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Did you ever look for a binary, and as a last resort download the source to compile yourself?   Of course you were disappointed that the program would not be part of your package management system. Usually you have to run something like this:   ./configure   make   make install An easy way to create an .rpm or .deb file from source is to run checkinstall instead of "make install" during the standard install from source. http://freshmeat.net/projects/checkinstall -- CheckInstall Freshmeat Page http://checkinstall.izto.org -- CheckInstall Home Page CheckInstall keeps track of all files installed by a "make install" or equivalent, creates a Slackware, RPM, or Debian package with those files, and adds it to the installed packages database, allowing for easy package removal or distribution.

Sure, you can now download music from the iTunes store without DRM but that doesn't mean you should just willy nilly start sharing that music with your friends. For one thing, it's illegal. For another, your account information is embedded into that m4a music file. Don't believe me? Try this yourself. The site is mostly for Mac users, but the strings command works in linux, and cygwin for Windows. This link has interesting comments as well. read more | digg story

VNC is an excellent way to remote control linux and Windows machines. Here is a description, and links to the programs. Blogger Digest: Using VNC And Redhat Linux x11vnc official site Real VNC Server official site TightVNC TightVNC software UltraVNC UltraVNC software

You May know those BIG things But Did you know these? Excellent list of easy firefox tips to implement -- e.g., press Esc to stop animated gifs from moving... # To quickly find any word in a web page type /word it will highlight the word and press Ctrl+G to “Find Again” that same word again # If you wish to remove an item from your Address Bar Drop down menu,Highlight it without clicking and use Shift+Delete. # To stop animated gifs from moving, press the ESC key. read more | digg story

The P2P network's founder Mark Gorton is in the fight of his life. read more | digg story

These RCHE study notes were designed to be brief reminders of what you should already be familiar with. This topic covers HTTP server configuration. One thing to be aware of when working with Apache and the 2.6 kernel is SELinux. Overview of SELinux SELinux, is a Mandatory Access Control (MAC) security system for Linux based on the domain-type model. It was written by the NSA ( http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/ ) and is comprised of a kernel module (included in all 2.6 kernels), patches to certain security related applications, and a security policy. More info: http://www.redhat.com/magazine/001nov04/features/selinux/ Study Notes Here are the brief steps from my RHCE study guide to help you remember the steps to configure a virtual host, and configure permissions. * HTTP/HTTPS install httpd, check context with ls -Z   Q: Create a virtual host www1.example.com w/ subdirectory /var/www/html/www1   A:    1) install httpd, modify /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file  ...

About P2P P2P software is free, and legal to install and use, but it does make sharing of copyrighted material easy to do, and that is not legal. Are people still using P2P software after Napster got shut down? Yes, they certainly are. Free music downloads? Free software? -- well be careful about copyrighted materials, but the technology is interesting nonetheless. One of the best ways to get a large file, such as a linux iso file, is to use bit torrent. Dangers What are the dangers, and inconveniences of using peer to peer file sharing software such as Limewire, eDonkey, Azureus, or Bittorrent? 1.) The content quality is only as good as how trustworthy the peers are 2.) Some content is copyrighted, and may be illegal to share or download on this type of network 3.) Content may contain viruses, trojans, and decoys 4.) Excessive traffic may cause your ISP to limit your bandwidth usage 5.) Some downloads may take days to complete 6.) There may be pornography disguised as something ...

After one year and five days of waiting: a brand new Vim release! This is a stable version. There are many bug fixes and updated runtime files. No amazing new features. Upgrading from a previous version is highly recommended... Note that Vim works on Linux, Windows, Macintosh, and other systems. This is an excellent free editor with syntax highlighting that is great for programming, text manipulation, and HTML editing. If you plan to be a sysadmin, you have to learn vi. I use it for scripting, text editing, and blog posting, among other things. read more | digg story

In Linux, directories are not accessible until the device is mounted. This is usually done at startup by the mount command which uses the /etc/fstab file. Files that start with a dot "." are hidden, but not completely (you can do ls -a to see the files). An example is the ~/.bashrc file. You can also hide files in a directory name that starts with a dot, e.g. ~/.ssh Now for the real trick Entire directories can be hidden, simply by mounting another device on top of the directory. The original files will still be in tact, but not visible until the device is remounted. First, find a device that is available to mount (boot is nice, because it is usually small). $ mount /dev/hda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw) ... etc... Then make your stealth directory, copy files to it, and mount a directory over it. $ cd /mnt $ mkdir stealth $ touch /mnt/stealth/somefile.txt $ ls /mnt/stealth/ somefile.txt $ mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /mnt/stealth ls /mnt/stealth/ config-2....

Google has some excellent webmaster resources, and some fun and useful gadgets that can be quickly added to a website or blog. Just as with any good design, remember not to over do it. http://www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets/ Here is what Google says about their gadgets: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Enhance Your Own Website Add Google Gadgets to your webpage You can now use Google Gadgets to make your webpages even more interesting and useful to your visitors. For instance, you can add your city's current temperature or a quote of the day to your own page. Just pick the gadget you want from our directory of "Google Gadgets for your webpage," customize that gadget, and copy-and-paste the HTML into your page's source code. Then, reload to see the gadget on your page. Find gadgets for your webpage. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you want to find something about cooking...

There are two basic categories for web site tracking. 1. Online (Embeded Tracking Code) 2. Log Analysis (Software) Onine This type of analysis has the advantage that nothing needs to be installed on the web server. The disadvantage is that every page requires modification. That is not much of a problem for blogs, or generated content, but it can be tedious to modify a large number of pages by hand. Google analytics is free, very simple to use, and produces excellent reports. Here are the instructions from their site: https://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=27323&hl=en_US How do I track a new website? There are two simple steps required to start tracking a new website: the creation of a new website profile, and the addition of Analytics tracking code to all of the pages you wish to track. Create a new profile 1. From the Analytics Settings page, click Add Website Profile 2. Select Add a Profile for a new domain 3. Enter the URL of the site you will be tra...

Sure we all want a nice looking website, but that doesn't mean you have to use lots of graphics and flash animation. It turns out, you'd be much better off using text instead of graphics. Here's the proof... Use text instead of graphics on your website Nowadays, it seems that every site owners knows how his site should look like: visually appealing, with a large amount of graphics (or even Flash) and, of course, with plenty of images of people, preferably women, preferably barely clothed (or naked). But reality is that what works isn't what people, who barely know anything about web design, think to work. read more | digg story

This is a very simple topic, but sometimes little tips can save you a lot of time. Windows & Linux First select the text, or item, or location to paste to: Copy = Ctrl-c, or From the "Edit" menu, select "Copy" Cut = Ctrl-x, or From the "Edit" menu, select "Cut" Paste = Ctrl-v, or From the "Edit" menu, select "Paste" You can copy and paste text, graphics, files, etc. In Windows, you can copy and paste files within Windows Explorer, or you can drag and drop them. Linux All of the above, plus: Copy = Select text with the mouse Paste = Click the middle mouse button vi If you want to copy and paste in vi, that's another topic. To copy a line in vi, type yy (yank line), and then p (paste after), or P (paste before). To copy a word, use yw (yank word). To copy five lines -- 5 yy, or five words -- 5 yw, or to paste something five times 5p. Here are some good tips on vi http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=312 . By t...

1. Update every single piece of software on my system with a single action. This is one of the main reasons I run Linux. Sure, Windows has Windows Update, but that only updates the operating system, Office, and a few other things. For every Linux distribution I've used (Gentoo, Red Hat, Suse, Ubuntu), updating is simple. read more | digg story

"Web 2.0" in just under 5 minutes. This is a slightly revised and cleaned up version of the video that was featured on YouTube in February 2007. Link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

Out of the plethora of chores that we do each day, which ones make up the top seven activities of forgetful system administrators? To begin, you might ask yourselves if the answer is quantitative or qualitative. Let's think about it for a minute. Forgetting to Delete a Former User's Account Forgetting to Regularly Search for Rootkits Forgetting to Use a Trouble Ticket Tracking System Forgetting to Set Up Technical Documentation and Creating a Knowledge Base Forgetting the Risks of Flash Memory Drives Forgetting to Manage Partial Root Access Forgetting Courtesy read more | digg story

Eric Meyer, CSS Guru gives us a run down on some extreme CSS Reset. Think of these as a starting point for creating your own defaults, in addition to being a way to illuminate the nature of browser defaults. Simply the act of taking those defaults into consideration and thinking about them closely puts you ahead of 99% of your peers. read more | digg story

Someone put together a list of just about every color related resource (worth mentioning) in the known universe. Designers rejoice! http://www.colorschemes.org read more | digg story

Scroll down for the top 10 list. From http://www.lifereboot.com read more | digg story

The command history is stored in ~/.bash_history. The history typically contains the last 500 commands typed at the shell prompt. You can view the history by using the history command. history | less Then you can search for a command. e.g. what was the name of that directory I created yesterday? Oh, yeah, I can search history for the mkdir command by using the slash. /mkdir You could also use grep, but with less, you can see the surrounding commands, as you often want to see the sequence of what was done. History Shortcuts !! - Executes the last command !902 - Executes command number 902 (from the history list) !service - Executes the command whose string matches the most recent history entry Up / Down - The most common shortcut is to simply use the up and down arrows to scroll through the bash history. Example If you recently restarted the network service, and then wanted to restart it again, you might do something like this; service network restart ping somehost.example.c...

IP Forwarding Effectively makes a Linux box act as a router Is usually used with two network interfaces (one internal, and one external) Can be used with firewall services and is often used for NAT Steps to Turn on IP Forwarding  1) Modify /etc/sysctl.conf      vi /etc/sysctl.conf      add this line:      inet.ipv4.ip_forward=1  2) Make the Change Active      sysctl -p  3) To View Current Settings:      sysctl -a | grep ipv4 More info can be found on the redhat site: https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/security-guide/s1-firewall-ipt-fwd.html We'll leave firewall rules for another topic... rhce linux