One of the things I always like about using VMWare's ESXi servers was the ability to access the console of the virtual machine (VM).

This ability also exists when using Linux KVM and Linux VMs, and is pretty simple to set up.

Bonus points after a small config change, it's much more usable.

Enable the console from …

Logging into one of my Linux boxes, I noticed I had a zombie process.

Welcome to Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.4.0-88-generic x86_64)

  => There is 1 zombie process.

A zombie process is

Processes marked are dead processes (so-called "zombies") that remain because their parent has not destroyed them …

By default, Ubuntu uses nano for editing visudo.

Nano is the linux editor for Windows administrator . . . don't use it!

To change it to something else, such as vim:

sudo update-alternatives --config editor
There are 4 choices for the alternative editor (providing /usr/bin/editor).

  Selection    Path …

While never a good idea to enable this in a production, or multi-user system, on a lab system, not needing to type in a password when running sudo makes life a lot easier.

• To enable password-less sudo:

  sudo visudo
  

• Add this to the bottom of the file, assuming your username is tom:

  tom ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
  

• If we …

I was trying to make a backup, but exclude my working directory, which just has a lot of temp files in it.

. . . easier said than done . . .

The concept is pretty easy, simply use the --exclude="file2exclude" switch option in the command, and the file(s)/directory(ies) listed will be excluded.

It didn't work. …

Virtual machines (VM) and their KVM host can't communicate over the network, which is by design.

There are times however, that I want to enable VM to KVM host communication, typically because the KVM host is hosting something else I want to access from the VM..

The two ways of doing this, along with the pros and cons: …