Check your Ubuntu for Non-free packages - vrms (Virtual Richard M Stallman)

In the early 1980's Richard M. Stallman created the GNU project, whose goal was to provide the world with a Free Operating System (with the word "Free" with the same meaning as in "Freedom").

Since then, a lot of Free Software was developed and entire operating systems based only on Free Software were created. Unfortunately, some data is still stored in a format that is proprietary, secret and non-standard, made by corporations that want to retain control over the users of the software that generates such data.

The vrms program provides the facility for users of Debian-based Operating Systems (like Ubuntu Linux) to detect if their systems have any non-free software installed, so that the users can keep their computer "pure", without non-free software.

vrms can be installed using Synaptic Package Manager:

To execute it, just type "vrms" in the terminal and you will get the list of 'non-free' software installed on your system. For each program from 'non-free' installed, vrms displays an explanation of why it is non-free, if one is available. This explanation is usually from a list included in the vrms package itself, but other packages can provide additional lists of explanations, too.

So if you want a completely free (as in freedom!) operating system, you can use Use/ Install gNewsense instead of Ubuntu or others.

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How to Securely Wipe a Hard Drive - Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN")

Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

DBAN is a means of ensuring due diligence in computer recycling, a way of preventing identity theft if you want to sell a computer, and a good way to totally clean a Microsoft Windows installation of viruses and spyware. DBAN prevents or thoroughly hinders all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis.

DBAN is a free software product that can be used at home or in a business at zero cost.

DBAN has all available drivers for SCSI disks and drivers for IDE, PATA, and SATA disks.
DBAN supports all Microsoft platforms and securely destroys FAT, VFAT, and NTFS filesytems and  all unix platforms and securely destroys ReiserFS, EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, and UFS filesystems.

Installation:
DBAN 2.2.6 Beta for CD-R and DVD-R media.
(Burn this file to a blank disc and boot the computer with it. Do not unzip this file.)
Burn this downloaded ISO file to a CD and boot off that CD (you need to configure your BISO settings to boot from the CD first). Follow the prompts and select your appropriate configuration options.

DBAN is easy to use and very secure, using multiple methods including the Gutmann method and the Mersenne twister.

The autonuke option from the first screen will automatically run through all detected disks, securely wiping them, so be careful with it.

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Modify Images in Linux - Mogrify

The  Mogrify program is a member of the ImageMagick suite of tool, use the mogrify program to re-size an image, blur, crop, despeckle, dither, draw on, flip, join, re-sample, and much more. This tool is similiar to convert except that the original image file is overwritten (unless you change the file suffix with the -format option) with any changes you request.

Imagemagick Mogrify is an easy to use, ligte, command prompt tool and capable of editting most of the image types.

Using Mogrify:
If you want to transform all the .tiff images in a directory to .jpg, you can do it with a single command:
mogrify -format jpeg *.tiff

Create thumbnails using this command:
mogrify -geometry 120x120 *.jpg

To reduce the size of any given image, use this command:
mogrify -resize 50% *.jpg

You can resize all your JPEG images in a folder to a maximum dimension of 256x256 with this command:
mogrify -resize 256x256 *.jpg

Convert PNG images to the JPEG format:
mogrify -format jpg *.png

Rotate an Image using this command
mogrify -rotate "-90" test.jpg

Reduce Colours of any given image using this command
mogrify -colors 2 test.jpg

Monochrome the given image using this command
mogrify -monochrome test.jpg

Add Borders to given image using this command
mogrify -border 2x4 test.jpg

Add Annotate to Image using this command
mogrify -comment 'My holiday highlight' test.jpg

Add some more Decorative Border using this command
mogrify -frame 20x20 test.jpeg

For more information about the ImageMagick project, visit http://www.imagemagick.org.
Run ‘mogrify -help’ to get a summary of the mogrify command options.

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How to enable Autologin to Linux console using mingetty

The mingetty program is a lightweight, minimalist getty program foruse only on virtual consoles. Mingetty is not suitable for serial lines (you should use the mgetty program instead for that purpose)

If you got the mingetty program, your /etc/inittab file will look like ....

1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty --noclear tty1
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2
3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3
4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4
5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6

The first field says that this is the line for /dev/tty1. The second field says that it applies to run levels 2, 3, 4, and 5. The third field means that the command should be run again, after it exits (so that one can log in, log out, and then log in again). The last field is the command that runs mingetty on the first virtual terminal.

The above series of lines also use the "respawn" option to keep six mingetty processes running on the system. If someone tries to kill one of these processes as root, the process will simply be respawned. Only critical processes are set up in this way to keep them safe from anything else happening on the system.

If you're curious about these processes, check them out on the running system using command

$ ps -ef | grep getty

Now to enable the auto loging for a particular user, edit the /etc/inittab file and identify the terminal on which you want user to have auto login ...

1:12345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty --noclear --autologin username tty1

Reboot the system after making above changes and insure that init has spawned the new version of mingetty, and if all is well, will automatically log you on to the console.

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