Change Hostname on uBuntu - Quick & Easy

Here's a quick and simple four step guide to changing your computers hostname on uBuntu.

1. In the terminal enter:  

sudo gedit /etc/hostname  

2. The file should be an empty text file. Save the file with the hostname you'd like to set.

3. In the terminal enter:  

sudo /etc/init.d/hostname.sh start  

4. Reboot.

Rename Files in Bulk uBuntu

Short and sweet tutorial to install a mass-renaming tool with a GUI.

1. sudo apt-get install gprename

2. gprename

This should open the gprename GUI where you'll be able to scroll to your folder then rename as many files as you want within seconds.

How to install a Tar.gz file (or Tar.bz2 file) Easily

1. Extract your file into a folder such as your documents.

2. Read the Install text or Readme to see if there are any specific instructions or requirements for your package.

3. Make that directory your central directory using the cd command in the terminal.

For example, for one extracted in your documents.

cd /home/username/Documents/YourExtract

4. Run command: ./configure 

This should also tell you if there are any dependencies which are required to be installed.

5. Run command: make 

6. Run command: sudo make install

Find a File by its Contents (uBuntu Contents Search)

So you can find a file by it's name pretty easily using Nautilus but how do you search for it's contents?

Enter the following code in the terminal:

grep -lir "search text" /path/to/directory

And it'll return a list of files containing your search terms within them.

Extracting/Unzipping a Zip Archive with .z01 Files

This is what you do when you've got a bunch of rar files, one ending in .zip then .z01, z02 etc.

1. Open up the terminal.
What we're going to do is compile all those weird .z01 files into one easy to open .zip file - which we'll then unzip via the command line.

2. Enter the following commands, replacing example with your file name.

cat example.z01 example.zip > example2.zip

unzip example.zip 

3. And there you have it - you should have your file!

How To Require a Username at Login

I've always kind of liked the extra security that came with having to enter your username as well as your password at login. It also, I find, looks better.

Here's how to do it.

1. Open the following file in a text editor...

/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

2. Simply Add the following lines...  

greeter-show-manual-login = true 
greeter-hide-users = true 
allow-guest = false

3. Save, restart and see the effects!

An Idiots Guide to Installing Truecrypt Quickly and Easily in uBuntu 12.04+

So Truecrypt isn't available in the software centre any more which is a bit of a pain but it's one of those bits of software you can't really do without.

Not to worry.

1. Open up the terminal and type:

For 32bit systems...

wget http://www.truecrypt.org/download/truecrypt-7.1a-linux-x86.tar.gz

Or for 64bit systems...

http://www.truecrypt.org/download/truecrypt-7.1a-linux-x64.tar.gz

2. Extract it... 

tar -zxvf truecrypt*.gz

3. And install it... 

sudo ./truecrypt-7.1a-setup-x86  

And your done!