How to tell which Linux distro you’re running


$ cat /etc/issue
Debian GNU/Linux squeeze/sid \n \l


Or


$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 2.6.32-trunk-686 (Debian 2.6.32-5) (ben@decadent.org.uk) (gcc version 4.3.4 (Debian 4.3.4-6) ) #1 SMP Sun Jan 10 06:32:16 UTC 2010


Source: Which Linux Distro are you using??

Enable mp3 playback with Amarok on Ubuntu 9.10

I just installed Ubuntu 9.10 on my desktop. When I tried to play some mp3 files with Amarok 2.2.0, it didn’t make any sound though it played ogg without a problem.

Thanks to this post, mp3 play back can be enabled by installing libxine1-ffmpeg.

$ sudo apt-get install libxine1-ffmpeg

Credit: How to Play mp3 files with amarok in Ubuntu Linux 9.04

Stopping hard drive clicking noise on MSI U100

Finally, the OS X has been removed from MSI Wind U100, and completely replaced by Debian (testing).

Whenever the computer is idle, the hdd makes this weird clicking noise. To stop it, we can use hdparm to turn it off.

kenno@tora:~$ sudo hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
setting Advanced Power Management level to 0xfe (254)
APM_level = 254
kenno@tora:~$


Source: MSI Wind – Gentoo Linux Wiki

Profile backup – Mozilla FireFox and Thunderbird

At work, a colleague is struggling to get his pc up and running for a few days now. To add insult to injury, he also lost some of his Microsoft Outlook back up emails.
Seeing what happened to him, I shall back up my files and emails too.

I use Mozilla Thunderbird (2.0.0.22), and I found a very nice tool to back up the emails (a.k.a profile). It’s called MozBackup.

I thought I should share this with others who use Thunderbird too.

SQL: Update with values from another table

UPDATE Log
SET Username = u.Username, Name = u.Name
FROM Users u
Where u.Id = userid

Source: codesnippets.joyent.com