Madhav Kobal (You cannot afford to ignore Linux)

Thanks to two concepts driving the data center today—economy and green computing—server virtualization is a hot topic in the IT world and a lot of hardware and software vendors are offering solutions. Virtualization solutions can have several benefits: they can let you easily migrate a virtual machine from one server to another, and let you provision a virtual as a reproducible clone image for, say,software development and testing. The process for achieving virtualized server consolidation depends on your starting point: If you are designing your system from scratch, you will likely implement virtualization from the ground up. If your system already exists in the physical state, you will probably want to migrate from the physical environment to the virtual one. I refer to the second process as phys...

Linux has become so idiot proof nowadays that there is less and less need to use the command line. However, the commands and shell scripts have remained powerful for advanced users to utilize to help them do complicated tasks quickly and efficiently. To those of you who are aspiring to become a UNIX/Linux guru, you have to know loads of commands and learn how to effectively use them. But there is really no need to memorize everything since there are plenty of cheat sheets available on the web and on books. To spare you from the hassles of searching, I have here a collection of 10 essential UNIX/Linux cheat sheets that can greatly help you on your quest for mastery: UNIX Tutorial for Beginners This is a quick and easy UNIX/Linux tutorial page that is aimed at beginners. It gives a subtle introduction to some of the most important UNIX/Linux commands. CLICK HERE TO VIEW Learning the Shell Aside from showing you how to apply the most basic UNIX/Linux commands, “Learning the Shell’ will te...

Google now offers a gallery of themes for its Chrome browser. (Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET) Google on Tuesday launched a gallery of 29 themes for Google Chrome . But Mozilla, while refraining from sniggering, boasted it's now up to 20,000. Cosmetic changes are, well, cosmetic, but a lot of people like them as a way to add some flair to their machines. Many had been pestering Google to add themes support even though Chrome employs a Spartan user interface without much acreage for artistry. Last week's developer version of Chrome added a "Get themes" button in the Options dialog box, and now Google has flipped the switch to activate the Web page that button points to. The collection of themes includes Legal Pad, Star Gazing, Transparent (it's not, on my Windows XP machine), Dots, and Pencil Sketch. One monochromatic theme called Minimal downloads nearly instantly, but Grass, at 1.3MB, takes more time. Why so large? Themes can come with a backg...

Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available. Wine provides both a development toolkit for porting Windows source code to Unix as well as a program loader, allowing many unmodified Windows programs to run on x86-based Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris. WineXS allows you to easily configure Wine by installing and removing software, editing the registry, managing files, and more. Install WineXS in Ubuntu first you need to download the file from where you want to run this installation in this example i am using /home/user $cd /home/user $wget http://tsx.nl/files/winexs-1.4.2.tgz Now you need to extract .tgz file using the following command $tar x...

1. Introduction This article will describe a configuration of Virtual Private Network connection by using an OpenVPN application. Firstly, you will be exposed to some basic theory behind Virtual Private Networks. Then, the article will guide you with step-by-step instructions on how to setup a OpenVPN virtual private network by using Symmetric Key Encryption and Public Key Encryption. This article is meant for everybody who possesses a basic knowledge of linux administration and networking. 2. Why VPN If you work in IT industry, it is very common that you do not use only a single computer sitting on your work desk, but you also utilize other systems connected to the same local area network. As long as you are sitting on your office chair this approach should not be a problem. However, this situation can become complicated once you are in hurry, and therefore, you need to take some of your work home. You are able to take you company laptop with you, but to fully utilize company resource...

I find that a little color on the command line helps make things easier to read. ls is easy to colorize: just add the line: alias ls='ls --color=auto' in your ~/.bashrc (then source it or open another terminal). You can also set color up for your manpages. The easiest way to do this is using most as a pager: Install the most package, and then type export MANPAGER="/usr/bin/most -s" Try looking at a man page and you'll suddenly see it in color! However, most isn't as good as less as a pager, and if you're accustomed to less you don't necessarily want to retrain your fingers to new commands. An alternative is to set up assorted termcap-related environment variables to provide colors. Add these lines to your .bashrc : export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$'E[01;31m' export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'E[01;31m' export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'E[0m' export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'E[0m' export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'E[01;44;33m' export LES...

Sony Pictures Imageworks announced an open-source development program that will start with the VFX studio releasing five technologies. The initial releases will include: • OSL, a programmable shading language for rendering • Field3d, a voxel data storage library • Maya Reticule, a Maya plug-in for camera masking • Scala Migration, a database migration tool • Pystring, python-like string handling in C++ The releases, on which information will be made available at http://opensource.imageworks.com, can be used freely by large and small studios and artists anywhere. The intention of the release is to build communities that adopt and further refine the code. “Some of the smartest and most dedicated engineers in computer graphics have put their experience and passion into the development of these tools,” said Rob Bredow, Imageworks’ CTO. “We are very excited to be able to share them with a much wider audience.”