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The IEs4Linux project makes installing and running Internet Explorer on Linux a cinch. Just follow these simple instructions. Their script will download and install IE6 and, optionally, IE5 and IE5.5 as well. Everything is automated and extremely easy. You can also install Internet Explorer 7 by following these instructions. I was able to get all four versions of IE running on both my CentOS and Fedora machines in no time. There are non distro-specific instructions as well as instructions for the Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Kubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo and Debian distributions. Basically, if you’re running Linux with Wine and cabextract installed you’re good to go. Many thanks to the IEs4Linux project for making this so easy for us. We should all seriously consider donating to the project.

UPDATED: Mar-21-2007

Due to the popularity of this post I’ve decided to include instructions for all three of the most popular methods for installing Firefox 2 on Fedora Core 6. Read through the three options to decide which works best for you.

Option 1: Via yum with the ‘development’ repo

This command will allow you to upgrade to Firefox 2 via the Fedora Development repo. This is the most commonly recommended option.

Instructions (as root):

# yum --enablerepo=development update firefox

Pros: Uses “official” Fedora packages

Cons: Doesn’t include the (optional) bonuses of option 2

Option 2: Via yum with the ‘remi’ repo

Remi Collet, an “official” Fedora developer, has made available a repo of packages that provides Firefox 2. The repo updates Firefox and those packages that depend on it and also contains a few bonuses such as an updated XChat package (version 2.8).

Instructions (as root):

# rpm -Uvh http://remi.collet.free.fr/rpms/fc6.i386/remi-release-1-2.fc6.remi.noarch.rpm

Now make sure that in your /etc/yum.repos.d/remi.repo file you’ve got enabled=1 and then:

# yum update

Pros: All required packages as well as some extra goodies; new versions of Firefox are automatically installed with yum update

Cons: Not “official” Fedora packages–bugs should not be submitted to the Fedora project

Option 3: Via firefox-2.*.tar.gz from Mozilla.com

I always recommend using RPM packages on Fedora, if possible. However, if you’d like to install Firefox 2 using firefox-2.*.tar.gz from Mozilla.com use this option. One benefit of this option is that Firefox 1.5 remains on your machine so have a choice as to which version to run.

Instructions (as root):

Download firefox-*.tar.gz from Mozilla.com.

# mv firefox-2.*.tar.gz /usr/local/
# cd /usr/local
# tar xvfz firefox-2.*.tar.gz
# mv /usr/bin/firefox /usr/bin/firefox15
# ln -s /usr/local/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox

Firefox 2 will now be your default browser. To run version 1.5 use the command firefox15. I don’t recommend running both versions concurrently because they will be using the same profile which might cause problems.

Pros: Firefox 2 co-exists with version 1.5

Cons: Installation isn’t as straightforward; must be repeated for future releases of Firefox 2

I recently added a hard drive to one of my Linux systems and while searching for the best way to copy my old /home filesystem to the new drive I came upon this command:

/sbin/dump 0f - /home | ( cd /new ; /sbin/restore rf - )

Here my new hard drive is mounted on /new and I’m copying the entire filesystem from /home to /new. On my system (CentOS 4) the dump and restore commands are in /sbin/ but other distros may not be consistent so you’ll want to make changes to the command as needed.

UPDATED Dec-19-2006:

NOTE: These instruction are for CentOS 4.

The apt-get method of installing sshfs that I had posted here previously did not work for me. I got this error when trying to mount an ssh drive:

shfsmount: shfs filesystem not supported by the kernel

So, I set out to find a different method of installing sshfs (and fuse, which it requires). One, preferably, that would actually work. Well, I found one. Its not the most elegant solution but its effective.

First, download a copy of the fuse source rpm:

wget http://www.devhen.net/centos/fuse-2.6.0-1.src.rpm

Next, install the source rpm and then build the proper fuse rpm’s from the .spec file:

rpm -ivh fuse-2.6.0-1.src.rpm
rpmbuild -bb /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/fuse.spec

Next, install the rpms that you have built:

cd /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386 (replace ‘i386′ with your arch, if necessary)
rpm -Uvh fuse-2.6.0-1.i386.rpm fuse-kernel-2.6.0-1.i386.rpm fuse-libs-2.6.0-1.i386.rpm fuse-devel-2.6.0-1.i386.rpm

Now you can install the sshfs-fuse rpm:

wget http://www.devhen.net/centos/sshfs-fuse-1.6-2.i386.rpm
rpm -ivh sshfs-fuse-1.6-2.i386.rpm

** You can try building the sshfs-fuse rpm from its source package if your not on i386**

Now comes the ugly part… For some reason the system can’t find the fuse module after installing these packages. So, head over to the fuse project homepage and download fuse-2.6.0.tar.gz. Unpack it and then

./configure
make
make install

and you should be in business. As I said, this is not an elegant solution because you are installing fuse from the tar.gz file on top of the fuse rpms. However, it works for me and that’s all that matters right now because I really needed to mount some ssh drives on my workstation.

Mount an ssh drive like so:

sshfs user@remotesystem:/path/you/want/to/mount/ /mnt/mount-point/ -o allow_other

Don’t forget the trailing /’s on both the source folder and the mount point. -o allow_other will give all users access to the mounted drive. Type sshfs -h for a list of all of sshfs’ options.

The latest stable release of Ubuntu Linux comes with Firefox version 1.0.8 installed. Unfortunately this version is slower than 1.5+ and some of the extensions I use only support 1.5+ so, naturally, I needed to upgrade. I found a page on the Ubuntu Wiki called FirefoxNewVersion that shows you how to install a second copy of Firefox, downloaded from the Mozilla web site, alongside Ubuntu’s default Firefox package. Instructions are included on how to change the /usr/bin/firefox script to use the newly installed version instead of the default. This looked like more work than I wanted for a Firefox upgrade–I wanted to stick with .deb packages and didn’t like the idea of having two versions of Firefox installed. So, I discovered a way upgrade my Firefox package using Debain backports. Read on for more.

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These notes are designed to help a Linux geek setup SMTP auth on a Linux + sendmail server. Without proper SMTP auth settings your server is liable to be used by spammers and spam bots to send out copious amounts of unwanted mail. This can get your server’s IP blacklisted and can really eat up your resources. Needless to say, we need to avoid this. Start by editing your sendmail.mc file (found in /etc/mail). I use the following commands, try replacing the corresponding lines in your mc file with these ones: (Note that lines beginning with ‘dnl’ are essentially considered comments and are ignored)

define(`confAUTH_OPTIONS’, `A’)
dnl
dnl Accept PLAIN and LOGIN authentications.dnl
TRUST_AUTH_MECH(`LOGIN PLAIN’)dnl
define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS’, `LOGIN PLAIN’)dnl

Now you need to rebuild your sendmail.cf file from the .mc file you’ve just edited:

make sendmail.cf -C /etc/mail

Next we need to make sure saslauthd is running and configured correctly. Edit your saslauthd configuration file (/etc/sysconfig/saslauthd) and replace shadow with pam for the MECH variable like so:

# Mechanism to use when checking passwords. Run “saslauthd -v” to get a list
# of which mechanism your installation was compiled to use.
MECH=pam

Restart sendmail and saslauthd

/etc/rc.d/init.d/sendmail restart
/etc/rc.d/init.d/saslauthd restart

and don’t forget to configure your email clients to use authentication when sending outgoing mail.

For more information and some tips on installing a certificate for secure SMTP connections, try this article:

http://www.madboa.com/geek/sendmail-auth/

Read on for a full copy of my sendmail.mc file.

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Thats right, not only is it possible, its easy! Just connect your digital camera via USB, login as root, and type

mkdir /mnt/camera
mount /dev/sda1 -t vfat /mnt/camera

The location of your digital camera depends on how many SCSI devices you have attached to your computer. So if sda1 doesn't work, try sda2, sda3, etc.

Logout of root and type

cd /mnt/camera

and you have your photos.