LINUX NEWS
Resources & Links From CramSession.com
Thursday, February 14, 2002TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) Sean’s Notes
2) Linux News
"Carrier Grade" and "Data Centre" Linux Projects Started
Scribus vs Quark
US Census Bureau Likes MySQL
Miguel Speaks Up on GNOME and .NET3) Linux Resources
Tips for Reading Code
EXT3 FAQ
Linux Wireless Resources
Simple Examples of Socket Programming
CerfCube Discount4) App o’ the Week
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ADVERTISEMENT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Free Quizzer for all Cramsession subscribers. Your Choice of Win2K Professional, A+, Network+, CCNA, CCNP, or MetaFrame. Hundreds of Free multiple-choice questions/answers and detailed explanations and lots of free reference material in our adaptive simulation test engine. Limit one per Cramsession subscriber.
Download your FREE Quizzer at: http://ad.brainbuzz.com/?RC06&AIH61
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For information on how to advertise in this newsletter please contact mailto:adsales@CramSession.com or visit http://cramsession.com/marketing/default.asp
1) Sean’s Notes
Unix is usually given a hard time about being unfriendly. (And, as the saying goes, it is user friendly, just picky about who its friends are). What these people don’t realize is that there are many features built into the shell to allow you to customize your environment more to your tastes.
The biggest feature in this area is aliasing. Simply put, it lets you substitute “ps -ef” every time you type “ps”, or change
dircopy dir1 dir2
into
tar -cf - dir1 | (cd dir2 && tar -xf -)
Its all up to you.
In either the bash or csh-type shells, you can check out your current list of aliases by typing “alias”
$ alias l. ls .[a-zA-Z]* –color=tty ll ls -l –color=tty ls ls –color=tty which alias | /usr/bin/which –tty-only –read-alias –show-dot –show-tilde
(Those seem to be the default in Red Hat 6.x)
I have one machine that I run pine to read my mail, both from home and work. This could be a job for my login script, but instead, I usually type “ps -x” when I log in to see if pine is already running. Just to save a couple of keystrokes, I’ll alias that command to “px”.
alias px ps -x
Whenever I type in “px”, the shell runs “ps -x”. Toss that in my .cshrc, and it’ll be there all the time.
bash users have a different format:
alias px=”ps -x”
Of course, a simple substitution isn’t anything to write home about. The real flexibility comes when you want to supply parameters within the command. Above, if we ran:
alias foo bar
and then ran:
foo baz
we’d end up with:
bar baz
This is very helpful, if for example, we wanted to make sure that every time I typed “rm”, I got “rm -i” (prompt for verification before removing). What if I wanted “baz” to appear somewhere within the aliased command, such as “bar baz bing”? Bash users take note – you can’t do this. Sorry.
So called “positional parameters” can be used:
!^ - first argument !$ - last argument !:N - Nth argument !* - all arguments
When I’m writing this newsletter, and think I might have used a URL before, I run
$ grep sometext ~/mail/newsletter
If I run:
alias used grep -i !^ $HOME/mail/newsletter
I can now type:
$ used sometext
(note the use of the backslash before the !, which protects it from being expanded by the shell)
So our “dircopy” from above can now be written as:
alias dircopy “tar -cf - !^ | (cd !:2 && tar -xf -)”
(Again, quotes protect the |, (), and && from being interpreted by the shell)
To get rid of an alias, use “unalias”:
$ unalias dircopy
If I had that rm -i alias in there as above, and wanted to perform a delete without being prompted, but didn’t want to unalias rm, I can use a backslash to skip around the alias.
$ \rm -rf somedir
Aliasing within the shell is a quick and easy way to shorten the number keystrokes without having to write a separate shell script. It also lets you feel more at home in your environment. Rather run “dir” instead of “ls”? Use an alias.
Long live the Penguin,
Sean mailto:swalberg@cramsession.com
2) Linux News
“Carrier Grade” and “Data Centre” Linux Projects Started
I think this group is more than the usual standards bodies coming together to agree on what should be obvious. Carriers have strict requirements, and if Linux can be made to meet them, perhaps it might have a shot at the digital PBX world, where Solaris is now pretty comfortable.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4639411232.html
Scribus vs Quark
I’m not a desktop publisher, but I know that Quark is the product that all others are measured by for publishing. There is work to create a Linux equivalent, called “Scribus”. According to this article, and the comments at the end, work is going well, and the product may be ready for you to try, depending on your needs.
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid/02/04/179247
US Census Bureau Likes MySQL
Even though they have a site licence for Oracle, the US Census Bureau finds themselves using MySQL, an Open Sourced SQL engine for some projects. Some of these projects have won awards, showing that Open Source tools have what it takes to compete.
http://www.mysql.com/news/article-87.html
Miguel Speaks Up on GNOME and .NET
Last week, I told you about .NET and GNOME, and how their paths are going to cross. Miguel, the man who made the statements, explains what he meant, and why it is perhaps not such a bad thing.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-devel-list/2002-February/msg00 021.html
3) Linux Resources
Tips for Reading Code
Reading someone else’s code can be pretty difficult. So in an environment where being able to read other people’s code is helpful, what do you do? This set of tips will help you make sense of what that programmer was writing on his late night coffee binge.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000053.html
EXT3 FAQ
A coworker and I were adding a new disk to a system, and were puzzling over how to take advantage of the journaling capabilities of the ext3 filesystem. There are a couple of extra commands you have to know; this FAQ has it all, and more.
http://people.spoiled.org/jha/ext3-faq.html
Linux Wireless Resources
Thinking of hooking up your Linux box to a wireless network? The Wireless HOWTO has some interesting thoughts on how to go about doing it, including what kinds of cards work.
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/howto/Wireless-HOWTO
Simple Examples of Socket Programming
When trying to find some sample code to implement multicast, I came across this page. Not only does it have a sample multicast client and server, but also a straightforward TCP and UDP server. It’s all in C, and fairly easy to follow.
http://pont.net/socket/
CerfCube Discount
The CerfCube is a stackable 3”x3”x3” StrongARM processor, flash disk-based computer, suitable for use as a small web server. Looks pretty cool! The price on their web site is $379, but I’m told that Linux User Group members can enter promo code CERFCUBE3-5147 and get $80 off.
http://www.intrinsyc.com/products/referencedesigns/cerfcube.asp
4) App o’ the Week
You’d never guess that this game was written in Perl. This is a fun puzzle-type game, where you try to get rid of all the colored balls on the screen by launching other balls at it. The graphics are polished, and the sounds are catchy. One and Two player modes are available. I’m completely addicted!
http://www.frozen-bubble.org/
(C) 2002 BrainBuzz.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This message is from CramSession.com.You are currently subscribed to the Hottest Linux News and Resources as: sean@ertw.com
To un-subscribe from this newsletter by e-mail: send a blank email message to: mailto:leave-linuxnews-3825955Y@list.cramsession.com
To Subscribe to this newsletter by e-mail: send a blank email message to: