From Tech Republic, worth reading if you’re new to Linux system administration. One of the most common mistakes is not checking log files (reason #10). I often find it hard to keep up and sometimes parse the variety of system logs on a system. A great tool for managing this is called LogWatch. While not [...]

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From the site: GroundWork Monitor Community Edition provides a essential IT monitoring solution that enables you to maintain network visibility and control. This is a single server deployment that leverages the strengths of 15 other open source projects such as Nagios, rrdtool and nmap. It combines the results of these projects in to a system [...]

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Click here for details.

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An excellent article on the subject: Source. Run these 3 commands from shell. SUDO not required. VBoxManage setextradata “name of vm” “VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/ssh/HostPort” 2222 VBoxManage setextradata “name of vm” “VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/ssh/GuestPort” 22 VBoxManage setextradata “name of vm” “VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/ssh/Protocol” TCP Where… “name of vm” is your virtual machine name ssh is the name of the service. This is [...]

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When you need to run a website (https), mail (ssl/tls) or similar over an encrypted link – you need an SSL certificate. This article will explain some of the choices involved, and how to run your own certificate authority (CA). You don’t need to spend any money to generate your own certificates, and they’re no [...]

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A well-written article on how to backup an entire partition using DD. Another way to do this is to use CloneZilla.

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Places to buy systems with Linux pre-installed (which means the hardware is Linux compatible!). There may be others, this is just a short reference. 1) Dell: Dell is currently selling four laptop systems starting from $549 to $1049; the linux desktop system available starts at $448. All these system are pre-installed with Ubuntu 8.04. here: [...]

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Some of these are to be taken with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary: _______________ Harder: – Anatomy of Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) – Understanding AppArmor – grsecurity – What is Linux Security Module? – 10 Basic Linux Security Tips to Implement – The Best Linux Security Tools – Linux Audit and Intrusion Detection [...]

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From Linux.com: Unless you have fully embraced the virtualization movement, you probably have more than one machine in your home or office, particularly if you run more than one operating system, and you probably have more than one keyboard and mouse on your desk. If you would like to regain some desk space without having [...]

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Extract the files in the .ISO to a USB stick and boot off that, then on-bootup, install from the USB key, quite simple. Here’s the full howto.

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Source: feraga.com Howto use Cryptsetup with LUKS support. (Debian Linux). This is a short howto to describe the basic usage of Device-Mapper, DM-Crypt, and Cryptsetup to mount and use encrypted partitions and container files. This is partially in response to the recent articles about the numbers of USB flash thumbdrives that are regularly lost. If [...]

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The 1 page Linux CommandManual Linux Command Reference Linux Security Quick Reference The Gimp Hotkey Reference

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The GNOME desktop environment is the default for Debian (and one of it’s more popular distros, Ubuntu), and is one that I use every day. One thing that I always have a hard time remembering is how to setup global keyboard shortcuts, so this quick guide will document the process. There is a simple applet [...]

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Source: help.ubuntu.com Preparing for backup Just a quick note. You are about to back up your entire system. Don’t forget to empty your Wastebasket, remove any unwanted files in your /home directory, and cleanup your desktop. Depending on why you’re backing up, you might want to: Delete all your emails Clear your browser search history [...]

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Source: PenguinPetes.com 1. You’ll need to connect the new drive onto the IDE cable. Most IDE cables have two plugs for hard drives. The headache comes with determining which drive is a master and which a slave, so the computer knows which one to boot to. No two hard drive manufacturers have the same standard [...]

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Fun with rename: 1) To rename filenames with CAPS characters to lowercase: rename ‘y/A-Z/a-z/’ * 2) To remove <spaces> from filenames: rename ‘s/ /-/g’ * 3) To strip files with the .bak extension: rename ‘s/\.bak$//’ *.bak Free: The free command displays the amount of free and used memory in the system. For example, free -m [...]

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Source: Ubuntu Wiki. Recording Skype calls NOTE: This howto uses examples geared toward recording with gnome-sound-recorder. If you are using KDE, go to the bottom of this howto and click on the original link. There you will find additional info on using kmix and krecord. The basic howto is still the same. What you’ll needed [...]

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Tips from IBM, not all that complicated, but worth looking at. Other tips include… Sharing computers on a Linux (or heterogeneous) network. IBM’s top 10 Linux articles and tutorials. Miscellaneous tips. Linux-powered networking: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Industrial-strength Linux box lockdown, a howto: Part 1 and Part 2. Introduction to cryptology concepts: [...]

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Source: LinuxHaxor.net Essentially RTorrent, CTorrent and Transmission-CLI.

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Source for this great article: Linux.com In this context, a one-liner is a set of commands normally joined through a pipe (|). When joined by a pipe, the command on the left passes its output to the command on the right. Simple or complex, you can get useful results from a single line at the [...]

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Source: blog.sontek.net This is an excellent treatment on advanced file permissions in Linux, though centered on OpenSUSE, it’s still very helpful and applicable to any distro. Though John credits this source for working with advanced Linux permissions in Ubuntu under Nautilus (Gnome).

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1. lsb_release -a 2. The watch command. 3. Command line intro summary, with some rarely used switches (TLDP). 4. If you’re using a system which has a lot of users, and you’d like to see who has started a particular script, daemon, or binary, then the pstree utility is very helpful. It draws a tree [...]

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I generally prefer SSH’ing to hosts from the CLI (Command Line Interface) though there are times when a GUI is preferable, especially when there’s a variety of settings specific to each session that might be desired. SSHMenu is much like Putty, in that you can set up individual address book style destinations to SSH into, [...]

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..if some want to try Ubuntu, but wants to jump right in to video editiing, audio recording and high end graphics work, there’s a version of it called Ubuntu Studio, which scripts a lot of the things one often has to do once Linux is installed. I personally would not use this edition of Ubuntu, [...]

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After good feedback from customers in 2007, ASUS (large motherboard manufacturer, also maker of the EEE PC) is going to embed Splashtop Linux in a chip onto a million motherboards and more soon. When turning on the PC you are presented with an option to boot into the embedded OS, which takes all of 5 [...]

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