August 2005
Joe "Zonker" BrockmeierInstallation of RHDS couldn't be much easier. I popped in the CD and ran the "autorun" shell script on the CD, which in turn ran me through a quickie setup program that installed the RHDS RPM. (Alternately, one could just run the RPM.)
Peter SalusThirty years ago, I was involved in a project involving a lot of data. I was running over a 110-baud line from the DECwriter II in my office to the IBM 360 in the University of Toronto Computing Centre. I was using APL. And I read a book on databases by C.J. Date.
Emmett DulaneyDulaney explains why he has never come to embrace a product so fully and quickly as he did with VMware Workstation 5.
Cameron Laird and Kathryn SoraizDon't be afraid to script. There's nothing new in that, of course; it's one of the messages the "Regular Expressions" column has consistently preached over the past seven years.We usually prefer to phrase it with more affirmative details about specific advantages use of high-level languages brings. A few incidents over the past month make a bit of mild debunking seem timely, though.
Cameron LairdIf you're reading this review, you should get your own copy of Mac OS X Tiger for Unix Geeks.
Marcel GagnéA perfect podcast aggregator would, for starters, contain a directory with a list of topics with an easy one button system to add feeds, a new show scanning feature so you don't have to go looking, and automatic scheduled downloads running in the background. As it turns out, jPodder does all those things and it's one of the best such programs I've found.
Peter SalusIn 1969, UNIX was created at Bell Labs.
For decades, the source of the AT&T dialect of UNIX came from the researches of workers in department 1127.
When the "Baby Bells" split from "Ma Bell," department 1127 survived. When AT&T and Lucent split, 1127 survived.
Peter SalusMoving to Linux is the very best way to slide those addicted to Microsoft into a better life. The bootable CD-ROM accompanying this book is a customized version of Knoppix, containing several home-grown programs...or "personal hacks."
Ben RothkeIn technology, books are often obsolete shortly after publication. Given the dynamic nature of technology, very few technology books can stand the test of time and remain relevant for a few years, let alone a decade after their original printing. Some of those rare titles that seem timeless include Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier, Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems by Ross Anderson, and the book I'll review here, Information Security Policies Made Easy, Version 10. Information Security Policies Made Easy (ISPME) is one of the most important information security books available for those who are serious about creating a comprehensive set of information systems security policies.
Reinhard VoglmaierEclipse can perhaps best be described as a Swiss Army knife for Java developers. Eclipse is a development platform that offers programmers a rich toolset for everyday work, such as an Editor with syntax highlighting, integrated debugger, integrated build environment, integrated versioning, and much more. The enormous advantage of Eclipse is that it is easily extended. Although Eclipse was intended initially for Java programmers, plug-ins for Perl, C, C++, and COBOL are also available. Eclipse at the time of this writing consists of 4 projects and 19 subprojects. You will find plug-ins for UML, GUI development, support for the open source application server Tomcat, the open source Java Framework Struts, and the Web Service Development Kit from IBM. Should you have special requirements not yet covered, you can write your own plug-ins to exactly fit your needs.
Joe "Zonker" BrockmeierIf you've ever looked through /var/log/secure or /var/log/auth.log (or whatever log file sshd logs to) on a public-facing system, you've probably noticed a number of failed login attempts for users that don't exist. Sometimes you'll even find dozens or even hundreds of failed login attempts — a sure sign that someone is attempting to access the system by brute-force attacks, trying to find a username and password combination that will give them access to your system.
Joe "Zonker" BrockmeierA while back, I reviewed Mark G. Sobell's A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux and found it to be a really excellent book on using Red Hat. Given the quality of A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux, I was happy to receive a review copy of A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming. As the title implies, this book covers commonly used Linux commands, shell programming with Bash and the TC Shell (tcsh), and the Emacs and Vim editors. It is, for the most part, applicable to any Linux distribution and not just Red Hat or Fedora Core. In fact, in large part, the book should be useful to anyone using a Unix-type operating system that has Bash and/or tcsh, Emacs, Vim, Sed, Gawk, and the GNU utilities.
Marcel GagnéThere are an awful lot of games we play on computers that we could be playing elsewhere. This particular elsewhere is something called the real world. This includes card games, board games, and even a number of sports such as golf, soccer, hockey, and so on. Of course, the computer versions of these games do add dimensions that we might not otherwise experience in this real world and that's why the computer versions are still interesting to us. You can almost hear your mother asking you why you are playing that on the computer when you could be outside, can't you?
Russell DyerLearning Perl is one of the best books written for learning Perl. It's the book from which I learned Perl six years ago and I've been recommending it to newcomers ever since. Also, it's an excellent reference manual of Perl concepts. Even today, when I'm confused about fundamental aspects of Perl, I will consult my copy of Learning Perl to get my bearings. For use as a text for a course, the book contains exercises at the end of each chapter, which may be used in a lab setting.
Emmett DulaneyLast month, I introduced the CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert) certification in general, and the security track in detail. To obtain this certification, you must first pass a "written" exam (2 hours long, 100 multiple-choice questions through VUE or Prometric testing centers) and then an intensive lab-based exam. The topic areas on the written exam were covered last month. This month, I'll look at the topics covered in the lab exam, which must be attempted within 18 months after passing the written test.
Ed SchaeferThis month, Dawid Michalczyk validates backups with his bash script cpverify. The script verifies that the object copied is an exact duplicate of the original.
Marcel GagnéFor the past few weeks or so, I've been running SUSE Linux Professional 9.3 on a couple of different PCs in my office. One is a desktop, tower-style system, and other other is my notebook. In fact, I'm writing the introduction to this review on my Compaq Presario notebook running SUSE Linux Professional 9.3. I'm also using OpenOffice 2.0 (beta) under KDE 3.4 while sitting in my living room. With daytime highs running around 30 to 34 degrees Celsius these last few days, it's too hot in the office so I'm running wireless. And just like that, I've given you several clues about my current SUSE Linux installation.
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