There are times when devices fail, or lock up.
In some of those cases it could be a SATA hard disk locking up (perhaps it is developing bad blocks, perhaps it just had a power failure due to a bad connector and got left in an undefined state).
Thankfully, Linux offers vast control over the hardware…
Every once in a while Windows 7 manages to lose the list of available updates, and while it displays the correct number, the list for both important and optional updates are empty.
The only actual solution seemed to be a computer restart. However, there is an additional way to restore the updates list to proper functionality…
Hibernation is a great feature on any computer. It allows for a temporary pause in execution in which the system in question can be unplugged, cleaned, modified, or moved.
But what happens when some services don’t play nice and fail to resume properly from sleep? Fortunately, Linux’s power management utilities provide the necessary functionality…
The Negear WNDR4500v2 router is quite a beefy piece of hardware with advanced firmware, including plenty of features even for a maniac user like me.
I would most likely not have replaced it from day 1 however if it had one more feature that I absolutely needed: TFTP/PXE/BootP options for the DHCP server. There is where DD-WRT comes in…
Permissions. We hate them (as they always stop us from doing what we want) and yet we love them (as they make sure nobody does what we don’t want them to)…
But what happens when you want different permissions on folder than on files?
One may randomly encounter a Windows installation where some bluetooth devices don’t get their drivers installed despite having installed all of the manufacturer’s drivers.
In such cases, one may end up with one or several non-functioning “Bluetooth Peripheral Device”. To solve this, start by downloading and installing Windows Mobile Device Center 6.1…
Working with Wordpress installations all the time, I get to encounter the weirdest issues. One of theme is the all-known “unable to upload media”, translated by Wordpress to a clear and yet useless message.
First step is, naturally, to check permissions. But what do you do when permissions are perfect, and yet Wordpress can’t upload?
Three months after installing KB2670838 and updating my graphics drivers from Catalyst Mobility 13.12 to 14.4 the font rendering issue popped up. Except I didn’t get issues with text rendered in pages, but in Firefox’s menu /tabs / titlebar itself.
Nobody would think an update installed that long ago could be the culprit. Everyone would think the newly installed driver is (and it definitely has something do to with the issue).
One can never have enough backups. Backups are important and you shouldn’t let one day pass without having them. I recommend creating system-wide backups (either the entire system partition or the entire hard disk) periodically.
But for that bit of data which is frequently changed/updated/replaced, you’ll need a more often backup schedule. This can be easily achieved with an archiver and a bit of scripting…
Hard disk jumpers where a necessary nuisance in the IDE/(P-)ATA days. Jumpers made the difference between a functional and a non-functional hard drive.
Fortunately, they disappear in the S-ATA age. Well, almost… While totally unnecessary nowadays, jumpers are still needed to fiddle modern S-ATA drives to make them compatible with some early SATA implementations motherboards.
I’m one of those maniacs who hates the Office 2007+ / Windows 8 “ribbon” interface on programs.
I consider that on a wide screen using an interface where up to a third of the height is filled up with useless huge buttons is just stupid.
Thankfully, FoxIt Reader (still) offers the option to return to the old non-“ribbon” toolbar mode…
After a long uptime specific (cheap) devices or components connected to the USB ports lock up or malfunction. Unplugging and plugging them usually fixes issues, but physical access to the system (especially a remote server) is neither always possible or desirable.
In cases like this, Linux (unlike Windows) can trigger a USB subsystem restart by deactivating and reactivating the USB controller(s).
