Recent versions of Linux use a unique identifier for hard drives in order to make sure they get mounted to the same location all the time. If you've looked into your /etc/fstab file for auto mounting drives, then you're probably already familiar with the long character strings that are used for UUID's.

How to manipulating your disks using their Universal Unique Identifiers.

Just upgraded your system with a shiny new hard disk and want to make it your new book disk? Cloning Ubuntu to another hard disk is easy. In fact, Ubuntu provides tools to clone the entire hard disk -- including the Windows partition, if there's one on there. This is the kind of fundamental task that Linux excels at, in fact.

Installing Ubuntu 11.04 or any other distribution on an external hard drive connected to a computer via USB is about the same as installing it on an internal hard disk. The key is to remember, after partitioning the disk, to install GRUB, the boot loader, in the MBR of the external disk, rather than in the MBR of the internal disk.

Many people leave their computers on around the clock. This usually implies that all the attached hard disks are always spinning. Constantly spinning up a hard disk normally increases the chances of drive failure. When a disk is not powered it should last longer than if it was spinning.

Some times you need to know the device node identifier. e.g. /dev/sda1, a partition UUID, a partition label or partition type (ntfs,fat32 etc). By using the following command you can see all the relevant information about your partitions.

"...You can find out more about the basics of the project here, but basically it’s an http layer on top of a common python XMPP library that lets you do most of the roster management available through XMPP by way of a simple restful api.The workflow for using it is simple, just install the app into an existing django project, and that will expose the api.

Damn Small Linux (DSL) is primarily a live CD, or emulation thereof, which means that the base system is read-only. So how do you save your settings?

GSmartControl is a really useful Linux app to check the health of your hard disk drive. GSmartControl is basically a graphical user interface for smartctl, which is a tool for querying and controlling SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data on modern hard disk drives. Only ATA drives including both PATA and SATA are supported for now.