Question
You see “lnext” or “LNEXT”, and you want to know what it means. In the context of Linux, what does LNEXT refer to?

Answer
It is a special character in Linux that pertains to the terminal driver. It means “Literal next.” To invoke the literal next character (and bypass other interpretations), an operator would typr Control-V.

The answer above was taken from page 1296 and 1298 of The Linux Programming Interface.

…

Continue reading “What Does LNEXT Mean or Stand for?”

Question
You want to know if child processes of a parent process inherit the environment variables of the process that spawned it. Does the child process get the variables?

Answer
Yes (according to page 568 of The Linux Programming Interface).

…

Continue reading “Does a Child Process in Linux Assume the Environment Variables of the Parent Process?”

Problem scenario
You have read about disk throttling. What does it do?

Solution
Disk throttling is the limiting of I/O activity. Files are often downloaded at an even rate over the network. Batches of writes can happen while throttling read operations. This can allow for interruptions from other OS processes without excessive latency and a consistent user experience. A server’s performance can be improved by putting a cap on disk input/output operations.

…

Continue reading “What Does It Mean to Throttle a Hard Disk?”

Problem scenario
You are running a quotacheck command on a Linux system. You get an error “quotacheck: Your kernel probably supports journaled quota but you are not using it. Consider switching to journaled quota to avoid running quotacheck after an unclean shutdown. “

Your /etc/fstab looks like this:

# <file system<mount point<type<options<dump<pass/dev/foo /bar ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1

What should you do?

…

Continue reading “How Do You Troubleshoot “quotacheck: Your kernel probably supports journaled quota but you are not using it.”?”

Problem scenario
You are using LibreOffice Draw to modify an .odg file. You know other slides exist, but you only see the first slide/page. How do you view other pages?

Solution
Press Page Down (aka PgDn) on your keyboard.

…

Continue reading “How Do You See Other Pages in an .odg File?”

Problem scenario
How do you convert an .odg file to a .jpeg?

Solution (for Linux users with LibreOffice)
Open LibreOffice Draw. Go to File -Export. Then choose in the dropdown the .jpeg format.

…

Continue reading “How Do You Convert an .odg File to a .jpeg?”

Question
In I.T. culture, there is a term “pwn”. What does it mean?

Answer
In video game culture, there is a term “pwn” [1]. The past tense is “pwned” [1]. According to Wikipedia [2] it can refer to Phrack World News. It could be a reference to unauthorized computer usage (as it amounts to internet slang) and can refer to Phrack World News [3].

…

Continue reading “What Does the Term “pwn” Mean?”