Friday, December 21, 2007

NVIDIA has released a new Linux display driver

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_ia32_169.07.html

Monday, December 17, 2007

Ubuntu Install - Check burned CD for MD5SUM - How to's

Folks,

Once you have downloaded ISO image for any linux distros, you must check the CD for MD5SUM check.

Please follow the instructions here, for How to's :

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM

Fabulous opensource CD/DVD burner - infra-recorder

Folks,

I normally use Sonik's product for making CD/DVD copies. You can buy these for about $50.00 bucks or choose to trust me and save this much money.

With this $50.00 bucks, invest in stock market and follow buffet and make a killing......and live on a private island ..........Ok....OK stop.....dreaming

Download a free CD/DVD burner from here.

http://infrarecorder.sourceforge.net

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Redhat Package Manager

Different versions of Linux have taken the idea of packages and expanded on it. Several different package formats are available, but the Red Hat format is probably the most common. There are several programs for the installation of software in the RPM format. Of these, the Red Hat Package Manager (rpm) is what I generally use. Two other package management tools that provide GUIs include glint and gnorpm.
First, download the package in question. Then, to install a package, call rpm with the options -ivh and the name of the package. If all goes well, that is all there is to it. You can use the -e option to remove a package.
A variety of packages come with many Linux distributions. Numerous sites on the Web offer extensive collections of Linux software in RPM format. If you are using Red Hat Linux, try http://www.redhat.com. Many of the repositories will provide you with a list of dependencies, which you'll need to install first.

Solaris Package Manager

In Solaris, packages are directories of the files needed to build or run a program. This is the mechanism Sun Microsystems uses to distribute software. If you are installing from a CD-ROM, the files will typically be laid out just the way you need them. You will only need to mount the CD-ROM so you can get to them. If you are downloading packages, you will typically need to unpack them first, usually with the tar command. You may want to do this under the default directory /var/spool/pkg, but you can override this location with command options when installing the package.
Once you have the appropriate package on your system, you can use one of several closely related commands to manage it. To install a package, use the pkgadd command. Without any arguments, pkgadd will list the packages on your system and give you the opportunity to select the package of interest. Alternately, you can name the package you want to install. You can use the -d option to specify a different directory.
Other commands include the pkgrm command to remove a package, the pkginfo command to display information on which packages are already installed on your system, and pkgchk to check the integrity of the package.
For other software in package format, you might begin by looking at http://sunfreeware.com or searching the Web for Sun's university alliance software repositories.

SNMP MIB Analyser tool ( TKMIB )

Folks,

If you have MIB for any device like Routers, VPNs, Servers, Firewalls, L2-L3. Configure those in 'tkmib' after installing it.

It can give you great information about associated 'traps' & 'informs'.

SNMP is completely UDP based. UDP runs on port 162.

Get 'tkmib' from:
http://packages.debian.org/stable/net/tkmib

Cheat Sheet for Regular Expressions (REGEX)

http://regexlib.com/CheatSheet.aspx

Configuration Management tools (Pancho/Panchito, rancid, wget)

Pancho/Panchito - Perl based VM Configuration files downloader/uploader. It uses tftp which must be started as a service during application start time.

Rancid - Rancid is a expect script based Configuration manager tool which uses login plugins.

wget - web downloader. HTTP support is necessary

Sun Solaris 10 Update 2 (Please see my previous update earlier this month)

Folks,

I have heard Sun is inviting developers to review/modify/change Solaris 10 kernel code if it can be made better. Not sure, if this is 100% true.

It can be a good thing for all and Solaris too. They can make it better to make it compete with various distros of Linux.

www.kernel.org is very helpful for learning and updates. People interested can get in touch with me.

Performance Graphing Tools - MRTG, RRDTOOL

Folks,

People have been asking me about performance graphing, monitor SNMP traffic from any Ethernet based devices like ROuters, VPNs, Servers etc.

MRTG & RRDTool are two perl based tools which is most popular. I am just giving the link here.

http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/
http://www.mrtg.com/
http://tobi.oetiker.ch/


Or simply Google with Key word - 'MRTG' or 'RRDTool'

Please read these documents before sending me emails.

Happy Learning.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Open source Documentation software (Very Powerful & robust) - Lyx

If you are writting an Use Case Document, System test plan, Requirement Document or Business Requirement document, conventional preference is to use MS Word (It drills a hole in your pocket) or tools from openoffice.org (This is better than MS products).

Let me introduce you one more very powerful product called 'lyx'. It is based on Latex (pronounced LEC). Normally PHD. students use this in Ivy League colleges because of these reasons.

1. It is very flexible and you can have your own formatting. Not like, MS word, where, you have to use pre-defined formatting. It will take some learning though.
2. It is very stable. I have experiment by inserting GIFs, JPEGs and PNGs images. Lyx is more stable than anyone.
3. You can draw mathematical formulas as you would do it on a piece of paper. E.g you can have
square, square root, divided by etc.
4. Convert this to PDF, kPDF (for linux distros.).
5. Convert this to text format too.
6. It is free.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Readymade (Ready to use) Regular Expression (REGEX) or Pattern Matching

Fellas,

Steal as much as possible (...Duh, it is free......)

www.regexlib.com (You will see my contributions too).

-Deepak

Compare different linux distros

Fantastic site to compare various linux distributions.

http://polishlinux.org/choose/comparison/?distro1=Ubuntu&distro2=Slackware

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Sun Solaris 10 is free - Update 1

Folks,

After all the hue 'n' cry, Sun had to give Solaris free. This can be due to two reasons.

1. To compete with various Linux distributions.
2. To bring more innovation to it. Bring more talented people (Sure, Sun people are smarter but them, competing with Open source nerds/geeks....duh.....

Anyways, check this site out for complete information.

www.opensolaris.org

Ciao

Ubuntu Server Vs. Redhat Enterprise Edition

I personally love any thing from Ubuntu and their promise to keep it free for life. Here is article published in 2006, on why, Ubuntu will take over.

--------------------------------------->>>>
I don’t like writing controversial editorials. Controversy is an effective means to get a lot of accesses: most people seem to enjoy reading controversial articles, maybe because they like torturing themselves. (And yes, I used to read a lot of Maureen O’Gara’s articles myself!). Besides, controversy is a double edged sword: there’s very little chance that I would ever go back to those sites!
And yet here I am.
First of all: Red Hat was my first love, as far as GNU/Linux distributions are concerned. I was always frustrated by the many tgz files in slackware, and was ecstatic when I installed Red Hat 3.0.3. At that time, Red Hat was a tiny startup with a modem connection to the internet. It was based on RPM, a tool that made me finally feel in control of my system.
Now, the key sentence: I became a user of Red Hat Linux for my desktop machine (and yes, it was a bit of a challenge!), and a couple of months later, when I had to choose what distribution I should use for my server, I chose the one I was most accustomed to: Red Hat Linux.
A number of things happened in the following years (1997 to 2005). Here are a few of them, in chronological order: the packaged version of Red Hat Linux flopped (why would anybody buy it, if you can download it? Plus, yes, it was overpriced...). Red Hat went public, and started having a number of investors that wanted to see good, realistic plans to make money—which meant focusing more on the corporate market. Then, the split: Fedora came along, but it was underfunded and the “community involvement” was patchy and disorganised. Eventually, Red Hat effectively abandoned its desktop audience, to focus on the more lucrative corporate market. Then, a very smart man called Mark Shuttleworth made 500 million dollars in the .com boom, learned Russian from scratch, went to space, came back in one piece, funded several charities focussing on South Africa, and... oh yes, he created Ubuntu Linux.
Mark accomplished three things with his move. First of all, he created tons and tons of work for himself. This isn’t really crucial to my point, but I think it’s important to mention it. He also gathered a community of hackers to create what is, in my humble opinion, the first desktop GNU/Linux done right. And I mean, really right. The third thing he did, was divert tons, and tons, and tons of GNU/Linux users away from Red Hat Linux, and towards Ubuntu Linux. A lot of those people—and this is the crucial piece of information—were system administrators, who in the last 12 months got more and more used to using Ubuntu Linux rather than Red Hat. And—guess what?—now they have Ubuntu Server, which—again, guess what?—is a GNU/Linux server system done right.
I am convinced that Red Hat is now starting to realise that losing their desktop users didn’t just mean “losing the suckers who didn’t pay a cent anyway” (this is not a quote, by the way), because a lot of those “suckers” were system administrators, who will soon have to decide between Red Hat Linux and Ubuntu Server. And when you use Ubuntu Server as your home system, the choice really can go either way.
By abandoning their desktop users, Red Hat has effectively shot itself in the foot. Funnily enough, they kept on chasing the mirage of thousands of soul-less corporate customers with the real money. However, the bleeding didn’t stop altogether, and behind those faceless corporations there are thousands of system administrators who now use Ubuntu Linux rather than Red Hat Linux.
And they will want to continue to do so, as much as possible.
Good luck, Red Hat. Thank you Mark for Ubuntu.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

ntop - Network Traffic Probe

ntop is a network traffic probe that shows the network usage, similar to what the popular top Unix command does. ntop is based on libpcap and it has been written in a portable way in order to virtually run on every Unix platform and on Win32 as well.
ntop users can use a a web browser (e.g. netscape) to navigate through ntop (that acts as a web server) traffic information and get a dump of the network status. In the latter case, ntop can be seen as a simple RMON-like agent with an embedded web interface. The use of:
a web interface
limited configuration and administration via the web interface
reduced CPU and memory usage (they vary according to network size and traffic)

mtop - MySQL Real Time Monitoring tool

mtop/mkill - MySQL Monitoring Toolsmtop (MySQL top) monitors a MySQL server showing the queries which are taking the most amount of time to complete. Features include 'zooming' in on a process to show the complete query, 'explaining' the query optimizer information for a query and 'killing' queries. In addition, server performance statistics, configuration information, and tuning tips are provided.
mkill (MySQL kill) monitors a MySQL server for long running queries and kills them after a specified time interval. Queries can be selected based on regexes on the user, host, command, database, state and query

http://mtop.sourceforge.net/

Monday, December 3, 2007

Replacement of 'Big Brother' (Hobbit Monitor)

http://hobbitmon.sourceforge.net/

Why would anyone need Hobbit Monitor:
-----------------------------------------
Hobbit monitors your hosts, your network services, and anything else you configure it to do via extensions. Hobbit will periodically generate requests to network services - http, ftp, smtp and so on - and record if the service is responding as expected. Through the use of agents installed on the servers, you can also monitor local disk utilisation, logfiles and processes.
All of the monitoring results are collected by a central server, and used to build a set of webpages that show the status of your network, with drill-down functionality to check up on problems. Hobbit will also record the history of each monitored item, so you can generate availability reports and check on the incidents that have occurred. Wherever it is possible, data is also stored for trend analysis and presented as graphs, so you can easily track e.g. the response-time of a business-critical web application over time.
In case of problems, alerts may be sent in the form of e-mails, SMS-messages or pager-alerts, so that staff can respond quickly to problems without having to keep watch over the services.
The easiest way to understand what Hobbit does is to see it in action. http://www.hswn.dk/hobbit/ is the live view of a Hobbit that monitors my home network

Install Ubuntu Desktop

Here is a great article, that I find, is very useful for new comers to Linux world & particularly to Ubuntu.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation

This is the best & simplest that installing Ubuntu (Desktop) can get. If you still have issues, please send me email or leave me a message, I will try to simplify it further.

Useful URLs for Ubuntu

1. http://www.ubuntu.com
2. http://www.ubuntulinux.org
3. http://www.ubuntuforum.org
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(Linux_distribution)
5. https://help.ubuntu.com

How to install different flavors of Linux

1.How to install Ubuntu (Desktop)
2.How to install Ubuntu (Enterprise Server Edition)
3.How to install Redhat
4.How to install Slackware