GNU Screen and Byobu Made Easy
For the *nix elitist, no graphical tool comes close to the power that the command line provides. While this may strike some people as odd, particularly those who only have experience with Windows, it's a pretty well known fact that the Linux command line provides a method of controlling every aspect of your computer activity; this is so much the case that most GUI applications on Linux are just command line "wrappers", hiding you from what's actually happening behind the scenes.
While this is all fine and dandy, things like development and multi-tasking can prove to be a little frustrating when connecting to a remote location and requiring more than one window open. Although a typical command line pretty much prevents this from happening, using GNU Screen or Byobu can make things a lot smoother. One window, multiple command lines.
As most developers will tell you, having multiple windows available to you is a godsend. It's particularly useful when you have scripts to run in the background that generate output, but you don't want to fork them as a daemon. Now, with GNU Screen and Byobu, you can do this easily, and even make your screen look snazzy as well. The only drawback to these utilities is that they are a little hard to get used to. In this post, I will quickly outline some of the key combinations which I use regularly.
GNU Screen and Byobu Simplified
The number one thing to remember about every command you use is Ctrl+A, which will be written as C-a. This is picked up by screen and will tell the utility that the next characters typed will be commands for screen to interpret. Keeping in mind that all keys are case-sensitive (as most things are in Linux), take a look at some of the commands below:
C-a c - Create a new screen window
C-a A - Rename the screen
C-a C-a - Go back to the previous window
C-a <0-9> - Switch to screen #0-9 (quick toggle)
C-a " - View a list of the current screens, which will allow you to select one from the list
C-a ' - Enter a screen number to switch to (slower version of C-a <0-9>)
C-a d - Detach the whole screen session and fork to the background. Very useful for remote sessions you want to leave open. The command "screen -r" will resume your screen session.
C-a <Escape> - Scroll up through your command line "history" and see what output you previously got. Hitting <Escape> again cancels it.
With the introduction of Byobu in Ubuntu 9.10, you can also get some statistics added to the bottom of your command line window to help keep you informed about the state of the system you are running on. Hitting F9 in session will bring up the menu for customization, which can make your screen session look pretty awesome. Instead of using screen to start your screen session, simply use byobu instead. Easy as pie.
If you have any questions about GNU Screen or Byobu, let me know and I'll see what I can do to answer them. Stay tuned on Friday for another issue of "Five Things" (hopefully).
Oct. 24 Photography Update
Now that I've been taking more photos recently, I'm getting into the habit of posting them up a little more frequently. Rest assured, I'll keep you all updated when I put up new photos. If you want to take a look at some of my other photos, just head to the gallery.
As always, I welcome your feedback; just post a comment below!
Ubuntu’s Koala Has Good Karma
It's not like me to gush over operating systems. Particularly looking at what we've dealt with in the past. If we're lucky, we got stability in an OS, but usually at the expense of it looking terrible. This year seems to have caused things to change, however. With the release of the Windows 7 RC, Microsoft has restored a good amount of the faith that it lost after churning out the load of crap that it called Vista.
The open source community is never far behind, and Canonical's Ubuntu 9.10 operating system is a work of art. Seriously. I would frame it and mount it on my wall if I could. Unfortunately I can't, so all I can do is gush about it and tell people about all of it's amazing features. Non-techies: just smile-and-nod your way through this post 
.
Ubuntu One
Cloud computing is all the rage these days, and Ubuntu has jumped on the bandwagon by presenting One, a personal cloud for the synchronization of files across multiple Ubuntu computers. Set up your account, get your 2 gigs of free space, move files into the Ubuntu One folder, and let them sync. Easy as pie.
ext4 Filesystem
Following in Fedora's footsteps, Ubuntu has set ext4 as 9.10's default filesystem. Although you won't make the switch if you upgrade, fresh installs will feel the warm glow of ext4 during their install.
Uncomplicated Firewall
One of my main complaints with Ubuntu's previous setups is that it fails to include a firewall by default, and that has been remedied in 9.10, with the introduction of ufw, the uncomplicated firewall. No more sifting through the iptables's man pages to figure out how to add a simple allow rule; ufw makes firewall management easy.
Faster Load Times with Upstart
Another popular trend recently has been the goal of reducing boot times as much as possible. Fedora Project made waves as they aimed for a 20 second boot time from BIOS to login page. Although they were a little short of their goal, they made some important headway, showing that not every single scrap needs to be loaded and cached on boot. Ubuntu has carried this forward and has made a similar goal. Although they don't mention any specific time-related goals, they made the switch to Upstart, which makes the loading page look smooth and cuts the boot time significantly.
Overall, I'm really happy with the progress Ubuntu has made. Although a lot of previous versions have fallen a bit behind on the times in exchange for having a stable system, they are catching up with the times and even pushing the envelope with new ideas. If you were looking for a reason to switch to Linux, put this one at the top of your list. If you're not convinced, download the LiveCD and try it out without installing (although your performance will suffer since it's loading from a CD...duh...).
Thanks for giving this a read, everyone. If you like what you see, or have any suggestions for further writings, drop me a line in the comments section below and give me a vote on Reddit or Digg. I read each and every one of your comments: I promise
The New Camera Lens: Some Sample Photos
I recently picked up a new lens for my Canon Rebel XTi DSLR camera: the EF 50mm f/1.8 II, to be precise. It's the first lens I've bought for my camera so far, mainly because almost every other lens is god-awful expensive. At only $130, this was a steal of a deal, and if you have a Canon DSLR camera body, I highly recommend picking yourself up one of these.
By popular demand of a few of my friends, I'm putting up a small sampling of the photos I've taken with it over the past few days. Although I'm still getting used to the lens, I'm really happy with the results so far. You can check out the full album of new photos right here.
From Paperwork to Web 2.0: UMSwing’s New Membership System
Nowadays, my life has a good amount of its time consumed with either work or swing dancing. I work every weekday, and four nights every week I'm dancing. Being the nerd that I am, I always look for opportunities to intertwine my hobbies, despite them being complete opposites. Being on the executive committee helps a lot with that, since I take the position of Web Administrator and Graphics Designer with UMSwing.
On the way home from an event a couple weeks ago, I was talking with a friend about the hassle of all the paperwork we have to go through every time we have a lesson; we need to fill out transaction logs for each payment, keep track of every person's attendance for each class, and also mark it on their membership form that they attended and paid for that class. A single person dropping in to that class requires writing on three sheets of paper. When you're trying to run everybody through quickly, that starts becoming an issue.
This friend, being the kind of person that seems to regurgitate good ideas on demand, suggested to me, "Brian, you're a developer. Just write a program to do it for you. You're learning Ruby and Rails, so you can do a web-based backend and a GUI frontend. Problem solved!". Thus, I sat down and started planning. Rails seems to be yet another one of those languages that lacks any decent documentation or tutorials. If you plan on learning it, pick up "Agile Web Development With Rails". It is by far the best development book I have ever read. If it's any sort of selling point, one of the authors created the Rails framework; if he doesn't know how to use the framework, nobody does.
As a method for potentially helping me brainstorm, I've decided to spill out some of my ideas and goals here. I'm only going to discuss a few ideas here; while I would normally immediately distribute this idea into the public domain, I've decided to keep this one closed source. If you have any suggestions or ideas, let me know and I will give you credit. Better yet, if you're interested in this software, get in touch and we can discuss it.
Goals for Dance Site
- Members: Keep track of all members, regardless of how long ago they joined. Eliminate the need to fill out a new membership form every semester. Each member should be assigned a member number, which can be put on a barcode. Keep track of personal information, interests, and attendance. Gather statistics/metrics from attendance vs. month/day/semester, etc.
- Memberships: Handle multiple membership types, including drop-in. Integrate with finances to determine when a user has paid for their membership through drop-ins. Support for online payments through Paypal (ie. Mastercard, Visa, eCheck, etc.)
- Finances: handle per-lesson incomes. Support for multiple lessons per day. Keep track of what is taught during that lesson. Provide unlockable content for each lesson; attendance to that lesson unlocks the content for that member; refresher videos, class notes, etc. Support for discounted membership dates/times.
- Graduated system: attendance of X number of events allows you to attend higher level classes. Ability to override by administrator.
- Mailing List: Separate old members by current members, allowing for class updates to be sent to current members, while global events to be sent to all. Ability to unsubscribe.
I Am
- Brian
- Computer Science Student
- Swing Dancer
- Photographer
- Recreational Security Analyst
- brian [at] dj-bri-t [dot] net
- irc.freenode.net #dj-bri-t
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- Spectral Instruments 112 Megapixel Digital Camera http://t.co/tVmnlxrm
- I think I just dealt with the pointy end of a netsplit... #irc http://t.co/yS2CpEFC
- The Best Ways to De-Stink Your Stuff http://t.co/0VCirOs2
- Student Makes Real-Life Portal Turret - Slashdot http://t.co/dl1IVDIp
- Faith in humanity restored: "What is the nicest thing you've ever done that no one knows about?" [Reddit] http://t.co/k9FfMxc8
