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Sys Admin and The Perl
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Version 12.0 delivers every issue of Sys Admin from 1992 through 2006 and every
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A Comparison of I/O Schedulers
Mulyadi Santosa, Fawad Lateef
The authors provide an overview and comparison of Linux disk I/O schedulers.
Fri, 29 Jun 2007
Upgrading Linux
Mark Roth
Roth provides some tips for upgrading or migrating Linux without too much pain.
Fri, 29 Jun 2007
Create a Customized Live Linux CD or Bootable USB Thumb Drive Using Knoppix
John Ferrell
Ferrell provide step-by-step instructions
to create a custom Knoppix CD and
use that CD to create a bootable USB thumb drive.
Sun, 29 Apr 2007
Java Web Application First Aid
Alan Berg
Berg explains how to find the cause of some common issues arising when deploying Web applications with Tomcat, Apache server, and mod_jk.
Sun, 29 Apr 2007
Implementing Highly Available Oracle Databases with Red Hat Cluster Suite
Sergey Nemirovsky
Nemirovsky explains the capabilities and limitations of Red Hat Cluster Suite in reducing downtime and improving availability of Oracle databases.
Fri, 30 Mar 2007
Linux Fits in Education
Quentin Hartman
Hartman discusses how Linux can help inexpensively meet the IT needs of educational institutions.
Sat, 30 Dec 2006
Sharing A Linux Scanner On Your Network
Marcel Gagné
If someone in your office is doing dedicated graphical design work, I can pretty much guarantee he has his own scanner at his side. Other people, however, may need only occasional access to a scanner. Scanners are pretty inexpensive pieces of equipment these days but they do take up valuable real estate on users' desks. Even if the price is right, space may still be an issue. With the saned program, part of the SANE package, it is possible to make a scanner connected to your Linux system available to others users on other workstations (besides, you were always taught that it was nice to share). Setting this up is extremely easy, and I'll take you through the steps now. I'll even show you how you can share that Linux scanner with a Windows workstation.
Tue, 17 Oct 2006
Ubuntu Linux: What's All the Fuss?
Marcel Gagné
Ubuntu Linux is hot. Really hot. How hot? Well, if you surf over to Distrowatch (http://www.distrowatch.com), you'll notice that Ubuntu is listed as the number one distribution, at least in terms of hit ranking on the site. SUSE and Fedora are usually duking it out for second and third place. In fact, Ubuntu has been in first place for quite a while now.
Mon, 30 Oct 2006
Accessing Windows Resources from a Linux Desktop
Marcel Gagné
You're one of the lucky ones. Despite incredible pressures, you've somehow managed to convince your boss to let you run Linux on your workstations instead of Windows. It could be that you've already saved your organization tens of thousands of dollars by convincing them to upgrade to OpenOffice.org instead of the latest Microsoft Office, and now the company is willing to explore other possibilities. However, you are still going to have to deal with the Windows workgroup or domain and the appropriate shared files and printers.
Mon, 30 Oct 2006
Building a Bulletproof Penguin: DB2 and Linux Failover
Joe La Chapell, JT Vogt
Implementing a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that will impact every division of a company is an intriguing proposition. A lot is expected of such a system, and when we were tasked with this undertaking at our company, we did not want to neglect the foundation of it -- the database. As we researched this project, it became evident that we could satisfy all the necessary requirements with a combination of products: IBM DB2, Red Hat Linux, as well as Heartbeat, Mon, and ipfail. In this article, I will describe how we built a "bulletproof penguin" one piece at a time.
Thu, 29 Jun 2006
Questions and Answers
Amy Rich
Amy Rich answers Questions for July 2006.
Mon, 24 Jul 2006
Chain Gang: Using SSH Chains to Traverse Firewalls
Ralf Hack
Imagine that you're working at home and you need access through the corporate firewall, but your document server, intranet Web server, and the development systems are protected by a managed shared firewall. Additionally, routing restrictions require multiple hops to gain access to your LAN. Even with a comprehensive VPN solution, you may experience difficulties accessing your normal work environment. Network restriction and network segmentation designed to protect your environment may hinder usability. Other than disregarding change control processes or maintenance windows, there is often no fast and sure way to open a port on short notice.
Thu, 29 Sep 2005
Remote Administration Based on VPN for Home Networks
Rafael Palacios, José Daniel Muñoz Frías
Because of recent improvements in communications, telework is increasing in all developed countries. One of the major problems associated with telework, from the technical point of view, relates to network and computer configuration. Although these problems are usually easily solved by systems administrators in the office, they can sometimes be impossible to address without going to the employee's home.
Thu, 29 Sep 2005
An Overview of IBM p5 Virtualization Features
Ron Jachim
If your management is like mine, they want to see their expensive computing resources utilized as fully as possible. This often contradicts the common expectation of being able to run additional applications without purchasing additional hardware. The management where I work has requested that we show better utilization. Incorrect figures abound as to our current utilization, but everyone believes it can be improved.
Thu, 29 Sep 2005
System Automation with PXE, Kickstart, and Cfengine
John Borwick
Manually installing operating systems and software is hard, and inevitably results in mistakes that make each server subtly different. Many administrators have surmounted the problems of manual installation by implementing a fully automated installation (FAI) process. With FAI, you can tell a server to install itself and return later to find a fully configured machine. The problem with FAI is that, while it guarantees a certain initial state, it does not necessarily configure each application or maintain the server's state over time -- you're on your own scheduling cron jobs and installing configuration files.
Thu, 29 Sep 2005
Tuning Your SELinux Policy with Audit2allow
Kevin Fenzi
Fedora Core 3 Linux has been shipping with Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) enabled by default for about six months now. SELinux allows privileges to be separated much more finely than the typical approach of having users and groups and the all-powerful root "superuser". The default SELinux configuration is fine for some uses, but the SELinux configuration files make sendmail.cf look easy. In this article, I will show you step-by-step how to tune your SELinux policy to your specific needs using the audit2allow tool.
Sat, 30 Jul 2005
Migrating to Mozilla Thunderbird
Dennis Gesker
You probably already know that Mozilla Firefox is a Web browser developed and distributed by the Mozilla Foundation. The release of the browser has been met with a warm reception, and there are reports that it has even made some headway in winning market share away from the dominant Microsoft product, Internet Explorer.
Mon, 30 May 2005
Migrating to LDAP-Based Naming Service in a Heterogeneous Environment
Kaijun Zhan
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, or LDAP, is increasingly popular in today's Unix/Linux environment as an option for naming services. Unlike NIS, which is based on a flat namespace, LDAP-based architecture is flexible and scalable. However, the process of seamlessly converting from one naming service to another can be very complicated.
Mon, 30 May 2005
Linux High Availability Clusters with Heartbeat, DRBD, and DRBDLinks
Sean Reifschneider
Linux clusters using Heartbeat and DRBD allow High Availability (HA) clusters to be created very inexpensively. In the past, HA clusters typically required a standalone RAID array (preferably Fibre Channel) in addition to the pair of servers. Now, for a fraction of the cost of a standalone RAID array and using entirely free software, an HA cluster can be built with Heartbeat and DRBD.
Fri, 29 Apr 2005
Portable Jumpstart Environment
Michael R. Sbailo Jr.
Automating system builds has greatly increased systems administrators' ability to build and recover environments in a more uniform manner. Each platform has its own method of accomplishing this, such as Jumpstart (Solaris), Autoyast (SUSE), Kickstart (Red Hat), etc. In this article, I'll focus on running Solaris's Jumpstart technology from a Linux-based laptop. Because of the need to support sites in the field that are scaled down and thus cannot support a full-blown boot environment, I wanted to combine all the components of Jumpstart into one.
Wed, 30 Mar 2005
Linux Server Monitoring with IPMI
Philip J. Hollenback
If you have expensive computer systems running in your data center, you want to make sure they keep running smoothly. Server vendors have addressed this by adding system monitoring devices to motherboards to report on temperatures, fan speeds, and voltages.
Sat, 28 Feb 2004
Building a Bridge-Based Firewall
Gleicon S. Moraes
Bridges are network devices that were widely used in older network setups (like Novell's NetWare) and are still in use in some equipment, such as xDSL modems. In a simple way, they just copy the network packet from one interface to another, making it possible to deal with two different network buses (or types), as is the case of DSL bridges.
Mon, 29 Nov 2004
Process Tracing with the Linux Trace Toolkit
B. B. Ramya, V. Pavithra, B. Thangaraju
Debugging an application or kernel program can be done with the GNU Debugger (gdb), Linux Kernel Source Level Debugger (kgdb), or Linux Kernel Debugger (kdb), but if we want to trace a particular process, we must use the strace utility, which will trace system calls and signals. Strace will trace only one process and present the result in text form. To trace many processes in a given period of time, Linux Trace Toolkit (LTT) is a better choice.
Sat, 30 Oct 2004
Locking Down Linux with Bastille
Kristy Westphal
As is widely known throughout the security community, default installations of operating systems are not very secure with regard to file system permissions, services enabled by default, and access control settings. Although many vendors are attempting to make their operating systems better by default, there are still some basic checks that can be done to make a system even more secure.
Sat, 30 Oct 2004
Embedded Linux Router
Tom Erjavec
Embedding Linux to create a networking device has long been a desired project of mine. With the advent of many micro-Linux distributions, it has become an easy task that can be done by any Linux lover. My goal was a high-performance secure Internet gateway, so I built a PC/Linux device that could offer full speed on an Ethernet port and provide a firewalled connection to the Internet.
Tue, 29 Jun 2004
Using VMWare as a Development Tool
Brian Wilson
I set up my first Linux system in 1992 as a lark. I was a SunOS and Mac lab manager at the time, and the idea of a UNIX system of my own appealled to me. Three weeks later, I started using it for consulting and telecommuting, and have relied on it ever since.
Tue, 27 Feb 2001
The IPv6 Internet: Connect Today with Linux
Ibrahim Haddad
The Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the next generation Internet protocol designed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as a replacement for the Internet protocol version 4 (IPv4). Most of today's Internet uses IPv4, which has been remarkably resilient despite its age; however, it is beginning to have problems in various areas. Its most visible shortcoming is the growing shortage of IPv4 addresses needed by all the new devices connecting to the Internet. Other limitations exist in Quality-of-Service (QoS), security, auto-configuration, and mobility aspects. As a result, the IETF defined IPv6 to fix the problems in IPv4 and added many enhancements to cater to the future Internet.
Sun, 30 May 2004
Deploying Microsoft FrontPage 2000 UNIX Web Services
Liam Widdowson
Microsoft FrontPage 2000 is a client/server application that simplifies authoring, management, and publishing of Web sites through a user-friendly GUI. It allows the implementation of seemingly complicated features, such as search engines, feedback forms, and discussion forums (that traditionally require CGI programming) with a few mouse clicks. Whether you're an enterprise rolling out FrontPage to manage your intranet content, or an ISP responding to customer demand, you can implement FrontPage-enabled Web services without Windows NT.
Sun, 30 Jan 2000
Persistent Linux with User-Mode Linux
Edward L. Haletky
Have you ever wished for an operating system that disregards all changes the next time there is a login? For security reasons, a persistent operating system maybe exactly what you need. And, given the security complexities of using Linux in critical positions, a persistent Linux may solve your concerns because customizations will be strictly controlled. Setting up a persistent User-Mode Linux (UML) session has many uses, from running a kiosk-style computer to creating a virtual jail for hackers. But let's define persistent. For the purposes of this article, persistent does not mean a completely static system, but a system where all customizations are strictly controlled and only those controlled customizations will last between uses. Most of the strictly controlled customizations will be those that allow the system to boot onto a network, set up specific applications for use, and other customization that administrators feel is important.
Thu, 29 Apr 2004
The OpenLDAP Proxy Server
Reinhard Voglmaier
Most people think of proxy servers only as servers that access resources on behalf of their users, but they can do much more. In this article, I will discuss LDAP proxy servers in particular and describe the functionality of this type of proxy. They can add access control, serve resources to their users, verify that users are who they claim to be, restrict access to resources, and rewrite requests using regular expressions. LDAP proxy servers also provide attribute mapping; this means they can map one attribute to another or hide an attribute altogether. These servers are frequently used for load balancing and fault tolerance, and can also have a cache to store results of frequently requested queries.
Thu, 29 Apr 2004
Configuring Linux for LDAP Name Service and Authentication
John D'Emic
Securely distributing account information is a common challenge faced by systems administrators. It is a tedious chore -- even in a small environment -- to individually log into multiple servers to change a single user's password. In the past, mechanisms such as NIS and NIS+ were used to fill this role. These services allowed the administrator to control user access from a single location, allowing him to quickly add accounts, change passwords, manage groups, and delete users. NIS and NIS+, however, have both fallen from favor because of security issues, compatibility concerns, or supportability. For Linux hosts, OpenLDAP is quickly emerging as the basis for centralized name service. Coupled with PADL software's PAM and NSS libraries, a complete open source suite of distributing user management is available for Linux.
Thu, 29 Apr 2004
Root Disk Mirroring with Linux
Jeff Layton
With hard disk drives, you can count on one thing: eventually, they will fail. Most operating systems have the ability to "mirror" hard disk data to two (or more) drives, which helps guard against failure. Linux is no exception and provides a kernel-based software RAID driver (known as the MD driver) that allows administrators to mirror devices (among other things).
Tue, 30 Mar 2004
Monitoring and Managing Linux Software RAID
Ryan Matteson
Systems administrators managing a data center face numerous challenges to achieve required availability and uptime. Two of the main challenges are shrinking budgets (for hardware, software, and staffing) and short deadlines in which to deliver solutions. The Linux community has developed kernel support for software RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) to help meet those challenges. Software RAID, properly implemented, can eliminate system downtime caused by disk drive errors. The source code to the Linux kernel, the RAID modules, and the raidtools package are available at minimal cost under the GNU Public License. The interface is well documented and comprehensible to a moderately experienced Linux systems administrator.
Tue, 30 Mar 2004
Securing Intranets with IPCop
Phil Barnett, Bryan Smith
An in-depth defense requires both host and network auditing and detection, in addition to basic host and network perimeter security. Because any security can be defeated, it is essential to be alerted when it has been. There is no greater business liability than an intranet that has become unknowingly compromised.
Fri, 30 Jan 2004
Creating a Bootable Backup of a Linux Operating System
Newton Hammet
I have an AMD Athlon-XP PC running Linux Red Hat 8.0 that I built for personal use and software development projects. For this system, I wanted an archival and recovery process that ensured a quick recovery from a hard drive crash or other loss of data, so I built my PC with two inClose cold-swappable docking bays. Each docking bay holds a removable docking tray containing one 60-GB IBM ATA hard drive. The result is a full tower PC that uses the hard drive in the bottom docking bay as my current operating system, and the hard drive in the top docking bay as my backup medium.
Tue, 30 Dec 2003
Current: An Open Source Update Server for Red Hat Linux
John Berninger
Beginning with version 6.2, Red Hat distributed a system updater tool called "up2date", which interoperates with the Red Hat Network (RHN) to intelligently download and install system updates and new packages. The client code, per Red Hat's usual business practices, was made publicly available. The server side of this code, however, was not released.
Tue, 30 Dec 2003
Emulating Networks Using User-Mode Linux
Ralf Spenneberg
When evaluating a new product or planning your firewall or VPN, it is always handy to be able to emulate your network virtually. Many people use VMware for this task and, although VMware does a very good job, it is quite cost-intensive. In this article, I'll describe how to use User-Mode Linux (UML) to model a network. UML is a Linux kernel capable of running on Linux. It offers networking, access to the host filesystem, jail, and honeypot features. Using virtual switches, you can combine several hosts to form a network. To use UML, you just need a Linux filesystem that the UML kernel can boot. I will also show how to use UML to emulate a testbed for a VPN solution.
Tue, 30 Dec 2003
Securing Linux Systems with grsecurity
Keith McDuffee
As systems administrators know, there are a multitude of open source tools available for securing a Linux system. Most of these tools are installed and run on top of the operating system, either executing at given intervals via cron, in the background as a daemon, or directly triggered by specific activity.
Sat, 30 Aug 2003
Integrating Linux Clusters into the Grid
Ian Lumb, Chris Smith
Linux clustering is pervasive. Next to the attractive price/performance of COTS components, smart system software plays a key role in this pervasiveness. In the context of clustering, it is smart system software that allows a number of distinct systems to appear as one -- even though each runs its own instance of the Linux operating system.
Wed, 30 Jul 2003
Data-Sharing Architectures in the Linux Data Center
Matthew O'Keefe
Very few would dispute that Linux plays a crucial role at the center of the Internet computing universe. But in the past few years, Linux has been moving up the value chain, steadily gaining the respect of corporations worldwide. Now, Linux is in the data center with high-performance clusters that offer mainframe-like performance and reliability. This article will examine the trends influencing the adoption of Linux clusters in the data center and explore why clustering has been "gaining ground."
Wed, 30 Jul 2003
Introducing the OpenSSI Project
Richard Ferri, Brian J. Watson
Although we often think of Linux clusters synonymously with High Performance Linux clusters, there are, in fact, many different types of Linux clusters. In addition to the well-known High Performance Computing (HPC) Linux cluster type, in the technical paper "Open Single System Image (OpenSSI) Linux Cluster Project", Bruce Walker lists five other cluster types:
Wed, 30 Jul 2003
The Secrets of openMosix
Richard Ferri
The ultimate promise of clusters is one of inexpensive, scalable compute power fueled by commodity hardware. openMosix expands that promise to include open source software. Luckily for programmers and administrators, openMosix fulfills the promise of an open, scalable, commodity cluster solution.
Wed, 30 Jul 2003
Product Review: Comparison of IM Clients
Marcel Gagné
If your enterprise is ready to wade into the IM waters, you will soon discover that IM is a many-headed beast with protocols galore. There is MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, AIM (now Oscar) and a raft of others. You could run a client of each, but manipulating every package with its various idiosyncrasies may be more than some people are willing to put up with. The real solution is an IM client that supports all those formats so that you can chat with people regardless of which IM provider they have chosen. With this requirement in mind, I'll tell you about some of the multi-protocol IM clients available for the Linux desktop.
Fri, 30 May 2003
Review: User-Mode Linux
Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier
I've always been fascinated by the idea of running an operating system under another operating system. It's a cool hack to make a piece of hardware do double (or triple, or quadruple...) duty by running virtual machines. I've been hearing such good things about User-mode Linux (UML) that I had to give it a whirl.
There are a few rough edges with UML. Overall, however, UML is a great piece of software that can come in very handy for Linux admins and developers.
Sun, 30 Mar 2003
dreamworks + hp
Caught between moviegoers' ever-rising expectations and movie studios' ever-shrinking budgets, the world-renowned animation team at DreamWorks had long had its eye on Linux. And for good reason. DreamWorks' leagacy systems could no longer handle graphics-intensive, proprietary applications like Toonshooter, and the company needed a flexible, scalable and less expensive platform that could.
Thu, 27 Feb 2003
PureMessage Identifies Close to 100% of Spam for University
The CS Department was beginning to reel form the amount of spam directed to their servers -- of an average 14,000 emails daily, approximately 3500 were spam. "We have always tried to remain relatively open with email content, and have readily available email addresses for everyone," said Rob Henderson, Associate Facilities Director for the CS Department. "There were lots of complaints from our because of teh upsurge in spam. THey were basically stopping me in the hall, asking, "What can we do to stop all this spam?"
Thu, 27 Feb 2003
linux services: implementing and optimizing your linux infrastructure
In view of the requiremant to integrate your Linux environment with your existing IT infrastructure, HP has developed a portfolio of Linux services based on our extensive experience on the HP-UX platform. These services ensure that your Linux implementation supports your business in addition to providing the availability you require to compete in the global marketplace.
Mon, 30 Dec 2002
hp mc/serviceguard for linux: protecting your environment
With more than 50,000 licences currently deployed on HP-UX, HP MC/Serviceguard is the proven solution for managing and protecting environments requiring high levels of availability. HP MC/Serviceguard is a robust clustering solution for protecting mission critical applications from a wide variety of hardware and software failures.
Mon, 30 Dec 2002
linux for the always-on internet infrastructure -- highly available and manageable for user optimization
Developed by Finland's Linus Torvalds, distributed for free, and organically enhanced by thousands of programmers worldwide, Linux has now hit the big time! According to IDC, Linux realized a 27% share of operating system software sold in 2000, up from 17% in 1998. As Linux gains acceptance, corporations in the telecommunications, oil and gas, retail, ISP, and manufacturing industries are exploiting its openness and cost benefits in the areas of CRM, point-of-sale, Web hosting, e-mail servers, and scientific applications.
Mon, 30 Dec 2002
Knox Software's Arkeia, Version 5.0.16
Marcel Gagné
Backups remain one of the most mundane tasks in the systems administrator's list of duties. For the most part, there's nothing exciting about the process and the excitement that does occasionally follow (restoring that lost file) is something we would all like to avoid. Nevertheless, backups are an absolute necessity. Having a reliable process that makes it easy to recover lost information is the only way to make friends when the inevitable happens. After all, it isn't a question of whether you backed up, but whether you can restore.
Thu, 27 Feb 2003
Recovering Linux Systems with mkcdrec
Kerry Thompson
Sooner or later, every sys admin will have to perform a system recovery. One of my favorite tools to do this task for Linux systems is a package called mkcdrec (make CD recovery), which was originally written in November 2000 by Gratien D'haese and has evolved into a compendium of Linux recovery tools.
Fri, 30 Aug 2002
Log Management Using Apache::DBILogger
Chip Castle
Many log-analyzer applications are available on the Web, but most are limited to specific predefined types of functionality. Many of these applications gather file transfer specifics from Apache's flat-file access log, which can confine the end user to a narrow scope of data-mining activities. I needed a much more flexible solution, which would allow me to add extra functionality in a scalable, customizable fashion. Thus, I installed the Apache::DBILogger module, which logs all incoming http requests on your server to a MySQL database.
Sun, 29 Sep 2002
Linux as a Windows Terminal Server Client
Kenneth Hess
For several years, I have been looking for the best way to use Linux at our client sites. Linux as a desktop operating system makes a lot of sense for businesses with limited budgets and computing resources. I am an avid proponent of Linux, and I think a total Linux network works beautifully, but many applications that our clients use are not available or are not easily transferable to Linux. However, I think I have found a way to use Linux in an interesting and money-saving capacity for just about anyone in a corporate network environment.
Wed, 30 Oct 2002
Bootprofile for Linux
Rajeev Kumar
When I switch my Linux laptop between home and office networking environments, I often need to reconfigure the laptop with different IP address, X display settings, DNS, DHCP, NIS settings, etc. To address this problem, I began by singling out which configuration files had to be changed and writing simple shell scripts for the onsite and homenet (offsite) networked environments. The scripts would run before I shut down my laptop to define the next boot mode (offsite or onsite). This was easy for me, but when we started deploying laptops for common users, I started searching for better tools.
Mon, 30 Dec 2002
Linux Kernel Debugging
Evan Sarmiento
Although understanding how to implement and maintain various services is critical to systems administration, it is also important to have an understanding of the underlying operating system. When working with the Linux kernel, especially the recent development kernels (2.5), knowledge of how to debug the running system is critical. The debugging techniques described in this article can help you pinpoint specific problems within the Linux kernel. With this information, you can fix the kernel and notify the Linux kernel mailing list.
Mon, 30 Dec 2002
Highlighting Linux Command Prompts with the PROMPT_COMMAND Variable
Kirk Becker
Most Linux installations provide a non-default command prompt startup with six available terminals accessible concurrently as {Alt-F1} through {Alt-F6}. Users can log in to explore their systems on the first terminal, then {Alt-F2} to log in again and read the man pages, then {Alt-F3} to log in again and read the HOWTOs. After reading the man pages and HOWTOs, users can {Alt-F1} back to the original terminal or {Alt-F4} to still another terminal to test a different command.
Mon, 30 Dec 2002
The OpenACS E-Commerce Solution
Rafael A. Calvo, Mark Aufflick
The Open Directory Project (http://www.dmoz.org/) lists more than 200 shopping cart/e-commerce software packages, and more than 20 of these are open source, including Red Hat's Interchange (formerly Minivend), and others familiar to the IT community. So why highlight the Open Architecture Community System (OpenACS) and its e-commerce package?
Thu, 30 Jan 2003
SELinux
Kerry Thompson
Security Enhanced Linux is an extension to the standard Linux kernel, designed to enforce strict access controls that confine processes to the minimum amount of privilege. In this article, Thompson describes how to install, configure, and manage an SELinux system.
Thu, 27 Feb 2003
Detecting and Removing Trojan Horses on Linux
Rich Paredes
This article shows how to detect Trojan horses on a Linux system and provides common-sense suggestions for dealing with them.
Tue, 30 Jul 2002
Questions and Answers
Amy Rich
Let Sys Admin solve your problems!
Submit your technical systems administration questions to our contributing editor, Amy Rich, President of Oceanwave Consulting Inc. Each month, Amy will select several challenging questions to answer in her column. Or check out the Questions and Answers archives.
Fri, 29 Nov 2002
Questions and Answers
Amy Rich
Let Sys Admin solve your problems!
Submit your technical systems administration questions to our contributing editor, Amy Rich, President of Oceanwave Consulting Inc. Each month, Amy will select several challenging questions to answer in her column. Or check out the Questions and Answers archives.
Wed, 30 Oct 2002
Using Oracle with Apache and PHP on Linux
William W. David
David outlines the steps needed to access Oracle databases from PHP running under Apache.
Sun, 29 Sep 2002
Providing Network Services Using LVS
Malcolm Cowe
The Linux Virtual Server (LVS) project provides a scalable server solution built upon a loosely coupled collection of individual computers organized into a cluster. Cowe describes the installation and configuration of an LVS system to provide a centralized server for HP-UX X11 applications.
Fri, 30 Aug 2002
Questions and Answers
Amy Rich
Let Sys Admin solve your problems!
Submit your technical systems administration questions to our contributing editor, Amy Rich, President of Oceanwave Consulting Inc. Each month, Amy will select several challenging questions to answer in her column. Or check out the Questions and Answers archives.
Fri, 30 Aug 2002
Compiling PalmTM Apps on Linux
Alex Lange
One of the latest waves in systems administration is to use handheld devices to administer systems remotely. As sys admins need to be everywhere at once, the convenience and ease of administering systems via a PalmTM Pilot (as one example) is becoming more and more apparent. Small programs called Palm Query Applications (PQAs), can be the front-end to systems administration tools, making them accessible to sys admins on the go. However, building a PQA is problematic for the Linux or UNIX systems administrator because Palm's development tools for PQAs run exclusively on Microsoft Windows.
Sat, 29 Jun 2002
Multi-Platform Performance Monitoring on the Cheap
Dale Southard
The monitoring system presented in this article grew out of a simple need for a portable system with which I could remotely monitor performance metrics on UNIX hosts. When I began looking for a solution, I considered many of the available commercial products. The standard xload is easy to understand, but only provides a single metric (load average) and doesn’t retain information across invocations. The top command is better, but again provides only a snapshot, not a history trail. Sun’s perfmeter and rstatd provide more metrics and the ability to save trails, but are only available under a few architectures. SGI’s Performance Co-Pilot can monitor and save an incredible number of metrics, but at the time was only available under IRIX (it has since been ported to Linux as well). Finally, SNMP looked like a future contender, but still suffered from a lack of affordable monitoring packages and security issues on some platforms.
Thu, 30 May 2002
Administering Linux IPSec Virtual Private Networks
Duncan Napier
In a previous article, "Introducing FreeS/WAN and IPSec", Napier discussed the basics of setting up IPSec for Linux using the FreeS/WAN package. This article describes some of the more advanced features of FreeS/WAN that can be leveraged to implement flexible and reliable IPSec VPNs.
Wed, 27 Feb 2002
Redundant Internet Connections Using Linux
Seann Herdejurgen
Herdejurgen shows how to set up a Linux host with redundant Internet connections.
Sun, 30 Dec 2001
IPTables/NetFilter - Linux's Next-Generation Stateful Packet Filter
Duncan Napier
Napier provides an overview of the new firewalling features of IPTables.
Thu, 29 Nov 2001
Multi-Booting Windows 98, Linux, and SolarisTM
Brian Gollsneider
Gollsneider presents a formula to quickly set a machine to boot Windows 98, Linux, and Intel Solaris.
Sat, 29 Sep 2001
Interoperating Linux with NetWare
A.J. Weinzettel
Passwords are a necessity in keeping information secure. The drawback is having so many of them -- one for email, one to access files, telnet/ssh sessions, etc. In this article, I will introduce an Apache module that allows users to use their Novell NDS password to access secure Web pages on a Linux Web server.
Fri, 29 Jun 2001
Remote Installation of Heterogeneous Linux Clusters Using LUI
Richard Ferri
The Linux Utility for cluster Install, aka LUI, is an open source project sponsored by IBM that was released in April of 2000 under the GPL (GNU Public License). LUI draws on technology developed for the RS/6000 SP, and was written to address the issue of how to install heterogeneous Linux nodes.
Fri, 30 Mar 2001
Using One Script to Backup Linux and Solaris
Clark Cooper
Backups are one of many critical tasks systems administrators must perform. Unfortunately, we too often hear horror stories of those who have not done them. This article introduces two shell scripts, Backup.sh and Restore.sh, which can be used to handle cpio backups and restores for an administrator needing a simple solution.
Fri, 30 Mar 2001
Web Hosting: A Migrational Case Study
Ripduman Sohan
Hosting, the act of providing a service on behalf of an individual or company, is a concept that has been around for as long as the Internet. There are many types of hosting services, including Web, mail, and database hosting. However, the most popular and longest-lived hosting service has been Web site hosting.
Tue, 27 Feb 2001
Open Source Real-Time Operating Systems
Rafeeq Ur Rehman
A real-time operating system performs its functions and responds to external events, such as interrupts, within a specified period of time. The term "real-time" means that the system responds to events as they occur. Real-time systems play a very important role in daily life. Common applications of these systems include air traffic control systems, telecommunication equipment, routing and switching products, and medical imaging systems.
Sat, 30 Dec 2000
A Linux Internet Gateway
Marcel Gagné
his beginning-level article will show how to configure a Linux system to provide Internet access. I'll also show how to accomplish this for a minimum of cost, with one company sharing a single phone line, a single modem, and a single dial-up account to an ISP. This setup demonstrates the magic of IP forwarding and masquerading - a technique that makes all hosts in a network appear as though they are coming from the single Internet-connected Linux server.
Tue, 30 May 2000
Using Linux to Duplicate Computers
Mark Nielsen
Thu, 30 Mar 2000
A Linux Email Server
Marcel Gagné
Electronic mail is a strange beast. In the past few years, I've set up a number of electronic mail and Internet gateways. Some of my customers are smaller companies with a few employees and no desire to pay huge amounts of money for a 24x7 ISDN or DSL connection.
Sun, 30 Jan 2000
Selecting a GUI for Linux
Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier
Thu, 30 Dec 1999
Policy Routing in Linux
Matthew Marsh
Thu, 30 Dec 1999
Kickstart
James O'Kane
Kickstart automates the install process, so that it becomes as simple as putting the floppy in, turning the machine on, and coming back 15 minutes later. Kickstart is especially useful if you have a number of machines with similar configurations.
Thu, 30 Dec 1999
Linux as an Application Server -- The Tomcat Way
Christopher Bush
Previously, Web servers didn't always get the same attention in the corporate data center as the mainframe, the database servers, or even the file and print servers. However, Web servers are here to stay and have added their own complexities to the job of the systems administrator.
Sat, 30 Dec 2000
An Apache Load Balancing Cluster
Don Gourley
The Java Application Server Pseudo-cluster (JASPer) is a simple cluster built with commodity hardware and free software from the Apache Foundation.
Sat, 30 Dec 2000
Linux Affinity
The success of Linux and open source over the recent months has made many of the traditionally high-end UNIX vendors take notice. IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett-Packard have all announced steps to embrace Linux on their traditionally high-end, enterprise UNIX operating systems, AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX, respectively.
Wed, 30 May 2001
Homebrew High Availability
Drew Smith
Smith provides step-by-step instructions for booting Linux from a software RAID-1 device. Besides doubling the reliability of your hard disk, this configuration also gives your IDE or SCSI bus a break, giving it two different paths from which to read from the disk.
Sat, 30 Dec 2000
Examining LPI Certification
Wed, 30 Aug 2000
Logical Volume Manager for Linux
A logical volume acts as one logical disk partition, although it can span multiple physical disks. Its size can be increased/decreased without any loss of data. A disk may be added to a volume group at any time when there is a need to increase data storage capacity. This provides a great flexibility for changing storage space demands and is useful for combining multiple small capacity disks into one large logical storage space.
Sun, 30 Jul 2000
FreeBSD for the SVR4/Linux Administrator
Michael Lucas
This article attempts to give a System V or Linux administrator a basic grounding in FreeBSD configuration and usage. All references are given for FreeBSD 3.x on the x86 architecture, which is slightly different than the Alpha architecture, the obsolete 2.x, or the bleeding-edge 4.0 versions.
Mon, 28 Feb 2000
Linux under FreeBSD
FreeBSD includes kernel modules for Linux, SCO, and SVR4. These modules allow you to run unmodified binaries for these platforms on your FreeBSD machine. FreeBSD's Linux module works well enough that several commercial software packages for Linux have been included in the FreeBSD ports system. Similarly, this article was written on Sun StarOffice 5.1 for Linux, on my FreeBSD-current box. Because the last version of RealVideo for FreeBSD is version 3.0, I run RealVideo 5.0 for Linux
Thu, 30 Dec 1999
Which OS is Fastest for High-Performance Network Applications?
In this article, we compare Linux, Solaris (for Intel), FreeBSD, and Windows 2000 to determine which operating system (OS) runs high-performance network applications the fastest. We present our OS benchmarks with both simulated and real-world tests, then evaluate the results.
Fri, 29 Jun 2001
Configuring Red Hat's High-Availability Server
Fri, 30 Mar 2001
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