Linux

New update script using apt rather than apt-get

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My plan is to migrate everything to this syntax. This is the first one. #!/bin/bash echo “updateall v.1.3 for Raspian” #Run this as a normal user. Your admin password will be asked for if required. sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade -y sudo apt full-upgrade -y sudo rpi-update echo “The script has now finished running.”

Non-interactive Debian upgrade script

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This could be run as a cron job on any Debian based system (tested on Debian, Ubuntu, Raspian). #!/bin/bash export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive yes ” | apt-get -y -o DPkg::options::=”–force-confdef” -o DPkg::options::=”–force-confold” dist-upgrade See http://slave27.local/debian-handbook/sect.automatic-upgrades.html for more details.

Converting .epub to .mobi

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This assumes the source file is DRM free, and that the machine already has calibre installed. for book in *.epub; do echo “Converting $book”; ebook-convert “$book” “$(basename “$book” .epub).mobi”; done

Merging PDF files

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The best graphical PDF merging tool for Linux is probably pdfmod. It’s in the Ubuntu repositories, and can do anything Preview can do as far as merging/exporting PDF files from multiple sources. For command line merging, pdftk does the job well. The syntax would be something like: pdftk *.pdf cat output combined.pdf Which would merge … Read more

Adding cowsay to login

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To get an interesting picture and quote each time you log in to a terminal session add the following to /etc/profile: echo;fortune | cowsay -f dragon;echo This requires fortune and cowsay to be installed first (through apt or homebrew depending on platform). The optput should look something like: _________________________________________ < Caution: Keep out of reach … Read more

Installing Motion on Ubuntu

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Install motion: sudo apt-get install motion Enable motion to start at boot: sudo nano /etc/default/motion Find the line that says start_motion_daemon=no and change it to start_motion_daemon=yes. Enable the stream to be viewed from other computers on the local network, and also make the output a little bigger: sudo nano /etc/motion/motion.conf Change the following values: daemon … Read more

Pandoc commands

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I wrote about Pandoc last year, but I’m using it more and more and I’ve found myself editing the original post a fair few times. This is the updated 2016 version that gathers together useful commands I’ve learned so far. Last year I found myself needing to do a lot of document conversion, and maintaining … Read more