Stop the Ubuntu 30-Mount Check Annoyance

I found this blog article on Digg talking about how to stop the fsck (File System Check, kind of like chkdsk in Windows) every 30 mounts. It is set by default when you install Ubuntu. Every 30 times you boot up, the fsck is forced. This is actually pretty good because it fixes problems and keeps your computer running properly.

If it's so good, then what the heck is the problem? The problem is that sometimes the check can take a while. A while meaning 15 to 20 minutes in some cases. I don't know about you, but when I'm booting up my computer it's because there is something I want to do on it now, not in 20 minutes.Well, If you want to avoid this, then you need autofsck, which forces the 30-day check at shutdown rather than at start-up. Also, when shutting it down, you get prompted before the check to make sure it is a good time to do it. That is fantastic because if you need to shutdown quick for some reason, you can skip it until next time.

From what I understand about it, at shutdown you get the prompt, and you select 'Y' to allow the check, your computer will reboot, do the fsck, then shutdown when finished. Not bad at all. To install it, do the following:

* Download the package here: autofsk
* Untar it
* Run the install script located in the extracted folder
(sudo ./install).
* Follow the prompts and voilla...No more Mr. boot time check!

read more | digg story

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This CD is the Ultimate!

Once upon a time there was this guy, and he created a pretty cool bootable CD called the Ultimate Boot CD. This little beauty comes with a bunch of diagnostic tools, administration tools, and other IT goodies. Some of these goodies include secure disk wiping utilities, or tools to change local administrative passwords on Windows machines. You know, cool stuff like that. The only problem was a lot of these tools were Linux based, and unless you were a wizard of the command line, some of these tools might seem a little daunting.

Well, the Ultimate boot CD, just got more ultimatER (Is that a word? It is now!). There is a version of the Ultimate Boot CD made especially for Windows lovers, and more exclusively GUI lovers! This is called The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows!

You need to compile this puppy yourself (Don't worry, it's fairly easy). All you need to compile it is the executable that you download from their site, and a Windows XP Professional installation CD.

Once it has been compiled, it is smooth sailing from here on in. To use it, just put it in the CD drive and boot to the CD. There are a lot of the original tools Like Derek's Boot and Nuke which securely wipe a hard drive so even the NSA can't recover data off it (Use the Gutmann Wipe option), but there is also a whole GUI portion as well with network support.

One of the best utilities that I have used a lot of since I discovered it, is the free Symantec Ghost like program that allows you to create deployable disk images for FREE! The utility is called Drive Image XML. You can download it by itself, but you can't create deployable images with the downloaded version cleanly. (If you use the Ultimate Boot CD version, you can run sysprep on the image you are deploying first to remove the SID). Since the CD has network support, you can upload an image to a file server for later deployment. Can you smell it? That is the smell of FREE binary goodness transferring across the LAN!

Another thing you can do, which I mentioned in my post about encrypting your hard drive, is you can browse files of the current operating system on the hard drive (As long as it is a windows computer) and you don't even have to be an administrator :-)

You can also reset the local administrators password for the operating system installed on the computer (As long as it is Windows NT 4.0 or newer) using the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor.

Oh, it is so juicy all of the things you can do with this disk! This disk is a MUST have for any IT professional.

For a list of all the tools this puppy has, click here!

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