If you change the appareance of your GNOME desktop, Debian provides two packages : gnome-themes and gnome-themes-extras
To install them :

root@localhost:~# apt-get install gnome-themes gnome-themes-extras

To choose one of the available themes :

fool@localhost:~$ /usr/bin/gnome-appearance-properties &

Here is what you should have :

To install other GNOME themes, please visit : http://gnome-look.org/
On this website, you can find plenty of wallpapers, icons, GTK2.x Themes/Styles. If you want to have a new full GNOME theme, just choose GTK2.x Themes/Styles : http://gnome-look.org/?xcontentmode=100

To install some of them, download your new theme archive and then install it by clicking on the button “Install…” as shown in the picture above. The installation is automatic and the new theme is available right away.

If you want to use FTP commands through a secured login session, here is a solution : sftp. SFTP can be activated on a remote server running openssh-server so that you will be able to run any  FTP commands.

All you have to do is to add the following line into the openssh server configuration file /etc/ssh/sshd_config :

root@localhost:~# echo “Subsystem       sftp    /usr/libexec/openssh/sftp-server” >> /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Reload you configuration file :

root@localhost:~# /etc/init.d/sshd reload

To open a ftp session :

sftp username@server_name

You will be in your default home directory. For instance, if you want to download a file on your own computer, use the get command.

To leave your session, just type quit.

All the modules available for the running kernel are located in the following directory : /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/

In this directory, there are several important files such as modules.pcimap and modules.usbmap. These files are created by depmod. They list all the modules available for the current kernel with the corresponding vendor id/model id of every hardware component which can be plugged to a PCI or USB bus.

Let’s have an example. I want to know which module to load for my fibre channel card (HBA) :

fool@localhost:~$ lspci |grep -i fibre

08:01.0 Fibre Channel: QLogic Corp. ISP2422-based 4Gb Fibre Channel to PCI-X HBA (rev 02)
08:01.1 Fibre Channel: QLogic Corp. ISP2422-based 4Gb Fibre Channel to PCI-X HBA (rev 02)

To get their respective vendor id/model id for each of them :

fool@localhost:~$ lspci -n |grep 08:01.0

08:01.0 0c04: 1077:2422 (rev 02)

Using the model id value, I can find the requested module’s name :

fool@localhost:~$ grep 2422 modules.pcimap
qla2xxx              0×00001077 0×00002422 0xffffffff 0xffffffff 0×00000000 0×00000000 0×0
The approach can be reused for usb devices using the modules.usbmap file.

If you get an error message as below :

sudo: /etc/sudoers is owned by gid 5876, should be 0

(The GID number is here just an example)
The group owner of the file /etc/sudoers is not the good one. As root, do the following change :

root@localhost:~#chown root:root /etc/sudoers

Check whether this file has the good rights otherwise :

root@localhost:~# chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers

Here is a message which was appearing in my syslog file until I solved the problem :

[drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
mtrr: type mismatch for e0000000,10000000 old: write-back new: write-combining

MTRR stands for Memory Type range registers. Its a new feature available in the latest Intel processors.It is a new way of partitioning and managing memory resources in your system.There are two solutions for using the right values for mtrr.
The first one is to add this option to your grub command line :  enable_mtrr_cleanup mtrr_spare_reg_nr=1
The second one is to recompile your current kernel and choose the value 1 instead of 0 for MTRR cleanup enable value (0-1) while issuing the command make menuconfig.

I chose the first solution and I do not get any error messages no more :

dmesg |grep mtrr
[    0.000000] MTRR default type: uncachable
[    0.000000] MTRR fixed ranges enabled:
[    0.000000] MTRR variable ranges enabled:
[    0.000000] original variable MTRRs
[    0.000000] Found optimal setting for mtrr clean up
[    0.000000] New variable MTRRs
[    0.000000] Kernel command line: root=/dev/sda2 ro quiet enable_mtrr_cleanup mtrr_spare_reg_nr=1

For more information :
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/MTRR
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/314928
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOneDiscussion
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showpost.php?p=74238&postcount=5
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/en-US/Reference_Guide/s2-proc-mtrr.html

Knoppix is a Debian-based live cd which provides automatic hardware detection and a complete desktop solution.
LXDE is used as the default X11 environment.
It’s worth trying it as a rescue cd.
The lastest stable version is : 6.2.1

To download the English-spoken version :

EN Live Knoppix CD

Do not forget to verify the checksum of what you have just downloaded :

Knoppix v6.2.1 md5sum file

Let’s have a look at these following files as well :

The official README

The boot command line options

the list of all the packages included

To know if your CPU is 64 bit one, type the following command :

fool@localhost:~$ grep -w lm  /proc/cpuinfo

If you have an output like that containing the word lm, then you have 64 bit processor.

lm stands for Long mode which is only enabled for 64 bit CPU.

flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm xsave lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
flags        : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm xsave lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority

The command uname -i can provide the kind of hardware-platform on which your OS is running. However, you may have unkown as an output of uname -i.

In order not to type your passphrase everytime you connect to a server using ssh, put the code below in your own bashrc file :

SSHAGENT=/usr/bin/ssh-agent

SSHAGENTARGS=”-s”

if [ -z "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" -a -x "$SSHAGENT" ]; then

eval `$SSHAGENT $SSHAGENTARGS`

trap “kill $SSH_AGENT_PID” 0

fi
Then reload your shell configuration by issuing the following command : source .bashrc

You will be asked to type once your passphrase and that’s it ! If you use keys-based authentication, do not forget to copy your public key to the servers you often connect to with the utility ssh-copy-id! ssh-agent will be very useful for you !

In order to make the connections to several servers through SSH easier, I use public/private keys-based authentication.

Cygwin provides all the basic tools related to SSH : ssh client, ssh-keygen, ssh-copy-id, ssh-add and ssh-agent.

Once I created my DSA keys with a passphrase, I sent my public key to all the involved servers with the ssh-copy-id utility.  So, each time I connect to a server, I only have to type my passphrase. It is possible to avoid it by using ssh-agent.

To start it : exec ssh-agent /usr/bin/bash

If you do not use exec, you will get the following error message :

Could not open a connection to your authentication agent

To add your DSA identity to your authentication agent : ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_dsa

Type your passphrase once and then, you will not need to type it anymore. You will be able to connect to servers where you have uploaded your public key.

This solution works only for your current xterm. If you open a new xterm session, you will have to type your passphrase.