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Off-topic Post

dpal — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 05:02:07 +0000

I’m gonna go a little off-topic tonight and blog a little a bout some of my personal likes.

First, I read today that AMD has broken the 20% mark in market share. I’ve been a fan of AMD for quite a few years now, so it is a good thing to see them gaining a little ground and respectability in the general public and the business sector alike.

Also, I’ve been taking some free online courses from HP. Right now, I’m enrolled in the Linux 201 class and the PHP/Mysql class. We’ve gone through two lessons so far, and I’m fairly happy with what is being taught. The Linux 201 class is based on the Fedora Core distribution and even moreso using the gnome desktop environment. I use neither at home – I am a gentoo man with fluxbox as my window manager when I need one. However, The course outline says that they will begin concentrating on some command-line administration pretty soon. That’s the only reason I really signed up for the course – also to see where my skills are lacking as an administrator.

The PHP/MySQL class has been interesting and requires more time than I thought. I actually have to lay out the design of some faux property management website before we actually create it and then create a control panel for it. This class could end up being very helpful to me.

I’ve started an exercise program. Well – not really… I am just doing some calisthenics to keep my heart rate up and then some bench presses and resistance crunches on the Bowflex. No strict schedule or anything, but I’ve put in about an hour each night for the past 3 nights. You see, I noticed the other evening a new warning label on my cholesterol meds. The new prescription bottle says that I shouldn’t eat grapefruit or drink grapefruit juice at any time while on the meds. Intruiged, I did some web research and found out that there is some chemical found in grapefruit that reacts with the medicine. While researching, I also read many complaints from people regarding muscle loss. Some were claiming that it was pretty substantial. Well, for those of you that know me, know that I have kinda “let myself go” the past few years. The last thing I really need is to get bigger. I figure that the little bit that I’m doing now will help counteract what I could be losing due to the medication.

During my downtime, I like to browse the web and catch up on news(mostly technology) and sports, but about a month ago or so, I ran into a blog that has quickly turned into one of my new favorites. Again, those of you that know me, know that I worked in the service industry for about 10-12 years. I loved the restaurant business, and I took extreme pride in my job. The money was good as well… In fact, a couple of those years actually exceeded my sysadmin salary from last year. Anyway, waiterrant.net has been a good way for me to reminisce about both the good and bad things of my “previous life.” I thnk it’s a great read whether you’re familiar with restaurant life or not.

So the Steelers made it to the Super Bowl!!! I’m really excited!!! It’s a nice story that Jerome Bettis will get to play his final(reportedly) game in his hometown for the title. I’m sure emotions will be high, but I hope the Steelers don’t become overconfident. I’ve been keeping an eye on the Seahawks’ stats all year and they’ve been pretty impressive. This game is going to be much closer than most people think.

I also read that Mario’s calling it quits again. This time it looks as if it’s for good. I’m so sad about this. I had planned on going to Raleigh this year to see the Hurricanes-Pens matchup just to say that I got to see Mario play… and then they found out about his irregular heartbeat, and all my hopes were lost. Earlier in the month, Mario put the Pens up for sale, but wants to keep the team in Pittsburgh. I truly hope he can accomplish this task. I know the Pens haven’t been great the past few years, and I know that they are underachieving this year, but the Pens should never leave Pittsburgh. It just wouldn’t be the same.

A thought just came to me… How many cities have won at least 3 of the big 4 sports championships?
Here’s what I have: New York, Boston, LA, Chicago, Pittsburgh… Any others?

Linux Basics – Where’s My Stuff?

dpal — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 06:11:41 +0000

One of the toughest things for a windows user to begin to understand is the Linux’s filesystem layout.
I thought I’d give a quick primer:

/ (aka:root) – The root directory is the base of the filesystem “tree”. It would be equivalent to C:\ in the windows world.

/boot – The boot directory may or may not be visible to the user once the OS has been booted since somtimes the directory can be unmounted after the boot process is complete. This filesystem consists of the all the things needed at system boot time. The OS kernel is usually located in this directory, but sometimes located in the root directory.

/bin – The bin directory contains essential user-command binaries. These are commands that can be used by any user, including the systems administrator. This area is meant specifically for commands needed when no other filesystems are mounted, as in when the system is in single-user mode. Other user-executable files can be found in /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, or in /opt/[package]/bin

/dev – The dev directory is reserved for device files. For instance, references to devices such as /dev/hda – which is usually your ide hard drive, or /dev/sound – which usually contains iformation regarding your sound card, are often found in your system configuration files.

/etc – The etc directory is where almost all of your system-specific configuration files are found. No binaries are found here. For instance, the filesystems mounted at boot time can be found in /etc/fstab. You determine how mysql(if it’s installed) behaves by editing /etc/my.cnf. Your users, their passwords(well, sort of), home directories, and their default shell are all stored in /etc/passwd.(Their encrypted password is usually in /etc/shadow) Note:Please take extreme caution when editing any of these files. The slightest typo to one of these files can cause very unexpected results!

/home – The home directory is where user home directories(except root, whose home directory is usually either /root or /) are kept. Normally, when you log in, you begin in your home directory(eg:user foo would begin in /home/foo). This is a basic repository for your(the user) convenience. You can keep documents, downloads, pictures, etc. here. Also located here are user-specific configuration files. These files ( also known as “dot” files) contain user-specific prefernces for how they may want a particular application to behave. Mysql will look at /etc/my.cnf and then look at /home/foo/.my.cnf for configuration preferences whenever it is called. These “dot files” are not visible to the normal user via the normal ls command, but can be found by doing an “ls -a”.

/lib – The lib directory contains shared libraries for applications and kernel modules as well.

/opt – The Opt directory is reserved for add-on packages or third-party packages.

/sbin – sbin contains system binaries that are needed for booting, restoring, or recovering the system. Other sysadmin utilities can be found in /sbin, /usr/sbin, or /usr/local/sbin.

/tmp – the tmp directory is a repository for applications that require temporary files.

/usr – /usr is a very complex directory structure and is maybe a little too in-depth for this article. the /usr directory is usually broken down in to many sub-directories:

/usr/lib - application libraries for binaries found in /usr/bin and /usr/sbin

/usr/local - This is a repository for locally installed binaries

/usr/include - contains C header files

/usr/share -  files are not archetecture specific

/usr/bin - contains most user commands

/usr/sbin - system administration commands

/usr/src - source code. Your kernel source files can be found in /usr/src/linux

/var – also quite complex is the var directory strucure. I will attempt to explain a few of the subdirectories:

/var/cache - application cache data

/var/lib - variable state information

/var/log - here is the meat of the /var filesystem. System and application logs are here

/var/spool - application spool data

/proc – This directory is for kernel and process information

Well, that should get you started. If you need to know more about the filesystem directory structure, there is a standards document on the web specifically for this. Their document is much more complete(and maybe more accurate) than what I provided here, but my purpose was to get you familiar with your surroundings before flying head-first into the unknown. As always, if you have any questions, leave a comment and I will attempt to answer as best I can.

Linux Basics – Applications

dpal — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 02:55:33 +0000

Any OS is only truly as useful as the applications that run on it. Fortunately, Linux has a plethora of very good open source applications for a variety of needs. In this article, I will list my suggestions for applications in a number of different categories. Of course, since linux is about choice, I will include some alternatives as well.

Web Browser
1) Mozilla Firefox – This to me, is a no brainer. I would recommend this browser to both Linux and Windows users alike. With the implementation of tabbed-browsing, extensions, a built-in(and configurable) search bar, themes, pop-up blocker, etc. this browser is extremely hard to beat regardless of OS.

2) Konquerer – is the default web browser for the KDE desktop. Not only is it a web browser, but it also functions as KDE’s file manager and can be an image viewer as well.

3) Epiphany – is the default web browser for the Gnome desktop based on the gecko engine(same as firefox). This browser includes the use of extensions, as well as tabbed browsing.

4) Recently, Opera changed their approach by removing the ads on their web browser and leaning up the interface. The result is a clean, speedy browser with an email client included.

Email Client
1) Evolution is as close to an Outlook replacement as you can get and since I do use all of the capabilities of Outlook at work, I will make Evolution my email client recommendation. Some of the features of Evolution include: Junk Mail filtering, Search Folders, Calandering, and the capability to talk with an Exchange Server.(a separate plug-in is required)

2) Sylpheed-claws is an excellent lightweight email client/usenet newsreader with a wide featureset including spamassassin integration as well as anti-virus scanning via clamd. This application is my second choice and would be my first if I didnt need Evolution for my work.

3) Though I have not personally tried Thunderbird, it comes highly recommended from some of my more trusted linux users, so I figured I’d put it in.

Office Suite
While both major Desktop environments provide their own office suite, Gnome has gnome-office and KDE has koffice, Openoffice.org2 is the clear standout. This suite is the most complete open source MSOffice replacement available.

Windows Integration
Chances are, you will still have a Windows-based computer somewhere n your network, or you have that one Windows-based app that you absolutely cannot do without. Samba will lessen the pain by allowing you to enable file and print sharing between platforms. Samba is not the easiest application to configure, but with some patience and maybe a quick search around your distribution’s site, you will probably find a HOWTO that will at least get you started. A very detailed HOWTO can be found on the Samba site. Many distributions include samba wth their default install or provide the option to install it. Wine is the tool needed for getting that must-have Windows application running in linux. A user-guide is available on the site.

Graphics Editing
The Gimp… period.

Multimedia
I’m not an expert at this by a longshot, but I happen to have Mplayer installed on my linux box and it serves basically all of my multimedia needs. Others recommend xine and vlc.

Games
While the selection of games for linux is nowhere near as wide as the offerings for Windows, There are still a ton of really good(and bad) open source games to choose from. Not to mention that many big game developing houses have recognized the popularity of linux and are offering linux clients for many of their multiplayer games. Some of these include Neverwinter Nights, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Quake4, and Unreal Tournament.

Security
1) Firestarter is a very good fornt-end to iptables. Iptables is basically firewall functionality already included in the linux kernel.

2) As previously mentioned, clamav is a very good virus scanner.

There are many, many more apps that I could mention ranging from the MythTV project, to Apache’s web server. If there is something specific you are looking for, leave a comment, and I’ll try to reply as soon as I can.

My next article will address the linux directory structure, so stay tuned…

Linux Basics – the GUI strikes back!

dpal — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 04:49:26 +0000

So, you’re a linux newbie… you did the research, found a distribution that you think you might like, installed it on an old(or new) PC… now what? What next?

Well, the real question is What is it that you want to do? Thanks to the open source community, there no real limit to what you can do with your new linux computer. But, let’s get you started with your basic linux necessities. This article assumes that you have at least one distribution that you have chosen and installed and that it has access to the internet.

Desktops
Depending on the distribution you choose, certain Desktop environments come as the default. The most common used by distributions today are gnome and KDE, but there are others such as xfce which is much more reminiscent of windows than the previous two. A Dessktop Environment can be described as a GUI(Graphical User Interface) in which the user can interact with the Operating System(OS). A DE usually consists of a window manager(wm), icons, themes, and little applets designed to help configure the look and feel of your desktop. A user can choose to install any one of these DEs or none at all.
My advice- Most common Distros install both KDE and Gnome. Try both and see which one you are most comfortable with. Please note that some distros only install one by default(Ubuntu uses Gnome… try kubuntu for KDE), and others don’t include a DE at all.(Gentoo lets you decide if you want a DE or just a Window Manager or just an ASCII console.)

WINDOW MANAGERS
A window manager(wm) basically is the software that controls the look, feel, and placement of your application windows. Many of them offer other functions such as virtual desktops, menus, or docks.
Both Gnome and KDE come with their own default wms(metacity and Kwin respectively), but there are many others to choose from such as fluxbox, xfwm, Enlightenment, and many many more.
My Advice- Stick with your DE’s default wm. If you chose not to install a DE, try fluxbox… it’s extremely lightweight and very flexible.

OK- so now we have your desktop set the way you want. you’ve found some cool-looking wallpaper and maybe a nice theme. Now we need some apps to run on your linux machine. Stay tuned – as my next Linux post will be all about the essential apps and the myriad of choices you have for each function.