Ubuntu Tips and Wget
Hi everyone, welcome back and thanks for joining me this week. For those of you who are new to freshubuntu, this is a podcast that aims to help new users migrate specifically from the windows environment to Ubuntu OS. I have a lot of things planned for us today. I have a few newsworthy items that happened in the past week and then I have a whole bunch of tips to help make life a little easier. Then I will tell you about a great little program called wget. So lets get on with this weeks news items. I got a voice message to ask if I was going to do a podcast about uprading to Edgy Eft and I will undoubtably be doing one. Not only that but I will most likely go through a fresh cd installation of Edgy on my desktop. This future episode will air most likely a week after releas of the stable version of Edgy. But, for now I posted instructions from the ubuntu forums on how to upgrade to the beta version.
Download mp3 here: 011freshubuntu01Oct06.ogg
NEWS
Item #1: Leo at the Podcast Expo -
Item #2: Screenshots of Ubuntu Edgy Eft Beta
Item #3: Bill Clinton wants you to have more Ubuntu!
TIPS GALORE
Ubuntu Tips at the unofficial ubuntu wiki
1. How to restart GNOME without rebooting computer
Press 'Ctrl + Alt + Backspace'
or
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart
2. How to run programs on startup when login into GNOME
* System -> Preferences -> Sessions
* Sessions
Startup Programs Tab -> Add/Edit/Delete
3. Run a terminal command without first opening the terminal
Press 'Alt+F2" and the run application dialog box will pop up; just type in the command you want to run and check mark the box that says wun in terminal. this will open the terminal command and execute the command you issued. This is also helpful for opening other files without starting the application first.
4. Update to Edgy eft Beta
Caution - edgy is not completely stable yet so dont use this as you primary computer or install on a computer that contains high value information.
gksudo "update-manager -c -d"
The "-d" switch instructs Update Manager to consider pre-release versions, including this Beta release. Without this switch, only official, final releases will be considered. The "-c" switch tells it to look for upgrades at all. By default the 6.06 LTS release will not offer that automatically because of its long support cycle and high stability.
If you have a working network connection, it should then inform you about a new release and offer to upgrade your system.
COMMAND LINE COMMAND OF THE WEEK - WGET
Description
GNU Wget is a free utility for non-interactive download of files from the Web. It supports HTTP , HTTPS , and FTP protocols, as well as retrieval through HTTP proxies.
Wget is non-interactive, meaning that it can work in the background, while the user is not logged on. This allows you to start a retrieval and disconnect from the system, letting Wget finish the work. By contrast, most of the Web browsers require constant user’s presence, which can be a great hindrance when transferring a lot of data.
Wget can follow links in HTML pages and create local versions of remote web sites, fully recreating the directory structure of the original site. This is sometimes referred to as ‘‘recursive downloading.’’ While doing that, Wget respects the Robot Exclusion Standard (/robots.txt). Wget can be instructed to convert the links in downloaded HTML files to the local files for offline viewing.
Wget has been designed for robustness over slow or unstable network connections; if a download fails due to a network problem, it will keep retrying until the whole file has been retrieved. If the server supports regetting, it will instruct the server to continue the download from where it left off.
Simple Usage
Say you want to download a URL . Just type:
wget http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
But what will happen if the connection is slow, and the file is lengthy? The connection will probably fail before the whole file is retrieved, more than once. In this case, Wget will try getting the file until it either gets the whole of it, or exceeds the default number of retries (this being 20). It is easy to change the number of tries to 45, to insure that the whole file will arrive safely:
wget --tries=45 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg
Now let’s leave Wget to work in the background, and write its progress to log file log. It is tiring to type --tries, so we shall use -t.
wget -t 45 -o log http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg &
The ampersand at the end of the line makes sure that Wget works in the background. To unlimit the number of retries, use -t inf.
The usage of FTP is as simple. Wget will take care of login and password.
wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/welcome.msg
If you specify a directory, Wget will retrieve the directory listing, parse it and convert it to HTML . Try:
wget ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/links index.html
Reformatted the shownotes and added a couple of features
1. Odeo send me a voicemail message.
2. flash player from odeo that plays old episodes of freshubuntu
3. Remember to visit the website freshubuntu.blogspot.com and leave me a comment.
4. Or you can send an email to freshubuntu@gmail.com
5. Remember to vote for me on podcastalley for the month of october I appreciate those who already have.
Bye.
Download mp3 here: 011freshubuntu01Oct06.ogg
NEWS
Item #1: Leo at the Podcast Expo -
Item #2: Screenshots of Ubuntu Edgy Eft Beta
Item #3: Bill Clinton wants you to have more Ubuntu!
TIPS GALORE
Ubuntu Tips at the unofficial ubuntu wiki
1. How to restart GNOME without rebooting computer
Press 'Ctrl + Alt + Backspace'
or
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart
2. How to run programs on startup when login into GNOME
* System -> Preferences -> Sessions
* Sessions
Startup Programs Tab -> Add/Edit/Delete
3. Run a terminal command without first opening the terminal
Press 'Alt+F2" and the run application dialog box will pop up; just type in the command you want to run and check mark the box that says wun in terminal. this will open the terminal command and execute the command you issued. This is also helpful for opening other files without starting the application first.
4. Update to Edgy eft Beta
Caution - edgy is not completely stable yet so dont use this as you primary computer or install on a computer that contains high value information.
gksudo "update-manager -c -d"
The "-d" switch instructs Update Manager to consider pre-release versions, including this Beta release. Without this switch, only official, final releases will be considered. The "-c" switch tells it to look for upgrades at all. By default the 6.06 LTS release will not offer that automatically because of its long support cycle and high stability.
If you have a working network connection, it should then inform you about a new release and offer to upgrade your system.
COMMAND LINE COMMAND OF THE WEEK - WGET
Description
GNU Wget is a free utility for non-interactive download of files from the Web. It supports HTTP , HTTPS , and FTP protocols, as well as retrieval through HTTP proxies.
Wget is non-interactive, meaning that it can work in the background, while the user is not logged on. This allows you to start a retrieval and disconnect from the system, letting Wget finish the work. By contrast, most of the Web browsers require constant user’s presence, which can be a great hindrance when transferring a lot of data.
Wget can follow links in HTML pages and create local versions of remote web sites, fully recreating the directory structure of the original site. This is sometimes referred to as ‘‘recursive downloading.’’ While doing that, Wget respects the Robot Exclusion Standard (/robots.txt). Wget can be instructed to convert the links in downloaded HTML files to the local files for offline viewing.
Wget has been designed for robustness over slow or unstable network connections; if a download fails due to a network problem, it will keep retrying until the whole file has been retrieved. If the server supports regetting, it will instruct the server to continue the download from where it left off.
Simple Usage
Say you want to download a URL . Just type:
wget http://fly.srk.fer.hr/
But what will happen if the connection is slow, and the file is lengthy? The connection will probably fail before the whole file is retrieved, more than once. In this case, Wget will try getting the file until it either gets the whole of it, or exceeds the default number of retries (this being 20). It is easy to change the number of tries to 45, to insure that the whole file will arrive safely:
wget --tries=45 http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg
Now let’s leave Wget to work in the background, and write its progress to log file log. It is tiring to type --tries, so we shall use -t.
wget -t 45 -o log http://fly.srk.fer.hr/jpg/flyweb.jpg &
The ampersand at the end of the line makes sure that Wget works in the background. To unlimit the number of retries, use -t inf.
The usage of FTP is as simple. Wget will take care of login and password.
wget ftp://gnjilux.srk.fer.hr/welcome.msg
If you specify a directory, Wget will retrieve the directory listing, parse it and convert it to HTML . Try:
wget ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/links index.html
Reformatted the shownotes and added a couple of features
1. Odeo send me a voicemail message.
2. flash player from odeo that plays old episodes of freshubuntu
3. Remember to visit the website freshubuntu.blogspot.com and leave me a comment.
4. Or you can send an email to freshubuntu@gmail.com
5. Remember to vote for me on podcastalley for the month of october I appreciate those who already have.
Bye.
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8:09 PM
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