Madhav Kobal (You cannot afford to ignore Linux)

If you ever wondered what that mysterious ISO file you downloaded two years ago is, and don’t want to burn the image, you can view details of the volume with a simple command: isoinfo -d -i filename.iso You’ll be given details like the volume size, if the image file is a bootable one and other valuable information.

In the past, the dock bar has been just an appearance enhancer in operating systems. People have been led to believe that the dock is for those who are more conscious about appearance rather than performance and because of this, they quickly lost interest in it once they got used to it. In truth, the dock bar can provide you more if you want it to. There are a lot of Dock bar applications available that do just that. Here are a few Dock Bar applications that are available on the major Operating Systems. Linux Gnome Do Gnome Do is a Quicksilver like application which allows you to search for items present on your Linux Desktop or Web. It also allows you to perform useful actions on the items that are found. It has a nifty plugin called Docky that it's an excellent dock bar. Resources Just open your linux package manager and install it. Avant Window Navigator The Avant Window Navigator is an application which tracks open windows and shows the list of the ones which are open. Not only...

It seems that another race has just begun--Image search is the latest sphere of intense competition between Google, Yahoo, and now Bing. Today, Google Images released some search options to make it easier to filter a search by color, type (face, photo, clip art, line drawing), and file size. The new features are pretty simple and offers instant access to existing tools that could save you some valuable searching time if you want to narrow down your image search to get the most accurate search results. These tools include search by color and image type . Color search option will show images that are only in color or only in black and white, or even images that consists of a specific color, such as red, pink or green. Also, the image search include Type search option that lets you trim down your results whether you are searching for a specific kind of image, such as a photo , clip art , line drawing or face . Moreover, the Size option enables you to define specific sizes aside from t...

Some people have taken their love for Unix and Linux on the streets literally by displaying their Unix/Linux-related personalized license plates. Though I haven't actually seen one in real life yet, I have collected several photos that will show some of these cool custom license plates in action, which I'm going to share with all of you. 1. UID 0 2. Got Unix 3. GNU linux 4. I Do Unix 5. Ubuntu 6. su root 7. Linuks 8. Linux Geek 9. Sendmail 10. rm -rf * Bonus: Do you recognize this old guy?

Novell is stepping into the log management market with the launch of new product aimed at tightening security and regulatory compliance. The Novell Sentinel Log Manager is designed to simplify auditing and bolster security by streamlining the management of raw event data used for risk investigations and compliance reporting for regulations such as HIPAA , Sarbanes-Oxley and PCI DSS . Most enterprises routinely capture and store information regarding transactions across networks and applications, traditionally in application and database logs, identity and access management repositories and network devices. However, the volume of information, and the fact that it tends to be stored and processed in silos, means that analysis is often extremely time consuming and trends between systems can be missed. "Successful reaction to new compliance pressures reaches across the organisation, from network and security to data management and application delivery," said Chris Howard, vice ...

MobaLiveCD is a freeware Windows application that will run your Linux LiveCD on Windows thanks to the excellent emulator called "Qemu". MobaLiveCD allows you to test your Linux LiveCD with a single click : after downloading the ISO image file of your favorite LiveCD, you just have to start it in MobaLiveCD and here you are, without the need to burn a CD-Rom or to reboot your computer. MobaLiveCD key features: + No need to burn the CD-Rom anymore + You can use the right-click menu for an easy and fast start + Program without installation that you can start from an USB stick + A clear and easy to use interface + Light and portable application, packaged in a single executable of 1.6MB only 1- download MobaLiveCD, go to http://mobalivecd.mobatek.net/en/ and follow the download link. Save the MobaLiveCD executable somewhere on your hard drive. 2- Start MobaLiveCD right away by simply clicking on the executable - it's a standalone application, i.e., it doesn...

Pre-eXecution Environment (PXE) is a method of booting computers off of a network card independent of local storage devices such as a hard drive or a DVD. PXE is very useful in thin client environments or as a quick way to deploy a new operating system to any computer. PXE is dependent on several network protocols: IP: A network layer protocol in the Internet Protocol Suite. IP provides the service of communicable unique global addressing amongst computers. UDP: A core of protocol of the Internet Protocol Suit. UDP allows programs to send short messages sometimes know as datagrams. DHCP: A method for networked computers to obtain IP addresses and other necessary networking parameters. TFTP: A simple file transfer protocol that can be implement in a very small amount of memory Setting up a TFTP server will allow you to easily deploy operating systems to machines without having to boot them from a CD or a DVD. Since most, if not all, laptops have an auto-sensing NICs these days, it ...

Palm’s new webOS and its accompanying toolchain provide a strong testimony to the role Linux can play in the mobile arena. Palm has come out swinging with its new mobile operating system, webOS. The platform is “connected” and targets the sweet spot of a mobile consumer or professional who loves powerful simplicity, though one could make a strong argument that webOS comes up a bit short as a gaming device — for now. In many ways the webOS is simply “Palm-like” — hearkening back to the days when our expectations for a mobile device were formed by the popular Palm Pilot. Strong on usability, the webOS integrates multiple accounts, calendars and social media such as Exchange, Google, GMail, and FaceBook to work the way you do. Do you have multiple monitors on your desk at work (or home?) — if you’re like me you very well do. In fact, I have two monitors at home and at the office I’ve got two external monitors — one for my Dell laptop and one for my MacBook. We live in an age where multip...

The new Cyber Regulation Appellate Tribunal is destined to a path-breaking work to check cyber fraud, cyber crime and even cyber terrorism, as per the Government.

Originally posted on VoIP & Gadgets Blog , here: http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/voip/google-voice-gizmo5-free-inbound-outbound-calls.asp . Google ( News - Alert ) Voice just added SIP connectivity through Gizmo5 which basically enables FREE inbound and outbound calling ! With the Gizmo5-to-Google Voice connectivity not only can you can connect any SIP device (softphone, IP phone), but you can even use regular telephones for free calls in the entire United States. Google Voice already offers DID numbers in nearly every area code , which means businesses, especially SMBs can take advantage of this without resorting to some obscure out-of-state area code. As you already know, Google Voice already gives you FREE outbound calling in the U.S., but the missing piece of the puzzle is free INBOUND calling. Well, Gizmo5's ( News - Alert ) beta service called Gizmo Voice is the final piece to the puzzle . Gizmo Voice lets you take full advantage of the messaging and call...

Nothing like adding a little levity to the black eye Google is getting over its Google Book Search project. I just successfully finished answering five literature-related questions for the Google Books game, the first round in the 10 Days in Google Books contest. Here's how it works: For the next 10 days, Google will ask us five questions each day on a different theme related to books. We have to search Google Books to find the answers. Answer each day's questions correctly and you can enter a contest to win a Sony Reader. After you answer the questions, write an entry of 50 words or less on the topic of books. Each day, the top three submissions will win Sony Readers. The first 20,000 people to play the game will also get Google Books laptop stickers. You can, of course, increase your chances to win the Reader by coming back the next day to try again. It seems like it could be tricky, but Google offers hints, and here's my hint to tell you how to succeed: Basical...

SMPlayer intends to be a complete front-end for MPlayer (video player), from basic features like playing videos, DVDs, and VCDs to more advanced features like support for MPlayer filters and more. One of the most interesting features of SMPlayer: it remembers the settings of all files you play. So you start to watch a movie but you have to leave... don't worry, when you open that movie again it will resume at the same point you left it, and with the same settings: audio track, subtitles, volume... Other additional interesting features: * Audio track switching. You can choose the audio track you want to listen. Works with avi and mkv. And of course with DVDs. * Seeking by mouse wheel. You can use your mouse wheel to go forward or backward in the video. * Video equalizer, allows you to adjust the brightness, contrast, hue, saturation and gamma of the video image. * Multiple speed playback. You can play at 2X, 4X... and even in slow motion. * Filters. Several filters are available: de...

How much time does it take to launch a new service and bring it in to the coveted "worlds most visited" sites list? Not much if the service happens to be a Search Engine, and more importantly, if the search engine is from Microsoft. Well, it's not the most visited website as yet. However, breaking into the top 20 was cakewalk for Bing, which managed the feat in just about two months from the launch date. So, ladies and gentlemen, it's now official. Microsoft's Bing, launched sometime in June, has now made its quiet entry into Alexa's top 20 list . It is still behind the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Strangely, Alexa's "top 20" page still lists Bing's erstwhile Avatar, Windows Live Search at the number five spot. Windows Live is dead for all practical purposes as going to live.com redirects to Bing now. While it may have inched itself into the top 20 list, it is still way behind Google, which continues to dominate the number one position. In...

sar is another powerful, versatile system. It is a sort of a jack o' all trades when it comes to monitoring and logging system activity. sar can be very useful for trying to analyze strange system problems where normal logs like boot.msg, messages or secure under /var/log do not yield too much information. sar writes the daily statistics into log files under /var/log/sa . Like we did before, we can monitor CPU utilization (every 2 seconds, 10 times): sar -u 2 10 Or you may want to monitor disk activity (10 iterations, every 5 seconds): sar -d 5 10

dstat aims to replace vmstat, iostat and ifstat combined. It also offers exporting data into .csv files that can then be analyzed using spreadsheet software. dstat uses a pleasant color output in the terminal: Plus you can make really nice graphs. The spike in the graph comes from opening the Firefox browser, for instance.

Like pacct, you can also dump the contents of the utmp and wtmp files. Both these files provide login records for the host. This information may be critical, especially if applications rely on the proper output of these files to function. Being able to analyze the records gives you the power to examine your systems in and out. Furthermore, it may help you diagnose problems with logins, for example, via VNC or ssh, non-console and console login attempts, and more. You can dump the logs using the dump-utmp utility. There is no dump-wtmp utility; the former works for both. You can also do the following: dump-utmp /var/log/wtmp Here's what the sample file looks like:

Did you know that you can log the completion of every single process running on your machine? You may even want to do this, for security, statistical purposes, load optimization, or any other administrative reason you may think of. By default, process accounting (pacct) may not be activated on your machine. You might have to start it: /usr/sbin/accton /var/account/pacct Once this is done, every single process will be logged. You can find the logs under /var/account . The log itself is in binary form, so you will have to use a dumping utility to convert it to human-readable form. To this end, you use the dump-acct utility. dump-acct pacct The output may be very long, depending on the activity on your machine and whether you rotate the logs, which you should, since the accounting logs can inflate very quickly. And there you go, the list of all processes ran on our host since the moment we activated the accounting. The output is printed in nice columns and includes the following, from l...

top is a handy utility for monitoring the utilization of your system. It is invoked from the command line and it works by displaying lots of useful information, including CPU and memory usage, the number of running processes, load, the top resource hitters, and other useful bits. By default, top refreshes its report every 3 seconds. Most of us use top in this fashion; we run it inside the terminal, look on the statistics for a few seconds and then graciously quit and continue our work. But what if you wanted to monitor the usage of your system resources unattended? In other words, let some system administration utility run and collect system information and write it to a log file every once in a while. Better yet, what if you wanted to run such a utility only for a given period of time, again without any user interaction? There are many possible answers: You could schedule a job via cron. You could run a shell script that runs ps every X seconds or so in a loop, incrementing a counter...