Paul Labis: This is a personal blog where everyone can read my experiences, ideas and thoughts about programming, latest gadgets and other information technology related topics, lifestyle and many other stuff I would like to share to the public.

by paul

0 Comments »

Why You Should Back up Your Data?


Odds are you have hundreds of gigabytes of personal data stored on your home computer including movies, music, games, documents, and photos and unless you are taking the right precautions these files could all be at risk. Data is stored on hard drives and unfortunately these spinning disks are far from perfect, it doesn't take very much to cause a complete failure and often times older hard drives will fail without any warning or trigger. When this happens all of your important personal data will be lost for good, unless you were smart and made a backup.

Backup up data is simple and usually can be automated but in the long run it will save you some serious headaches. Even if you think that the data on your computer isn't necessarily that important you will be surprised just how much it hurts to lose everything. Whether you lose everything due to a software corruption issue, a hardware failure, or some other issue; a backup will definitely be able to get you back on track without having to recreate every bit of your hard drive.

Read more »

by paul

0 Comments »

Encrypt and decrypt files in Ubuntu with ccrypt

ccrypt is a utility for encrypting and decrypting files and streams. It was based on Rijndael cipher, which was chosen candidate by U.S. government's for Advance Encryption Standard. This cipher is believed to provide a very strong security.


1. Install CCrypt from repo


sudo apt-get install ccrypt


2. To encrypt a file, use one of the following command,


ccrypt -e file_name or ccencrypt file_name


3. It will prompt you for Encryption Phrase aka Password, enter it. for example,


ccrypt -e sample.text 
Enter encryption key: your_key 
Enter encryption key: (repeat) your_key 


Note: Don't forget the encryption phrase, there is no way to get back the original file without it.

Read more »

by paul

0 Comments »

, ,

How to Backup and Restore PostgreSQL Database

There is an easy way to create backup file and restore your current PostgreSQL database using the Linux terminal. I am not sure though if this is the easiest way.

As of the moment I am writing this article, I used the following command to backup and restore my database. 

Using pg_dump and psql will make your life easier. Below are the terminal command I use to backup and restore my database.
  • Backup : pg_dump -U {user_name} {database_name} -f {backup_file_name}
  • Restore : psql -U {user_name} -d {database_name} -f {backup_file_name}
If you are getting an error:

Read more »

by paul

0 Comments »

, ,

Recover Ubuntu Grub2 After Windows Installation

A month ago I decided to dual-boot my laptop with windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04 version as my main operating system. So I first installed Ubuntu 10.04 then Windows 7 afterwards. After installing Windows 7, ubuntu distribution isn't accessible. I am not sure but I think Windows installation might have wiped out Ubuntu grub.

To be able to recover Grub2 menu along with the option to select either which operating system you want to use, I did the following recovery steps below.
  1. Boot from Ubuntu Live CD - any Ubuntu distribution is okay to use for as long as you get access to linux terminal or bash shell.

Read more »

by paul

1 Comment »

,

Install NVIDIA driver manually for Asus K43 SV with Ubuntu Lucid 10.04

I just bought a new laptop Asus K43 SV and installed Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 LTS stable release. It has an i5 2nd generation processor with 4Gb of memory and 1 Gb of VRam. So far, I think this is the most affordable laptop I can look for in Philippine market offered free delivery through LBC by www.pccorner.com or www.laptopking.com from your online purchase.
Some of you might have difficulties in installing NVIDIA driver on your new bought Asus K43 SV laptop. I started researching online and found that there is a default yet not installed NVIDIA driver on synaptics. However, I had been screwing my desktop and as a result, I had to reformat my laptop again and again. I always backed-up my xorg.conf file but had difficulties on restoring it. Anyway, thats the end of story and in this article, I'm gonna share how to easily install NVIDIA driver manually on your k43SV. 

Read more »
« Older Entries