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Book Review: Beginning Ubuntu LTS Server Administration: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition by Sander van Vugt

Ubuntu Server Edition, built on Debian GNU/Linux, has established itself as one of the most popular and well documented GNU/Linux server distributions. The Long Term Support (LTS) version of Ubuntu Server is provided with security updates for five years from the release date. This long term commitment ensures a stable base for deployment. Beginning Ubuntu LTS Server Administration From Novice to Professional aims to teach all you need to know to begin administering Ubuntu Server. The book covers installing, configuring and the systems administration tasks for Ubuntu Server Edition.

The Falcon Programming Language: a brief tutorial

The Falcon Programming Language is a typeless language born for rapid development, prototyping, and ready-made integration. We may also describe Falcon as a "scripting" language with features that enable the programmer to create even complex multi-threaded applications. It mixes several different programming paradigms into an unique blend of constructs, overcoming the limitations and partialities of other languages.

Book review: SQL Hacks by Andrew Cumming and Gordon Russell

SQL is the de facto method of accessing relational data within databases. Databases have been around for many years, and consequentially many many books have been written about them. However, SQL Hacks: Tips & Tools for Digging into Your Data by Andrew Cumming and Gordon Russell sets itself apart through format, easy-going style, and ability to cover lots of tips, tricks, and hacks with Structured Query Language. The O'Reilly Press Hacks Series book covers SQL for MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and Microsoft Access. It covers 100 hacks which will definitely add to your SQL toolkit, and it will help give you ideas of how to solve related issues in writing queries.

Home automation in GNU/Linux

Home Automation is anything that your home does for you automatically to make living there more enjoyable or productive. It covers many areas, including remote and timed control of lights and electrical home appliances, distributed media services, and communication. Over the last 10 years, many hardware manufacturers have presented their own proprietary solutions to these problems. Unbeknownst to them, a groundswell of developers from around the world has been providing similar solutions to the free and open source community.

Protect your server with Deny Hosts

Requiring system accessibility via the Internet poses several problems for system administrators. One problem is allowing access by authorized users with the least amount of complexity on the client computer while keeping the system and its services safe from intruders. Common services that may be provided include web server, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server, and Secure Shell (SSH) server. Each of these services can require different methods of security to ensure only authorized users have access.

UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) installation and configuration

An inexpensive way to prevent unscheduled downtime or data loss due to power problems is with a UPS or Uninterruptible Power Supply. However, a UPS by itself is not enough for proper operation. Hardware, software, and configuration together make up a UPS system that will recover from unexpected power loss or power fluctuations that can damage systems and peripherals.

Introduction

Introduction to Firestarter

Most modern GNU/Linux distributions are secure with their default minimal installs, whether desktop or server, while some distributions are designed specifically with security in mind. However, any GNU/Linux distribution that needs services available to other users or systems will need either enhanced or configurable security. There are other situations in which added security is beneficial; for example, a large environment, while secure to the outside world, would be enhanced with additional security measures in place.

Network design

Firewall Builder

Have you ever wanted to configure a personal firewall for your GNU/Linux box, but were scared of the complexity of iptables? Well, I might not be able to make you a security expert, but I can show you a tool that will help you to configure your personal firewall the easy way. The secret? Firewall Builder (also known as fwbuilder for short).

Backup your workstation with Backup Manager

Backing up is one of those tedious jobs that has to be done but is usually relegated to the end of the To Do list. Enter Backup Manager, which is a set of Bash and Perl scripts that alleviate the tediousness of performing backups. Taking away some of the complexity of backup tools and combining others, Backup Manager is similar to other backup programs like my pc backup in that it brings simplicity to backing up. Obtaining a higher level view of backups also allows easier management of archives including retention. What follows is a method of backing up a single workstation daily and managing those backups.

Managing your iPod without iTunes

While iTunes is a powerful application, it does have its limitations, mostly stemming from both Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions and the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) interest in preventing unauthorized copying of music, regardless of fair use and personal flexibility. The free software community believes that the ability to freely copy content you own between your iPod and a computer is a right, not a privilege. In this article, I’ll discuss how to fully manage the content on your iPod using completely free software.

Stitching seamless panoramas with Hugin

We can’t all afford four-figure priced twelve megapixel digital cameras with wide angle lenses. We can, however, all use free software to embellish the photographs taken by our modest equipment and belie their resolution and viewing angle. Set the GIMP aside for a moment and launch Hugin, a powerful cross-platform GTK frontend that will help you quickly and easily stitch individual photographs into one, large, seamless panorama.

Panoramas from start to finish

Book review: Nagios: System and Network Monitoring by Wolfgang Barth

There was a commercial on US television a while back that showed a man in an office building, and the man sticks his head into a coworker’s office, and says, “The network’s down, want to go grab a bagel?” The following scenes show each of those coworkers asking other coworkers to step out for a bagel. The final scene of the commercial shows the entire office, several hundred people, all crossing the street down below to grab a bagel, since they couldn’t do their jobs without a computer network. While Nagios can’t prevent network or application outages, it can actively monitor conditions and alert the appropriate people to ensure the network or application functionality can be restored quickly. Nagios: System and Network Monitoring by Wolfgang Barth is an excellent book which addresses installation, basic configuration, and provides an in-depth look into how to configure service checking for multiple platforms for Nagios 2.0.

Wengophone: VoIP done right

A new, full-featured free software application pops its head into the VoIP world, and it nominates itself as the most serious competitor of Skype. Its name is Wengophone.

What is Wengophone?

Figure 1: Wengophone “NG” 2.0 beta running on a Debian testingFigure 1: Wengophone “NG” 2.0 beta running on a Debian testing

In short: Wengophone is a communication-over-IP application. With Wengophone you can:

  • place voice calls to other Wengophone users
  • create audio conferences with up to three users
  • place video calls to other Wengophone users

Book review: User Mode Linux by Jeff Dike

“User Mode Linux” by Jeff Dike discusses a specific form of virtualization. UML is a Linux virtual machine contained within the GNU/Linux operating environment. The technique allows you to run multiple sandboxed virtual instances of Linux from one machine under a master Linux operating system. This is always good for server consolidation, security and development. In this book, a potentially complex subject area has been tamed and discussed with well grounded commonsense and practical examples by the original creator and current maintainer of the software. Virtualization is a hot topic.

Book review: Write Great Code by Randall Hyde

In our era of more powerful personal computers, applications that were once quick and simple have become larger, slower, and full of bloat. Any one of these application’s developers would have done well to have picked up a copy of Randall Hyde’s Write Great Code Volume 2: Thinking Low-level, writing high-level, published by No Starch Press. Write Great Code Volume 2 exceeds its goal of helping developers pay more attention to application performance when writing applications in high-level languages.

Simple package management with Synaptic

If you don’t like using the command line, and you want to manage your program installations without typing a command, then read on: this article is for you!

Ladies and Gentlemen: Synaptic!

Synaptic is a graphical user interface (GUI) for managing software packages on Debian-based distributions. If you are using Debian or Ubuntu you will easily find Synaptic in the System Tools menu or in the Administration menu. Synaptic uses the GTK graphic libraries (GNOME’s ones) . So, if you are using GNOME on your debian-based distro you will probably have Synaptic installed as well.

Book review: Wicked Cool Perl Scripts by Steve Oualline

Every GNU/Linux administrator will need to touch a Perl script or two at some point. Perl seems to be the scripting glue of choice since it has matured so well over the years. As a result, administrators can choose from many different Perl books. One such book is Wicked Perl Scripts by Steve Oualline and published by No Starch Press.

Wicked Perl Scripts coverWicked Perl Scripts cover

Pages

Most forwarded

Interview with Dave Mohyla, of DTIDATA

Dave Mohyla is the president and founder of dtidata.com, a hard drive recovery facility based in Tampa, Florida.

TM: Where are you based? What does your company do?
DTI Data recovery is based in South Pasadena, Florida which is a suburb of Tampa. We have been here for over 10 years. We operate a bio-metrically secured class 100 clean room where we perform hard drive recovery on all types of hard disks, from laptop hard drives to multi drive RAID systems.

Anybody up to writing good directory software?

Since the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).

Interview with Mark Shuttleworth

Mark Shuttleworth is the founder of Thawte, the first Certification Authority to sell public SSL certificates. After selling Thawte to Verisign, Mark moved on to training as an astronaut in Russia and visiting space. Once he got back he founded Ubuntu, the leading GNU/Linux distribution. He agreed on releasing a quick interview to Free Software Magazine.

Is better education the key to finding better software?

I read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.

Most emailed

Free Open Document label templates

If you’ve ever spent hours at work doing mailings, cursed your printer for printing outside the lines on your labels, or moaned “There has got to be a better way to do this,” here’s the solution you’ve been looking for. Working smarter, not harder! Worldlabel.com, a manufacture of labels offers Open Office / Libre Office labels templates for downloading in ODF format which will save you time, effort, and (if you want) make really cool-looking labels

Creating a user-centric site in Drupal

A little while ago, while talking in the #drupal mailing list, I showed my latest creation to one of the core developers there. His reaction was "Wow, I am always surprised what people use Drupal for". His surprise is somehow justified: I did create a site for a bunch of entertainers in Perth, a company set to use Drupal to take over the world with Entertainers.Biz.

Update: since writing this article, I have updated the system so that the whole booking process happens online. I will update the article accordingly!

So, why, why do people and companies develop free software?

More and more people are discovering free software. Many people only do so after weeks, or even months, of using it. I wonder, for example, how many Firefox users actually know how free Firefox really is—many of them realise that you can get it for free, but find it hard to believe that anybody can modify it and even redistribute it legally.

When the discovery is made, the first instinct is to ask: why do they do it? Programming is hard work. Even though most (if not all) programmers are driven by their higher-than-normal IQs and their amazing passion for solving problems, it’s still hard to understand why so many of them would donate so much of their time to creating something that they can’t really show off to anybody but their colleagues or geek friends.

Sure, anybody can buy laptops, and just program. No need to get a full-on lab or spend thousands of dollars in equipment. But... is that the full story?

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