LINUX NEWS
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Thursday, January 25, 2001TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) Sean’s Notes
2) Linux News
2.0.39 Released
Linux Virus
An Interview with Dan York - President of the LPI
Is Linux Really Free?3) Linux Resources
NT to UNIX Migration
Underground Book Available
Linux and USB
MySQL Filesystem
Lots o' Free Fonts4) App o’ the week
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1) Sean’s Notes
What’s the most important skill a Unix admin needs? Is it shell scripting? Knowing the ins and outs of the file system? Running sendmail, perhaps? Or maybe vi?
All of the above skills are good to have, but there is a skill that is more important. It’s problem solving.
Problem solving is knowing how to find the answer to what you need. Guaranteed, no matter how much you know about sendmail, you’re eventually going to run into a problem that makes you scratch your head.
Of course, going out and asking a guru the question may get you the answer you need quickly, but you don’t end up learning anything. It is the learning part of problem solving that’s important.
A small example to illustrate. When writing last week’s article, I made the statement that the OUTPUT chain of the filter table is consulted after the POSTROUTING chain of the nat table. As I got up to that sentence, I asked myself who takes the last stab at the packet. Maybe nat:POSTROUTING gets it after filter:OUTPUT?
One thing that popped into my mind was to find a newsgroup or IRC channel and ask. However, I took a couple of minutes to deny packets to an outside web server in both chains, set my machine pinging through, and checked the counters. Sure enough, I proved to myself that filter was consulted last, and learned a lot more about iptables than just that. While flipping through the man page and web sites I found some new options and cool features of iptables.
The best tool to use in this particular instance is the man pages. Don’t know how to use iptables? “man iptables”. Does that solve your problem? If not, I usually check the HOWTO’s site at–
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/howto/
–to see if it’s already documented. Failing that, I surf on over to google.com (as a side note, I used to use Altavista until quite recently. After trying google once I was hooked. Much faster, cleaner and more complete). Google is great for finding out why you’re getting certain error messages. Another great source of information on error messages is the source itself:
grep “Connection refused” *.c
…and start from there.
I also experiment a lot on my own machines, as I showed above. Part of the learning process is recovering from your own mistakes, like the time I upgraded my system libraries in the wrong order and rendered my machine fairly useless.
So, if you’re asking yourself “How can I become better at Linux?”, the answer is to dive in and try it. Want to know how email works? Set up a mail server. Just getting in to Linux? Give it a whirl, try things out, and if you get really stuck ask for help.
On that note, the BrainBuzz Linux-General board is a great place to start:
http://boards.brainbuzz.com/boards/vbt.asp?b1
We’ve also got our own board for discussions:
http://boards.brainbuzz.com/boards/vbt.asp?b2
And, because I can’t get enough of that poll feature, I’d like you to tell me what kind of book reviews you’d like to see in the latest Linux News Poll:
http://boards.brainbuzz.com/boards/vbm.asp?rpg=1&wpg=1&sb=0&m#9510
Long live the Penguin,
Sean swalberg@brainbuzz.com
2) Linux News
-
39 Released
If 2.4 is not your bag, and you never made the jump to 2.2, then this may interest you. Some updates have been made to
- 0: lots of IDE stuff, some NIC updates, memory leaks, and even some backporting of 2.4 features (devfs). Believe it or not, I know of a few 2.0 boxes out there, one of mine included!
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0101.1/0624.html
Linux Virus
Well, it had to come around sooner or later, a virus targeted specifically towards Linux. This one goes after RedHat 6.2 and 7.0 servers, in particular the rpc.statd, wu-ftpd, and LPRng bugs. All of these are fixed in updated RPMS on RedHat’s errata section. What’s funny about this virus is that it replaces the web server’s home page with a picture of a package of Ramen Noodles, and a message.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1123000/1123827.st m
An Interview with Dan York - President of the LPI
An interesting interview with the President of the Linux Professional Institute – one of the certification bodies for Linux. What makes this cert good is that it’s not particularly distribution specific. In this interview, we find out why Dan thinks that this is a Good Thing, and other stuff about the LPI cert.
http://www.slashtco.com/article.pl?sid/01/19/1223227
Is Linux Really Free?
Sure, it costs you nothing to buy, no upgrade costs, but are the maintenance costs zero? Probably not, but how do they compare to others? This series of short interviews investigates the question, “Is Linux Really Free?”
http://www.computerweekly.com/cw_management_zone/cw_management_clin ic.asp
3) Linux Resources
NT to UNIX Migration
This whitepaper covers the advantages of Unix over NT. Well presented in a technical fashion, this document presents a fair argument for making the move.
http://web.cuug.ab.ca/~leblancj/nt_to_unix.html
Underground Book Available
“Tales of hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier” is the by-line of this book. It has recently been offered as a free download, in a multitude of formats, including mp3! It’s been well reviewed, I’m looking forward to reading it (on my palm pilot no less!)
http://www.underground-book.com/download.php3
Linux and USB
The author of this piece contends that Linux is not ready for the desktop until USB support is as easy as it is with Windows. More or less, it’ll be ready when vendors ship Linux drivers with the equipment. Check out the comments and resources section for some helpful information on USB and Linux.
http://linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-2001-01/lw-01-penguin_3.html
MySQL Filesystem
From the “because we can” department comes a filesystem
that runs out of a MySQL database. Truthfully, though, the developer brings up some excellent applications for this. It will make access for non-technical users easier, so that your marketing folk could browse the database with Windows explorer, and you don’t have to write any fancy front ends.
http://no.spam.ee/~tonu/mysqlfs.html
Lots o’ Free Fonts
I’ve been playing with the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) lately, and found this site with lots of True Type Fonts. It’s also got instructions on how to get True Type support added to your system.
http://fonts.linuxpower.org/
4) App o’ the week
This program (Linux and Windows versions available) will help you develop essential skills needed to work with Windows systems, such as using the mouse to close error dialogues.
http://bluesine.com/archives/software/mcseTrainer/
(C) 2001 BrainBuzz.com. All Rights Reserved.
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