Expanding a KVM guest disk without LVM!

I recently ran out of space on my primary home server kernel virtual machine (Linux Mint) because I created the disk with a paltry 20G of space. To remedy this, I decided to add 30 additional gigabytes. The following are the steps I took.

Note that step 4 is potentially dangerous (specifically deleting and then re-creating the root partition), and setting the system up with LVM would have prevented me having to do it but if you are following this guide you are in the same situation and can't really benefit from could have/should have thoughts. :-) Anyway, everything worked fine when I was done.

1. Shut down the guest (on host)
1. virsh -connect qemu:///system
2. shutdown your-guest-domain-name
2. Expand virtual disk (on host)
1. qemu-img resize guest-disk.img +30G
3. Restart virtual machine (on host)
1. virsh -connect qemu:///system
2. start your-guest-domain-name
4. Expand ext4 partition and filesystem on bare disk (on the guest)
1. I followed this guide to the letter to resize the root os partition, reboot, and then expand the filesystem

RDP broken on Linux Mint (possibly after upgrading)

Background:

I am a fan of SSH of course, but RDP is pretty rock solid and easy to set up for remote desktop sessions and has given me a lot less trouble than nomachine setup that I used to use.

Problem
You used to have nice RDP sessions to your Linux server with xrdp. However, suddenly you get to a grey or checkerboard screen with an X for your cursor that never goes away after entering your login credentials. I encountered this after I took my main home server virtual machine from Mint 14 to Mint 17 in a single step.

Solution:

Specify the use of a mate session (if using mate) rather than an X11 session as described in this forum post.

nvidia-settings don't load on reboot

UPDATE:
This seems to no longer fix the problem for me lately after an upgrade to Mint 17, and I'm unsure why.

Problem: 
You are using an Ubuntu/Mint/Debian with an Nvidia driver (or perhaps another proprietary GPU driver), and your custom resolutions are lost at each restart even though you applied them and saved to xorg.conf. This frustrates you to no end, and even if you script a live modeline change putting your box to sleep or a reboot will mean it doesn't get automatically reapplied. Also, your settings don't get reloaded into the settings GUI after a reboot, and you are mystified.

Explanation: 
The built-in Mint Preferences > Displays tool doesn't give a crap about your custom configuration, and it will reload whatever it had set previously just to torture you. You can kill it with fire though. To see if it has a settings file look for a ~/.config/monitors.xml file.

Solution:
You may not need the first four steps, or you may have already performed them.

1. sudo nvidia-xconfig    # create a fresh xorg.conf
2. gksudo nvidia-settings # set it up like you wanted it; my overscan fix example
3. Click "apply"
4. Click "save to x-config file"
5. rm ~/.config/monitors.xml  # get rid of the non-xorg Displays configuration
6. restart

I have seen this problem again and again on forums where nobody knew that deleting that file would fix the problems. Spread the word my friends.