Tag Archives: command line

Get System Information Using the Terminal

Troubleshooting, upgrading, or just curious? Find out what’s in your system without opening the case. Using these Linux command line tools, you can get details about your hardware and distribution.

I’ve tested these commands in Ubuntu 7.10, but they should all work in other Linux distributions. Unless noted otherwise, all of this software is included by default with Ubuntu.

Graphics card:

– details about OpenGL, the Xserver, and your graphics card

– do you have direct 3d rendering?

– graphics card vendor

– specific graphics card model

– a simple 3d benchmark, prints frame rate to the terminal

– supported display resolutions

Audio:

– audio controller

– more audio device information

Software versions:

– current distribution and version

– packagename’s version and dependencies

– Linux kernel version

– all kernel details

Networking:

– Ethernet controllers

– networking interfaces, IP addresses, and more

Processor:

– all processors, clock speeds, flags, and more

– processor load average for the last 1, 5, and 15 minutes

– press C key to sort processes by CPU usage

Memory:

– amount of RAM and swap, and how much is being used for what

– total, used, and free memory shown in MB

– press M key to sort processes by memory usage

Hard disks:

– partitions, as well as their mount-points and usage in GB

– all partitions, their device names, and positions on disk

USB devices:

– USB buses and attached devices

Even more:

– monitor for hardware changes

– all PCI devices

(install from package hwinfo) – overview of all hardware, as well as more detailed info

– another program for listing hardware

– lists hardware with HTML output in the w3m web browser

– current time elapsed since last reboot, users, and load average

HOWTO: Create a FTP server with user access (proftpd)

A. The GUI way (for beginners only)

For those who are new to linux and don’t want to use a FTP server without GUI, or just for those who don’t use often their FTP server and wish to set it
quickly without a high level of security, there is a GTK GUI for proftpd.
Be careful, it’s less secure than configuring yourself your server.

1. Install proftpd and gproftpd with synaptic or with this command:
Code:

2. Play with the GUI and set up quickly your server.

Feel free to post here if you have some problems with gproftpd but it shouldn’t be too hard to use (it took me 2 minutes to set up a small FTP server ).

B. The secure way

1. Install proftpd with synaptic or with this command:
Code:

2. Add this line in /etc/shells file (sudo gedit /etc/shells to open the file):
Code:

Create a /home/ftp directory:
Code:

Create a user named ftp_user which will be used only for ftp access. This user don’t need a valid shell (more secure) therefore select /bin/false shell
for ftp_user and /home/ftp as home directory (property button in user and group window).
To make this section clearer, i give you the equivalent command line to create the user, but it would be better to use the GUI (System -> Administration -> User -> Group) to create the user since users here often got problems with the user creation and the password (530 error) with the command line, so i really advice to use the GUI :
Code:

In ftp directory create a download and an upload directory:
Code:

Now we have to set the good permissions for these directories:
Code:

3. OK, now go to the proftpd configuration file:
Code:

and edit your proftpd.conf file like that if it fit to your need:

Code:

Ok you have done proftpd configuration. Your server is on port 1980 (in this exemple) and the access parameters are
user: ftp_user
password: the one you’ve set for ftp_user

4. To start/stop/restart your server:
Code:

To perform a syntax check of your proftpd.conf file:
Code:

To know who is connected on your server in realtime use “ftptop” command (use “t” caracter to swich to rate display), you can also use the “ftpwho”
command.