Linux, *Nix

This category displays all articles relating to *Nix operating systems including Ubuntu, and Mac OSX.

How to: make a local copy of a website using the command line in Ubuntu

I was recently asked to make a copy of a live website for reference purposes by a client of ours atCoolpink, I normally used HTTrack for this task as it's a really nice free piece of software and as well as having a GUI version (for both Windows and Linux) is usable via the command line in Linux.

However the last couple of times I had used it I noticed it was having problems when downloading images and cutting for no apparent reason, so I decided to look into other ways to do the task and it appears that it is relatively simple in the Linux command line using the wget command, simply type:

cd Desktop wget --mirror -p --html-extension --convert-links http://somewebsite.com

And in a matter of seconds of watching the command line spit out lots of text, a new folder titled www.somewebsite.com (obviously this will be what ever website you are making a copy of) appear on your Desktop with all the webpages downloaded as html files.

How to: Update your gem sources list on Ubuntu

I recently wanted to edit my gem sources list to incorporate http://gems.github.com as I whenever I wanted to try a new gem I had found on there or more recently when I was doing a fresh install of everything on my home machine I was finding it pretty tedious having to go to github finding the link for the gem and adding it to the end of the gem install command.

However after doing a bit of reading I found that it is amazingly simple to update this list, so using the instance above to add github.com to my gem list I ran the following command from my terminal:

sudo gem sources -a http://gems.github.com

If it has worked you will get a message displayed saying that it has been added.

Also say for instance that you decide at some point you no longer what this item in your sources list simple type the following command to remove it:

sudo gem sources -r http://gems.github.com

and this will remove said item from the list.

how to: install Alsa with creative XFi support in Ubuntu

Recently I had been having sound issues in Ubuntu but here is how I overcame them:

Step One: Download the latest version of the alsa-unstable-snapshot.tar.gz from here to your home dir.

Step Two: Now we need to make sure our system is able to compile these files by typing the following commands into your terminal:

sudo apt-get update
apt-cache search linux-headers-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
sudo apt-get install build-essential

Step Three: Next we need to make sure we're in home dir in Terminal and extract the files before we start to compile them:

cd ~
tar -zxf ALSA-driver-unstable-snapshot.tar.gz
cd ALSA-driver-unstable-snapshot

Step Four: Now you should be in your new extracted alsa dir, which contains all the relevant files, now we need to make sure the correct permissions are granted to the files we need:

sudo chmod 700 configure

Step Five: Now we start with the configuring and installation process:

first we need to run the configure file so in terminal type:

./configure

once that has finished the next step is to make the files:

make

and finally we install the package:

sudo make install

once this has finished you should restart your machine.

Step Six: at this point you will probably think that not much has happened, the reason for this is that by default the Alsa Drivers are muted, so now we need to adjust the volume via the Alsa mixer, so in our terminal type:

alsamixer

and using your left and right keys to move between the controls and the up and down keys to adjust them, adjust your settings accordingly.

now you need to check that you are using the Alsa drivers so again in terminal type:

gnome-sound-properties

and check that all the boxes read Alsa and thats it your Alsa drivers are now installed and will work with your lovely Creative XFi sound card.

End Note: IN the past I have found that PulseAudio seems to conflict with the Alsa Drivers i.e. sound cutting out etc. if you experience the same problems, all I did to resolve this was remove the PusleAudio drivers:

sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils

NB I believe this has since been sorted in Ubuntu 9.10.