Often I find that I am needing to determine a) if an O/S install is 32bit or 64bit and b) if the CPU will support 64bit. I run into a lot of Linux boxes that have 64bit CPUs but the 32bit version of the distribution was installed. Here are a few quick ways to tell. For the O/S: The architecture should be listed as x86_64 for 64bit or i686 for 32bit. Using uname (-m or -p): 64bit $ uname -m x86_64 $ uname -p x86_64 32bit $ uname -m i686 $ uname -p i686 or using lscpu: 64bit $ lscpu | grep -i arch Architecture: x86_64 32bit $ lscpu | grep -i arch Architecture: i686 or using getconf: 64bit $ getconf...

Well, in the name of security, it seems Java 7 has broken a whole lot of apps. I will not bother with the pros and cons of this, but will simply address how to get things working again. Java 7, by default, blocks “untrusted” and “self-signed” applications. In addition, it is 64 bit and will not work with Chrome on Macs, which is 32 bit. Trying to run such an app results in this annoying dialog: There are a couple ways around this. The most simple is to use the Java Security Preferences to lower the Security Level. This can be done by: Select “System...

With RPMForge you have access to over 5,000 additional packages, including  wine, vlc, mplayer, xmms-mp3, and other popular media tools. It is not part of CentOS but is designed to work with it. Installing RPMForge: Download the Package Install the GPG Key Verify the Package Install the Package Enjoy I generally prefer to work out of an “install” folder, it makes it easier for me to cleanup my mess and/or retain stuff that I install for later use elsewhere. $ mkdir install $ cd install/ $ wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.3-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm $ sudo rpm...

When digging an old computer out from under a desk, for the simple purpose of playing around with a new O/S, make sure you are not trying to boot a 64-bit O/S on a 32-bit computer… before you get too involved in troubleshooting things.

Vimdiff starts Vim on two (or three or four) files. Each file gets its own window. The differences between the files are highlighted. This is a nice way to inspect changes and to move changes from one version to another version of the same file. See vim(1) for details about Vim itself. When started as gvimdiff the GUI will be started, if available. In each window the ’diff’ option will be set, which causes the differences to be highlighted. The ’wrap’ and ’scrollbind’ options are set to make the text look good. The ’foldmethod’ option is set to “diff”, which puts ranges of lines without...