Join pdfs using ghostscript

gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=finished.pdf file1.pdf file2.pdf

Cloning Nexus 7

I have fifteen Nexus 7 tablets to prepare, so I needed to find out how to clone one.

Here is what I have discovered:

Note: I am using a computer running Linux and working on the command line as root. The notes below document the steps I took to get a Nexus 7 cloned, but are not really a tutorial.

WARNING! At one point I was stuck with a non-booting device and had to do a factory reset. This was on the device I was hoping to clone. Luckily I was just learning and it wasn't a real master tablet. You should get your tablet rooted and a recovery installed before setting it up, if at all possible. If you have already got your master tablet ready, make a backup using Titanium or similar, and get it off the tablet. 

New Year, New System

I've spent most of the last two weeks setting up a new server and clients ready for the school year. The server went pretty smoothly, and is performing well for the teachers. The management interface is easy and comprehensive, and of course most of the work goes on via ssh which I am used to.

http://www.linuxschools.com/

However, the client is causing me a lot of work. Its xfce on ubuntu, which sounds OK, but there are so many things to change.

rsync options

Finally got round to upgrading the family sever, which holds all our precious photos and music and was several years old (Debian Lenny). Transferring 250GB from old server to new, I didn't have space to tar up the files first. Anyway waste of time creating and gzipping the archive just to unzip it on the new server. So I used rsync with compression. While looking up the syntax, I came across this handy list,with explanations, from:

http://www.evbackup.com/support-commonly-used-rsync-arguments/

Creating a Raspberry Pi SD card Image

The default Raspbian image from the Raspberry Pi website is set up for a UK keyboard, and is missing some software I want to use in school. So what I have been doing is installing Raspbian on one SD card, tweaking it to my liking, and then making an image from that card, which I can write to SD cards for students. Since our cards are 8GB, this technique saves a lot of time when you have many cards to write, since it only copies occupied sectors to the image, and not the whole card.