Debian: Force users to use more secure login password with pam_cracklib

One of the factor that makes your system easily crackable is the weak password. PAM cracklib forces users to choose stronger password by analyzing the password strength, length and entropy.

To enable pam_cracklib in Debian / Ubuntu operating system, you need to install libpam_cracklib:

sudo apt-get install libpam_cracklib

Then edit the “/etc/pam.d/common-password” file using your favorite editor. Then, add and uncomment the following line at the end of the file.

password required pam_cracklib.so retry=3 minlen=6 difok=3

difok determines the number of same characters that allowed to be present in the old and new passwords.

Ubuntu: How to erase CD-RW/DVD-RW from Command-line

Here’s an easy way to erase CD-RW and DVD-RW from command-line in Ubuntu:

you only need to install ‘wodim’ package:
sudo apt-get install wodim
Then run:
wodim -scanbus
To search for the cdrw device in case if you don’t already know.

To erase the entire disk, run:
wodim dev=/dev/cdrom blank=fast

That’s all!

Buzz!! – Yahoo like IM shake with Pidgin Nudge plugin

I think most of you may have already migrated to Empathy, the default Instant Messenger client for the GNOME desktop environment. But I still use Pidgin IM because I like its functionality and its expandable plugin architecture.

I am a Yahoo Messenger user, and one thing that I miss about when using Pidgin (either on Linux or Windows) is the “shake-effect” whenever I receive “Buzz” or “ding” from my contacts. Back in 2003 (when Pidgin still was called Gaim) I tried replicating that effect, but to no avail. However, just a couple of weeks ago I discovered “pidgin-nudge“, a plugin that shakes conversation window when it receives “Buzz”,”nudge” or “ding” from contacts. Here’s how it looked :

Installing pidgin-nude on Ubuntu linux is easy! First make sure you have Pidgin 2.6.x and above installed. Then you have to install “pidgin-dev” package alongside with “build-essential” to compile the plugin source code, as shown in the example below.


sudo apt-get install subversion pidgin-dev build-essential
svn checkout http://pidgin-nudge.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ pidgin-nudge-read-only
cd pidgin-nudge-read-only
make
sudo make install

Happy Buzzing!

Microsoft Windows XP on vanilla AMD decTOP (Geode) – wished Linux GUI is this light

This is a continuation from my post of running Android on my AMD decTOP machine.

Of all Linux distribution that I tried, I found out that only Puppy Linux offered a usable GUI desktop environment on a plain vanilla AMD decTOP out of the box, but that is not without some effort on the installer side.

On the other hand, it is very easy to get Windows XP running on a plain vanilla AMD decTOP, without additional hardware upgrades. Here is my prove.

It seems Windows XP is more tolerant to low end desktops (or in this case, decTOP) than Linux operating system for fully GUI environment. Are we getting bloated?

AMD decTOP specs
RAM: 128MB RAM DDR2
HDD: 10GB IDE
Processor: AMD Geode GX 500, 366 MHz clock rate

Play Urban Terror, a free Counter-Strike like game on Linux

Right now I’ve been playing Urban Terror (or UrT), it is a First Person Shooter (FPS) game similar to Counter-Strike. The game was developed using the open source Quake III Arena engine and can be played under GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

You can download Urban Terror binaries from Urban Terror Official Website

The game is available for 32bit and 64bit platform and is tested on Fedora 13 and Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) releases