Debian

I’ve always loved Pandora radio, but now Pandora is available only to US citizens. However there is a solution, if you happen to own a VPS located in States (and your provider allows proxy service) then you can setup your own proxy server and enjoy listening to Pandora (and not only that) from any location. It could be also useful for Americans who gone abroad. With proxy you can also bypass your company’s firewall, so if admins are blocking some websites you’ll just access them via your proxy. OK, lets do it then. Login to your server as root and follow below steps (installation of packages as described below would work on Debian and Ubuntu, if you happen to have different distro then you must install packages following rules for your OS):

Today I’ve faced embarrassing situation, I’ve forgot my root password to my Debian VM. I know this is lame. But happened, so I’ve started looking for solution and after viewing few more or less helpful websites I’ve compiled my own solution. To reset root password on Debian (Lenny) do following:

1. During start of PC when there is your boot manager displayed press “e”.
2. Move arrow on the keyboard to highlight “kernel”.
3. Press “e” again.
4. On the displayed line change “ro” to “rw” and add “init=/bin/bash” at the end. Without quotation marks of course.
5. Press Enter and then “b” to boot your Debian.
6. Debian would boot to bash console with root privileges. Now execute “passwd” command and input your new password.
7. Reboot your system.

That’s it. Your root account is now back. Enjoy!

I’m using Debian Linux as a second operating system. Previously I was using it only for my servers, but now I’ve decided to start doing some software development on it. As I love bash environment, the choice of text editor was pretty obvious, Vim, the greatest editor ever made. But problem was that I like my syntax to be colored, it’s easier to write program code then. No problem, I thought, quick searching via Google gave me the “:syntax on” command which should enable what I’ve wanted. After typing it in my Vim I’ve received a message “command not available in this version”, WTF? So I’ve searched and searched, and searched a little more:) And finally solved it!