Unsplash is a great place to go to for wallpapers. The site used to let you sort the photos by date allowing you to easily browse through all the new ones. Now, you get a selection of new photos and most new ones will not be discovered. This makes it more difficult to find landscape photos on Unsplash for wallpapers but, if you use Chrome, there’s an extension that will make the search easier.
Install Splash search from the Chrome Web Store and visit Unsplash.
landscape photos on Unsplash
Splash search adds two filters just above the search bar on Unsplash. The filters allow you to filter out photos by orientation where ‘Any’ is no filter and will give you a mix of landscape and portrait photos. The ‘Portrait’ filter will filter out all landscape photos leaving you with just the portrait ones. To get landscape photos, you have to apply the ‘Landscape’ filter and it will filter out all the portrait ones.
A few portrait orientated photos will still sneak through even with the Landscape filter and it likely has to do with the size of the photos but most of them will be landscape. The same goes for the Portrait filter; you will get a few landscape photos in the results.
The second filter is for ‘Luminance’. It has two options; light, and dark. For well lit photos, apply the Light filter, and for darker photos, apply the Dark filter.
You can apply the filter to the home page, or you can search for photos via a keyword and apply the filters to the search results.
Unsplash has a lot of great photos but its search engine isn’t that great and unless you find a really good, well-curated collection of photos on a particular topic, you’ll mostly be seeing the same ones over and over. It’s categories do cover most photo topics but you will still only see the same photos if you browse it everyday for a few days.
Unsplash’s algorithm needs considerable improvement. It seems to favor different photos depending on the device you’re viewing the website on as well. It has some truly great photos and it’s a shame that most of them won’t be found because the newest content isn’t pushed to the top of the front page.
It’s surprising but there really aren’t that many extensions or add-ons (for Firefox), that help users search Unsplash more easily. It’s like an untapped niche.
It’s common knowledge that you can change the cursor on Windows 10. Not only can you set a different size and color for the cursor, but you can also change how it looks with a theme. Themes normally change all states of the cursor i.e., the loading state, the pointer arrows, the scroll face, etc., however, you can change a particular cursor face on Windows 10 and leave the rest as they are. Here’s how.
Replace a cursor face
Find the cursor face that you want to use. It can be part of a theme and you can partially apply it, or it can be a stand alone image that you create. Unfortunately, creating a cursor isn’t that simple. Your best bet is to try an online app that allows you to draw one. A more complicated or good looking cursor will require some skill.
For this post, we’re going to use a cursor face from the Metro X1 Animated Cursor theme.
Open Control Panel and go to Hardware and Sound. Click Mouse, and you’ll get the mouse properties window. Go to the Pointer tab. You will see a list of all the different states the cursor goes through and each one will be accompanied by the cursor face that is used for that state. Select the cursor state, and click the browse button.
In the window that opens, select the cursor face that you want to use. The Metro X1 theme, when extracted, shows plainly every single cursor face that it has. You can pick the one you want to use, and click Apply.
If you ever want to change the cursor back to the way it was, it’s pretty simple. Visit the mouse properties again. Go to the Pointer tab, and select the cursor you want to restore. Once selected, click the ‘Use Default’ button and the cursor face will revert to the default one that was set by Windows 10.
When you change a particular cursor face, make sure you replace it with one that’s easy to recognize. If you can’t tell what the cursor is for i.e., whether it’s ready to type or if it’s indicating the system is busy in the background, then it’s of little use. The good thing is that it’s very easy to reset a cursor that you can’t recognize.
On that same note, if you have a cursor theme that you like but you aren’t happy with one or two of the cursor faces it has, you can use this same trick and swap out the confusing cursor face with one you like better.
Mission Control is a way to quickly look at the windows open on your desktop. You can move them to a different desktop if you want and that’s about all you can do. It’s surprising that a feature that’s been around for so long falls short of the Windows 10 version of it which is only a few years old. It turns out that you cannot close and quit apps from Mission Control. To do that, you need an app called Mission Control Plus. It’s not free. The app costs $2.99 but it has a trial version that you can take for a spin before you buy it.
Close and quit apps from Mission Control
Download and run Mission Control Plus. It needs accessibility permission in order to work and it will run in the menu bar. Go to Mission Control and when you mouse over a window, you’ll see a close button at the top left corner.
Mission Control Plus works with keyboard shortcuts as well; you can close a window, close all windows, hide an app, hide all apps, or kill an app with them. To view all the keyboard shortcuts, click the app’s icon in the menu bar and look under Preferences.
This may seem trivial but Mission Control is a great way to clean up app and window clutter. You can get a quick look at everything that’s open so why not clean up the mess while you’re at it?
We mentioned that this feature pales in comparison to what Windows 10 has and it does. On Windows 10, Taskview is the equivalent of Mission Control and you can close windows from there. It’s a built-in feature which means there’s no need to use an app for it.
The trail version of the app isn’t limited in features. You get the whole deal, all the features. The trial version is for ten days and each time you launch the app, it will tell you how many days you have left before the trail expires and you have to buy a license for it. The only downside is that you can’t buy it from the Mac App store. If you prefer to buy apps exclusively from there, and you like this app, you’re going to have to make an exception.
Mission Control Plus is a new app and as such, it requires that you’re running macOS 10.14 i.e., Mojave, or later. That means the current version of macOS, and the next one expected to drop in October 2019 i.e., Catalina will be the only two versions of macOS that can run the app.
Apple Music is Apple’s answer to Spotify and Google Music. The service works pretty well on iPhone, iPad, macOS, and even Windows. It does not, however, work well on the Linux platform, and Apple has no plans to change this.
Even though Apple Music will never get official Linux support, it is still possible to get a native Apple Music app on Linux with the help of Nativfier.
Install Nativefier
Nativfier is a NodeJS application that can take any website the user points at it and convert it to a native Linux, Windows, or Mac application. To get Apple Music working the Nativefier app must be installed on your system.
Installing Nativefier is a complicated tool to install. If you know how NPM works and already have NodeJS set up on your system, open up a terminal window and enter the command below to get the latest Nativfier installed. Otherwise, follow our guide on Nativefier to learn about how to set up the app, and NodeJS on Linux.
sudo npm install nativefier -g
After running the installation command, you can run nativefier --helpto confirm it works.
Building Apple Music on Linux
Building Apple Music on Linux is a tedious but rewarding process. The process starts by opening up a terminal window and using the CD command to move the command-line session from the home directory (~) to the temporary folder.
cd /tmp
Once inside of the temporary folder on your Linux PC, use the mkdir command to create a new build directory for Apple Music named “apple-music-linux-build-dir.”
mkdir -p mkdir -p apple-music-linux-build-dir
After creating the new Apple Music build folder in the temporary directory, use the CD command to change directories from the temporary folder into the new Apple Music build directory.
cd apple-music-linux-build-dir
The next step in the build process for Apple Music is to download the icon that the program will use on the Linux desktop. To download the Apple Music icon from the internet, copy and paste the following wget download command below into the terminal window.
wget https://i.imgur.com/9ts6pyp.png -O icon.png
The Apple Music icon is done downloading and saved as “icon.png.” We can now use the Nativefier tool to generate a new Apple Music Linux binary in the build folder.
Note: as of writing this guide, the Apple Music Web URL is http://beta.music.apple.com. In the future, it may change. For more information, check the official Apple Music page on Apple.com.
nativefier -p linux -a x64 -i icon.png --disable-context-menu --disable-dev-tools --single-instance http://beta.music.apple.com/
The Nativefier tool will take some time to generate a native Linux binary of the Apple Music webpage. When it’s done, the Apple Music program files will be located in the “apple-music-linux-x64” directory.
Using the mv command, rename the “apple-music-linux-x64” folder to “apple-music.”
mv apple-music-linux-x64 apple-music
Now that the Apple Music folder is renamed, it’s time to move the app’s files from the temporary directory to the “opt” folder. Using the mv command below, move the files into “opt.”
With the Apple Music files in the “opt” directory on your Linux PC, it is time to update the permissions of the files so that your user can successfully access them. Using the chmod command below, update the Apple Music Linux app’s permissions.
sudo chmod 755 -R /opt/apple-music
The permissions for the Apple Music Linux app are up to date. Now it’s time to create a desktop shortcut to make it easy to launch the app from the Linux desktop. Using the touch command, create a new Apple Music desktop shortcut.
Paste the code below into the Nano text editor. To paste in Nano, press Ctrl + Shift + V.
[Desktop Entry]Comment[en_US]= Access Apple Music on Linux. Comment= Exec=/opt/apple-music/apple-music GenericName[en_US]=Apple Music desktop app. GenericName=Apple Music Icon=/opt/apple-music/resources/app/icon.png MimeType= Name[en_US]=Apple Music Name=Apple Music NoDisplay=false Categories=AudioVideo;Audio
Save the edits to the shortcut file with Ctrl + O, and exit Nano with Ctrl + X. Then, update the permissions to the new Apple Music shortcut file.
After updating the permissions for the shortcut, open up the app menu on your Linux PC, click on “Audio” or “Multimedia” (or just search for Apple Music) and launch Apple Music. Once the program is open, find the blue “login” button and click it to sign in to your account.
Once signed in to the Apple Music app, you’ll be able to listen to your favorite songs! Enjoy!
Love the Apple look but want something fresh? Check out Korla, a beautiful, modern icon theme for Linux. Its design is very similar to that of macOS and borrows a lot of design choices from Mac-like Linux themes, yet it differentiates itself by adding in flat app icons (something Mac-like themes don’t do), and a variety of different folder color choices.
The Korla icon theme is available to Linux users for download via the project’s GitHub page. To get the latest release of Korla, you must have the Git tool installed.
Install Git
Installing the Git tool on Linux requires the Linux terminal. Open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, follow the command-line instructions outlined below that match the Linux operating system you use.
Ubuntu
To install Git on Ubuntu Linux, use the following Apt command.
sudo apt install git
Debian
Using Debian Linux? Set up Git with the Apt-get command below.
sudo apt-get install git
Arch Linux
On Arch Linux, Git is installable via the following Pacman command.
sudo pacman -S git
Fedora
To install Git on Fedora Linux, use the following Dnf command.
sudo dnf install git
OpenSUSE
Git is available to all OpenSUSE Linux users. To install it, use the following Zypper command.
sudo zypper install git
Download Korla icon theme
After installing Git on your Linux computer, use the git clone command to download the latest release of the Korla icon theme.
git clone https://github.com/bikass/korla.git
Once the Korla icon theme is done downloading through Git, download the Korla Folders icon set.
Unzip both “korla.zip” and “korla-folders.zip” with the commands below.
Note: To use the unzip commands outlined below, you must have the unzip tool installed. For more information on how to install unzip, head over to Pkgs.org.
unzip korla.zip unzip korla-folders.zip
Install Korla icons
The Korla icon theme can be set up on a Linux PC in two different ways. The first way involves installing the icons for a single-user so that only the user that sets up the icon theme can have access to it. The second way is by setting it up system-wide so that every single user on the Linux system can have access to the Korla icon theme. In this guide, we will go over both installation methods.
Single-user
To set up the Korla icon theme on Linux as a single-user, start by using the mkdir command to create a new folder with the name of “.icons” in the home directory (~) of the current user.
mkdir -p ~/.icons
After creating the new “.icons” folder, move the Korla folder into the directory with the mv command.
mv korla ~/.icons
mv korla-folders ~/.icons
Did you download the icons with the wget command? If so, the folder names are different than the ones in the commands above. Try these instead:
mv korla-master ~/.icons
mv korla-folders-master ~/.icons
Once the icon files are placed in the “.icons” folder in the home directory (~), the Korla icon theme is installed as a single-user.
System-wide
To install the Korla icon theme on Linux system-wide, start by gaining root access using the sudo -s command.
sudo -s
Now that the terminal shell has root access use the mv command to install the Korla icon theme into the icon directory.
mv korla /usr/share/icons/
mv korla-folders /usr/share/icons/
If you downloaded the Korla icon files through the wget download command, and not the git clone tool, the commands outlined above will not work. You must instead use these commands to place the Korla icons in the correct directory.
mv korla-master /usr/share/icons/
mv korla-folders-master /usr/share/icons/
When the icon files are placed in the system’s icon directory, the Korla icon theme is installed system-wide.
Enable Korla icon theme on Linux
Korla is set up on Linux, but the system won’t use it until it’s set as the default icon theme. To set Korla as the default icon theme on your Linux PC, open up “System Settings,” and make your way to the “themes” or “appearance” settings. Once there, switch the icon theme to “Korla.”
Having some issues setting the Korla icon theme as the default on your Linux PC? We can help! Look through the links below for the desktop environment you use to learn all about how to change icon themes.
Printers are some of the most problematic hardware you’ll find. We may be living in a world where 3D printing is possible, but it doesn’t mean printing on paper at home has improved all that much. Printers are pretty much still from hell and ink and toner cost an arm and a leg. If you’re trying to print something, and keep seeing the printer offline, here are a few things you can try.
Run basic troubleshooting steps before you proceed.
Check hardware
There are a few things you need to check before you can troubleshoot an offline printer from Windows 10. The first is the cable that you’re using to connect your printer to your PC. Make sure that it is not damaged. Printer cables aren’t exactly proprietary but, a damaged or frayed cable isn’t something that will work.
Change the port you’re connecting the printer to. Not all ports may be able to connect with the printer e.g., if the printer is a USB 2.0 printer and the port you’ve connected it to is USB 3.0, you might run into problems.
Make sure that there is paper in the paper tray. Also make sure the printer is in its correct ‘printing’ position i.e., nothing is open, or removed. All lids that are supposed to be closed should be closed.
Finally, make sure that you’re able to print a test page on the printer. You do not need the printer to be connected to a PC in order for it to print the test page. Normally, pressing the power button on the printer will do the job. In some cases, there might be a dedicated button for printing a test page, or a different method might be used. Consult your printer’s manual.
If all of the above checks out, proceed with the fix below.
Uninstall/Reinstall the printer
On Windows 10, printers normally install automatically i.e., Windows takes care of the drivers that are needed and sets everything up. There are still rare cases where this may not work or there might have been problems with the set up. To fix them, uninstall the printer. It’s pretty easy to do; look for the printer in the Settings app under Devices>Printers & scanner, select it, and click the uninstall button. Disconnect the printer and for good measure, restart your system.
Connect the printer again, and then allow Windows 10 to install drivers for it.
If your printer came with installation media, try using that if the generic drivers that Windows 10 installs don’t work after the reinstallation.
Check offline printing status
Open the Settings app and go to the Devices group of settings. Select the Printers & scanners tab, and select your printer. Click the ‘Open Queue’ button. In the print queue window, click the File item on the menu bar and make sure ‘Use printer offline’ is not enabled. If it is, disable it, and disconnect and reconnect the printer again.
Restart printing services
Use the Win+R keyboard shortcut to open the run box and enter the following.
services.msc
Tap enter to open the Services manager. Look for a service called Print Spooler. Right-click it and select Restart from the context menu. Disconnect and reconnect the printer again.
Check printer port
This solution may not work for all types of printers but it is definitely worth trying. Open Control Panel and go to Hardware and Sound>Devices and Printers. Right-click the printer and select ‘Printer properties’ from the context menu.
In the Printer properties window, go to the Ports tab. Make sure that the box next to your printer is checked. If it isn’t, check it and see if the printer appears online.
If it doesn’t, return to the Printer properties window, and on the Ports tab, click Configure Port. You may, or may not, be able to configure the port. It depends on your printer model but if you see options to configure it, disable the SNMP Status Enabled option.
Close and open app
Close the app that you’re sending the print job from. Disconnect the printer, and connect it again. Allow a few minutes to pass and then open the file again. Try printing. It’s worth going to the app’s print dialog to make sure it can see/select the printer.
You should also try printing from a different app. It is possible that the app you’re using has problems of its own and it is unable to connect to the printer.
If you’re sick of manually tagging music files on Linux, you’ll be interested to know that it’s possible to automate it, using MusicBrainz Picard. It can scan your existing music files on Linux, look through them, and assign the correct ID3 tags.
Install MusicBrainz Picard on Linux
Before going over how to use MusicBrainz Picard to auto tag music files on Linux, we must demonstrate how to install the program. So, in this section of the guide, we’ll go over several ways to get the app working.
Note: MusicBrainz Picard works on almost all Linux distributions, and packages are available for Arch Linux, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and even Flatpak.
To start the installation, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, from there, follow the command-line instructions that match the Linux operating system you use.
Ubuntu
MusicBrainz Picard is installable on Ubuntu Linux via a PPA. To enable this PPA, use the following add-apt-repository command.
After adding in the PPA to Ubuntu, the update command must be run.
sudo apt update
Finally, install MusicBrainz Picard on your Ubuntu PC with the apt install command.
sudo apt install picard
Debian
The MusicBrainz Picard application is available to all Debian Linux users in the “Main” software repository. Install it with the following apt-get command.
sudo apt-get install picard
Arch Linux
MusicBrainz Picard is in the Arch Linux “Community” software repository. So, enable “Community” in the Pacman.conf file (if you haven’t already). Then, install the app with the Pacman command below.
sudo pacman -S picard
Fedora
On Fedora Linux, you can get the Picard application directly from the official software repository. To install, use the following Dnf command.
sudo dnf install picard
OpenSUSE
The MusicBrainz Picard app is available for installation on OpenSUSE via the “Oss all” software repository. To get it going on your system, use the Zypper command below.
sudo zypper install picard
Flatpak
MusicBrainz Picard is on Flathub as a Flatpak. If you’d like to install it as a Flatpak on your Linux PC, start by enabling the Flatpak runtime. Once the runtime is activated and ready to go, use the following Flatpak commands in a terminal window to install Picard.
To auto-tag, your music files in the MusicBrainz Picard application, start by opening the application on your Linux desktop. To open the program, go to “multimedia” in the app menu, and select “MusicBrainz Picard.” Alternatively, press Alt + F2 on the keyboard, write the command in below, and press Enter to launch.
picard
With the Picard app open, locate the “Add Folder” button and select it to bring up the file browser window. Then, follow the step-by-step instructions below to learn how to use the automatic tag feature.
Step 1: Inside of the file browser window that opens after clicking “Add Folder,” browse for your music directory, or an individual album directory and select it to load music files into the program.
Step 2: Under the “Unclustered Files” folder, select each music file by holding down the Ctrl button as you click. Alternatively, press Ctrl + A on the keyboard, and Picard will automatically highlight all files under “Unclustered Files.”
Step 3: Now that all of the music files are selected and highlighted, locate the “Scan” button in the menu bar in Picard and click it. Selecting “Scan” will run each music file against Picard’s online database and find the best matches for the files.
Step 4: Once Picard is done scanning all of your music files against an online database, matches for each music file will show up in the right-hand side of the app. Find each music file with a green box next to it, hold down the Ctrl button, and highlight each of them with the mouse.
Step 5: With all of the matched music files selected, locate the “Save” button and click it to save the new tag information to the music files.
After saving the new tag information to the music files, restart your music player. Upon re-launch, the player should instantly see the changes and adjust accordingly.
Manual tagging with Picard
Aside from automatically tagging music files in Picard, it is also possible to set information manually. To do this, load up music files into the app by selecting “Add Folder,” or “Add Files.” Then, go to the tag pane at the bottom, find a value you’d like to change, right-click on it, and select “Edit” to change it.
After you’re done editing, select the file with the mouse, and click the “Save” button to save the new tag information to the music file.
A File System on a drive decides how data is stored and read from a drive. Think of it as a method for ordering information. If you were to go to a library, the books there will likely be sorted using the Dewey Decimal System. A file system is somewhat similar to this concept. There aren’t a whole lot of file systems but there are enough of them for users to have to stop and think which one they want to use. If you have a drive that’s on a certain file system, and you need to change it to another, you can easily do so on Windows 10.
Change file system of drive
In order to change the file system of a drive on Windows 10, you have two different built-in methods that you can use however, be warned. When you change the file system of a drive, it first erases everything on it. Make sure you back up data before you proceed. You should also know that you cannot change the file system of drive that you’ve booted form e.g., if you’re running Windows 10 from the C drive, you won’t be able to change its file system.
Change file system of drive – Drive format
Connect the drive that you want to format to your Windows 10 PC. Open File Explorer and go to This PC. Right-click the drive and select ‘Format’ from the context menu.
A new window will open with a dropdown for ‘File System’. Open it, and select one of the supported file systems that Windows 10 can convert to. If you want, you can uncheck the ‘Quick Format’ option. Click Start and the drive’s file system will be changed. The process will take some time to complete depending on the size of the drive, and whether or not you choose to disable Quick Format.
Change file system of drive – Disk Management
Connect your drive to your PC. Open Windows Search and enter Disk Management. Select the ‘Create and format hard disk partitions’ result.
In the Disk Management app, right-click the drive that you want to change the file system for. From the context menu, select ‘Format’.
In the window that opens, open the File System dropdown and select which file system you want to use for the drive. Click OK, change other settings/preferences for the drive if you need to, and then allow the format and conversion to complete.
On Windows 10, you can convert to the NTFS, exFAT, and FAT32 though the options may differ based on the type of drive that you’re looking to change the file system of. There are other file system besides these three such as Apple’s own proprietary Apple File System. You will need a Mac to convert a drive to this file system, or a paid app.
Focus Assist is a useful feature on Windows 10 that allows you to turn off notifications for a while. It has different modes whereby the notifications are kept silent if you’re watching something in full screen mode, or if you’re playing a game. It allows notifications from certain apps, or you can set it so that only alarms can interrupt you and nothing else. If you use the Priority setting for Focus Assist, you can choose which apps are allowed to show notifications. Here’s how you can whitelist apps in Focus Assist.
You should know that whitelisting apps in Focus Assist is done via a built-in feature on Windows 10. As such, it has its own limitations where not all UWP apps can be whitelisted. It seems Windows 10 still filters which apps are allowed even as exceptions in Focus Assist.
Whitelist apps in Focus Assist
This whitelist applies only to the Priority Only mode in Focus Assist. Open the Settings app and go to the System group of settings. Select the ‘Focus Assist’ tab, and under Priority mode, click ‘Customize your priority list’.
Note: You do not need to enable Focus Assist and/or Priority Only mode to access the list of whitelisted apps.
The next screen will have settings for calls, text, messages, and People. Scroll past them and you will see an Apps section. Click the ‘Add an app’ button and from the dropdown that opens, select the app that you want to whitelist. That should do the trick.
It seems that the apps that are excluded from this list are ones that don’t show notifications. If you were to visit the notifications section in the Settings app, you’ll find that every single app on your system is listed there and you can allow it to show you notifications. While that means they’re allowed to show notifications, it doesn’t add the ability to the app itself to show notifications. If an app doesn’t have a notification feature, it won’t be able to show you anything. Case in point: Netflix. The app can’t show notifications; new arrivals appear as in-app notifications. It’s possible that Windows 10 chooses to exclude apps like this from the list of apps that can be added as an exception.
The desktop apps that can be added to the whitelist isn’t very long. You can add Chrome or Firefox but you can’t add Steam which does show notifications for new chat alerts or new in-game achievements. Of course the notifications are the app’s own and are not sent via the Windows notification center so that may be another reason.
On Linux, it is possible to quickly mount any file system as read-only directly through the terminal. Mounting file systems as read-only on the fly is a great way to prevent modifications, tampering and to overall increase security temporarily.
Mount file systems as read-only
To start the mounting process, open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. From there, run the lsblk command to view all block devices on your computer.
lsblk
If you have a lot of loop devices (Snap packages) showing up in lsblk, run lsblk -e 7 instead to view connected file systems without seeing loop devices.
Look through the printout that the lsblk command shows in the terminal to find the partition name you’re trying to re-mount as root. In this guide, we’ll use /dev/sda1. Yours may differ.
Note: having trouble finding out the partition label of the file system you’d like to mount as read-only? Check out our guide on how to find hard drive information on Linux.
Once you’ve determined the partition label, use the following command to mount the file system in read-only mode.
Note: the command below is an example. Please change “/dev/sda1” below with the partition label you plan to mount in read-only mode on Linux.
sudo mount -r /dev/sda1 /location/to/mount/partition/
With the above command entered, your file system will mount as read-only, and it will not be possible to tamper with the contents of the file system. It will stay in read-only mode till the next reboot.
Remove read-only mount
If you’ve decided you want to remove read-only mode on the partition you’ve mounted without rebooting, the remount command must be used.
Note: be sure to change “/dev/sda1” with the partition label for the file system you plan to re-mount as read/write on Linux.
sudo mount -rw -o remount /dev/sda1 /location/to/mount/partition/
Assuming the command above runs successfully the file system will no longer be mounted in read-only mode.
Permanently mount file systems as read-only
Putting a file system in read-only mode through the command-line is useful for specific tasks, but not sufficient for long-term use. If you want particular file systems on Linux to always be accessible in read-only mode, you must specify it in the file system configuration file (fstab).
Back up your Fstab
Before tinkering with the Fstab file in this guide, you must make a backup of the file. Making a backup will ensure that if something goes wrong during editing, changes made to the file can quickly be undone.
To create a backup of the Fstab file, use the cp command below.
sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak
Add in read-only mode permanently
To add in read-only mode, open up the Fstab file in the Nano text editor. Keep in mind that editing this file must be done with sudo or su as it is a system file!
sudo nano -w /etc/fstab
Or
su - nano -w /etc/fstab
Once inside of the Fstab file in Nano, look for the partition you’d like to change to read-only mode and move the cursor there with the Arrowkeys.
Note: can’t find the hard drive partition you want to change in the Fstab file? Open up a second terminal, run lsblk -f and match the UUID code that appears next to the partition you’d like to edit in the lsblk output with the one in “/etc/fstab.”
When you’ve found the line in the Fstab file, add in the read-only option to the file-system “ro” to the mount line. It should look similar to the example code below.
Note: the code below is just an example to get an idea of what the edit should look like. Do not copy and paste the code into Nano!
After making the edit to the Fstab file to make read-only permanent, save the edits. Saving is done by pressing Ctrl + O on the keyboard. Then, close the text editor by pressing Ctrl + X.
Close the terminal window and reboot your PC. When you log back in, the partition should be in read-only mode.
Remove read-only auto-mount
Want to get rid of the read-only mode set up in the Fstab file? Here’s what to do. First, open up a terminal window and move it to the root account by using sudo -s.
sudo -s
With the terminal window logged into the root account, move into the “/etc/” directory using the CD command.
cd /etc
Delete the Fstab file with the read-only edits made to it using the rm command.
rm fstab
Restore the “fstab.bak” file you made at the start of this guide with the mv command.
mv fstab.bak fstab
Close the terminal window and restart your Linux PC. When you log back in, the read-only setting will be disabled.
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