Turn Manjaro into multimedia streaming server with Plex Media Server

Tweak your Manjaro performance and usability with Plex Media Server. Plex Media Server is a free, rich features multimedia application that can turn your Linux box into a powerful multimedia streaming server. This tutorial is going to show you how to install and configure Plex Media Server on Manjaro 17.0 series. PMS is available on AUR repository so we need to make sure that AUR repository is enabled on Manjaro.

By having Plex Media Server on your network you can play your favorite collections from any devices such as PC, Laptop, Smartphone (Android or iOS), PS4 and some other supported devices. On some countries, you can also integrate and play your online Televisions on Plex.

Installing Plex Media Server on Manjaro is very easy. Simply follow these steps below to get started.

Install Plex Media Server on Manjaro

Step 1. Open Add/Remove Software

Step 2. Type plex media server on the search box

Click AUR and then mark plex media server from the list. Press Apply to start the installation. You will be asked to enter the root password to continue. This process will take some times and will download about 100 MB of files from the internet.

Once finished open a web browser and type Manjaro IP address with the following format:

http://ip-address:32400/manage

The Plex Media Server web interface will open up. Now sign in to Plex. You may need to create free Plex account if you don't have it already.

Once signed in, we need to configure some stuffs

Add you media library to Plex.

Once finished, you will see the Plex dashboard where you can see, manage and play your media.

How to connect to OpenVPN Server on Manjaro 17.0

This tutorial will show you how to connect to OpenVPN Server from Manjaro 17.0. I will connect to my existing OpenVPN Server installed on Debian 9 Server. If you build your own OpenVPN Server, make sure you download the .ovpn configuration file. This file will be used by the client to connect to the server automatically.

I assume you have a working OpenVPN Server and also you have .ovpn config file on hands. Next we can start configure Manjaro. Open Network, and the follow these steps shown below.

Once connected, you can test or check your IP address via http://whatismyip.com. Your new IP address will be changed to the OpenVPN Server IP address.

I hope that helps and cheers.

Make your GRUB menu more eye catching with Vimix

Boring with the original black and white GRUB menu ? Don't worry, we can easily change or beautify GRUB menu using Vimix. Vimix is actually an addon for Grub Customizer that can be used to change the background of the Grub. It is good to have something like this upon system boot. 

Its nice isn't it? But how to make it? 

OK, first, we need to install two package. First, install Grub Customizer and also Vimix. You can use Pacman Software Manager or via Terminal. 

Search for vimix on the search box. And make sure you have enabled AUR repository. 

Install the package called grub2-theme-vimix-git. Don't forget to install Grub Customizer as well. 

How to change GRUB Background

1. Open Grub Customizer and switch to Appearance Settings tab. 
2. Select Vimix from theme list and then select background.png from the left panel.
3. Load your own .PNG image using the Load file button at the bottom. 
4. Once finished, go to File | Save.
5. Reboot Manjaro.  

Grub Customizer, a GUI application to modify Grub menu

Grub Customizer is a special application that can be used to modify the Grub menu entries, color and some other settings. Its a handy application that comes with nice GUI. Grub Customizer can be installed on Manjaro via Pamac Software Center. When this post is being written, the Grub Customizer 5.0.6 can be installed through Pacman command or Pamac Software Center. 

What Grub Customizer can do?

• Edit boot menu
• Change Grub background color
• Change the default Grub entry
• Modify boot delay

How to install Grub Customizer

Use the following command to install Grub Customizer on Manjaro

sudo pacman -S grub-customizer

Thank you

Make your Manjaro looks more eye catching with OSX-Arc Theme

OSX-Arc Theme is a cool and beautiful GTK Theme. This tutorial will show you how to install OSX-Arc theme on Manjaro Linux. I am using Manjaro 17.0 MATE on this tutorial but it can be installed on any Manjaro Linux version and edition. 

INSTALLATION

OSX-Arc is available on AUR repository. Make sure you have enabled AUR on your Manjaro prior to the installation. You can read this post to see how to enable AUR repository on Manjaro. You can either install OSX-Arch via Terminal or using Pamac Software Manager.

There are several version of OSX-Arc Theme. You can choose or simply install them all. Once installation completed, you can activate it via Appearance or Tweak Tool.

How to install Budgie Desktop on Manjaro 17.0

This quick tutorial is going to show you how to install the latest Budgie Desktop on Manjaro 17.0 desktop. Why Budgie? Budgie is believed as a simple, lightweight and beautiful desktop environment for Linux. It was made popular by Solus OS. Budgie is actually a fork of GNOME desktop but way simpler and more lightweight.

In order to install Budgie Desktop on Manjaro, all you need is a working network connection. The Budgie Desktop is included in Pacman repository on Manjaro. You can either install Budgie Desktop via Terminal or Pacman GUI.

Install Budgie Desktop via Terminal

If you prefer to install using Terminal, use the following command to update and install Budgie Desktop on your Manjaro Linux.

sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S budgie-desktop

The download process will started and in few minutes, the Budgie Desktop should be installed.

Install Budgie Desktop via GUI

Open Pacman software manager and type budgie on the search box. You will see any packages related to budgie will show up. Select budgie-desktop from the list and mark it for installation. Press Apply to confirm and the process will started.

Optionally, you can also install budgie-wallpapers and manjaro-budgie-settings that will make Budgie Desktop more usable.

Once complete, simply log out and re login to the new Budgie Desktop. 

How to connect to iSCSI disk on Manjaro Linux 17.0

I am currently working and testing my new iSCSI target server built on my FreeNAS 10 machine. I wrote a similar tutorial to connect to remote iSCSI disk/portal from my Fedora 26 server. Now I want to try to adopt it on my Manjaro. But mostly here done with command line. So, if you want to follow this tutorial, make sure you have an access to the remote iSCSI Target server.

My System configuration:

• Remote iSCSI target server (FreeNAS 10 Corral) IP address: 10.34.0.211
• iSCSI initiator client : Manjaro 17.0 Linux

Steps to connect to iSCSI target on Manjaro 17.0

Step 1. Install open-iscsi package

First of all, we need to install open-iscsi package on Manjaro. This package is not installed by default, so we need to install it first.

sudo pacman -S open-iscsi
sudo systemctl start open-iscsi

Step 2. Configure iscsid.conf

Now, we need to configure the file /etc/iscis/iscsid.conf. At this point, we will enter the iscsi target server details.

sudo nano /etc/iscsi/iscsid.conf

Now uncomment the following lines:

node.session.auth.authmethod = CHAP
node.session.auth.username = username
node.session.auth.password = password

Make sure you change the username and password with the iSCSI target server user name and password.

Step 3. Target discovery

Execute this command to start discover the iSCSI Target

sudo iscsiadm -m discovery -t sendtargets -p 10.34.0.211

You will see the list of any iqn list on the target server

Step 4. Confirm status of discovery

Now use this command to confirm the status of the Target server discovery

sudo iscsiadm -m node -o show

Output:

Step 5. Login to the target

sudo iscsiadm -m node --login

Example:

At this point we are connected to our remote iSCSI Target server and the iscsi disk is mounted locally. Check if it listed using fdisk command.

fdisk -l

You should see new disk is listed there like mine below.

OK so, we are successfully connected to the remote iSCSI disk on Manjaro. This tutorial also applicable to other Arch based Linux such as Antergos as well.

Install Atom 1.15 on Manjaro 17.0

Atom is an all in one text editor for most Linux users. It comes with a nice GUI, expandable features and many other interesting features. The new Atom 1.15 is available and here I want to show you how to install Atom on Manjaro 17.0.

What's new on Atom 1.15

• Duplicate selections with multiple lines
• Cursors are always visible by default
• Fix for hangs on opening minified files

Steps to install Atom 1.15 on Manjaro 17.0

If you like to install it via Terminal, simply use the following command

yaourt -S atom

Make sure you have enabled AUR repository on Manjaro Linux. You can read how to enable AUR on Manjaro if you haven't done yet.

Alternatively, you can also install Atom via Pamac Software Manager

Once completed, you can start using Atom on Manjaro. Please kindly share this article so other users can use it.

How to Make Shell Script Executable using command line

Hello everyone, today I am going to demonstrate some shell script tips and tricks. On my previous post, I have shown a simple shell script "Hello World" that can be read here. After we create a script, we need to make the script executable before we can actually run it.

For example, we already have a .sh file called hello.sh which contains some line of codes. We need to make the hello.sh file executable. Use the following command to make the hello.sh executable.

sudo chmod +x hello.sh

Now we can run the script with this command

sh hello.sh

or

./hello.sh

Its pretty simple but for a beginner, you must know it.

Install PHPMyAdmin on Manjaro 16.10

This tutorial is going to show you how to install PHPMyAdmin on Manjaro 16.10. As you know, PHPMyAdmin is a web based administrative tool for MySQL Server. We can perform many administrative tasks to our MySQL Server right away from a web browser such as Google Chrome. In order to install PHPMyAdmin, first we need to install LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL and PHP) on our system. Please refers to my previous tutorial to install Apache, MySQL and PHP on Manjaro below.

Once we've configured LAMP on our system, now we are ready to install PHPMyAdmin. Please follow the steps below.

Step 1. Install PHPMyAdmin

You can either install it via Add/Remove Software (Pamac GUI) or via Terminal command.

sudo pacman -S phpmyadmin

Output:

sudo pacman -S phpmyadmin
[sudo] password for dhani:
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) phpmyadmin-4.6.6-1

Total Download Size:    6,08 MiB
Total Installed Size:  35,85 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n]

Step 2. Configure PHPMyAdmin

Enable mysqli on PHP. On Terminal, do the following

sudo nano /etc/php/php.ini

Find and uncomment the line extension=mysqli.so. It should looks like this now:

extension=mysqli.so

Setup Apache by creating new configuration file

sudo nano /etc/httpd/conf/extra/phpmyadmin.conf

Now paste these lines:

Alias /phpmyadmin "/usr/share/webapps/phpMyAdmin"
<Directory "/usr/share/webapps/phpMyAdmin">
    DirectoryIndex index.php
    AllowOverride All
    Options FollowSymlinks
    Require all granted
</Directory>

Now include this line below inside  /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. Put it at the bottom of that file.

Include conf/extra/phpmyadmin.conf

Now restart apache

sudo systemctl restart httpd

Step 3. Access PHPMyAdmin web interface

Open web browser and type http://localhost/phpmyadmin. You should see the welcome window with login screen on the web browser.

Login with your MySQL credentials

If you see the error as above, "The configuration file now needs a secret passphrase (blowfish_secret), do the following. You will need a strong password, use 32 length password. You can use password generator to generate the password. For example I use this password: Nj9pzCbF^ZGgVxgZ!4pp-%*x4<QDfVFB

Edit the file /etc/webapps/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php and add the password to this line. So the final line should looks like this. Put the password between (' ').

$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = 'Nj9pzCbF^ZGgVxgZ!4pp-%*x4<QDfVFB'; /* YOU MUST FILL IN THIS FOR COOKIE AUTH! */

Now refresh the browser and the error should now gone.

Thank you for reading. Please share if you found this article useful. Cheers

How to backup local data to Amazon S3 Storage on Manjaro

I have an Amazon S3 Storage account and I want to integrate the storage with my local work. I am using Manjaro for my daily work and actually, I just want to backup my data into Amazon S3 Storage. Fortunately, there is Dragon Disk application that allows us to easily move or backup our local data to Amazon S3 storage. Dragon disk is available for free and can be installed on Manjaro with ease. See my previous tutorial to install Dragon Disk on Manjaro.

How to backup or sync data to Amazon S3 Storage

Step 1. Install Dragon Disk 

Step 2. Setting the Amazon account to Dragon Disk

First we need to create a new account on Dragon Disk. At this point, we must have a working Amazon S3 account that will be integrated to DD.

Step 3. Create Synchronization Job

Next we can start create a new Synchronization Job. This job requires source and destination to be set for sync purposes. 

We may also specify some other sync options. 

Step 4. Start Sync

To start the sync, simply go to Synchronization and click the sync job we created earlier.

Thank you for coming and share this if you think this article is helpful.

Google Chrome 56.0 is now available, install it on Manjaro

The new version of Google Chrome has been released. This is the new Google Chrome 56.0, a simple and lightweight web browser. Google Chrome has become my favorite web browser for all operating systems that I use. The new Google Chrome 56 brings a lot of improvements, bug fixes. Manjaro users can easily install Google Chrome 56.0 via Terminal or Software Center. 

Install Google Chrome 56.0 on Manjaro Linux

A. Via Terminal

Before continue, you will need to enable AUR repository on Manjaro. Please refers to my previous post to install or enable AUR repository on Manjaro. Next, use this command to install Google Chrome on Manjaro

yaourt -S google-chrome

After you execute the command, it will ask us to confirm the installation few times. 

B. Via Software Center

1. Open Software Center (Add/Remove Software)
2. Type google-chrome
3. Click google-chrome and press Apply

Darktable 2.2.2 is available, install it on Manjaro 16.10

Darktable is friend of photographer. It has many features needed by most photographer to edit their pictures, with so many advanced tools. Darktable is slightly similar to Adobe Lightroom in Linux environment. The main user interface is very nice yet easy to use. If you are running Manjaro, this tutorial will show you how to install Darktable 2.2.2 on Manjaro.

Steps to install Darktable on Manjaro 16.10, Manjaro 2017, and all its derivatives. This steps also applicable to Arch Linux.

Step 1. Refresh the repository and update Manjaro

sudo pacman -Syu

Step 2. Install Darktable

sudo pacman -S darktable

That's it. Now you can start edit your pictures for better result.

How to install Kodi 16.1 Jarvis on Manjaro Linux

Hello, today I will share about how to install Kodi on Manjaro Linux. Kodi is a special software to me because it was so useful for me. Kodi is a kind of multimedia center that will turn Manjaro into a multimedia station where we can watch movies, videos, listen to our music in a beautiful way. 

The new version of Kodi 16.1 with codename Jarvis has many improvements. Actually the development version of Kodi 17.0 is available but I think I will wait a bit more to get better performance on my Manjaro.

Step by step to install Kodi 16.1 on Manjaro 

How to change SSH port on Manjaro Linux

In some cases, to improve security we need to change the default ssh port on Manjaro or Arch Linux. For example we want to change it from port 22 to port 2222. By changing this default port, we will improve our system security from the start. OK, there are few things we need to do in order to change this ssh port. Before we go through, I assume you have a running SSH Server on Manjaro. 

Steps to change SSH port on Manjaro Linux

Step 1. Check the status of the SSH Server

Use the following command to get the current status of SSH Server 

sudo systemctl status sshd

You should see something like this:

Make sure the sshd service status is active (running).

Step 2. Edit the sshd_config

The main configuration of the SSH server is stored in /etc/ssh/sshd_config. To change the default port, open and edit the sshd_config file with your favorite text editor such as nano. 

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Find and change the following section:

Port 2222
#PermitRootLogin yes
#AddressFamily any
#ListenAddress 0.0.0.0

As you can see, I change the port to 2222. Close and save the file and then restart ssh service

sudo systemctl restart sshd

Step 3. Test the new port

Now use other computer and try to connect to the computer with the following command:

ssh -p 2222 dhani@10.34.0.10

Change the credentials with your username and IP address.

LVM Disk Management on Manjaro Linux

On this tutorial I will show you how to create a Logical Volume using several disks. LVM (Logical Volume Management) is a powerful way to manage multiple disks under Linux. We can use any number of disks as on big disks. The system will see those disks as single disk. For more information you may want to read more about LVM.

Steps to create Logical Volume on Manjaro Linux

Step 1. Create Physical Volume
Step 2. Create Volume Group
Step 3. Create Logical Volume

Step 1. Create Physical Volume

Physical volume can consist of many hard disks or partitions. We can add or remove disks from the physical volume. To create a new physical volume you will need one or more hard disks connected to Manjaro. Check the disk using fdisk -l or lsblk command.

lsblk

Output

As you can see here, I have sdb and sdc as my additional hard drive that is not in use. We will create a new PV with these hard disks. On this tutorial, the entire hard disks will be used for LVM. So, I don't have to create new partitions on it.

pvcreate /dev/sdb /dev/sdc

Output

OK now, new physical volume is ready. Make sure there are no error when executing the command above. We can continue to the next steps.

Verify the new Physical Volume

pvdisplay

Output:

Alternatively we can also use pvs command.

pvs

Output:

Step 2. Create Volume Group

Now we can create a new volume group. Volume group contains one or more physical volume. For example, we will create a new volume group called VGTest. I will add /dev/sdb to this VGTest.

vgcreate VGTest /dev/sdb

Output

Check the new volume group

vgs

Output

or use vgdisplay for detailed information about the volume group on system

vgdisplay

Output

Extend Volume Group
In some cases we need to extend or increase the size of a volume group by adding more physical volumes. Here I will extend my previously created VGTest with /dev/sdc. We use vgextend command as follow.

vgextend VGTest /dev/sdc

Output

Check the new volume group status

vgs

Output

As you can see, VGTest now has 14.99 gigabyte in size after I added /dev/sdc (10 GB) to this VGTest.

Step 3. Create Logical Volume

Now we can start to create a new Logical volume. For example, I want to create a logical volume with 7 GB in size. I would use the following command:

lvcreate -L 7G -n project VGTest

The command will create a new logical volume called project inside VGTest Volume Group with 7 GB in size. You can adjust the parameter to meet your own needs.
After created a new logical volume, we can then mount and format this logical volume.
Thanks for reading, please follow this blog to get more articles like this. Cheers.

How to install Nginx on Manjaro Linux

Nginx is a lightweight web server application that can turn our Linux desktop/server into a web server. Nginx is believed to be less resource compared to another popular web server Apache. This tutorial is going to show you how to install Nginx on Manjaro Linux. To install Nginx on Manjaro is very simple. 

Steps to install Nginx on Manjaro Linux

Open Terminal and type the following command

sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S nginx

Start Nginx Service

sudo systemctl start nginx

Stop Nginx Service

sudo systemctl stop nginx

Enable Nginx on boot

sudo systemctl enable nginx

Thank you

Pix Image Viewer, simple and useful image editor on Manjaro

Pix is a nice, simple Image Viewer and Editor that comes with Linux Mint 18.1. It comes with pretty simple user interface but its very easy to use. Pix 1.2.1 can be installed through Manjaro Pamac software manager.

Pix Image Viewer was developed based on gThumb Image Viewer. The browser mode will display image thumbnails of any images found on the selected folder. The detailed metadata of the selected image will be displayed on the left panel. We can also configure the layout of the main window as well.

We can easily add comment, title, date and some other information to our images. This is a useful tool to better manage and tag your picture collections.

The basic tool such as rotate, resize, convert to other format can be reached from the Tools menu on Pix main window. It can instantly export your current image to other format such as PNG, JPG, Tiff, TGA and WebP image.

The resize menu offers a basic resize mode.

Double click an image to enter the full screen mode where we can use Page Up and Page Down button for navigation.

Edit Image with Pix Image Viewer

Now lets try the image editing feature on this application. Click the Edit button on the top right to open the edit menu where you can find some adjustment tools. Unfortunately there is no slider for the contrast menu, so we cannot change it manually.

Install Pix on Manjaro

sudo pacman -S pix

In my case, I also install clutter-gtk to run Pix properly.

sudo pacman -S clutter-gtk

Enjoy.

How to connect to MariaDB Server on Manjaro

Hello Manjaro users, now we will learn how to connect to our MariaDB server from command line. This simple tutorial will show you how to connect to local MariaDB Server via Terminal command line. After we log in, we can do many things but at this time I will show you how to connect. In the future, I will show you more. 

Log in to MariaDb server via Terminal

Command:

mysql -u root -p

The command will log in as root user. 

Install OwnCloud Client on Manjaro 16.10

Install OwnCloud Client on Manjaro 16.10-Owncloud Client is the Desktop sync application that is needed to synchronize the Owncloud server with local computer. This tutorial is going to show you how to install Owncloud Cleint on Manjaro 16.10. Owncloud Desktop Sync Client is available on Manjaro repository.

Step to install Owncloud Client on Manjaro

Step 1. Open Add/Remove Software
Step 2. Type owncloud on the search box
Step 3. Select owncloud-client from the list
Step 4. Press Apply to confirm the installation

 

Once the installation completed, run Owncloud client to configure the remote Owncloud server.