Changing default shell in ubuntu

I faced this problem when I created a new account using command line where the default shell of my new account is /bin/sh. After googling around, I found 2 useful solutions which are listed below:

1. Change user entry in /etc/passwd
a) edit /etc/passwd using any editor

• $ vi /etc/passwd
  

b) find the line that belongs to the user (foo) that we about to modify

• foo:x:1001:1001::/home/foo:/bin/sh

c) change from /bin/sh to /bin/bash

• foo:x:1001:1001::/home/foo:/bin/bash

d) save
e) Logout and login back

2. Use chsh command
a) type chsh

• $ chsh

b) You will be asked for password. Enter your password
c) This screen will appear

• Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
  Login Shell [/bin/sh]:

d) Put /bin/bash at the menu and press Enter

Done :)

Turn off automatic first capital letter in openoffice

By default, openoffice will automatically turn the first letter to capital in a sentence. This feature is very useful but sometimes you do not want your first letter in your sentence to be capital. There is a setting that you have to turn off to make this happen. This steps have been tested on openoffice 3.

1. go to Tools -> AutoCorrect
2. go to Options tab
3. Uncheck Capitalize first letter of every sentence under [T] which means disable capitalize first letter of every sentence when typing
4. Click on OK
   

Done :)

Installing microsoft truetype font on ubuntu

The reason we need this microsoft truetype fonts is that we want the documents created in microsoft office to be nicely opened in openoffice. To install microsoft trutype fonts:

1. Run the command below to install msttcorefonts. You can also use synaptics package manager to install if you are not familiar with terminal

$ sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

2. To immediately use the new font, run the command below to rebuild back font information cache files

$ sudo fc-cache -fv

3. Your new fonts are ready to be used. Fonts that are already installed are:

• Andale Mono
• Arial Black
• Arial (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Comic Sans MS (Bold)
• Courier New (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Georgia (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Impact
• Times New Roman (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Trebuchet (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Verdana (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Webdings

To add another font besides listed above, just copy the fonts files, and put it inside ~/.fonts/. You can find the fonts files from sourceforge

Rebuild corrupted dbmail account

Symptoms of corrupted dbmail account are slow to open account and if manage to open account, it will take forever just to open the inbox. Here are the steps to rebuild back the account using joe's email account

1. You have to backup the the user's inbox. Use command "dbmail-export" to export mailbox to mbox file. For better management, export the mailbox to home folder.
# cd /home
# dbmail-export -u joe

2. A few mbox files will be generated depending on how many folders you have in your email. The mboxs will be placed in a folder named with your username, in this case, joe
#ls /home

3. Clear up the username mailbox using "dbmail-users". -e is for clearing mailbox
# dbmail-users -e joe

4. Delete the user. -d is for deleting user
# dbmail-users -d joe

5. Create back user. -a is for add user, -w for password, -p for password type and -s for aliases
# dbmail-users -a joe -w joe123456 -p md5 -s joe@example.com

6. Download dbmail tarball from here. Extract and you can see a script named mailbox2dbmail in contrib folder. Use that script to migrate back the mbox files to dbmail. For easy usage, copy the mailbox2dbmail script to /usr/local/bin. -u is for username, -t for type of input, -m for input filename and -b is for the name you want the mailbox to appear in your email
# cd /home/joe
# mailbox2dbmail -u joe -t mbox -m INBOX.mbox -b INBOX

7. Go to your joe's webmail and you can see the INBOX is already there. Repeat step 6 for all your mailboxes

CentOS/Fedora forgotten password

What to do if you forgot the password for your CentOS/Fedora/Redhat machine?? Here are some simple steps to change back the password by entering into single user mode of your machine provided you do not forgotten your grub password if you have set it ;)

1. Reboot your machine
2. Press 'Esc' key once grub starts loading
3. Select your kernel press 'e' on one of the kernel to edit the kernel parameter
4. Press 'e' on the line that starts with 'kernel /vmlinuz...'
5. Append ''single" or "1" at the end of the line
6. Press 'Enter'
7. Press 'b' to boot from the appended kernel
8. You are now in the single user mode of your linux machine once you get to the shell. You can now change the password of your account using command passwd
   
9. Reboot back your machine normally
   
10. You can now log in to your machine using your new password

:)