How To Install Htop on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Htop or Hisham’s top is an interactive and real-time system-monitor process-viewer written for Linux. It is designed to replace the Unix program top. It shows a frequently updated list of the processes running on a computer, normally ordered by the amount of CPU usage. Unlike top, htop provides a full list of processes running, instead of the top resource-consuming processes. Htop uses color and gives visual information about processor, swap and memory status. It is a must have when you want to monitor the resources of your linux server over an ssh connection for example.

Install Htop on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo’ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation Htop monitoring tool on a Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) server.

Step 1. First make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running these following apt-get commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Installing Htop.

Install htop process monitoring tool using apt-get command:

sudo apt-get install htop

Now that htop is installed on your server you’ll want to start the program by running the following in a command prompt:

htop

This will open the program and you’ll see something similar to the following:

Congratulation’s! You have successfully installed htop. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing htop process monitoring tool on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official htop web site.

April 2, 2019April 24, 2019

How To Install Mytop on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Mytop is an open source and free monitoring program for MySQL databases, using Perl language and it provides a command-line shell interface to monitor real time MySQL threads, queries per second, process list and performance of databases and gives an idea for the database administrator to optimize the server to handle heavy load.

mytop is a console-based (non-gui) tool for monitoring the threads and overall performance of a MySQL 3.22.x, 3.23.x, and 4.x server. It runs on most Unix systems (including Mac OS X) which have Perl, DBI, and Term::ReadKey installed. And with Term::ANSIColor installed you even get color. If you install Time::HiRes, you’ll get good real-time queries/second stats. As of version 0.7, it even runs on Windows (somewhat).

Install Mytop on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo’ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation Mytop database performance monitoring on a Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) server.

Step 1. First make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running these following apt-get commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Installing Mytop.

After system update use the following command to install mytop:

apt-get install mytop

Step 3. Configuring Mytop.

Create a .mytop file in your root directory. This file will configure Mytop with default settings for the root user. The password line should contain your MySQL root password:

cd /root
nano .mytop

Add the following content in the file and save and exit:

user=root
pass=PASSWORD
host=localhost
db=mysql
delay=1
port=3306
socket=
batchmode=0
header=1
color=1
idle=1

You can now run the “mytop” command to connect to your MySQL database and examine its performance:

MySQL on localhost (5.5.47-MariaDB) up 0+00:47:45 [06:36:47]
Queries: 1.4k qps: 0 Slow: 0.0 Se/In/Up/De(%): 56/06/13/01
qps now: 4 Slow qps: 0.0 Threads: 1 ( 1/ 0) 00/00/00/00
Key Efficiency: 76.9% Bps in/out: 260.6/400.4 Now in/out: 48.1/11.2k
Id User Host/IP DB Time Cmd Query or State
-- ---- ------- -- ---- --- ----------
46 root localhost mysql 0 Query show full processlist

Congratulation’s! You have successfully installed Mytop. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Mytop database performance monitoring on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Mytop web site.

You Might Also Like: How To Install Mtop (MySQL Database Server Monitoring) on CentOS 6

April 2, 2019April 24, 2019

How To Install Kodi on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Kodi (formerly XBMC Media Center) is an open source and very powerful project that provides all the necessary tools for transforming your regular PC into a bona fide HTPC, which if used in conjunction a big screen TV and a Hi-Fi audio system, will transform your living room into a veritable home theater. Currently Kodi can be used to play almost all popular audio and video formats around. It was designed for network playback, so you can stream your multimedia from anywhere in the house or directly from the internet using practically any protocol available. Use your media as-is: Kodi can play CDs and DVDs directly from the disk or image file, almost all popular archive formats from your hard drive, and even files inside ZIP and RAR archives.

Install Kodi on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Step 1. First, you can add the PPA to your system, update the local repository index and install the xbmc package.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/xbmc-nightly
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa

Step 2. Next, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running these following apt-get commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 3. Installing Kodi.

Run the following commands to install Kodi:

sudo apt-get install kodi

Add –install-suggests option if you want to install audio codecs and other addons, so the last command will be:

sudo apt-get install --install-suggests kodi

Once installed, log out and select log in with Kodi session. Or launch the media center from the Dash (may need restart).

Congratulation’s! You have successfully installed kodi. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing kodi media center on 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Kodi web site.

April 2, 2019April 24, 2019

How To Install Unison on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Unison is a GUI and terminal-based tool which allows files and directories to be kept in sync with each other, between different local directories and drives or on a network, which could be on different operating systems. The application is available for Unix operating systems (Linux and Mac OS X) and Windows. Changes can be made on the different places, and Unison will update the machines with the correct versions of files and folders, copying, deleting, renaming or deleting files and directories as necessary.

Unison doesn’t currently work well with USB sticks that are formatted as VFAT (FAT32 FAT16 etc) due to file permissions. You might like to try usbsync for this instead. Or, as a workaround, you may try adding a line like ‘perms = 0’ to your ~/.unison/*.prf file, or running with ‘-perms 0’ option.

Examples of uses

Heres a few scenarios on which Unison would be useful:

Justine has a lot of music and would want to back it up to another drive in case her main drive fails. Unison can synchronize any new music she has added on her main hard drive, and will delete any music she has deleted from her main drive.
Ryan has a laptop and a desktop computer. He works on both regularly and wants to be able to have his latest work available on the computer he wants to use. Unison will be able to syncronise both computers over the network using SSH so that work he has done on his desktop will appear on his laptop, and when he wants to use his desktop again, he can sync the files so they are updated there.

Install Unison on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Step 1. First make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running these following apt-get commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Installing Unison.

Add the PPA repository to your system, update the local repository index and install the unison package:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:eugenesan/ppa
sudo apt-get update

After updating the apt sources-list, run the following command to install the package:

sudo apt-get install unison

Once it is done, use the following command to view the Basic and Advanced options:

root@:wpcademy.com~# unison -help
Usage: unison [options]
or unison root1 root2 [options]
or unison profilename [options]

Basic options:
-auto automatically accept default (nonconflicting) actions
-batch batch mode: ask no questions at all
-doc xxx show documentation ('-doc topics' lists topics)
-fat use appropriate options for FAT filesystems
-group synchronize group attributes
-ignore xxx add a pattern to the ignore list
-ignorenot xxx add a pattern to the ignorenot list
.
.
watch when set, use a file watcher process to detect changes (default true)
-xferbycopying optimize transfers using local copies (default true)

Check the version of Unison:

unison --version

Further Help

man unison

unison --help

Congratulation’s! You have successfully installed Unison. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Unison on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Unison web site.

April 2, 2019April 24, 2019

How To Install OTRS on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

OTRS (Open-Source Ticket Request System) is a web-based ticketing system, widely used by businesses for services like customer support, help desks and call centres. The software is separated into several parts, the main section being the OTRS framework, which contains all central functions for the application and the ticket system.

Install OTRS on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Step 1. First make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running these following apt-get commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Installing MariaDB.

Install MariaDB on the server using apt-get command:

sudo apt-get install mariadb-server

By default, MariaDB is not hardened. You can secure MariaDB using the mysql_secure_installation script. you should read and below each steps carefully which will set root password, remove anonymous users, disallow remote root login, and remove the test database and access to secure MariaDB:

mysql_secure_installation

Configure it like this:

- Set root password? [Y/n] y
- Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
- Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y
- Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
- Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

Once installed, OTRS require that you change the following settings:

nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Under the [mysqld] section, paste:

max_allowed_packet = 20M
query_cache_size = 32M
innodb_log_file_size = 256M

Start MariaDB with system:

systemctl start mysql
systemctl enable mysql

Step 3. Installing OTRS (OpenSource Trouble Ticket System).

First thing to do is to go to OTRS’s download page and download the latest stable version of OTRS:

wget https://www.otrs.com/thank-you-for-downloading-the-otrs-software/?download=otrs-5.0.16.tar.bz2

Unpack the OTRS archive to the document root directory on your server:

tar xpf otrs-5.0.16.tar.bz2
mv otrs-5.0.16 /opt/otrs

Check if the system contains all required PERL modules and install required modules with apt (as suggested by the script), executing the command:

perl /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.CheckModules.pl

Create a OTRS user:

useradd -d /opt/otrs -c 'OTRS user' otrs
usermod -G www-data otrs

Default config files In /opt/otrs, execute the following command:

cp Kernel/Config.pm.dist Kernel/Config.pm

Step 4. Configure Apache web server.

Check installed modules and configure Apache:

perl -cw /opt/otrs/bin/cgi-bin/index.pl
perl -cw /opt/otrs/bin/cgi-bin/customer.pl
perl -cw /opt/otrs/bin/otrs.Console.pl

If the response is “syntax OK” for all, it means that the Perl modules have been installed successfully.

Next, install the Apache web server and mod_perl, using apt-get command:

apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-perl2

In /opt/otrs there is a configuration file for Apache. Link it to the webserver configuration directory:

ln -s /opt/otrs/scripts/apache2-httpd.include.conf /etc/apache2/conf-enabled/zzz_otrs.conf

OTRS requires a few Apache modules to be active for optimal operation:

a2enmod perl
a2enmod headers
a2enmod version
a2enmod deflate
a2enmod filter

Finally, Restart the webserver so it will load new configurations:

systemctl restart apache2

We will need to change some folders permissions:

bin/otrs.SetPermissions.pl --web-group=www-data

Step 5. Accessing OTRS.

OTRS will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://yourdomain.com/otrs/installer.pl or http://server-ip/otrs/installer.pl and complete the required the steps to finish the installation. If you are using a firewall, please open port 80 to enable access to the control panel.

Congratulation’s! You have successfully installed OTRS. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing OTRS (OpenSource Trouble Ticket System) on Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus server. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official OTRS web site.

April 2, 2019April 24, 2019

How To Install Vivaldi Browser on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Vivaldi is a feature-rich, next-generation web browser application based on the powerful and open source Chromium project, from which the popular Google Chrome web browser is derived. The application is freely distributed and cross-platform, created by the former CEO of Opera Software, built using modern Web technologies like React, JavaScript, Node.js, and Browserify.

Install Vivaldi Browser on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo’ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation Vivaldi Browser on a Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) server.

Step 1. First make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running these following apt-get commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Installing Vivaldi Browser.

Download the deb package of Vivaldi and then install it with Ubuntu software center or use dpkg tool to install it:

### Ubuntu 32 bit ###
wget https://downloads.vivaldi.com/stable/vivaldi-stable_1.6.689.34-1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i vivaldi-stable_1.6.689.34-1_i386.deb

### Ubuntu 64 bit ###
wget https://downloads.vivaldi.com/stable/vivaldi-stable_1.6.689.34-1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i vivaldi-stable_1.6.689.34-1_amd64.deb

Once installed, open Vivaldi web browser from Ubuntu Dash or Terminal. Run “vivaldi” command in Terminal. (without quotes):

vivaldi

Congratulation’s! You have successfully installed Vivaldi. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Vivaldi browser on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Vivaldi browser web site.

April 2, 2019April 24, 2019

How To Install Monit on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Monit is a opensource process tool for Linux operating system which helps you to monitor system process using web browser and also when ever requires it automatically do the maintenance or repair of particular process in such a way that it can be brought back online. The monitoring can be directly on the command line or on the web. You can assign Monit multiple tasks (not only monitoring), so if a certain service fails the check, Monit can alert or do something about it (try to restart the service for example).

Install Monit on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo’ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation Monit monitoring tool on a Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) server.

Step 1. First make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running these following apt-get commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Installing Monit and Apache web server.

Run the following commands in Terminal:

apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-php
apt-get install monit

Step 3. Configure Monit monitoring tool.

After the installation is complete, edit the main config file to resemble the example below using your favorite text editor and set your own username and password:

nano /etc/monit/monitrc

set httpd port 2812 and # # set the listening port to your desire.

use address localhost # only accept connection from localhost
allow localhost # allow localhost to connect to the server and
allow admin:monit # require user 'admin' with password 'monit'
allow @monit # allow users of group 'monit' to connect (rw)
allow @users readonly # allow users of group 'users' to connect readonly

Once you’ve configured it, you need to start the monit service to reload the new configuration settings:

systemctl restart monit.service

Step 4. Configuring Programs Self Monitoring using Monit.

Once the initial config is completed, we can configure some of the services we want to monitor. To do this, we will create separate files for every service located within the /etc/monit.d/ directory. Following are some useful configuration examples for monit, that can be very helpful to see how a service is running, where it keeps its pidfile and how to start and stop a service etc:

## SSH ##
# nano /etc/monit.d/ssh
start program “/etc/init.d/sshd start”
stop program “/etc/init.d/sshd stop”
if failed port 22 protocol ssh then restart

## Webserver ##
# nano /etc/monit.d/http
check process webserver with pidfile /var/run/httpd/httpd.pid
group apache
start program = “/etc/init.d/httpd start”
stop program = “/etc/init.d/httpd stop”
if failed host 0.0.0.0 port 80 then restart

# nano /etc/monit.d/ntp
check process ntpd with pidfile /var/run/ntpd.pid
start program = “/etc/init.d/ntpd start”
stop program = “/etc/init.d/ntpd stop”
if failed host 127.0.0.1 port 123 type udp then alert

After adding required services in monit monitoring configuration file, Use the below command to verify syntax of file:

monit -t

Finally, restart monit service:

systemctl restart monit.service

The configuration file is pretty self-explaining, if you are unsure about an option, take a look at the Monit documentation.

Step 5. Accessing Monit.

Monit will be available on HTTP port 2812 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://your-domain.com:2812 or http://server-ip:2812 and and then enter the credentials you created in conf above.

Congratulation’s! You have successfully installed Monit. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Monit monitoring tool on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Monit web site.