November 2004
Ed SchaeferWhen you're a novice, don't you hate it when you're struggling with a shell programming problem and someone advises you to "read the MAN pages"? If you're of the opinion the MAN pages are written by experts for experts rather than for beginners, then Ellie Quigley's Unix Shells by Example may be just what you need.
Emmett DulaneyThe goal of this book is to persuasively demonstrate to managers and key decision makers that productivity gains can be achieved by implementing a unified approach to e-learning. That unified approach includes three strategic network-driven elements: e-communication, e-training, and e-assessment. The argument is made that there is a synergy that exists between these three elements and all three must work together in an integrated approach in order to reap the rewards that are possible through e-learning.
Peter SalusSANE is sponsored by the NLUUG, the NLnet Foundation and the USENIX Association. It attracts attendees from the US and Europe (about 600 of them this year).
Cameron Laird"Regular Expressions" preaches the strong form of the scripting gospel — code in a high-level language unless there is a compelling and specific reason not to. What's more, we have evidence for our creed.
Some programmers and managers sincerely believe that scripting is only for "Web monkeys" and self-taught teenagers. Over the past decade, though, the "weak form" of our proposition has come to be accepted by most developers: scripting languages are useful for prototyping; they yield quick results; and, in a pinch, they can be used to build undemanding projects, perhaps in combination with modules coded in "systems" languages such as C or Java.
In a world full of email server solutions ranging from sendmail at the free end to BackOffice (Microsoft), GroupWise (Novell) and Openexchange Server(SuSE) on the high end, you need something to make you stand out from the pack if you are going to compete in this market. While SCO touts SCOoffice Server as a “…full-featured Internet e-mail solution” loaded with security features, the thing that struck me most about it was its ease of use.
Joe "Zonker" BrockmeierThis month, I'll begin the foray into Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS). There are several decent IDS projects that run on Linux, one of the most popular being Snort. Snort is a flexible tool that can be used for packet sniffing, packet logging, or network intrusion detection.
Peter SalusThrough the 1970s, I was a faculty member at the University of Toronto. At one point, around 1974, it became possible to leave a message for someone working on the same IBM360. Soon thereafter, it was possible to write to others at Toronto who were working on different machines.
Then, sometime in the 1976-77 academic year, I think, Toronto got connected to BITNET. I began to get mail from all over North America, neatly printed on my DECwriter II.
So I asked an acquaintance in the Math department how the message flow worked. And he pointed me at Kleinrock's Queueing Systems. And a new world opened.
Joe "Zonker" BrockmeierFor the casual user, learning the syntax for iptables to set up a functioning firewall and/or gateway with Linux can be a bit of a pain. If you work with iptables frequently, it's pretty easy to get the hang of over time — but it's definitely a bit much to tackle in order to set up a single device for your home or office.
Most Linux distros include wizards or utilities to set up a rudimentary firewall and gateway/router functions, but they often lack flexibility. That's why my picks for this month are Guidedog and Guarddog. Guidedog is a GUI tool that can be used to set up packet routing/forwarding and IP masquerade (NAT) and port forwarding on a Linux host with iptables. Guarddog is a GUI tool designed to help set up a firewall using iptables, and is a great tool to use in conjunction with Guidedog. Guidedog and Guarddog were written by Simon Edwards, and both are available under the GNU General Public License.
Source code and RPMs are available for both utilities. The Guidedog utility hasn't been updated in a while, but the latest version of Guarddog was released in August of this year.
Russell DyerWhen visiting a Web site that provides files for downloading through an HTTP connection, you will sometimes see a neat file directory listing. A Web-based file directory or index typically will have a paragraph or so of text at the top or bottom describing the directory's contents. It will also have special icons next to sub-directories or key files. When you click on one of these icons or filenames, it will allow you to download the file selected. These indexes are typically generated by Apache with the mod_autoindex module. In this installment to my series on configuring the Apache Web server, I will discuss how to set up an automatic index page on a Web site.
Emmett DulaneyOne of the most common reasons why many people don’t look up the answer to a question is that they don’t want to have to wade through ream upon ream of text to find something miniscule. Rather than pulling a giant tome on networking off the shelf to find out why problems with a particular protocol may be occurring, they will turn to what is perceived to be an easier solution – asking someone else, posting a query, etc. Truth be told, the other solutions they turn to are rarely as reliable as the book they could have pulled from the shelf.
TCP/IP Foundations , like others in the “Foundations” series from Sybex, is based on the belief that readers can benefit from very small books that are concentrated on one particular topic. Many of the titles in the series, including this one, came from the JumpStart series of a few years back. I mention this because I was disappointed to find that the content had not been changed at all for this title since it was known by the other name.
Peter SalusOutsourcing, according to Yourdon, is the #1 issue facing IT organizations. That's an overly narrow view. Outsourcing and its cousin offshoring are the #1 issue worldwide. They combine in globalization, and fear of them is what compels congress to stiffen immigration laws, impose tariffs, and subsidize domestic producers.
Jeffrey L. TaylorMambo is an Open Source Content Management System (CMS) written in PHP4. It comes with a core functionality to get you up and running quickly. There are plenty of third-party plug-ins available at MamboForge.net and other places. The administrator documentation for the core is good. However, the documentation for plug-in developers is sketchy (a problem it shares with most CMSs). Mambo plug-ins come in two flavors: modules (applets) and components (applications). Modules normally are positioned around the periphery of the page. Components are in the large central area. There are normally multiple modules on a page, but just one component. Modules mostly just display information (e.g., MyWeather), though some are entry points for a component (e.g., the events_cal and events_latest modules have links to the Events component). This article develops a module, mod_fortune, that demonstrates the basics of writing a module.
Emmett DulaneyTo commemorate four years of this column, last month I created an email account — cert_quest@insightbb.com — for the sole purpose of collecting questions and queries to answer this month. Immediately, the emails started arriving. Many of the emails were on the same (or similar) topics, so I combined them to make them more general to keep from repeating the same information where it was not necessary. I also discovered that the questions easily fit into one of two categories – generic and specific.
Ed SchaeferThe cut command is one of the “arrows” in the shell programmer’s “quiver”. This month, Anton Gorshkov presents bash shell script rcut that performs an anti-cut operation. Rather than including columns, rcut excludes them.
Russell DyerUsing the Web browser for a user interface makes programming user applications in Perl much easier, and it makes using them agreeable for the end-user. For many Perl programmers, though, there's a temptation simply to place HTML code within quotes and to have Perl print the raw HTML text to the browser. A much more professional method, however, is to use the Perl CGI module. In this article, I will cover the basics of the CGI.pm and give examples of how to duplicate common HTML code with the module.
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