Top new questions this week:

How to easily build your own Linux Distro?

I wanted to have a go at creating my very own Linux Distribution. Could you suggest some nice and easy-to-follow tutorials (preferably text based and not videos). I have heard something about Arch …

/ linux / arch-linux / distros

asked by Jakub 16 votes answered by James Brandon 2 votes

Differences between volume, partition and drive

What do these terms mean exactly? partition volume drive On Windows, one may say drive C: or partition C:. On Linux I'm not sure what should be used for partitions because they don't have a name.

/ hard-disk

asked by Minimus Heximus 12 votes answered by Thomas Nyman 12 votes

Why does `exit &` not work?

I don't understand why exit & does not work. Why does it not?

/ shell / exit

asked by Pedro Ziff 12 votes answered by Miroslav Koskar 16 votes

Determining Specific File Responsible for High I/O

This is a simple problem but the first time I've ever had to actually fix it: finding which specific files/inodes are the targets of the most I/O. I'd like to be able to get a general system overview, …

/ linux / monitoring / io / profiling

asked by Joel Davis 10 votes answered by slm 3 votes

How do I loop through only directories in bash?

I have a folder with some directories and some files. for d in *; do echo $d done will loop through all files, but I want to loop only through directories. How do I do that?

/ bash / files / directory

asked by rubo77 10 votes answered by choroba 14 votes

Is there an easy way to programmatically extract IP address?

Is there an easy way to programmatically extract IP address, without tedious parsing of ifconfig? I would not mind simple command output processing using sed to do it but not processing multiline …

/ shell / networking / ip

asked by amphibient 9 votes answered by slm 8 votes

How do I tell what program is asking for a password?

I'm getting an occasional "Authentication request" dialog from Gnome, and I don't know what program is asking or even which account it's talking about. [email redacted] is an email address of mine, …

/ gnome / gnome3 / authentication

asked by cjm 9 votes answered by Evan Teitelman 3 votes

Greatest hits from previous weeks:

How to add a newline to the end of a file?

Using version control systems I get annoyed at the noise when the diff says No newline at end of file. So I was wondering: How to add a newline at the end of a file to get rid off those messages?

/ bash / shell / text-processing / newlines

asked by k0pernikus 23 votes answered by l0b0 30 votes

How can I get my external IP address in bash?

I need to find my external IP address from a bash script. At the moment I use this function: myip () { lwp-request -o text checkip.dyndns.org | awk '{ print $NF }' } But it depends on …

/ linux / bash / ip

asked by eugene y 33 votes answered by joschi 20 votes

Can you answer these?

How to enable VESA framebuffer as default in NetBSD 6.1

When booting NetBSD, the old Tecra 720CDT that I have, works quite nicely in 1024x768x15 mode with vesa fb. I always have to activate VESA when booting the system: > vesa on > vesa 0x116 > …

/ kernel / netbsd / framebuffer

asked by polemon 2 votes

Autostart all LightDM seats and show one as default

I configured a media-center server running Debian with LightDM, Leapcast and Plex. What I want to accomplish is the following. There should be three LightDM seats, one default seat on which I can …

/ lightdm / multiseat

asked by gillis 2 votes

Why do wmaker icons shrink?

I find myself spending too much time getting the wmakers icons right. When I start an application from the commandline I get an Icon, which I can attach to the dock or the clip. Good. However, when …

/ icons / window-maker

asked by Martin Drautzburg 2 votes