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The Perfect Desktop - OpenSUSE 11.1 (GNOME)
This tutorial shows how you can set up an OpenSUSE 11.1 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.
Red Hat has announced a new software maintenance service for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), known as Extended Update Support (EUS). This allows customers to standardize on one RHEL environment for up to 18 months.
- Red Hat has launched a new software maintenance service, Extended Update Support. Company officials said the new service offers customers extended service level support and cost savings by allowing them to standardize on one Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment for up to 18 months.
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The Perfect Server - OpenSUSE 11.1
This is a detailed description about how to set up an OpenSUSE 11.1 server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. This tutorial is written for the 32-bit version of OpenSUSE 11.1, but should apply to the 64-bit version with very little modifications as well.
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How To Rebuild The Squid 2.6 Debian Package with Support For X-Forwarded-For Headers
This article describes how you can rebuild the Squid 2.6 package for Debian Etch with support for X-Forwarded-For headers - this feature is not enabled in the default Debian Etch Squid package. This feature is useful if you are using Squid as a reverse proxy for your web site and are using a load balancer (such as HAProxy) in front of Squid - it allows us to track the client's original IP address instead of the load balancer's IP address (which to Squid appears as the client).
Novell has unveiled their latest release to the openSUSE line with 11.1. Offering both updates and new features, Novell continues to push for more openness and transparency. The new release includes Linux kernel 2.6.27, Python 2.6, Mono 2.0, OpenOffice 3.0, and many others. "[...] Our choice was also influenced by impressive changes that are transpiring in the openSUSE community, which is growing rapidly and is also becoming more open, inclusive, and transparent. Last month, the project announced its first community-elected board, a major milestone in its advancement towards community empowerment. This is a very good openSUSE release and it delivers some very impressive enhancements. The distro has evolved tremendously in the past two releases and is becoming a very solid and usable option for regular users."
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Creating Virtual Machines For Xen, KVM, VMware Workstation 6, and VMware Server With vmbuilder On Ubuntu 8.10
vmbuilder is a tool (introduced on Ubuntu 8.10) that allows you to build virtual machines (with Ubuntu as the OS) for multiple virtualization techniques. Currently it supports Xen, KVM, VMware Workstation 6, and VMware Server. You can afterwards copy the virtual machines to another system (a Xen, KVM, VMware Workstation 6, or VMware Server host) and run them there.
This guide explans how you can install and use KVM for creating and running virtual machines on an Ubuntu 8.10 server. I will show how to create image-based virtual machines and also virtual machines that use a logical volume (LVM). KVM is short for Kernel-based Virtual Machine and makes use of hardware virtualization, i.e., you need a CPU that supports hardware virtualization, e.g. Intel VT or AMD-V.
I still appreciate offline applications for the integration with the desktop, speed, and features they sport. The Evolution contact and calendaring application is a great example: it's as feature-packed as Microsoft Outlook, but with GNOME integration, and it's fast. Gmail, by comparison, is slow and lacks any desktop integration. In a perfect world, Evolution would sync with Google's PIM apps. Unfortunately, there aren't any good, easy-to-use, comprehensive guides for setting up Evolution to sync with all of these apps -- until now.
An couple of anonymous readers wrote in to let us know about a followup to last Wednesday's story of the teacher who didn't believe in free software. The Linux advocate who posted the original piece has cooled off and graciously apologized for going off half-cocked (even though the teacher had done the same), and provided a little more background which, while not excusing the teacher's ignorance, does make her actions somewhat more understandable. Ken Starks has talked with the teacher, who has received a crash education in technology over the last few days — Starks is installing Linux on her computer tomorrow. He retracts his insinuations about Microsoft money and the NEA. All in all he demonstrates what a little honest communication can do, a lesson that all of us who advocate for free software can take to heart. "The student did get his Linux disks back after the class. The lad was being disruptive, but that wasn't mentioned. Neither was the obvious fact that when she saw a gaggle of giggling 8th grade boys gathered around a laptop, the last thing she expected to see on that screen was a spinning cube. She didn't know what was on those disks he was handing out. It could have been porn, viral .exe's...any number of things for all she knew. When she heard that an adult had given him some of the disks to hand out, her spidey-senses started tingling. Coupled with the fact that she truly was ignorant of honest-to-goodness free software, and you have some fairly impressive conclusion-jumping. In a couple of ways, I am guilty of it too."
VorlonFog writes "According to Information Week, IBM has introduced a line of business computers that avoid Microsoft's desktop environment in favor of open source software. IBM worked with Canonical and Virtual Bridges to create the platform, which IBM claims saves businesses $500 to $800 per user on software licenses and an additional $258 per user 'since there is no need to upgrade hardware to support Vista and Office.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This is just a short tutorial showing how to create an RPM version of FreeRADIUS 2.1.1-6 on CentOS 5.2. This version of FreeRADIUS is not yet included in the CentOS 5 repositories.
Well folks, it's that time to announce a new stable Slackware release again. So, without further ado, announcing Slackware version 12.2! Since we've moved to supporting the 2.6 kernel series exclusively (and fine-tuned the system to get the most out of it), we feel that Slackware 12.2 has many improvements over our last release (Slackware 12.1) and is a must-have upgrade for any Slackware user.
The Magic Folder is actually just a Windows Sidebar gadget that you can drag files to, and it can automatically sort them into the proper folders, based on rules which you can configure easily.
Using the Magic Folder
Once you install the gadget, you'll probably need to add it by right-clicking on the sidebar somewhere and choosing "Add Gadgets" and then dragging it to the desktop or the sidebar.
eWEEK Labs has been testing Fedora 10, the latest version of the community-supported Linux-based operating system that serves as a technology proving ground for future Red Hat software products. Here is a rundown on upgrading from Fedora 9 to the current version using the distribution's handy preupgrade tool.
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How To Resize RAID Partitions (Shrink & Grow) (Software RAID)
This article describes how you can shrink and grow existing software RAID partitions. I have tested this with non-LVM RAID1 partitions that use ext3 as the file system. I will describe this procedure for an intact RAID array and also a degraded RAID array.
Two Oregon educators who founded the K12Linux project seven years ago are glad that they have been able to hand that project over to Fedora, the home they always meant for K12Linux to have.
GNOME's Vala programming language lets you use the GLib2 object system at the heart of the GNOME desktop without having to do object-oriented programming in ANSI C. Unlike Mono or Java, a Vala program does not require any virtual machine or runtime libraries, so people who use your Vala objects don't even have to know they are not written in C.
Thanks to a group of KDE developers, it is possible to run some KDE-specific applications up and running on Microsoft Windows. Jack Wallen explains how to install KDE applications and have them run on the Windows operating system. by Mark Kaelin
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Installing VirtualBox 2.0 On An Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop
This tutorial shows how you can install Sun xVM VirtualBox on an Ubuntu 8.10 desktop. With VirtualBox you can create and run guest operating systems ("virtual machines") such as Linux and Windows under a host operating system. There are two ways of installing VirtualBox: from precompiled binaries that are available for some distributions and come under the PUEL license, and from the sources that are released under the GPL. This article will show how to set up VirtualBox 2.0 from the precompiled binaries.
An anonymous reader lets us know about a new initiative designed to help shield the open source software community from threats posed by patent trolls. The initiative, called Linux Defenders (the website is slated to go live tomorrow, Dec. 9), is sponsored by a consortium of technology companies including IBM. "The most novel feature of the new program... will be its call to independent open source software developers all over the world to start submitting their new software inventions to Linux Defenders... so that the group's attorneys and engineers can, for no charge, help shape, structure, and document the invention in the form of a 'defensive publication.' Linux Defenders will then also see to it that the publication, duly attributing authorship of the invention to the developer who submitted it, is filed on the IP.com Web site, a database used by the US Patent and Trademark Office and other patent examiners throughout the world when they are trying to determine whether a proposed patent is truly novel..."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
OS X is heralded for its friendliness, but according to Jack Wallen, it falls short in many other respects. Find out why he says Linux is superior in everything from flexibility to portability to cost.This download is also available as an entry in our 10 Things blog.
Archmbox lets you list, move, and copy messages from one mbox mail file to another, primarily for archiving messages. This tool lets you easily move all messages that are older than a given date into another (possibly compressed) mbox file, and you can also grab or delete messages by matching regular expressions against message headers.
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Server Monitoring With munin And monit On CentOS 5.2
In this article I will describe how you can monitor your CentOS 5.2 server with munin and monit. munin produces nifty little graphics about nearly every aspect of your server (load average, memory usage, CPU usage, MySQL throughput, eth0 traffic, etc.) without much configuration, whereas monit checks the availability of services like Apache, MySQL, Postfix and takes the appropriate action such as a restart if it finds a service is not behaving as expected. The combination of the two gives you full monitoring: graphics that lets you recognize current or upcoming problems (like "We need a bigger server soon, our load average is increasing rapidly."), and a watchdog that ensures the availability of the monitored services.
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Installing VirtualBox 2.0 On Mandriva 2009.0
This tutorial shows how you can install Sun xVM VirtualBox on a Mandriva 2009.0 desktop. With VirtualBox you can create and run guest operating systems ("virtual machines") such as Linux and Windows under a host operating system. There are two ways of installing VirtualBox: from precompiled binaries that are available for some distributions and come under the PUEL license, and from the sources that are released under the GPL. This article will show how to set up VirtualBox 2.0 from the precompiled binaries.
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Installing ubuntu-system-panel (USP) On Ubuntu 8.10
ubuntu-system-panel is a simple launcher for the GNOME desktop, providing easy access to Places, Applications and common configuration items for your computer. This guide shows how to install and configure it on an Ubuntu 8.10 desktop.
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The Perfect Desktop - Fedora 10 (GNOME)
This tutorial shows how you can set up a Fedora 10 desktop (GNOME) that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.
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Storing Files/Directories In Memory With tmpfs
You probably know that reading from RAM is a lot of faster than reading files from the hard drive, and reduces your disk I/O. This article shows how you can store files and directories in memory instead of on the hard drive with the help of tmpfs (a file system for creating memory devices). This is ideal for file caches and other temporary data (such as PHP's session files if you are using session.save_handler = files) because the data is lost when you power down or reboot the system.
How would you characterize the relationship between Windows and Linux? Is it purely adversarial, do they affect one another in substantive ways, or are they just two different tech ideologies? Take the poll! by Selena Frye
Squid Graph is a Perl script that takes your Squid proxy server access.log file and generates a Web page showing you statistics about your proxy accesses and transfers, including the number of cache hits and the percentage of requests that were served by the cache alone. With Squid Graph you can see how well tweaks to your Squid configuration are working.
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Set Up A Fully Encrypted Raid1 LVM System
For this Howto I use Debian Lenny (still testing and not "stable" for the simple reason as - contrary to Debian Etch and/or Ubuntu 8.04/8.10 - the install routine does setup the initrd correctly so that you can set up encrypted swap and also an encrypted raid1 lvm during install). This Howto will be heavy on screen shots again - a lot of them are repetitive as I setup multiple partitions at once. Basically I will set up the system in a way that (a) everything [except for /boot] will be encrypted, (b) everything will be on a raid1 and (c) have a LVM for your data partition so that this one can be easily expanded.
Virtualized computing environments can take advantage of built-in virtualization support in modern dual-core processors, but when it comes to 3-D acceleration in virtual machines, almost all fall flat on their faces. VMGL is a little-known application written as part of Google's Summer of Code 2006 program that lets OpenGL apps running inside a virtual machine take advantage of the graphics hardware acceleration on the host. It has limitations, but if you want 3-D in VMs, VMGL is your best bet.
k33l0r writes "Recently I've been thinking about developing (or learning to develop) for Linux. I'm a IT university student but my degree program focuses almost exclusively on Microsoft tools (Visual Studio, C#, ASP.NET, etc.) which is why I would like to expand my repertoire on my own. Personally I'm quite comfortable in a Linux environment, but have never programmed for it. Over the years I've developed a healthy fear of everything Java and I'm not too sure of what I think of Python's use of indentation to delimit blocks. The question that remains is, what language and tools should I be using?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Installing Nginx With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Debian Etch
Nginx (pronounced "engine x") is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server. Nginx is known for its stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. This tutorial shows how you can install Nginx on a Debian Etch server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support.
PC/OS aims to be an easy-to-use Linux distribution right out of the box. Being Ubuntu-based, it has a head start on being user-friendly, but PC/OS goes above and beyond Ubuntu's measures to ensure ease of use by having common third-party non-GPL software included in the install.
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Installing Nginx With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Debian Etch
Nginx (pronounced "engine x") is a free, open-source, high-performance HTTP server. Nginx is known for its stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption. This tutorial shows how you can install Nginx on a Debian Etch server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support.
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Useful Uses Of netcat
This short article shows some useful netcat commands. netcat is known as the TCP/IP swiss army knife. From the netcat man page: netcat is a simple unix utility which reads and writes data across network connections, using TCP or UDP protocol. It is designed to be a reliable "back-end" tool that can be used directly or easily driven by other programs and scripts. At the same time, it is a feature-rich network debugging and exploration tool, since it can create almost any kind of connection you would need and has several interesting built-in capabilities.
Buckbeak writes "I like to carry my Linux systems around with me, on USB flash drives. Typically, SanDisk Cruzers or Kingston HyperX. I encrypt the root partition and boot off the USB stick. Sometimes, the performance leaves something to be desired. I want to be able to to an 'apt-get upgrade' or 'yum update' while surfing but the experience is sometimes painful. What can I do to maximize the performance of Linux while running off of a slow medium? I've turned on 'noatime' in the mount options and I don't use a swap partition. Is there any way to minimize drive I/O or batch it up more? Is there any easy way to run in memory and write everything out when I shut down? I've tried both EXT2 and EXT3 and it doesn't seem to make much difference. Any other suggestions?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Everyone knows and loves rsync, the command that lets you clone a directory tree to another disk or system with the ability to keep the clone fresh in an incremental and bandwidth-efficient manner. Sometimes, however, you want to sync in the reverse direction. With bidirectional filesystem syncing tools, there is no primary filesystem -- you just tell the tool to make sure both target directories, or clones, are identical. Here's a hands-on look at two tools designed to accomplish that task: DirSync Pro and Unison.
Mounting and unmounting filesystems used to be straightforward in GNU/Linux. A basic knowledge of the mount command or some editing of /etc/fstab in a text editor and you were done. However, with the addition of udev in the 2.6 kernel for autoplugging, and the demand for hotswapping USB devices, along with the increased use of logical volume managers and other complications, the process is now more complicated -- perhaps too complicated for many among the growing number of desktop users. That is where graphical mount managers such as Forelex Mount Manager, PySDM, and MountManager find their niche.
MNonitor your network with PasTmon passive traffic monitor. The PasTmon passive traffic monitor enable you to recording which clients are interacting with which services, when and how long things took. You can then use the application's PHP Web interface to investigate these figures to see if any host is connecting to Web services that it shouldn't, or is contacting services suspiciously more frequently than you would expect for normal operation, or when response times become excessively long.
The latest version of Canonicals Linux distribution, Ubuntu 8.10, still outshines the Linux desktop offerings from Red Hat and Novell, and is the best open-source alternative to Microsoft and Apple operating systems. However, both Red Hats Enterprise Linux and Novells SUSE distributions are ahead of Ubuntu 8.10 in the server space.
- Canonical's Ubuntu 8.10, the latest version of the popular Linux-based operating system for desktops and servers, hit the Internet in early November bearing a modest assortment of updates to the open-source software components that compose it. Based on my tests of Ubuntu 8.10 which is more fanciful...
One of the first things I do upon installing a Linux distribution is put the Network Monitor applet on my GNOME panel. Watching the blue lights twinkle on and off makes me aware of network traffic. But if you want more details about what's happening on your network, such as which application is hogging bandwidth or what each network interface is up to, you can turn to specialty tools like NetHogs and IPTraf. While NetHogs is a unique tool altogether, IPTraf can be used on a server as well as by a home user.
Several readers pointed out a ComputerWorld UK blog piece on the expanding ripples of the Vista fiasco. Glyn Moody quotes an earlier Inquirer piece about Vista, which he notes "has been memorably described as DRM masquerading as an operating system": "Studies carried out by both Gartner and IDC have found that because older software is often incompatible with Vista, many consumers are opting for used computers with XP installed as a default, rather than buying an expensive new PC with Vista and downgrading. Big business, which typically thinks nothing about splashing out for newer, more up-to-date PCs, is also having trouble with Vista, with even firms like Intel noting XP would remain the dominant OS within the company for the foreseeable future." Moody continues: "What's really important about this is not so much that Vista is manifestly such a dog, but that the myth of upgrade inevitability has been destroyed. Companies have realized that they do have a choice — that they can simply say 'no.' From there, it's but a small step to realizing that they can also walk away from Windows completely, provided the alternatives offer sufficient data compatibility to make that move realistic."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Managing OpenVZ With The Vtonf Control Panel On CentOS 5.2
Vtonf is a free web-based control panel (released under the GPL license) for managing virtual private servers (VPS) based on OpenVZ. It makes it very easy to create and manage OpenVZ VMs even for people with little technical knowledge. Right now, Vtonf is available only for RedHat, Fedora, and CentOS (support for Debian is planned), therefore I describe its installation and usage on a CentOS 5.2 server.
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