July 2005
Peter SalusWith several nods to Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane, John Markoff eases us back into the '60s and '70s and the origins of "the Personal Computer industry" in the counterculture.
Jeffrey L. TaylorNagios is an open source package for monitoring hosts, services, and networks. The base package is a daemon that collects the data and some CGI scripts to present the data as Web pages. Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier covered Nagios installation and configuration previously in The Open Road: Nagios. Nagios is easily extended with plug-ins and eventhandlers. Plug-ins collect additional types of data. Eventhandlers take action based on alerts generated when user defined thresholds are exceeded. The Nagios Plugins package contains more than 50 plug-ins. This article covers the basics of writing your own plug-ins and eventhandlers.
Joe "Zonker" BrockmeierSince Sun released OpenSolaris back in June, I've been itching to spend a little time with the release and see what OpenSolaris has to offer and what might be coming up for Solaris enthusiasts and developers, as well as users who are new to Solaris.
Since OpenSolaris isn't really "finished," this will be more of a overview, rather than a critical review of the product.
Ben RothkeIrrespective of the myriad proclamations of systems or products being hackerproof, bulletproof and the like; given enough time and money, everything is breakable. Security purists may argue that one-time pads are provably and perfectly secure. While that is correct in the pristine halls of academic cryptography, the real world is littered with many one-time pads of dubious security.
Marcel GagnéSummertime! It's hot out there . . . really. The humidity is sky high and the sun beats down to create an environment that's perfect for floating lazily in a swimming pool while the radio pumps out some great music. When you get out of the pool, you can stretch out in your Muskoka chair, pour yourself a cold one, and listen as the radio DJ serves up yet another summer tune. You have to agree that whatever you do in the summertime, music has got to be part of it. Unfortunately, we all have to work sometime, even during those lazy days of summer. Luckily, we don't have to give up on the music. With your Linux desktop nearby, so is the music. Welcome to another new series here on UnixReview.com, my recommended application of the month.
Emmett DulaneyOpenServer 6, the latest version from SCO, has recently been released and includes numerous enhancements over the previous version as well as quite a few new features. It now boasts automatic kernel tuning, Hot Plug support, EFS, and three years' worth of other developments.
Kristy WestphalAs a skeptic of Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), I was delighted to review Intrusion Prevention and Active Response and wanted to have my skepticism of deploying this type of technology proven wrong. After reading this well-done depiction of IPS, however, my skepticism has only been confirmed. IPS is a deployable technology, but it has to be done right the first time or you will find yourself in a heap of trouble.
Ed SchaeferDo you dread documenting your latest technical endeavor? Are you intimidated by that word processor's blank screen staring back at you? If technical writing makes you cringe or if getting started troubles you, then Barry Rosenberg's Spring into Technical Writing for Engineers and Scientists may be just the text for you.
Ed Schaefer and John SpurgeonMost systems administrators are familiar with using the cron facility or the at command to schedule jobs. Sometimes an attempt is made to schedule jobs so they don't conflict with one another. For example, it may be necessary to limit the number of resource-intensive jobs running at the same time to avoid overloading the system. Or you may need to prevent jobs from simultaneously accessing a shared resource. This can be challenging, especially if commands must be run frequently and the time they take to complete is significant and variable.
Joe "Zonker" BrockmeierRecently, I've been working on projects that require a lot of Perl modules, on various versions of Red Hat Linux and Fedora Core. This month, I will share a tool that has come in extremely handy when dealing with these modules — cpan2rpm, which converts Perl modules into RPMs. (The name does tend to give it away.)
This utility is easy to set up and takes only a few minutes to become productive with. So, let's get started converting Perl modules into RPMs for easy installation — and removal, if need be.
Marcel GagnéSince this is the first column in this series, I'm going to start with a little justification. After all, when you are doing something that looks more like fun than work, there always seems to be some "splaing to do". So, let me explain. Linux as a computing platform has come a long, long way since it appeared way back in 1991, so much so that it is now ready to replace that other rather common desktop OS we see on PCs everywhere. (Shhh . . . don't mention the name!) In the server room, Linux has been king for some time. Now, Linux is ready for the desktop and the business applications that the average office worker depends on — word processors, spreadsheets, Web browsers, electronic organizers, email packages, and so on. If you're still following my logic, then winning the business desktop is already a done deal — it's just going to take a little while. That means it's time for Linux to look to the final frontier, which takes me back to the justification for this series.
Emmett DulaneyIt's probably safe to say that the purpose of most Nutshell books is to provide a reference you can pull from the shelf and look up the syntax for an arcane command when needed. To say that this book fulfills that function, however, is to tell only part of the story. Not only does it offer a quick reference to MySQL statements and functions, but it also covers such topics as installation (on various platforms including Unix, Linux, NetWare, Windows, and Macintosh OS X), and the basics. While I don’t necessarily want to imply that this book would serve as a complete tutorial (there are a number of other books written in that vein), I don’t mind insinuating that it is much more than just a “quick reference”.
Emmett DulaneyWhen it comes to non-operating system computer certifications, few today hold as much prestige as CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert). This certification has been popular with both the HR and tech community for a number of years and there are currently 5 topic areas in which it can be obtained; each topic area — or track — requires passing a written exam and an intensive lab-based exam. The 5 topic areas are:
* Routing and Switching (the most popular)
* Security
* Service Provider (originally known as Communications and Services)
* Storage Networking
* Voice
This article focuses upon the Security track for CCIE, with future articles examining the other tracks.
Chris F.A. Johnson and Ed SchaeferThis month, Chris F.A. Johnson presents "Mouse Reporting in a Shell Script", which senses mouse clicks in xterm-type terminals under Linux, FreeBSD, and NetBSD.
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