Neil's Open Source & Linux Blog

We use CentOS for our web servers, and favor Webmin as a way to administer our servers. To install Webmin via yum on CentOS, follow these steps as root or sudo, from the command line (via SSH or at the console). These steps will also work for RedHat servers. Configure the Webmin repository and instal l Webmin is not available via yum in the default CentOS repository. Follow these steps to add the Webmin repository (repo) from Webmin.com. Create and edit the repository file # nano /etc/yum.repos.d/webmin.repo Add the [Webmin] section (listed below) to the new repository file Save the new file Import the public key: # rpm --import http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc Install webmin: # yum install webmin Open the Firewall If your server is protected by a firewall, you won't be able to access Webmin until you open port 10000. Use these steps on CentOS Backup the current firewall settings: # cp /etc/sysconfig/iptables /etc/sysconfig/iptables.bak Inst...

I'm trying to help my friend fix his Dell OptiPlex GX400 , which is running Windows XP Home, and is probably owned. It only has 128 MB of RAM, and it turns out this particular model uses expensive 128MB PC-800 Rambus RIMM for Dell RAM Memory . So, it doesn't make sense to buy a chip, really, and none of my spares will probably fit. Instead of throwing hardware at the problem, I looked at Damn Small Linux ( DSL information ) To burn a CD of Damn Small Linux, Download the ISO and then burin it to a CD, in Windows, with InfraRecorder (GPL). DSL is based on Knoppix , but is stripped down to a bare bones set of Debian packages . As promised, booting DS from the CD transformed the slow, almost unusable computer into a speed demon. Plus, DSL shows system resource use right on the desktop , and we could see that it was hardly using any RAM -- less than 20% of 128 MB. Now all we have to do is figure out a way to save the configuration, and configure networking.

Writing scripts in bash is lame. I'm not the only one who thinks so: Shell Script Language – Use Perl, Not Bash | LinDesk From the post: Advantages of using a Shell Language Its supported in even the tinest linux distros – even in embedded systems. Its the method preferred by the majority – I hope this will change soon. Command calls look more natural in a shell language. Advantages of using a High Level Language Better Code Easy to maintain Faster development Libraries provide a lot of functionality Easier to port to different platforms. PHP Shell Scripting Want to get busy slinging code? Start here: An Introduction to Linux Shell Scripting: How to Use Bash, Perl, PHP or Python in a Linux Script | Suite101.com An Alternative to Perl: Shell Scripting With PHP Using PHP As A Shell Scripting Language PHPDeveloper.org: PHPHacks.com: Shell Scripting with PHP CLI

It's time to move our servers to a virtualized platform. Info here: Linux Virtualization Wiki - TechComparison Xen Welcome to xen.org, home of the Xen® hypervisor, the powerful open source industry standard for virtualization. Citrix Systems » Products » -- XenServer » XenServer Citrix Systems » XenServer Requirements and Specifications CentOS 5 Virtualization Guide - Virtualization Guide Xen virtualization platform providers | Top 10 Dedicated Server Hosting Reviews, News and Articles

If you don't want to be tied down to a desktop, you need direct access to your computer in the cloud. Since Firefox runs just about everywhere, it's a good place to start to set up a reliable way to access your accounts. Blog & Social  Delicious Bookmarks is the recommended and official Firefox add-on for Delicious, the world's leading social bookmarking service (formerly del.icio.us). It integrates your bookmarks and tags with Firefox and keeps them in sync for easy, convenient access. Syncing slows down startup, though. ScribeFire Blog Editor is a blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. They've also integrated their affiliate Quick Ads advertising program, which I haven't tried.

MaximumPC published a very detailed article that describes how to install Ubuntu on your favorite NetBook : How To: Become a Linux Netbook Power User . Also useful: Ars Technica's How to: Installing and running Ubuntu on the Eee PC .

I wrote last year about a great open source brainstorming and mind mapping tool, Freemind 0.8.0 - Java Mind Map software , but I was concerned that the program hadn’t seen a significant update in several years. Well, it’s just been updated this year to 0.8.1, and you can download it from SourceForge.net: FreeMind . Version 0.9.0 is still an unstable beta.

As the cost of Windows becomes a larger and larger portion of the cost of computer hardware, more vendors are going to look at Linux as a viable alternative. Acer is already selling Linux on its low cost ultra-portables, but will expand Linux options to notebooks this year.  Another interesting advantage of Linux for hardware manufacturers: because it's open, they can customize it for their specific hardware models and the differing requirements of laptops or Media PCs. According to the article, using Linux helps them "extend battery life from five to seven hours."  This means that hardware manufacturers could build special hardware features into their boxes and then not only write the drivers to support the hardware, but also modify any aspect of the operating system to better support the new features. That's an appealing option to companies that are currently competing primarily on price.

It looks like the best way to get my Creative X-Fi card to work in Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 is to install OSS4 .

When you decide it’s time to start writing bash scripts with some style, start at the Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide by Mendel Cooper. It’s available as a PDF, or a tarball download, too.

[UPDATED] Joomla 1.5 is acting flaky on one of our installations because the directories are set to ‘unwriteable’. To see the their current state, log in as Super Administrator and go to Help > System Info > Directory Permissions . Elsewhere, it's been suggested that the specified directories must be set to “world-writeable” (777). This works, but it is a very bad idea , since it means anyone can change your files! Not cool. Fixing Security with User and Group Settings To perform these changes, you need shell (command line) access to your server. If you don't have it, you can beg your host to make these changes for you, or switch to a Joomla-friendly host. I'm going to assume that you are using a LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) server because if you're not, then ... well, these instructions should work in principle, but the specifics for your server may be quite different. Here's the issue: you, the FTP user, need full access to your files. So does Joomla,...

At Cadent , we use Parallels Plesk Control Panel Software for Hosting on our servers (we’ve also used the open source Webmin and the commercial CPanel). Plesk has a great user interface, which our clients appreciate. It also imposes its own way of doing things, which can be a bit of a pain when tracking down subtle issues with server configuration. Because Plesk rewrites many configuration files automatically, it’s really critical to ensure that I make any manual changes to the server configuration in the right place, or Plesk will overwrite my efforts without remorse. The issue we needed to address was this: we installed Joomla! 1.0 on our development server, and Joomla reported the following configuration problems:         •        Safe mode was on, needs to be off.         •        The session directory was unwriteable. PHP: Safe Mode is a global setting allows only a file's owner or group to execute the script or read a file. Clearly, this is a good thing for security...

If you use a Mac at all, you know the value of a handy search interface like Spotlight or Quicksilver . The Gnome Deskbar delivers similar features to the Ubuntu desktop, or any other Gnome desktop, for that matter. See also: Dick Wall's Blog: Deskbar - Ubuntu's answer to spotlight Katapult - KDE's answer to Deskbar

A page of many sample uses of the tar command to illustrate the most useful options with real-world examples.

Version 5.0 of the free, open-source and cross-platform encryption program TrueCrypt is now available for download and installation for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. TrueCrypt: Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk. Encrypts an entire hard disk partition or a storage device such as USB flash drive. Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent . Further information regarding features of the software may be found in the documentation .

[There's been quite a bit of interest in this post and I've expanded on it quite a bit. Please post any comments or questions to help me improve this guide. - Neil] Keith and I have both run into situations where we want to recover a Windows computer by cleaning it up with a Linux Live (bootable) CD distro. This offers several advantages to cleaning up an infected or compromised computer by booting into Windows: It prevents the malware, if it exists, from jumping from the infected computer or partition we are trying to fix to the repair partition or boot medium. If we boot from a CD, there's actually no way to alter the boot medium, since it's read-only. Naturally, we started with Knoppix -- download it here . Installing and scanning with F-Prot is covered in this Knoppix.net discussion thread, Virus Scan from LiveCD , which describes how to install F-Prot from the command line using apt-get. Also, In Knoppix 5.1, you can boot from the Knoppix CD and install F-P...

Here is one interesting software development environment, especially for web applications. Squeak is an open source implementation of Smalltalk. Seaside is a Web Framework for developing web applications in Squeak. Pier is a CMS built on Seaside. DabbleDB is also built on Seaside -- an incredibly impressive web app. So far, I've installed it on my Mac iFive (OS X 10.4.10).

Great tips on how to install and customize Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), although a little slow to load with all the screen shots. It's a great way to get a sense of how to set up one of the best Linux desktops around these days. Some of my favorite tips include: powertop adding a new software repository adding the medibuntu repository

You can see the current version of Ubuntu by selecting System > About Ubuntu . It's in the second paragraph. The other method to find your version is a command line method. There are two commands you can use: cat /etc/issue or you can use cat /etc/lsb-release …and finally to find your kernel version and a few more details about your machine use the uname command which, per the man pages, shows system information. Examples: uname -a : print all information uname -r : print the kernel release uname -v : print the kernel version uname -o : print the operating system

I performed a clean install on a dedicated hard disk. No problems there. I really like the clean desktop: no icons! Although the boot up time seems unusually long, Sound card drivers: Creative X-fi XtremeGamer 64-bit driver for Linux Error: neil@area-51u:~/Desktop/XFiDrv_Linux_US-1.04$ sudo ./installer [sudo] password for neil: This product only support 64-bit Operating Systems Setup will now exit neil@area-51u:~/Desktop/XFiDrv_Linux_US-1.04$ Here's why: Requirements: Linux x86_64 OS Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi audio devices listed above. Still, this should work! neil@area-51u:~/Desktop/XFiDrv_Linux_US-1.04$ uname -a Linux area-51u 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Sun Oct 14 21:45:15 GMT 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux It's always something, on the bleeding edge...