Quick Post: Useful Tools – Terminator for Linux

Nov04
by Phil Tann on 04/11/2012 at 10:30 am
Posted In: Computing, Linux

One of the frustrations I find with Linux is I often find myself connected to anywhere between 2 and 5 separate machines doing various tasks. The problem comes in having to have multiple terminal windows open, or using other tools to achieve multiple open windows on the screen simultaneously.

While cruising through the lifehacker website I discovered a recommendations that Adam had made regarding software tools, one of which was Terminator. What attracted me to this immediately was some of the screen captures of the application running anything from dual (side by side or one on top of the other) to what I would perhaps refer to as as totally over the top, rediculous workspace like this one (image sourced from Oracle VUE).

A very quick Google search showed me that depending on the release you’re running, it’s possibly already in your repo’s for most current versions of Linux, I’m running Ubuntu 12.04LTS so I’m in a pretty easy position for that. All I had to do was a 

sudo apt-get install terminator

Then replaced my on screen shortcuts for Terminal with the Terminator shortcut and I love it!

For anyone using a less mainstream distro of Linux you may need to add the repo into your sources in order to be able to install terminator, the source you need is 

ppa:gnome-terminator/ppa

or if you’re that way inclined download the source and build it yourself, which is not something I plan on going into here today.

What used to be a bit of a pain in the bum is now really quite easy, I shoot in and out of screens without drama, connect to 2 or 3 different machines (or more if necessary) and have no worries in monitoring multiple machines either doing installs, updates or watching on screen live logging on game servers to fault find what’s causing crashes (for ref it’s usually Sourcemod after a big game update from Valve <-- A story for another day!). While my typical workspace looks like this

I’ve had as many as 7 separate terminal’s open doing various tasks with great success and I’d recommend anyone that does any amount of work in Terminal give it a try if you’re not already using it.

A couple of other useful references for anyone looking into this are:

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New toys, back to Linux

Nov02
by Phil Tann on 02/11/2012 at 11:25 pm
Posted In: Computing, Linux, Operating Systems

OK so I got bitten by the bug and wrapped up in the excitement months ago…
I bought a Raspberry Pi, what a gorgeous little device it is!

Due to some major time constraints I’ve not had time to really do anything with it (such as purchase SD card, card reader for my PC or HDMI cable so I can hook it up for starters), so I was really excited when my beautiful wife presented me with 2 x SD Cards and a card reader for my PC on my birthday. My parent’s in law were very generous and gave me a wad of cash to complete the set so off I went and grabbed the required HDMI Cable with enough left over to buy a little case for the beast on ebay.

Great, it’s hooked up… Now what?

For anyone venturing down this path, the best place to start is certainly the Raspberry Pi Website. There’s a bunch of useful resources there including

I decided to play with a few images to see which I liked best, starting with their “recommended” image which is Raspbian “wheezy” which is in the above mentioned downloads area (a skinned version of Debian Squeeze for anyone that’s wondering where the name came from) and Fedora 14 which is probably going to become my daily river O.S. for the little beast.

How do you build an image?

In essence, you don’t have to! People far smarter than I, have already done it for you. There’s probably at least a dozen good images out there to play with and learn the ropes with Linux without having to know anything of the core operating system; ie. it’s a bootable image, you don’t need to build the installation yourself. Installing it to your SD card is nearly as easy as downloading it and this is where the SD Card reader my wife gave me comes into play!

  1. Pick and image you’d like to play with
  2. Download it
  3. Unzip the image
  4. Grab a copy of Image Write for Windows: HERE
  5. Run Image Writer
  6. Find the image you have just unzipped and select it
  7. Select the drive letter of your SD Card that should be plugged into your computer during this process
  8. Select “write”

At this time you should be ready to plug your SD card into your Raspberry Pi and turn it on.
All being well, you should be greeted after a few seconds with a screen that looks something like this one.

What’s the point?

There’s a couple of reasons for this, the main one being: Because I can!
What sort of geek would I be if I didn’t want to play with the latest toys, really?

The second being that I’ve been tinkering with Linux for a number of years now, learning all the while and thanks to some very patient, talented and smart friends I’ve got to a point where I can usually achieve what I have set out to do in multiple distro’s of Linux. I’m still weighing up which is my favourite, either Ubuntu or Fedora for desktop and Centos for Server applications.

Finally there’s the power/noise factor, it’s no secret to anyone that we’re getting royally screwed on power prices in South Australia and anything you can do to minimise power use (therefor cost) without sacrificing your quality of life and what you love doing is surely a good thing. So far it’s a great toy, I’m really enjoying playing with it. It takes me back a few years to when I first discovered the joys of tinkering with computers and learning what makes them tick. A very happy $50 spent and would happily recommend to others to do the same.

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New Blog – FINALLY

Oct02
by Phil Tann on 02/10/2012 at 11:03 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized

It’s been ignored for ages and ages so I decided to finally move everything across from my old blog – www.geekout.info and get everything on my own domain here.

So much has happened since I last posted anything; where do I start?

Home: We’ve (my wife and I) got another baby!  Jennifer was born on the 7th of September at some ungodly hour of the morning.  Alex is taking it all in his stride and doing remarkably well given his whole world has been turned on it’s head, I’m so proud of him!  With the baby coming along, I was evicted from my nerds lair and had a new desk built for me in the master bedroom (only place we had room for it) and mission control is back in business!

We’ve had our hot water system changed over from the old electric beast to a instant gas system which should save us a bit of money, particularly through the winter months so that will be nice.

Work/Study/SES: A lot to roll into 1 batch, but none are really enough to warrant their own post. The abridged version is: Work is busy, I’m still learning a lot each day and struggling to keep up some days. Just when I think I’ll get to some project work, something pops up that needs attention quickly.

I’ve finished one of my study course, the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment which means I can continue to train people at SES. I’ve also begun a Diploma of Management, also through the SES which is keeping me very busy in my non paid hours (As if a 3 year old and a new born weren’t enough to do that already!?). In the not too distant future, I’ll be starting the Certificate III in Public Safety SES Rescue which will be a nice little notch on the belt too.

While on the subject of SES, aside from being promoted at my home unit to training coordinator: I got my 10 year medal earlier in the year and have been notified late last week that I’ve also been awarded the Chief Officers commendation for my work in organizing a large scale training exercise for 3 units (my own and 2 neighbouring units) which is quite unexpected but a very welcome honour.

I’ve been trying in amongst all this to maintain some presence on Ausdroid, go there to see my posts!

I guess that about covers it for now.

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