darkstat - a network traffic analyser In this article we present the network traffic analyzer "darkstat". We cover installation, start and usage of this program.
Simple Animation Creating a simple animation is fun and easy, for children and adults alike.
The mystery of mount points This article explains the concept of mount points but I hope the article has also some information which is interesting to readers who are not new to linux.
Interview with Jeff Dike Jeff Dike is the creator and maintainer of User Mode Linux, a very interesting new feature of the 2.6 Linux kernel. This article will give some insight into UML and the people behind it.
Data loss, worst case A real-life case of data loss with a happy end, thanks to reiserfsck. Three cheers for journaling file systems and their tools.
vsftpd - an introduction to the Very Secure FTP Daemon This article gives a basic introduction to the "Very Secure FTP Daemon". I am beginning with a general description of FTP and vsftpd. After that we will have a look at the installation, configuration and start options of the vsftp daemon.
Temperature monitoring with Linux (part 2) In the second part of "Temperature Monitoring With Linux" we see how to store the data in mysql and represent it graphically.
Gentoo linux Gentoo Linux is a source package based Linux system. It is very different from the established commercial Linux distributions.
shivalik -- simple configuration backup (defying Murphy's laws) There are a whole lot of HOWTOs out there which tell you what to do if you have a serious problem with your Linux installation. Good for us. But there is no one there who told you what you should do before disaster strikes you!
Talking to a Running Process Run Time Access is a library that lets you view the data structures in your program as tables in a PosgreSQL database or as files in a virtural file system (similar to /proc).
Rsync: The Best Backup System Ever Backup is one of the hardest and most neglected parts of system administration. This article presents a very easy solution based on rsync.
uucpssh.org: UUCP e-mail for Linux fans In the windows world incomming mails are received via POP3 or IMAP and outgoing mails are sent directly via SMTP. This split setup can cause all kind of headaches especially if you are using different ISPs all the time.
Statistics Anyone? Most statistics packages seem to be overwhelming in their scope, forcing the user on a very steep learning path, most of them are also very expensive. There is however a refreshing alternative: SalStat
RPN calculators for Linux Reverse Polish Notation is the most advanced entry method for calculators. This article will review some of the available RPN desktop calculators for Linux.
Understanding the Proc File System The proc filesystem is a virtual filesystem which provides a lot of infromation about hardware and kernel internal data structures.
The MySQL C API In this article, you will learn how to use the C APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that come with MySQL.
Linux on the desktop: A computer for Mom My Mom belongs to a generation which grew up without computers. This article is probably valid for most people who first started to use a computer beyond the age of 60.
Building an autonomous light finder robot In this article we describe how to build an autonomous robot that will always try to walk to the brightest spot in the room.
A GNUstep small apps tour This is a very short review of some of the smaller but very useful tools from GNUstep.
A 1 Bit Data Scope This article describes a 1bit logic analyser which samples data and sends it to a Linux PC via the rs232 port.
Going 3D with Blender: Very first Steps Blender is an open source 3D graphics program. In this first article in a series about Blender we look at the very basics and build a stage with sphere and cube on it.
Ximian Evolution installation guide Ximian Evolution is able to read ans send mail from a Linux workstation via an Exchange server 5. In this article, I'll give you some info about my personal experiance and my own configuration.
GWorkspace, the GNUstep Workspace Manager The concept of Workspace Manager appeared with NeXT at the end of the 80's. It was a complete new way of using a system GUI. GWorkspace is the GNUstep free implementation of this revolution.
GUI Programming with GTK In this article we will learn how to write graphical user interfaces (GUI) using GTK.
Concurrent programming - Message queues (2) This series of articles has the purpose of introducing the reader to the concept of multitasking and to its implementation in the Linux operating system. Starting from the theorical concepts at the base of multitasking we will end up writing a complete application demonstrating the communication between processes, with a simple but efficient communication protocol.
Accessing PostgreSQL through JDBC via a Java SSL tunnel This article shows how to set up JDBC access for PostgreSQL on redhat 8.0 and how to create a SSL tunnel using Sun's Java Secured Socket Extensions, to enable secured access to a remote postgres database.
Linux USB LCD display with watchdog and buttons This article explains how to modify the LCD display prestented in May2002 to work with the USB interface. The design is based on a chip from www.ftdichip.com
Intrusion detection with Debian GNU/Linux The article presents techniques and the tools for Debian GNU/Linux to detect and track people wo broke into your computer network.
Demography hands on This article presents a simulation program to answer the question "How will the population look in 50 or 100 years from now?"
Basic Programming with Unix Review of Basic interpreters, IDEs for Basic, and and other things to build Basic programms under Linux.
Automating system administration with ssh and scp This article demonstrates the usage of ssh and scp commands to automate system administration jobs, such as installing and configuring software on Linux systems.
Fighting against Spam Spam between the mail!? Spam E-mail is growing at an alarming rate and it is a major problem for almost everybody.In this article we will explain ho w to handle unwanted commercial email.
Mozilla dissected In this article we dissect the huge lizard - in particular we investigate the browser part. It's actually a review of Mozilla 1.1 with two add-ons: 'Mouse Gestures' and 'RadialContext'.
Root-kit and integrity This article presents the different operations a cracker can do after having succeeded in entering a machine. We will also discuss what an administrator can do to detect that the machine has been jeopardized.
Fail Safe Port Allocation for Linux Device Drivers Writing a device driver is a challenging and an adventurous job. Once the device is registered in the driver's init_module routine, the resources for the device should be allocated. One of the main resources for the device is I/O port. The dynamically linked drivers, the developer should be careful to allocate unused range of port addresses for their device.
Installation of a LAMP-Systems LAMP is an abbreviation for Linux Apache MySQL PHP. In this article you will learn how to install a Webserver based on LAMP.
Using BibTeXML in DocBook XML to Write Scientific Articles BibTex is an system which enables you to insert references from a (file) database into Tex documents. In this article I will show you how you can use a BibTex like reference system with DocBook XML.
How to secure an heterogeneous network with free tools Security in computers networks is probably one of the biggest technology challenges of the 21st century. This article provides a general overview over the most important aspects.
Plugins and Mozilla RC3 How I setup Mozilla RC3 for Real Player, Acrobat, Flash, and a generic plug-in Plugger.
Editing DocBook XML Documents This article describes the use of Kate and its XML plugin as a tool for editing DocBook XML documents
A LCD control panel for your Linux server In this article we use an Atmel AT90S4433 microcontroller and a few other inexpensive parts to build a LCD control panel for a Linux server.
Getting to know XML This is a short introduction to XML. You will meet Eddy the meta cat, the XML syntax police, and some DTDs. Don't worry, we'll explain ;-)
Samba Configuration This article describes the configuration of Linux-samba, a server needed to control domains of networks based on MS-windows machines. Examples given here are based on Debian GNU/Linux and Samba 2.0.7
Introduction to Ncurses Ncurses is a library that provides function-key mapping, screen painting functions and the ability to use multiple non-overlapping windows on text-based terminals.
Developing Gnome Application with Python (Part 2) This article series is primarily written for beginners in the area Gnome and GNU/Linux. The author presents an educational tool to write Gnome GUIs using Python.
Chrooting all services in Linux Chrooted system services improve security by limiting damage that someone who broke into the system can possibly do
Linux System Administration - A User's Guide (Book Review) This is a review of the book titled "Linux System Administration - A User's Guide" by Marcel Gagne. The book has 532 pages and 26 chapters that cover installation, daemons, run-levels,file systems, password policy, kernel building, printing, devices, backups, network administration, secure computing, and more.
Yellow Pages (Part III) In this last article about NIS, we explain how to install a NIS server. We will see which programs are used, configuration files and the building of the database.
XMRM: Multi Resolution Morphing XMRM (Multi Resolution Morphing for X) is a morphing program that allows one to create an mpeg video based on the the transformation from one image into another one.
Security holes - part V This fifth article is about race conditions :what they are, how to avoid them ...
Using XML and XSLT to build LinuxFocus.org(/Nederlands) This article shows you how parts of the Dutch website of LinuxFocus is generated with XSLT tools from the XML database. It compares this with the (very) much slower DOM tools in Perl.
Analyzing your internet applications' logfiles This article is the first in a series about using Lire to analyze log files of internet server applications. This is not limited to one service, e.g. Apache, but is an integrated analyzer for many different services. Included are DNS, WWW, email and ipfilter services.
Yellow Pages The Network Information Service (NIS) manages a data base on server. Each computer on a network running a NIS client NIS can then poll the server for informations (login name,password, users and groups informations, ...).
Yellow Pages (Part II) My previous article was an introduction to the yellow pages and RPCs. This one explains how to configure a NIS client, how this client works and a small introduction to the different tools coming with NIS. Finally, we'll have a few words about NIS+
Make it anywhere with make! This article explains how "make" works. It shows that "make" is more than just a command to compile software.
Security holes This article explains how to exploit badly programmed software by using buffer overflows.
Game Review - GLtron 3D variant of those games, featuring the light-cycle race from the movie "Tron"
Introduction to BORG BORG is graphical user interface to BMRT, but it is not just a GUI it divides the rendering work across different computers where BMRT is used to render frames.
Through the tunnel Using free SSH with external applications on different OSes
Real-time mp3 recording, part II In the first part we showed how you can record in mp3 in realtime, for example a radio show, and make a big file out of it, e.g. 650MB for 24 hours of music in near-CD quality (128 kbit/s; stereo). Now, what to do with such a big file? Can we make even bigger files, or could we maybe get a better compression rate? How about the quality of these mp3 recordings?
Real-time MP3 recording Recording music in mp3-format gives you the possibility to record very long pieces of music without exhausting the disk-space.
Security Holes - part II This second article is not directly related with the subject of the series. It reviews some concepts before describing the fear of all the system administrators:Buffer Overflows. We shall see how the memory is organized as well as the stack and how a function call is performed. Then we present a tool used for every intrusion attempt: shellcode.
Using different ISPs for your Internet access In this article we develop configuration files to easily change between a number of different Internet Service Providers. We extend the configuration not only to one PC but to a whole network using IP masquerading. A DNS proxy will be used to make the changing DNS IP addresses invisible inside the masqueraded network.
Realtime data mirroring on Linux This article will explain on how to set an inexpensive real.time data replication system on Linux without need of special hardware. This kind of replication will be especially useful for ISPs or webhosts.
Automount and autofs Automount and autofs are powerful tools and ease file systems management.
Multicast This article is an introduction to multicast technologies on TCP/IP networks.
Slackware 7.0 part II: Configuration Guide After the installation in the first part, the author now describes some basic configuration tasks in his now favorite Linux distribution. He explains how to configure X, how to compile a kernel (and how to use it with lilo), how to do user account management, how to dial in to internet and how to give your system some basic security.
Security Holes - part I This is the first article of a series of articles on security holes that can appear within a program. The series will show how to avoid security holes if programming habits are slightly corrected. We shall first discuss privileges, UID and EUID in this first article before dealing with the execution of external commands.
A serial line shutdown button with control LED In this article we design a little push button to connect to your server on the serial line and which you can use to shut the machine down when needed.
Game Review - Tux Racer Tux Racer is a fast pace arcade game. Our favorite Linux mascot has to slide down snow-covered hills,trying to catch as many herrings as possible and finish the courses in time.
Discovering Ted Ted is a very nice and light weight word processor
GNU utilities The GNU utilities are a set of standard UNIX commands available with almost every UNIX system.
Network File System (NFS) Network File System (NFS) is a tool to manage files spread among several computers on a network as if they were on the same local machine. So, the final user does not have to worry of the exact location of its own files in order to access them.
An Introduction to Tk This articles explain how to build a graphical interface using the Toolkit of Tcl: Tk. The reader should also appreciate the simplicity of this toolkit compared to usual X-Windows libraries.
xinetd - extended Internet services daemon xinetd - extended Internet services daemon - provides an excellent security against the intrusions, and limit certain risks of attacks by Deny of Services ( DoS ). It allows, just like the most known pair ( inetd + tcpd ), to set access control to a computer, but its capacities extend well beyond. This article proposes you to discover them.
Slackware 7.0 part I: Installation Guide The author describes in detail the installation of the Slackware 7.0 Linux distribution. This article is written for beginners.
Magicpoint This article reviews the possibility of MagicPoint. This software is one of the very few that allow creation of presentations under X-Windows.
Bastille Linux Available by the beginning of june,version 1.1 of Bastille-Linux is not a new Linux Distribution but a set of security scripts. The authors have adopted a very pedagogic approach and one can learn a lot simply installing these scripts.
REBOL the rebel Let's say REBOL is a messaging language, but as a matter of fact, it's much more than that.
Reporting bugs on Debian 2.2 How that Debian 2.2 is released, a lot of people will upgrade to new newest Debian distro. Since Debian is extremely stable, why do you need a bug report tool? I do not know, but you cannot write software without bugs, so bugs will be found. This article explains how to submit them to the developers of the package.
Building Scalable ISPs with opensource softwares In my last article, I introduced you to using LDAP on Linux. In this article, we will build a scalable ISP that can scale from one to any number of backend machines. The backbone of setting up this ISP is LDAP.
An Introduction to Perl's XML::XSLT module This article demonstrates some of the capabilities of the W3C's XSLT standard and how it can be used to help you manage and publish XML documents to the web.
Using LDAP under Linux This article will talk about the benefits of deploying LDAP in an organization and how to implement it on Linux.
Apache : Part I This article is an introduction to the HTTP protocol it takes also a look at the history of the World Wide Web.
Sendmail and Fetchmail: A local mail server. Sendmail is a powerful but complex software. This article explains how to configure sendmail and fetchmail for use on a typical home computer.
Setting up IP-Masquerading IP-Masquerading provides the possibility to connect several computers to the Internet using a computer running Linux with just one public IP address.
Making PDF documents with DocBook This article describes how you can use DocBook to develop PDF documents and covers tools you need to edit DocBook articles and tools to translate them to PDF documents.
Mastering the VI editor The VI editor is a screen-based editor used by many Unix users. The VI editor has powerful features to aid programmers, but many beginning users avoid using VI because the different features overwhelm them.
Linux RT, part III In this article a simple electric circuit is used to process commands from any infra-red remote control.
NEdit, the universal editor in Unix world Nedit is a remarkable editor. Unfortunately it is not included in most Linux distributions and therefore not as well known as other editors.
Product review: SNiFF+ for Linux SNiFF+ is an integrated development environment for Linux. TakeFive Software provides a download version (limited to 200 files) free of charge.
The uCsimm kit This article describes the uCsimm kit and the UClinux project: Porting the linux kernel on hardware without MMU (memory management unit).
FSViewer, a File Manager for WindowMaker Among the revolutionary tools of NeXTStep, the first in order of appearance on the screen was indisputably the File Viewer. Thanks to the path-view in that File Manager you always knew where you were. It was more than a manager, it was a true browser. FSViewer is a NeXTStep a like File Manager for WindowMaker.
Recycling Ip Addresses with Apache This article demonstrates how to serve multiple virtual web servers using the same Ip address with Apache on Unix/Linux.
VXE, a Linux security tool Serge Lozovsky presents a software package that he developed to make UNIX systems more secure.
Sketch, vectorial drawing under Linux The advantages of a vectorial representation over bitmap is that files are smaller and the image can be enlarged significantly without differences in rendering (pixellisation). Sketch is written in Python, an object oriented interpreted programming language.
PostScript Part II: The Operand Stack The author describes the operand stack of the PostScript language. The stack manipulations and mathematical operators are presented here.
RenderMan Part III This article discusses he possibility of modeling and animating a scene using C or C!+
f-CPU Project: Attempting the "even harder" The fPU project attempts to develop a microprocessor like the present ones allowing a development scheme close to the one guiding important free software projects.
Japanese on Linux Part I This article takes a brief overview at how to make your Linux system Japanese-capable.
Installation and Configuration of a Raid-system RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) consists of a series of systems to organize several disk drives into a single entity that behaves as a single virtual drive but making the various disks work in parallel thus improving the access performance and saving the information stored from accidental crashes.
File Access Permissions This article is divided into two parts: The first part (Basic file access permissions) is a very short introduction to the basic file permission concept under Unix. The second part (T-bit, SUID and SGID) covers more advanced features of Linux that go beyond the basic "read-write-execute" flags.
Java. Part II The second part of a tutorial about java
An Introduction to Network Booting and Etherboot An advanced article that explains how to bootstrap your computer from a program stored in non-volatile memory without accessing your hard disk.
Finding Files How to search for files by name or content.
Enabling Chinese on Linux This brief article describes how to enable Chinese locale on a "standard" Linux box.
Interview with Juan Jose Amor Juan Jose Amor Iglesias Current coordinator of the LuCAS project, part of the LDP and devoted to the translation and localization of MDL manuals in Spanish
Enlightenment Enlightenment is a highly customizable window manager for Linux. This article discusses the features, installation, and customization of the Enlightenment window manager.
Regular Expressions Regular expressions are advanced search patters. This Article gives an introduction.
Real-Time Linux II In this second issue devoted to RT-Linux I will try to offer a more practical view of RT-Linux.
Programming with Java. Part I This is the first article in a series about Java programming. The first part will describe Java as a language, its general characteristics and the location of the most relevant sources of information.
SQL Tutorial Part II Part II of the tutorial reviews several basic statements of the SQL language.
MySQL. A Database Server MySQL is an SQL (Structured Query Language) database server supported by a number of platforms, including Linux. Its Linux version is design with fast performance in mind.
TCPD and Firewalls using IPFWADM This article describes very briefly how to configure the inetd services in order to improve security on your system. We concentrate in the of the tool IPFWADM to administer and configure inetd services
MindsEye: 3D Modeling About 2 years ago, when linux was still very much a hackers operating system, the idea popped up to start work on a renderer/modeler/animation program for Linux.
Writing Text with Gimp The graphics corner continues to review and compare two good Image manipulation tools: Photoshop and Gimp. Our reviewers explore the creation of text banners.
The X Display Manager The X Display Manager runs as a daemon on a host machine and manages multiple X displays.
StarOffice for Linux This article reviews the applications available in the suite StarOffice 4.0. The author gives us a demonstration using tool for the creation of presentations. (functionally similar to Microsoft's Power Point).
Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 versus UNIX The goal of this article is provide managers in corporations with the data and comparisons necessary to make well-informed decisions concerning the installation of servers for the corporate environment. All the information presented in this article summarizes the experience of a number of information systems professionals.
RenderMan Who has not heard of Pixar? Who has not seen "Toy Story"? Pixar developed RenderMan.
Introduction to DNS You may have wondered what happens behind the scenes in Netscape after you enter a URL. This article will help you to understand the name-lookup process.
GLUT: using Menus Our GL Utility Toolkit series continues, examining the windows menu programming interface with a simple example.
POVRAY II: Basic Notions This is the second article on a series about Povray. This time we review some general concepts and start describing the basic elements of the language.
Writing Text with PhotoShop The graphics corner continues to review and compare two good Image manipulation tools: Photoshop and Gimp. Our reviewers explore the creation of text banners.
Configuring X What are all those dotfiles for anyway?
Interview with Miguel de Icaza Miguel de Icaza gives us an interesting peek at a selected group of linux kernel developers. He is involved with the Linux/Sparc, Gnome project and RedHat's Lab.
What is OpenGL? This article is the first in a series about OpenGL, perhaps the most successful API for high-end 3D graphics
GLUT programming:Windows and Animations GLUT is the GL Utility Toolkit, developed by Mark Kilgard. In this article the author introduces GLUT, and gives us a primer on Windows and Animations handling with GLUT.
Connecting to the Internet Here we have something lots of users face up to in their early stages of setting Linux up: Connecting to the Internet.
I got Linux Installed, What next? This article introduces new users to some of the issues that he/she will confront upon installation of Linux.
Some Tips Well...here are some notes, tricks, some of these are specific to non-english speaking users and therefore not frequently answered in the common documentation.
Managing Your Mail with procmail Keep you mail on folders, respond automatically, create mailing lists, learn how to do these and much more with procmail.
Linux in Hospitals Linux means business, an example of using Linux in the health care environment.
![[LinuxFocus-icon]](../common/images/logolftop_319x45.gif){kind=small}
