September 2001

A Look at Squid

Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier

Zonker gets all wrapped up in Squid, a package that handles proxy caching for Web pages and other Internet objects. He also comments on Gartner's recent recommendation that enterprises should move away from IIS.

The Solaris Companion: Role-Based Access Control

Peter Baer Galvin

UNIX administrators have been wanting more fine-grained access control to administrative features almost since the first administrator accidentally destroyed his first system. As of SolarisTM 8, Sun has delivered a solution to that problem. But is the solution for you?

Programming Linux Games

Ken Barnes

If the thought of Linux and games together really gets your motor running, check out this book on building game engines with Linux.

Regular Expressions: What's So Special About Python 2.2?

Cameron Laird and Kathryn Soraiz

Laird and Soraiz take a fresh look at Python, an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented, portable programming language that has no rule six.

Win4Lin 3.0

Jon Holman

Win4Lin 3.0 is a Linux application that enables installation of the Microsoft Windows 95/98 operating system into a Linux environment. You can run popular Windows programs at native speeds without additional hardware or the need to dual boot. For this review, I decided to install and uninstall the full, boxed version and then install the free trial version to see if there was any difference in performance. The code performed the same in both situations.

The Linux Cookbook

Randy Reames

"Webmaster Randy" offers a sample taste of The Linux Cookbook by chef...er, author Michael Stutz.

Tool of the Month: HTML Tidy

Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier

One thing I love about the UNIX philosophy is the idea that each program should do one job and do it really well. There are zillions of small tools for UNIX-type OSes that make life much easier and are hugely useful, but they don't necessarily get written about. They certainly don't receive the same kind of coverage that Apache and Sendmail receive. One of my favorites, HTML Tidy, is a tool for HTML/Web development that I think will interest a lot of folks. HTML Tidy cleans up HTML produced by WYSIWYG editors and such.

Shell Corner: bfiles

Dave Masterson

This month, Dave Masterson (s97bf103@student.ucd.ie) submits bfiles, a Korn shell script that traverses directories searching for specific files.

Exim: The Mail Transfer Agent

Philip Hazel

This book covers everything you've ever wanted to know about Exim, and probably quite a few things that you didn't know you wanted to know (but will be glad to find out).

Instant Perl Modules

Steve Graham

Graham uncovers a book designed to promote and support the reuse of Perl modules.

Top 31 Things to Know for the Red Hat RHCE Exam

Emmett Dulaney

This month, I will look at the top 31 topics to know for this part of the exam. Why 31? The list of topics mirrors those emphasized by Red Hat. The following list of study topics includes links that will take you to sites documenting the topics in detail and should quickly bring you up to speed on your exam preparation. Bear in mind, however, that the difficulty of the RHCE exam lies not so much in the multiple-choice portion of the exam, but in the lab portion.