RootPrompt -- Nothing but Unix http://RootPrompt.org News and information for Unix Sysadmins en-us Code by Noel Davis Installing Beryl Or Compiz Fusion (6 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11032 This tutorial shows how you can install and use Beryl or Compiz Fusion on a Fedora 7 desktop (the system must have a 3D-capable graphics card). With both Beryl and Compiz Fusion, you can make your desktop use beautiful 3D effects like wobbly windows or a desktop cube. A Safe Mirror When Logging In With Unionfs (6 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11033 When reading a hint on the website of LinuxFromScratch I discovered the special capabilities of unionfs, specially in combination with chroot. Later I read a HowTo on a wikiwebsite of Gentoo, about entering a chrooted home directory when using a special script as shell. Combining these two brings me to using a chrooted environment, which you enter when logging in as a special user. This environment is an exact copy (mirror) of the system you are working on. Because you are in safe copy of t New libferris release enhances Web photo services (6 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11035 By: Ben Martin The recently released 1..16 version of Libferris includes initial support for mounting Web photo services as a filesystem. This means that sites such as 23hq.com and flickr.com can be seen as filesystems, which allows users to upload digital pictures easily by using the cp(1) or ferriscp(1) tool with a destination of 23hq://username/upload. Read more at Linux.com. Debugging with the Eclipse Platform (6 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11034 This article shows you how to use the built-in debugging features in the Eclipse Platform for debugging software projects. The Eclipse Platform features a built-in Java debugger that provides all standard debugging functionality, and debugging functionality for C/C++, PHP and many more programming languages. This related article is for anyone who wants to use Eclipse with Rational Application Developer, which you can try out online, without downloading any code. Howto Setup FreeBSD firewall (5 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11028 Ipfirewall (ipfw) is a FreeBSD IP packet filter and traffic accounting facility.IPFW is included in the basic FreeBSD install as a separate run time loadable module. This small howto covers building and installing a custom kernel with IPFW. It also provide a small example on how to setting up the rules for a typical FreeBSD based Apache Web server. FreeBSD Setting up Firewall using IPFW TrueCrypt Tutorial: Truly Portable Data Encryption (5 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11027 TrueCrypt is a free software that encrypts data on-the-fly. Right now the newest version released is version 4.3. You can create an encrypted hard drive, a separate partition or a directory with TrueCrypt. It does not simply encrypt the content of files, but their names and the names of the directories they are in as well. Moreover there is no way to check the size of the encrypted directory/HDD/partition. TrueCrypt is available for Windows and Linux. Monitoring OpenLDAP servers for performance (5 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11029 LDAP has become the Internet standard directory access protocol, and is used to access everything from DNS zone files to user account information. As companies and software vendors rely more heavily on LDAP directory servers, the need to measure server throughput and performance becomes imperative. This article will cover several tools that can be used to monitor the health and performance of an LDAP directory server, and will explain how ORCA can be used to trend directory server performan UNIX Command Line in One Sentence (5 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11031 Speaking UNIX is simply a matter of building a sentence. An executable is a verb, output is a noun, and the shell operator is a conjunction. Virtually all non-trivial problems require you to filter good data from bad. Discover the many UNIX command line utilities that use regular expressions to discern the relevant from the irrelevant. How To Back Up MySQL Databases (5 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11030 This article describes how you can back up MySQL databases without interrupting the MySQL service. Normally, when you want to create a MySQL backup, you either have to stop MySQL or issue a read lock on your MySQL tables in order to get a correct backup; if you do not do it this way, you can end up with an inconsistent backup. To get consistent backups without interrupting MySQL, I use a little trick: I repplicate my MySQL database to a second MySQL server, and on the second MySQL server I NorhTec MicroClient Jr. Review @ PCBurn (3 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11023 Weighing in at 55 grams (just over a pound) and selling for around 1$(USD) the MicroClient Jr. is an inexpensive SFF machine. PCBurn takes a look to see what it's got internally and how well it can run Slax, DSL, or as an LTSP thin client. Will it be a good fit as your next always-on web browser or POS machine? How To Secure An SSL VPN With One-Time Passcodes (3 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11024 SSL-based VPNs were designed to eliminate the need for complex configurations on the user's PC. Unfortunately, that was before the dangers of public WiFi networks and tougher regulatory requirements came into being. Thanks to WiFi, many attacks that were difficult are now quite simple. In particular, a man-in-the-middle attack can intercept SSL-encrypted traffic, rendering SSL-based VPNs useless - even if it is protected by a typical one-time password system. The man-in-the-middle can easil How to detect hardware problems in Solaris 10 (3 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11025 A short explanation about the Fault Management included in Solaris 1 and how to use it. It also gives you a script you can easily integrate into your monitoring. How to detect hardware problems in Solaris 1 Review: Moneydance 2007 (3 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11026 By: Ben McGrath Linux users have a multitude of choices for personal finance applications, including GnuCash, KMyMoney, Kapital, and others, not to mention being able to run Quicken under WINE. One good alternative that runs on multiple operating systems and manages finances with ease is Moneydance. Read more at Linux.com. Testing with DB2 and Ruby on Rails (3 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11022 This third article from the DB2 and Ruby on Rails series shows you how testing works in a DB2 on Rails environment, and how easy it is to write tests within the Ruby on Rails framework. In Part 1, we introduce the IBM_DB Ruby driver, Rails migration, and a Team Room application. In Part 2, you can learn how to build on the existing Team Room application to take advantage of DB2 pureXML support in a Rails application. Installing Xen On An Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Server (2 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11016 This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install Xen on an Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (Ubuntu 7.4) server system (i386). You can find all the software used here in the Ubuntu repositories, so no external files or compilation are needed. Xen lets you create guest operating systems (*nix operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD), so called virtual machines or domUs, under a host operating system (dom). Ubuntu Linux Install Oracle Database XE Server (2 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11017 An Oracle database consists of a collection of data managed by an Oracle database management system. You can download Oracle Database XE server for Debian, Mandriva, Novell, Red Hat and Ubuntu Linux distributions. First you need to get databases up and running in order to use Oracle. The Oracle database has had a reputation among new Linux users as difficult to install on Linux systems. Now Oracle Corporation has packaged recent versions for several popular Linux distributions in an attempt The Linux Alternative Project - linuxalt.com (2 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11019 Very nice list of Linux software."the Linux Alternative Project (formally the Linux Equivalent Project). The goal is to provide an informational and available website for all linux users. The website is currently in beta form. I will be periodically updating the database with Windows software and the Linux equivalents and alternatives. " The Linux Alternative Project - linuxalt.com Using DTrace to understand mpstat and vmstat (2 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11018 The Solaris Operating System provides the mpstat and vmstat utilties to view CPU and Virtual memory performance statistics. These utilities provide numerous useful performance counters, but don't provide any details on why each performance counter contains a given value. This article will show how DTrace can be used to determine which application or kernel subsystem is responsible for the values printed during each sampling period. The DTrace output can be a valuable starting point for cond Fault-tolerant Web hosting on a shoestring (2 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11021 By: Alaric Snell-Pym The words "fault-tolerant Web hosting" bring to mind hosting centers with multiple redundant power supplies, complex networking, and big bills. However, by taking advantage of the underlying fault-tolerance of the Internet, you can get a surprising level of reliability for little cost. Read more at Linux.com. Anatomy of the Linux Networking Stack (2 Jul 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11020 Explore the structure of the Linux networking stack from the perspective of its layers and also examines some of its major structures. Its interfaces range from the protocol agnostics, such as the common sockets layer interface or the device layer, to the specific interfaces of the individual networking protocols. The Distro Jungle (29 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11012 People new to Linux are often confused by the large number of distributions there are to choose from. The good news is that you can safely ignore most of them. This article helps you cut through the confusion of choosing a Linux Distribution your exploration and helps you understand just what it is you've chosen. Postfix Monitoring With Mailgraph And pflogsumm (29 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11013 This article describes how you can monitor your Postfix mailserver with the tools Mailgraph and pflogsumm. Mailgraph creates daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly graphs of sent, received, bounced, and rejected emails and also of spam and viruses, if SpamAssassin and ClamAV are integrated into Postfix (e.g. using amavisd-new). These graphs can be accessed with a browser, whereas pflogsumm (Postfix Log Entry Summarizer) can be used to send reports of Postfix activity per email. Postfix mail server block Malware with blacklist (29 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11009 Malware is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent. It is a portmanteau of the words "malicious" and "software". The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code. Setting up a malware blacklist in Postix MTA is quite easy. The Malware Block List is a free, automated and user contributed system for checking URLs for the presence of V Server Monitoring With munin And monit (29 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11015 In this article I will describe how you can monitor your Debian Etch 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, eth 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 y Metric equivalent of Microsoft fonts for Linux (29 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11014 Red Hat is all set to formally release a set of fonts which are the metric equivalent of most popular Microsoft fonts that are used on the web. The advantage of using metric equivalent fonts are that once and for all, Linux users can shrug away another one of the propritery tentacles at the same time enjoy all their favourate websites without facing any design glitches caused by not having the right Microsoft fonts installed on their machine. Read the full article A beautiful puzzle game for Linux (28 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11008 Remember the time when I reviewed a very beautiful game called FizzBall which runs on Linux and which was developed by a young gaming company called Grubby games ? Well, they have released yet another game called "Prof. Fizzwizzle and the Molten Mystery" - this time a game of puzzles. The protagonist of the new game is again Prof. Fizzwizzle... Read the review Configuring Samba 3.0 To Use The ADS Security Mode (28 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11010 The intent of this article is to show you how to configure your Linux machine and Samba server to participate in a Windows 23 Active Directory domain as a Member Server using Kerberos authentication. This involves using the security = ADS security mode in Samba. Adding a little Cream to (g)Vim (28 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11011 By: Scott Nesbitt Even though I'm a die-hard Emacs user, there are times when I have to use the vi editor -- specifically gVim, the graphical face of the popular vi clone Vim. Since I use gVim so infrequently, I don't readily remember many of the editor's basic commands. Either I muddle through or reach for my well-thumbed copy of the vi Editor Pocket Reference. That was until I discovered Cream. With Cream, gVim becomes an easy-to-use editor -- so easy, in fact, you might not believe that Secure Websites Using SSL And Certificates (27 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11004 This article will guide you through the entire process of setting up a secure website using SSL and digital certificates. This guide assumes that you already have a fully functional (and configured) server running Apache, BIND, and OpenSSL. Just as a side note, this guide was written based on a Fedora Core 6 distribution, but should be the same for most other distros out there. Portrait: Long-time Linux advocate Clay Claiborne (27 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11005 By: Robin 'Roblimo' Miller Clay Claiborne was an early Linux advocate, and his company, Cosmos Engineering, was one of the first computer builders to offer Linux-based PCs and servers. But Clay has never been as much about business as he's been about social activism. He cofounded the Linux Users of Los Angeles (LULA) group back in 1999, but lately he's dropped out of Linux activism and is spending most of his time on social (mostly anti-war) activism. He'll still happily build you a Linux-b The Perfect Desktop - Ubuntu Studio 7.04 (27 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11006 Ubuntu Studio is a special Linux distribution tailored to the needs of audio, video, and graphic enthusiasts or professionals. Because Ubuntu Studio is based on Ubuntu, you are not limited to this area, but can install any application that is available for Ubuntu, thus turning Ubuntu Studio into a normal desktop for everyday use. This tutorial shows how you can turn Ubuntu Studio 7.4 into a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system wit FoxTorrent, a Firefox BitTorrent client (27 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11007 By: Chad Files BitTorrent clients are all over the place these days. One of the newcomers, FoxTorrent, is a fully functional cross-platform Firefox BitTorrent client created by Red Swoosh, a company that is now part of Akamai. What FoxTorrent lacks in features it makes up for in simplicity. Read more at Linux.com. RAM for Macs (27 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11003 Upgrade your Mac."RAM upgrades are the best way to get a performance boost from your computer. Mac OS X loves to hog up all the RAM you've got, so the more you have, the better! Here are a few often asked questions and their answers regarding RAM and Macs." Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About RAM for Macs - MacTalk Forums LXer: Ubuntu'd, you're getting a Dell (26 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=10998 Pain free Linux for his daughter."That evening, at her graduation party, I finally saw the box opened. It was relatively sparse of documentation, but that didn't matter. The documentation was tossed aside as she went straight for the laptop. Within five minutes it was powered up, her information was entered, and she was viewing the Ubuntu desktop for the first time. I watched as she checked out the games and other applications. No hesitation, no learning curve, just straight to it. " LXer: Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth (26 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=10999 Nice interview. "I'm fascinated by things that sweep through society and then change everything that they touch in different ways. The Internet itself was the first big tidal wave that I could actually witness. I guess I also saw desktop computing as a kid, but I didn't really have much of a perspective on it. But watching the Internet sweep through society, changing the way my mother worked, changing the way businesses worked, changing the way people designed products and so on, has been a Playing with ZFS boot on Nexenta (26 Jun 2007) http://RootPrompt.org/article.php3?article=11000 How to use the new ZFS boot facility in Nexenta (OpenSolaris) to create clones of file systems and boot from them. Playing with ZFS boot on Nexenta