How to avoid sudo password only for certain commands

How to shutdown/reboot

How to set ubuntu server to have LAN internet connection

Sudo nano etc/network/interfaces

How to create symlinks inside shared folders on VirtualBox?

How to tell which process is holding onto what port

How to synchronise the server clock

How to track a log file that changes as time goes by

How to set ubuntu server to have LAN internet connection (Static)

Another way to set up static IP

How to change machine name

How to fix errors involving missing erl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = (unset),
LC_ALL = (unset),
LANG = "en_US.UTF-8"
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").

How to mount flash drive in Ubuntu Server

How to find Installed Packages Location:

All installed packages via apt-get goes into the directory: /var/cache/apt/archives

How to have shared folders on Ubuntu VM via Virtual Box

How to install Guest Additions

Install LibreOffice to Ubuntu

Install unoconv package (works for >= 12.04)

Create New SSH keys

Gain remote access to another server using ssh

have a mail smtp host on ubuntu server

Add www-data to sudoers file

Allow all sudoers to execute sudo without password

Change password for other users

Setup ssh login without password

a) Make .ssh folders for the user b On B
b) Actually assign a’s public key into user b on B as an authorized key

Pdftotext how to convert to and from pdf

Prepare /var/virtual for webapp source code

update packages including those kept back

how to purge old kernel packages when run of disk space

how to display list of users and their ids

how to remove the 12 packages can be installed message when you login via ssh

if ubuntu is guest OS, ssh into it

How to unzip zip file in terminal

How to install Jenkins on ubuntu

How to configure jenkins to use subdomain like ci.example.com

How to make prompt appear if it is missing

This account is currently not available

How to find out full path of a command

How to update known_hosts file when the ip address changes for a server and you try to ssh

How to allow a certain command be sudo by a particular user without password prompted.

how to prepare server for ssh agent forwarding

show all users

How to use tar and gzip

Creating a tape archive:
Listing the contents of an archive:
Extracting all files from an archive:
Compress:
Decompress:
Update system clock
Sync Clock Via NTP

Setup Puppet Master on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

How to update to higher versions of ubuntu

Verify your settings on ubuntu Check version

How to restart jenkins when you accidentally lock yourself out by security

How to find all files and delete

How to avoid sudo password only for certain

commands
http://askubuntu.com/questions/159007/how-do-i-run-specific-sudo-commands-without-a-passw
ord
sudo visudo

then type something like

jenkins ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/local/bin/composer.phar

where jenkins is the user alias

How to shutdown/reboot

To shutdown safely:
sudo shutdown -h now
To reboot:
sudo reboot

How to set ubuntu server to have LAN internet

connection

Sudo nano etc/network/interfaces

Add the following lines

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Sudo etc/init.d/networking restart

How to create symlinks inside shared folders on

VirtualBox?

The problem is basically because `yo angular appname` will attempt to create symlinks.

There is an issue with creating symlinks inside SharedFolders for VirtualBox VMs.

The solution is that

a) make sure you are running Linux variant as Host OS (Mac, Linux, etc)

b) Shut down your VM.

c) run the following command in your host OS terminal.

VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME

VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/SHAREDFOLDERNAME 1

where you need to replace `VMNAME` and `SHAREDFOLDERNAME`

d) now re-run the VM and execute the `yo angular appname`. If need be remove any previously
created files and folders by your previous `yo angular appname` command before re-running it.
http://stackoverflow.com/a/20002108/80353

How to tell which process is holding onto what port

netstat -tulpn

How to synchronise the server clock

timedatectl

You should expect the following:

Local time: Fri 2017-08-04 14:10:43 SGT
Universal time: Fri 2017-08-04 06:10:43 UTC
Timezone: Asia/Singapore (SGT, +0800)
NTP enabled: yes
NTP synchronized: yes
RTC in local TZ: no
DST active: n/a

How to check if pinging to ntp servers?

ntpq -c lpeer

You should see

remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter

=========================================================================
=====
61-216-153-106. .INIT. 16 u - 64 0 0.000 0.000 0.000
61-216-153-105. .INIT. 16 u - 64 0 0.000 0.000 0.000
fwdns2.vbctv.in .INIT. 16 u - 64 0 0.000 0.000 0.000
y.ns.gin.ntt.ne .INIT. 16 u - 64 0 0.000 0.000 0.000
alphyn.canonica .INIT. 16 u - 64 0 0.000 0.000 0.000

To sync, run sudo apt-get install ntp

How to track a log file that changes as time goes by
tail -f /path/to/log

How to set ubuntu server to have LAN internet

connection (Static)
Make sure etho is down.

Command:

sudo ifdown eth0

Go to:

Sudo nano etc/network/interfaces

Add the following lines

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address <ip address>
netmask <subnet mask>
gateway <gateway address>

Then bring interface up:

sudo ifup eth0

If doesn’t work, restart networking service:

/etc/init.d/networking restart

Another way to set up static IP

1. ensure that dhcp is working in interfaces.

2. run sudo ifconfig eth0 150.236.108.17 netmask 255.255.254.0

To go back to dhcp again use

sudo dhclient eth0

https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/serverguide/network-configuration.html
To configure a default gateway, you can use the route command in the following manner. Modify
the default gateway address to match your network requirements.
sudo route add default gw 10.0.0.1 eth0

To verify your default gateway configuration, you can use the route command in the following
manner.
route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
10.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 1 0 0 eth0
0.0.0.0 10.0.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

How to change machine name

You need to edit the computer name in two files: 

/etc/hostname

and 

/etc/hosts

These will both need administrative access, so run 

gksu gedit /path/to/file

Replace any instances of the existing computer name with your new one. When complete 
run 

sudo service hostname start

The name will also be changed if you restart your computer. 

（p.s the sudo service hostname start didn't work so had to restart the computer)
How to fix errors involving missing erl: warning:
Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = (unset),
LC_ALL = (unset),
LANG = "en_US.UTF-8"
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale
("C").

On ubuntu, need to add in the following:

sudo locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

quit the ubuntu and restart it for the changes to work.

if you need to ssh into the server, on the machine you ssh from make sure that you add the
following to your own .bashrc and .bash_profile

# Setting for the new UTF-8 terminal support in Lion

export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

and then RESTART the terminal.

read the following:

http://stackoverflow.com/a/7413863/80353
http://stackoverflow.com/a/5243258/80353
How to mount flash drive in Ubuntu Server

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount/USB

Step 1: Type “sudo fdisk -l” to check which disk the USB is detect on. (e.g. /dev/sdb1)

Step 2: Create a folder where you want the USB to be mounted on (e.g. /media/usb)
Type “sudo mkdir /media/usb”

Step 3: Mount the usb

For FAT type hard disk:

Type “sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /media/usb -o
uid=1000,gid=1000,utf8,dmask=027,fmask=137” <- This is based on Step 1 and 2 examples.

For NTFS hard disk:

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /media/usb

To unmount, type: “sudo umount /dev/sdb1” || “sudo umount /media/usb”

How to find Installed Packages Location:

All installed packages via apt-get goes into the directory: /var/cache/apt/archives

How to have shared folders on Ubuntu VM via Virtual

Box

1. VBox > Settings > Shared Folders and add the folder you want to share inside VM
2. Choose auto mount and permanent if available.
3. check /media inside VM. Does it show /sf_SharedFolderName?
a. if no, install GuestAdditions
b. if yes, you have successfully mounted a shared folder.
How to install Guest Additions
Go here to download http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/
Look for the version and then download the iso
Read this http://docs-v1.vagrantup.com/v1/docs/base_boxes.html

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

sudo apt-get install dkms -y

sudo mount /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

sudo sh /media/cdrom/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

How to mount your shared folder to another part of

the VM
1. Create the folder that you want the shared folder to appear as well.

Eg:

inside /var/virtual you do a mkdir SharedFolder so that you have a

/var/virtual/SharedFolder

2. Now you need to create a script so that everytime you turn on the vm, you automatically
mound this shared folder to /var/virtual/SharedFolder.
 Eg:
sudo nano /etc/init/automountSharedFolder.conf

3. inside the conf file, type the following.

description "this is to mount the /media/sf_SharedFolder into

/var/virtual/SharedFolder"

start on startup

task

exec mount -t vboxsf <SharedFolder> -o rw,dmode=755,gid=33,uid=33

/var/virtual/<SharedFolder>

Please take note that the gid and uid must match the of the owner of the
/var/virtual/<SharedFolder>

Replace <SharedFolder> with the actual name.

4. restart the VM.

5. check /var/virtual/<sharedfolder> you should see the shared folder successfully mounted
there as well.

Check out the answer in http://superuser.com/a/527991/8184

Install LibreOffice to Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-core libreoffice-common libreoffice-writer libreoffice-calc
python-uno

Install unoconv package (works for >= 12.04)

cd /tmp
git clone https://github.com/dagwieers/unoconv
cd unoconv/

## if need be, install make

sudo apt-get install make

sudo make install

cd ../
rm -Rf unoconv/

change the /etc/environment to include

UNO_PATH=/usr/lib/libreoffice

for 14.04
simply do
sudo apt-get install unoconv -y

Create New SSH keys

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email@youremail.com"# Creates a new ssh key using
the provided email
# Generating public/private rsa key pair.
# Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/you/.ssh/id_rsa): [Press enter]

Gain remote access to another server using ssh

Just like you use a remote control to change channels on a tv without touching a tv, you can
also gain access to a server without actually be in direct contact with a server.

usually you gain access by going to your terminal and type

ssh username@server-ip-address

e.g.,

ssh root@198.61.169.10

or if you have associated the IP Address with a domain, you can do

ssh root@example.com

have a mail smtp host on ubuntu server

install postfix

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Postfix

Add www-data to sudoers file

What this is: we want to add a particular user account to the list of sudoers

Run the following as root:

sudo adduser www-data sudo

Allow all sudoers to execute sudo without password

Your main user is member of group 'sudo'. Default settings is to ask your password in order to 
perform any activity which requires some privilegies. 
in order to change it, you need to run in a terminal: 
sudo visudo
and change this line: 
%sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

for this line: 

%sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

save the changes and close your session to have your system taking the changes. 

Change password for other users

Run the following as root:

passwd www-data

Setup ssh login without password

Assume you want to login from a@A to b@B

First we assume that you have already created your private/public key pair

a) Make .ssh folders for the user b On B

Now use ssh to create a directory ~/.ssh as user b on B. (The directory may already exist,
which is fine):
a@A:~> ssh b@B mkdir -p .ssh
b@B's password:

Warning!! Sometimes, you get a host key verification failed message. This means
that probably you change the IP address of the server. Reset your known_hosts
file like this.

Note: for ssh via a different port number like 3022, use

ssh -p 3022 b@B mkdir .ssh

b) Actually assign a’s public key into user b on B as an authorized key

Finally append a's new public key to b@B:.ssh/authorized_keys and enter b's password one
last time:
a@A:~> cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh b@B 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'
b@B's password:

Note: for ssh via a different port number like 3022, use

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh -p 3022 b@B 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'

From now on you can log into B as b from A as a without password:

a@A:~> ssh b@B hostname
B
A note from one of our readers: Depending on your version of SSH you might also have to
do the following changes:
● Put the public key in .ssh/authorized_keys2
● Change the permissions of .ssh to 700
● Change the permissions of .ssh/authorized_keys2 to 640

Pdftotext how to convert to and from pdf

sudo apt-get install poppler-utils

Prepare /var/virtual for webapp source code

Create the following folders if you want to have 1 production instance and 1 stage instance for
the same webapp

login as www-data

navigate to /var/virtual

use mkdir to create the following folders like:

webapp.com
stage.webapp.com

The permissions of the folders should be 775

Or you can use

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/gist/4528222)" <webapp.com>

this is the script https://gist.github.com/4528222

update packages including those kept back

sudo apt-get update -y

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y

will update all packages including those kept back.

After this, run

sudo apt-get autoremove -y

This will remove any unwanted packages.

You will be prompted to restart the system with

Graph this data and manage this system at https://landscape.canonical.com/

*** System restart required ***

Go to your Amazon EC2 or Rackspace to reboot the system.

how to purge old kernel packages when run of disk

space
sudo apt-get autoremove -f

This will forcibly remove unwanted kernel packages

If this doesn't work,

uname -a

to find out current kernel used

then
cd /boot
sudo rm *-3.03-61-generic

and remove any generic that is NOT current kernel.

Then try autoremove again.

Finally
sudo update-grub

how to display list of users and their ids

sudo nano /etc/passwd

how to remove the 12 packages can be installed

message when you login via ssh
this message is called motd or Message of the Day.

There are 2 reasons for this.

1) you have not updated packages that are held back. You need to update all packages
including those held back

2) There is a bug with the motd.tail file. You need to run

sudo touch /etc/motd.tail

if ubuntu is guest OS, ssh into it

http://superuser.com/a/527462/8184

Add a port forwarding rule assuming you are using virtualbox

The best way to login to a guest Linux VirtualBox VM is port forwarding. By default you should
have one interface already which is using NAT. Then go to the Network settings and click the
Port Forwarding button. Add new Rule:
Host port 3022, guest port 22, name ssh, other left blank.

How to unzip zip file in terminal

1. install unzip http://askubuntu.com/a/86852/10591

2. unzip file.zip -d destination_folder
How to install Jenkins on ubuntu

This is greatly referenced from

https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Installing+Jenkins+on+Ubuntu

Run the following as root:

wget -q -O - http://pkg.jenkins-ci.org/debian/jenkins-ci.org.key | sudo apt-key add -

sh -c 'echo deb http://pkg.jenkins-ci.org/debian binary/ >

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/jenkins.list'
apt-get update -y
apt-get install jenkins -y

adduser jenkins sudo

curl -L http://updates.jenkins-ci.org/update-center.json | sed '1d;$d' | curl -X POST -H 'Accept:

application/json' -d @- http://localhost:8080/updateCenter/byId/default/postBack

or you can use

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL

https://gist.githubusercontent.com/simkimsia/4473000/raw/6adbd05cc3b8aaa5fb9cf1d7d4a5a0eaef273
21a/install-jenkins-on-ubuntu-12-10.sh)"

The script is here https://gist.github.com/4473000

It is important all of the above commands are executed. The first is to install. The second adds
`jenkins` to sudoers. The last one is to update the updatecenter so that you can properly use
shortname to install plugins.

if you get a curl: (7) couldn't connect to host

run the curl command again

How to configure jenkins to use subdomain like

ci.example.com
See this https://gist.github.com/simkimsia/5307691

How to make prompt appear if it is missing

Refer http://askubuntu.com/a/232663/10591 for more details

first at root i did a

echo $SHELL

I saw that I have /bin/bash

then i switch to www-data

sudo su www-data

then i do a

echo $SHELL

I saw that I had

/bin/sh

instead.

So I did a

chsh -s /bin/bash

I was prompted for my www-data password so I gave it.

Password:

after that I switch back to root

exit

then i log back into www-data

sudo su www-data
I checked the $SHELL again

echo $SHELL

I saw that now it is

/bin/bash

and also my prompt is back

This account is currently not available

sudo chsh -s /bin/bash username

to change the bash

How to find out full path of a command

If i want to know the full path to `service` as in `sudo service php5-fpm restart`

i will use `which service`

this will return me the full path which is usually \user\sbin\service

How to update known_hosts file when the ip address

changes for a server and you try to ssh

When you try to ssh to a server, sometimes the ip address changes and you get prompted for a
host key verification failed message.
So what you do is you need to reset the known_hosts

ssh-keygen -R hostname

How to allow a certain command be sudo by a

particular user without password prompted.

taken from http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/59843

visudo as root
then

type

Phing ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /full/path/to/service

assuming Phing is the user.

use which service to find out which service is used

when you change visudo, you need to reboot

how to prepare server for ssh agent forwarding

because sometimes a user needs to mkdir in another dir owned by another user and you do not
wish to change user privileges nor ownership or even which group the user belongs to.

easiest way is to use ssh agent forwarding.

but you need to update the known_hosts file.

otherwise you will keep triggering host key verification error..

so eg jenkins wants to mkdir a folder inside /var/virtual which belongs to www-data

first update the known_hosts inside jenkins

Login as jenkins

Do a

www-data@ipaddress

you will see a

The authenticity of host 'ipaddress (ipaddress)' can't be established.

ECDSA key fingerprint is 95:a3:86:8f:a1:d1:2d:4b:e2:bf:97:e2:92:a1:cd:1d.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes

then allow jenkins to access www-data@ipaddress without prompting for password

show all users
cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd

How to use tar and gzip

Creating a tape archive:

tar -cf archive.tar myDirectories/
Note - using the "v" flag prints out extra messages, as verbose mode, though it's not related to
extracting files.

Listing the contents of an archive:

tar -tf archive.tar
It is generally a good idea to preview the contents of tape archives before unpacking them. This can
become a serious problem if you are currently root, and the archive just happens to jump out of the
current directory, and write over some important system files.

Extracting all files from an archive:

tar -xf archive.tar
To extract just partial pieces from the archive, supply a file or directory name after the archive name.
You can list as many as desiered here, separated by spaces.
tar -xf archive.tar filename

Compress:
gzip archive.tar

Decompress:
gunzip archive.tar.gz

Merging files
The "z" flag works with gzip, to either create a tar/gzipped archive:
tar -czvf archive.tgz files/
...or decompress a tar/gzipped archive:
tar -xzvf archive.tgz
Update system clock

Sync Clock Via NTP

If you want to sync your clock with NTP servers, it is also very easy. Just make sure you have the file ntp.conf file in
/etc. How can you check it?
ls /etc/ntp.conf
If you see /etc/ntp.conf as a result, you already have that file. If the ls command gives an error, you do not have it. If
so, you may create it yourself.
sudo vim /etc/ntp.conf
This file will be used to automatic synchronization of the clock. I do not know if the client uses this file automatically or
one has to configure something first. Thanks to Sean (see comment below): You need to install ntpd in order to make
use of this ntp.conf file.
Whether you have the file already or not, make sure it has at least the following data
driftfile /var/lib/ntp/ntp.drift
server 0.pool.ntp.org
server 1.pool.ntp.org
server 2.pool.ntp.org
server pool.ntp.org
Here you may replace, add, and/or remove any servers you wish. You will find a list of time servers from the public
NTP time server list.
You may manually sync the clock using the following
sudo ntpdate servername
where servername can be any public or private time server. You may always choose the following without hesitation
sudo ntpdate pool.ntp.org
If you don’t have ntpdate installed, you can install it via:
sudo aptitude install ntpdate

Setup Puppet Master on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

1. http://docs.puppetlabs.com/guides/puppetlabs_package_repositories.html#for-debian-an
d-ubuntu
2. wget https://apt.puppetlabs.com/puppetlabs-release-precise.deb
sudo dpkg -i puppetlabs-release-precise.deb
sudo apt-get update
3. if the server is hosted somewhere in internet, use

sudo vim /etc/hosts

and add puppet to the 127.0.0.1 entry

4. install the Jenkins see How to install Jenkins on ubuntu

5. switch to Cloudflare for your domain
6. wait for 24 hours before the nameservers DNS switches over to cloudflare

How to update to higher versions of ubuntu

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install update-manager-core

then

$ sudo do-release-upgrade

if still no release

do

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

taken from
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-upgrade-to-ubuntu-14-04-from-ubuntu-13-10-or-12-04/

A better answer is here for silent upgrade using defaults:

http://askubuntu.com/a/304980/10591

Verify your settings on ubuntu Check version

$ lsb_release -a
$ uname -mrs
$ tail -f /var/log/app/log/file

How to restart jenkins when you accidentally lock

yourself out by security

root access and then navigate to /var/lib/jenkins

vim config.xml

look for useSecurity and change true to false

sudo reboot to restart server

worst case scenario is

sudo apt-get remove jenkins

then reinstall

How to find all files and delete

find . -name "*.txt" -type f -delete