Administration tutorials
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 Using NDISWrapper to Install Windows Drivers on Linux
How to set up wireless network cards in Linux using NDISWrapper and Knoppix 4.0.
Dell Wireless 1350 WLAN on Knoppix 4.0 Using NDISWrapper
Setting up the Dell Wireless 1350 Card is relatively easy on Knoppix 4.0. My card happened to come with my Inspiron 1200. I would assume most people using this card also got it with a Dell Notebook. If you like Knoppix, then you are going to definitely want to set this up.
Requirements:
Knoppix 4.0 CD (I have gotten this to work with versions as low as 3.6)
Windows/Linux PC to transfer files from CD to thumbdrive
USB Thumbdrive
Laptop with PCMCIA port
Dell Wireless 1350 card and Driver disk
Wifi network to connect to (preferably using DHCP and unencrypted)
Let's get started! You will need to boot your
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| Setting Up Your Own Web Server
Not happy with your ISP? Think you can can share information within your organization better? Setting up your own Web server isn't as hard as some may think, thanks to the ease of use of Linux and Apache.
Admin Digest: Setting Up Your Own Web Server
Why You Need Your Own Web Server
Rob Reilly
Thursday, January 2, 2003 01:36:47 PM
Having your own Web server goes beyond the need to put your business' information out on the Internet for all to see. While that certainly won't hurt, there are many more ways you can take advantage of such a server.
Whether you are running a department within a large corporation, or your own small business, having access to an HTTP server can quickly improve the way your employees share knowledge.
Groups within an organization of any size generally need to share a great deal of information, even though they may be working toward different goals. One way to accomplish this is to provide groups and individuals with access to an intranet Web server and allow them to publish their own facts and figures. Everyone could share one web server, and have a common user interface to access each others' work. If more space or segregation of information is needed, individual groups could set up their own web server using surplus hardware and Linux.
In another situation, you--the content provider--know exactly what you want, but are unable to find just the right package of features at the right cost. Many ISPs charge extra for even basic logging information. Given the tight margins that all businesses have to operate within these days, occasionally the right move is to set up your own host hardware.
Another reason to set up a Web server is that some Internet-based applications may require performance that only a dedicated server can offer--tuned to your special needs.
It may seem unlikely that you can provide a better service than experienced ISPs, but ISPs are catering to a mass market and tend to charge a lot for special services. Some web applications just don't fit into the general ISP scheme and installing your own web server on a Linux box, could prove to be a cost effective way of getting the Internet services you need.
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| The Coda Distributed Filesystem for Linux
Bill von Hagen continues his thorough examination of the distributed filessystems available for the Linux platform. In this report, he explores the Coda distributed filesystem that provided much of the inspiration for InterMezzo and gives readers a detailed tutorial on how to implement Coda for themselves.
The Coda Distributed Filesystem for Linux
Introduction to Coda
Bill von Hagen
Monday, October 7, 2002 11:12:44 AM
The initial article in this series provided an overview of the basic principles of distributed filesystems, and highlighted several of the most popular and up-and-coming distributed filesystems that are available for Linux today. The previous articles explored the InterMezzo distributed filesystem and explained how to install and configure a simple InterMezzo client and server. This article explores the Coda distributed filesystem that provided much of the inspiration for InterMezzo and which is also readily available for Linux.
Coda is a well-established distributed filesystem that was developed at Carnegie-Mellon University, is actively in use there, and is also still actively under development. Coda began life as a variant of the AFS distributed filesystem (version 2) from Carnegie-Mellon University, but has since taken on a complete life of its own. Led by M. Satyanarayanan, the Coda filesystem project is focused on specific distributed filesystem functionality required for mobile computing, such as support for disconnected operation. As explained in the article on InterMezzo, "disconnected operation" is the term used to describe the situation where a system that is ordinarily a part of a networked, distributed filesystem, is used without being connected to a network.
Due to its heritage, Coda shares a basic set of terminology and features with AFS. (The Open Source version of AFS, OpenAFS, will be discussed in the next article in this series.) Coda provides a number of features that make it an excellent, high-performance distributed filesystem. Beyond its focus on mobile and disconnected operation, one of Coda's most significant features is its extensive use of caching. Caching means that copies of files or portions of file retrieved from Coda servers are preserved on Coda clients as long as they can be verified to match the master data stored on the Coda server. This is therefore known as "client-side caching". Client-side caching reduces the amount of time that it takes to restart a Coda client by minimizing the amount of data that needs to be transmitted over the network after a Coda client is restarted. It's a fact of computer life that people tend to work on the same files and in the same directories--these change over time, of course, but the files you are working on today are probably more-or-less the same ones that you worked on yesterday.
Client-side caching reduces network communication and minimizes client restart times, but doesn't always guarantee that the files that you need to work on are present on the client. In a networked environment, this is fine--the client system can simply retrieve the file from the file server on which it is located. Given Coda's focus on disconnected operation, Coda also provides command-line commands that let users manipulate the contents of the cache, guaranteeing that specific files and directories will be present in the client's cache. Coda's "hoard" command therefore enables you to anticipate being disconnected from the network. uses any preloading your system with cached copies of specific file and directories. This function is typically used before you disconnect a laptop from the network prior to working in a disconnected fashion for some period of time. An example of using the hoard command is provided later in this article.
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| Using RAID in Linux
The concept of RAID, so often put aside in Linux documentation for all those smart systems administrators, is actually not something that takes a lot of special knowledge to understand. As Alexander Prohorenko explains, all you need is a little common sense and a good plan to implement RAID on your systems.
Using RAID in Linux
The Mysteries of RAID
Alexander Prohorenko
Thursday, August 1, 2002 01:52:49 PM
When you look at some of the installation documents for any of popular Linux distributions, you will see only few mentions of the term RAID, typically with passages such as "you will need RAID only if you are a very professional systems administrator and you already know what are you doing."
Even in the latest documentation of the latest Linux releases, this is likely the only thing you will see about RAID. This is one big reason why I think we should move past this barrier and demonstrate that RAID can be used by "normal" people.
RAID stands for "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks." This seems to be rather self-explantory, except for that strange word "inexpensive." In reality, it's usually just refers to common PC hard disks, either SCSI and IDE.
But some additional explanation is necesary, however. Array simply means multiple units. It is perhaps the most significant term in the acronym--for owners of just one, even huge, hard drive, RAID is absolutely useless. Also, the word "redundant" is not an entirely descriptive label. As you'll see, it is not as easy as that.
First, let's begin by describing what RAID can be.
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| Remote Administration of Linux Systems
One of the best advantages of using Linux is the ability to quickly and (if done correctly) safely logon to and administer another machine from across the room or across the planet. All you need are the right tools, a little paranoia, and just a little time, as Alexander Prohorenko details in this tutorial.
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| Beginner's Guide to SSI (server side includes)
An easy to follow guide on SSI and how to use this feature to do handy tasks such as include the contents of an external file, display the current server date or time, get the user's IP address and more.
Beginner's Guide to SSI (server side includes)
An easy to follow guide on SSI and how to use this feature to do handy tasks such as include the contents of an external file, display the current server date or time, get the user's IP address and more.
Beginner's Guide to SSI (server side includes)
Don't worry, SSI doesn't require a rocket-science degree to understand and use. It is, however, a highly useful feature that lets you do incredibly time saving tasks such as include the contents of an external file across multiple pages on your site, or access and display server specific information such as the current server time, visitor's IP address, etc. In this tutorial I'll introduce new comers to the wonderful world of SSI! SSI is short for Server Side Includes, by the way.
Does my server support SSI?
The first thing that needs to be settled is whether your server supports SSI and have it enabled. SSI is a Linux/Apache specific feature, so if you're on a Windows server for example, you'll need to look for the Windows equivalent of SSI (sorry, not a Window's guy). To test if your server supports SSI then, you can run a simple test, by inserting the below code inside a webpage, and saving the page with a .shtml extension (the most common extension configured to parse SSI by default):
test.shtml source:
| | Hits:402 Rate: 0.0(out of 5) Vote:0 Submit Date :2006-03-20
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| Setting Up A SuSE 8.0 Linux DHCP Client
Enterprise businesses with their own IT staffs may have the knowledge and where-with-all to implement Linux in their organizartions, but what about the small-business owner who has to manage everything from buying pencils to setting up the network? The Admin Digest is a new series designed to address Linux solutions for people who have other things they can be doing with their time. This first installment examines how to use SuSE Linux 8.0 to create a DHCP client system.
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| Schedule scripts to run
Schedule your daily work like checking logfiles, cleaning up old data in your web systems. Let automated scripts take care of this, learn how to use "Cronjob" for this.
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| Basic Administration
In this section we talk about the basics of system administration. We discuss user accounts, printing, starting and stopping the system, making backups and other basic administrative tasks.
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| The Operating System
This section is a more detailed description of the Linux operating system. We go into the internal of the kernel, files and filesystems, and device nodes.
The Operating System
In this section, we are going to go into some detail about what makes a Linux operating system. I am not talking about the "product" Linux or any of the bundled distributions such as SuSE, RedHat, or Mandrake. Here, I am talking strictly about the software that manages and controls your computer. The collection of functions that do all the work are collectively called the "kernel".
Because an operating system is of little use without hardware and other software, we are going to discuss how the operating system interacts with other parts of the various Linux distributions. I will also talk about what goes into making the kernel, what components it is made of, and what you can do to influence the creation of a new kernel.
Much of this information is far beyond what many system administrators are required to have for their jobs. So why go over it? Because what is required and what the administrator should know are two different things. Many calls I received while in tech support and many questions posted to newsgroups could have been avoided had the administrator understood the meaning of a message on the system console or the effects of making changes. By going over the details of how the kernel behaves, I hope to put you in a better position to understand what is happening.
The contents of this discussion is based primarily on two sources. The first is my book Linux User's Resource. The second is David Rusling's "The Linux Kernel". In our seperate documents David and I covered different topics and in different levels of detail, so you didn't get the full story by reading either one by itself. Rather than rewriting everything from scratch, David has graciously given me permission to include his material with mine. Perhaps "merge" is a better term than "include", because in spite of much commonality between the two documents, one often included information that the other did not include.
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| Setting Up Your Own Web Server
Not happy with your ISP? Think you can can share information within your organization better? Setting up your own Web server isn't as hard as some may think, thanks to the ease of use of Linux and Apache.
Admin Digest: Setting Up Your Own Web Server
Why You Need Your Own Web Server
Rob Reilly
Thursday, January 2, 2003 01:36:47 PM
Having your own Web server goes beyond the need to put your business' information out on the Internet for all to see. While that certainly won't hurt, there are many more ways you can take advantage of such a server.
Whether you are running a department within a large corporation, or your own small business, having access to an HTTP server can quickly improve the way your employees share knowledge.
Groups within an organization of any size generally need to share a great deal of information, even though they may be working toward different goals. One way to accomplish this is to provide groups and individuals with access to an intranet Web server and allow them to publish their own facts and figures. Everyone could share one web server, and have a common user interface to access each others' work. If more space or segregation of information is needed, individual groups could set up their own web server using surplus hardware and Linux.
In another situation, you--the content provider--know exactly what you want, but are unable to find just the right package of features at the right cost. Many ISPs charge extra for even basic logging information. Given the tight margins that all businesses have to operate within these days, occasionally the right move is to set up your own host hardware.
Another reason to set up a Web server is that some Internet-based applications may require performance that only a dedicated server can offer--tuned to your special needs.
It may seem unlikely that you can provide a better service than experienced ISPs, but ISPs are catering to a mass market and tend to charge a lot for special services. Some web applications just don't fit into the general ISP scheme and installing your own web server on a Linux box, could prove to be a cost effective way of getting the Internet services you need.
| | Hits:609 Rate: 0.0(out of 5) Vote:0 Submit Date :2006-03-21
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| Setting Up A SuSE 8.0 Linux DHCP Client
Enterprise businesses with their own IT staffs may have the knowledge and where-with-all to implement Linux in their organizartions, but what about the small-business owner who has to manage everything from buying pencils to setting up the network? The Admin Digest is a new series designed to address Linux solutions for people who have other things they can be doing with their time. This first installment examines how to use SuSE Linux 8.0 to create a DHCP client system.
| | Hits:364 Rate: 0.0(out of 5) Vote:0 Submit Date :2006-03-21
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| The Coda Distributed Filesystem for Linux
Bill von Hagen continues his thorough examination of the distributed filessystems available for the Linux platform. In this report, he explores the Coda distributed filesystem that provided much of the inspiration for InterMezzo and gives readers a detailed tutorial on how to implement Coda for themselves.
The Coda Distributed Filesystem for Linux
Introduction to Coda
Bill von Hagen
Monday, October 7, 2002 11:12:44 AM
The initial article in this series provided an overview of the basic principles of distributed filesystems, and highlighted several of the most popular and up-and-coming distributed filesystems that are available for Linux today. The previous articles explored the InterMezzo distributed filesystem and explained how to install and configure a simple InterMezzo client and server. This article explores the Coda distributed filesystem that provided much of the inspiration for InterMezzo and which is also readily available for Linux.
Coda is a well-established distributed filesystem that was developed at Carnegie-Mellon University, is actively in use there, and is also still actively under development. Coda began life as a variant of the AFS distributed filesystem (version 2) from Carnegie-Mellon University, but has since taken on a complete life of its own. Led by M. Satyanarayanan, the Coda filesystem project is focused on specific distributed filesystem functionality required for mobile computing, such as support for disconnected operation. As explained in the article on InterMezzo, "disconnected operation" is the term used to describe the situation where a system that is ordinarily a part of a networked, distributed filesystem, is used without being connected to a network.
Due to its heritage, Coda shares a basic set of terminology and features with AFS. (The Open Source version of AFS, OpenAFS, will be discussed in the next article in this series.) Coda provides a number of features that make it an excellent, high-performance distributed filesystem. Beyond its focus on mobile and disconnected operation, one of Coda's most significant features is its extensive use of caching. Caching means that copies of files or portions of file retrieved from Coda servers are preserved on Coda clients as long as they can be verified to match the master data stored on the Coda server. This is therefore known as "client-side caching". Client-side caching reduces the amount of time that it takes to restart a Coda client by minimizing the amount of data that needs to be transmitted over the network after a Coda client is restarted. It's a fact of computer life that people tend to work on the same files and in the same directories--these change over time, of course, but the files you are working on today are probably more-or-less the same ones that you worked on yesterday.
Client-side caching reduces network communication and minimizes client restart times, but doesn't always guarantee that the files that you need to work on are present on the client. In a networked environment, this is fine--the client system can simply retrieve the file from the file server on which it is located. Given Coda's focus on disconnected operation, Coda also provides command-line commands that let users manipulate the contents of the cache, guaranteeing that specific files and directories will be present in the client's cache. Coda's "hoard" command therefore enables you to anticipate being disconnected from the network. uses any preloading your system with cached copies of specific file and directories. This function is typically used before you disconnect a laptop from the network prior to working in a disconnected fashion for some period of time. An example of using the hoard command is provided later in this article.
| | Hits:518 Rate: 0.0(out of 5) Vote:0 Submit Date :2006-03-21
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| Remote Administration of Linux Systems
One of the best advantages of using Linux is the ability to quickly and (if done correctly) safely logon to and administer another machine from across the room or across the planet. All you need are the right tools, a little paranoia, and just a little time, as Alexander Prohorenko details in this tutorial.
| | Hits:422 Rate: 0.0(out of 5) Vote:0 Submit Date :2006-03-21
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| Using RAID in Linux
The concept of RAID, so often put aside in Linux documentation for all those smart systems administrators, is actually not something that takes a lot of special knowledge to understand. As Alexander Prohorenko explains, all you need is a little common sense and a good plan to implement RAID on your systems.
Using RAID in Linux
The Mysteries of RAID
Alexander Prohorenko
Thursday, August 1, 2002 01:52:49 PM
When you look at some of the installation documents for any of popular Linux distributions, you will see only few mentions of the term RAID, typically with passages such as "you will need RAID only if you are a very professional systems administrator and you already know what are you doing."
Even in the latest documentation of the latest Linux releases, this is likely the only thing you will see about RAID. This is one big reason why I think we should move past this barrier and demonstrate that RAID can be used by "normal" people.
RAID stands for "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks." This seems to be rather self-explantory, except for that strange word "inexpensive." In reality, it's usually just refers to common PC hard disks, either SCSI and IDE.
But some additional explanation is necesary, however. Array simply means multiple units. It is perhaps the most significant term in the acronym--for owners of just one, even huge, hard drive, RAID is absolutely useless. Also, the word "redundant" is not an entirely descriptive label. As you'll see, it is not as easy as that.
First, let's begin by describing what RAID can be.
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| Linux Partition HOWTO
This Linux Mini-HOWTO teaches you how to plan and create partitions on IDE and SCSI hard drives. It discusses partitioning terminology and considers size and location issues. Use of the fdisk partitioning utility for creating and recovering of partition tables is covered.
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| How I Caught the Spam and What I Did With it When I Caught it
Longtime Perl programmer Mark-Jason Dominus tells us about an unhappy incident involving food and some lawyers. He also finds time tell us how to deal with annoying Email.
How I Caught the Spam and What I Did With it When I Caught it
An Unpleasant Surprise
Mark-Jason Dominus
Thursday, October 14, 1999 03:43:35 PM
In May of 1994, while I was reading the phl.food newsgroup, I saw something new. It was a message with this subject:
U.S. Green Card Lottery - New Immigration Opportunity
That was not what I expected to see in phl.food, so I wrote to the author:
This has nothing at all to do with food, and you posted it to
phl.food. Please be more polite in the future and keep
announements in relevant and appropriate groups.
And he sent me a reply:
People in your group are interested. Why do you wish to
deprive them of what they consider to be important
information??
I was really startled. Naïvely I had expected that the author would recognize that he had done something incorrect once it was pointed out to him. Gosh, was I wrong!
That was the beginning of my life with spam. It was the now infamous `Green Card Spam' from Lawrence Canter and Martha Siegel, a pair of incompetent lawyers. But they were on the leading edge of a big trend. Within two years the newsgroups were clogged with spam, and at the same time email spam was becoming common.
Spam, Spam Everywhere
The email spam was really starting to bother me towards the end of 1996, when I was getting several junk messages each week. (How quaint that seems now!) I tried to figure out what to do about the spam. Some of the plans worked out well. Some were instant failures. Some were failures but it took me years to decide that they didn't work---those are the most interesting ones. My basic problem was that it annoyed me to get spam mail in my inbox every morning. I wanted to address this problem directly. Complaining back to the the source wasn't what I was looking for, because I would still be annoyed. One solution would have been to stop getting annoyed, but I didn't have much luck with that, so I tried to think of ways to prevent the spam from getting into my inbox in the first place. I started thinking about filtering.
The idea of filtering is simple: write a program that will examine each incoming message, and if it looks like spam, throw it away. If not, the program delivers it to my inbox as usual.
The idea is simple, but the implementation is hard. What does spam look like? And if I couldn't recognize it infallibly, what would happen when I made a mistake?
Failing to recognize spam is called a false negative, and is only a minor problem. The only thing that would happen was that my blood pressure would go up imperceptibly. But the opposite false positive problem, of incorrectly recognizing and discarding some message that wasn't spam, was much more frightening. If I erroneously identified a non-spam message as spam, and threw it away, I might lose important messages from clients, or from my lawyers, or from someone else important. So I decided that whatever happened no message must ever be thrown away until I had had a chance to look at it. And messages that are rejected mustn't go into an oubliette somewhere unless someone is notified. I had nightmares about getting a call from my lawer, asking why I hadn't gotten an important communication the previous month, and having to say it had gone into my spam box.
| | Hits:161 Rate: 0.0(out of 5) Vote:0 Submit Date :2006-03-21
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| Comprehensive guide to .htaccess
.htaccess is a mysterious file on your server that can do wonders for your site. Get the lowdown on .htaccess and how to use it to customize your site's error pages, password protect directories, deny user(s) by IP, and more.
Comprehensive guide to .htaccess
Tutorial written and contributed by Feyd, moderator of the JK Forum, with additions by JavaScriptKit.com. Please see tutorial footnote for additional/bio info on author. Last updated: Jan 18th, 06' for additional section.
I am sure that most of you have heard of htaccess, if just vaguely, and that you may think you have a fair idea of what can be done with an htaccess file. You are more than likely mistaken about that, however. Regardless, even if you have never heard of htaccess and what it can do for you, the intention of this tutorial is to get you two moving along nicely together.
If you have heard of htaccess, chances are that it has been in relation to implementing custom error pages or password protected directories. But there is much more available to you through the marvelously simple .htaccess file.
| | Hits:131 Rate: 0.0(out of 5) Vote:0 Submit Date :2006-03-20
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| Beginner's Guide to SSI (server side includes)
An easy to follow guide on SSI and how to use this feature to do handy tasks such as include the contents of an external file, display the current server date or time, get the user's IP address and more.
Beginner's Guide to SSI (server side includes)
An easy to follow guide on SSI and how to use this feature to do handy tasks such as include the contents of an external file, display the current server date or time, get the user's IP address and more.
Beginner's Guide to SSI (server side includes)
Don't worry, SSI doesn't require a rocket-science degree to understand and use. It is, however, a highly useful feature that lets you do incredibly time saving tasks such as include the contents of an external file across multiple pages on your site, or access and display server specific information such as the current server time, visitor's IP address, etc. In this tutorial I'll introduce new comers to the wonderful world of SSI! SSI is short for Server Side Includes, by the way.
Does my server support SSI?
The first thing that needs to be settled is whether your server supports SSI and have it enabled. SSI is a Linux/Apache specific feature, so if you're on a Windows server for example, you'll need to look for the Windows equivalent of SSI (sorry, not a Window's guy). To test if your server supports SSI then, you can run a simple test, by inserting the below code inside a webpage, and saving the page with a .shtml extension (the most common extension configured to parse SSI by default):
test.shtml source:
| | Hits:402 Rate: 0.0(out of 5) Vote:0 Submit Date :2006-03-20
Rate It | Error | Review |
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| Schedule scripts to run
Schedule your daily work like checking logfiles, cleaning up old data in your web systems. Let automated scripts take care of this, learn how to use "Cronjob" for this.
| | Hits:288 Rate: 0.0(out of 5) Vote:0 Submit Date :2006-03-20
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