Skip to main content

Blocklist-Update.sh

Blocklist-Update.sh is a script that I wrote to manage blocklists from bluetack etc to be used in conjunction with Transmission torrent downloader in Linux/MacOS. The script can be taylored to work with Qbittorrent as well, but the placement of the blocklists means you'd have to redirect the blocklist to go somewhere locally manageable as Transmission uses its own blocklist directory in .config. I believe there are about 10 lists there now. It works well for my needs. It can be ran weekly using crontab in standard user profile.  To download:  blocklist-update.sh To download the others:  Github
Post a Comment

SWAP FILES IN LINUX

The Swap partition is something that is debated by computer enthusiasts today within Linux. The Swap partition allows the system to suspend when not in use, hibernate, and it is instrumental in swapping out pages when RAM space is sparse. Swap is the block of space reserved on a hard drive/solid state drive that allows caching when the memory is filled during heavy read/write jobs or during normal use when such an event occurs. Regardless of how much RAM you might have, it is a good idea to at least have one an half times that in swap, however, it is possible to run your computer just fine with the bare minimum of 2GB of swap. Swap is reminiscent of the Windows Page file, however, Windows usually creates a separate file for hibernating and suspend called Hiberfil.sys. Swap is also known as virtual memory.

Swap files are small portions on the hard disk which do not count as a separate partition, however, they are bits of space cordoned off by the command fallocate –length swapsize /swap file. This cordoned off space lets the system use everything but that space for storage, but it sets that apart to use in the event that a program or multiple programs take all of the available space in memory, this isn’t the same as taking all the memory as the system also sets aside a cache of RAM for its own purposes. The larger the desktop, the larger the amount of RAM it might set aside. Windows and Macs do this also. The RAM set aside is mostly for the Kernel space. Kernels these days attempt to use as minimal an amount as possible, however, today, most computers contain anywhere from 16GB to 64GB of Memory or more depending upon their use case.

Issuing the free command or free -h will allow you to determine how much memory/swap is being used on your Linux device. Using the command swapon -s will alert you to the device or partition that is being accessed as swap. Usually swap will come with a priority as well. This priority tells the Linux kernel to use the device with the highest priority first, much like a first come, first serve sort of thing, although, this setting can be manually changed by the user with swapon -p followed by the number. Swappiness is another factor to take into consideration when creating the swap file. Will my system use the adequate amount of memory before swapping to the disk? Swappiness in Linux desktops usually start at around 60 percent. This is too much for modern desktops and old ones alike. Setting the swappiness value lower is key for greater performance over all, when using a small swap file, it is recommended that the swappiness is set to something like 5 or below. Swappiness can be set from anywhere from 1 to 100 so using the lowest number possible is best.

To create a swap file do the following:






Then to make it mount at startup: 


I recently have added a function in my scripts on github which do this for you should the distribution not automatically create a swap partition. You can find that here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NOSCRIPT CONFIGURATION FOR PALE MOON SPECIFICALLY

I wrote an article before about making Pale Moon more private. I covered a few of the settings and back end changes I make each time I install it. I mentioned Noscript, but I didn’t give any details about how I set it up. First though, you have to get the version already marked for your version of “Firefox” or in this case, Pale Moon. If you went to https://addons.palemoon.org/addon/noscript/ you would probably find the Pale Moon addons page devoted to the newest possible Noscript being marked specifically for Pale Moon. Other versions may work, but these are hybrid addons and the closer we get to Noscript 10, the less I trust it to work with Pale Moon specifically. I just opt to stick with 5.0.6. There have been people asking about what happens when Maone, the developer stops supporting the hybrid versions of Noscript, “Will it work with Pale Moon?” Why yes it will. Noscript blocks scripts, that’s its main function and it will do that as long as Java script exists on a page. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

SSD PARTITION ALIGNMENT

I was searching for more information regarding SSDs last night as that is what I now use, I found an interesting little tip that most users will never have to worry about, but people using Arch Linux, Manjaro or Windows that was cloned from another drive may want to consider checking this. The Partition manager within Linux normally takes good care to ensure that you have some free space to be used by the SSD in the event that a cell becomes worn out or corrupted. Also, Linux generally ensures that a proper amount of unallocated drive space is set aside preceeding the partition. However, on my own image of Manjaro, I discovered that this was not the case. The partition was “out of alignment”. To fix this situation, I found an article on  Lifehacker that went into instructional detail about how to solve this from a live environment or an image of Gparted . Gparted is a separate live environment of Linux that is based on Debian and uses Gparted as the main tool to manage...
Post a Comment
Read more

PALE MOON PRIVACY SETUP

I did a review of Pale Moon back when 27.6.2 came out in linux. I had mostly great things to say about the browser then and my feelings towards it have not changed. Pale Moon is a very useful tool for scowering the net. It has privacy at its core with a few implementations made by Moonchild, the lead developer, built in. I also mentioned the point that Pale Moon has a canvas poisoning feature in the backend, however, I wasn’t very clear about how to turn it on. I thought in this tutorial, I’d show with a series of screen shots, some of the useful settings and preferences that I change to make Pale Moon a bit more private. I also thought I’d take this time to rant a little more about some of the not so savory issues with Firefox which have recently come under scrutiny by various people in the the Linux world. First order of business, if you haven’t heard, Mozilla recently added an extension into their browser which gave people ads. That’s right, they were ads for a specific t...
Post a Comment
Read more