Category: Console

Change the default editor on Debian.

Debian uses for visudo, crontab, reportbug and other similar applications the default text editor, if you want to change it use the update-alternatives command.

Run this on a CLI.

root# update-alternatives --config editor

The options in my Debian system are:

There are 6 alternatives which provide `editor’.

Selection Alternative
———————————————–
1 /bin/ed
2 /bin/nano
3 /usr/bin/vim.tiny
*+ 4 /usr/bin/vim.gnome
5 /usr/bin/mcedit-debian
6 /usr/bin/emacs21

Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number:
The + sign denotes the default option, and the * sign denotes the actual selection, to change from vim to nano, just press 2 in this example and the ENTER.

Turn off periodic FSCK at booting time.

Forces drives to be checked once for every 30 times the filesystem is mounted. This means that on an average, once every 30 times you bootup your computer, the filesystem integrity is checked.
To disable filesystem integrity check forever do:

$sudo tune2fs -c -1 `mount | awk '$3 == "/" {print $1}'`

or

$sudo tune2fs -c -1 /dev/yourhdd

but if you don’t want disable filesystem check forever, only for the next bootup, create a file called /fastboot.

$sudo touch /fastboot

will disable filesystem check for the next time you bootup. Since the /fastboot file is removed during bootup, this will disable filesystem check only once – for the one time you bootup after you create the /fastboot file
On the contrary to force a filesystem check the next time you bootup, create a file called /forcefsck by doing

$sudo touch /forcefsck