Linux Tips

Disable Auto-Mount

You can temporarily disable automount by doing as root [1]:

$ rcdbus stop

Fast Copy

Using Netcat

When copying a directory that contains a lot of small files (like 1000+ files <1kB), it is faster to actually generate a tarball of the directory and have it unpacked on the fly on the destination server [2]:

# On DESTINATION box, launch first the listener
nc -l -p 2342 | tar -C /target/dir -xzf -
#On SOURCE box, launch the sender
tar -cz /source/dir | nc Target_Box 2342

Using tar

Say you want to copy from directory /mnt/img to /mnt/usb

(cd /mnt/img ; tar -cf - *) | (cd /mnt/usb ; tar -xvf -)
sync                                                         # Flush file system buffers

Fast Search

! Power Tip ! Use locate to find files rapidly by their names. locate is very lightweight (hardly notice it's running) and very efficient. It works for any file in any local file system.

For more powerful search (searching in file content), try software like Recoll, Beagle, Google Desktop, ... See Linux Software.

Other

See here

Password prompt during boot

This is a tip for GDM but similar tip works for KDM. It prompts for a password needed to mount a password protected HOME partition [3].

Add at the end of /etc/gdm/Init/Default:

DEVICE=/dev/sda6
while [ ! -e /dev/mapper/cryptohome ]; do
zenity --entry --hide-text --text="Enter your passphrase:" | cryptsetup luksOpen $DEVICE cryptohome
done
mount /dev/mapper/cryptohome /home