Install all programs on a newly installed ubuntu system

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If you’re running Ubuntu there is a neat way of installing all of your programs on a newly installed Ubuntu system.
Run the following command on the ‘old’ Ubuntu installation.
“dpkg –get-selections > installed-software”

You’ll end up with a file called installed-software. Copy the file to a usb key and copy it to a location on your backtrack machine.
Run: “dpkg –set-selections < installed-software” in the directory where you copied the file installed-software.
Finally the “sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade” commands completes all of this. Be aware that is might take while until the installtion finishes.

If the above doesn’t work, you probably do not have dselect installed.
In that case, run “apt-get install deselect”
The above instructions also work on BackTrack 5

Hard and Soft Linking in Linux

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Sometimes it’s nice to have files accessible from more than one location on your computer, but to only actually have one copy of the file (it can save on drive space for really big files!). An example of where I have needed this most, actually, has been with the use of Dropbox on my laptop. Many times I’ve been working out of a folder somewhere on my computer and I’ve needed to make the files accessible to other computers in the research lab. I’ve had to physically copy and paste these directories to my Dropbox folder (or usb drive, before I discovered Dropbox) and then once all the edits had been made elsewhere, had to copy and paste them back to where they belong. If, however, I could place a link to the files in my Dropbox folder, both copy and paste steps could be avoided (as well as the simultaneous confusion of which files were updated, and in what order etc.). Continue reading →