Linux gurus unite!

./gone

i agree with mas, ..... maybe ./gone on this site where newbie questions and M$ dominate the topics.

but this is not the only tech site out there and by no means the de facto forum for *nix questions.

(although most of my discussionsare usually about tip's and tricks or tools that I have found for linux that can make the newbies life easier)

Hi, how are you?
I am a bit new with Linux SUSE and within a month probably we are going to implement a samba and dns server and I was wondering if you have a cookbook for this two tasks. Also If you have anything for a firewall I would like to have cookbook for it.
Anything you could guide me with is appreciated.

Regards,
Mario E Mira
mmira@sbcglobal.net

RedHat has now instigated court action against SCO claiming that SCO is acting illegially. Just maybe SCo is finding out what the real world is like.

http://news.com.com/2100-7252-5059547.html?part=dht&tag=ntop

In the lattest news bulletin IBM has filled a Counter Claim against SCO and is attempting to get an injunction preventing SCO shipping any Unix product if this proves sucessful it may require quite a lot more Microsoft money to keep SCO going to the stage where it can reach court.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5060965.html

And while it is now 4.42 AM over here I'd say from a very quick look at only the first 10 pages there goes my nights slep again.

I really like the amount of detail as well as the links to prove the authors points. It looks like it will be anothe 6 weeks that I have the lattest DVD that I just hired lastnigh out before I get to watch it. But then again what are these groups for if not to learn?

Thanks for the link at least some of the people at TR will be happy that I'm not to bee seen for a long time.

Cheers for naw I'll get back to my reading or should I say studing?

Lindows.com, makers of LindowsOS, is a full Debian GNU/Linux system best suited to use on a fast broadband network. The company is located in San Diego, California. The software was originally created with some help from the former Corel Linux developers at Xandros, who have their own distribution. Now Lindows.com engineers and develops their own packaging and they have a very easy to install and use system, based on an idea called the Click N Run Warehouse.

The other company you're thinking of is Lycoris, formerly called Redmond Linux. It's founder, Joseph Cheek, has worked for LinuxCare and as a consultant at Microsoft, but the company has nothing at all to do with Microsoft, other than being located rather nearby.

Lycoris is arguably the easiest desktop Linux system on the market. It's specifically designed to be simple, not full of excess software, simply containing basic desktop applications that a consumer is likely to use.

Both LindowsOS and Lycoris are available from Wal-Mart's online store in preconfigured systems from Microtel. Lycoris has recently introduced a tablet PC and a really solid notebook system in addition to the inexpensive Microtel systems sold through Wal-Mart.

It's not impossible to break any system. Until you become familiar with the way that Debian GNU/Linux software works, I'd have to be fair and at least acknowledge the possibility that if something broke, you could badly break your entire system.

First of all, I'd have to question the wisdom of doing a blind apt-get upgrade or an apt-get dist-upgrade. Both of these commands offer a way to download the package headers only and see what would happen if you actually installed the changes without actually performing the changes. Therefore, it is always possible to check what might be and what might happen.

It's very surprising to me that a stable distribution would break, unless that stable distribution actually consisted of a commercial implementation BASED on a stable distribution and the commercial setup was incorrect.

Raw Debian is breakable, but it's also quite fixable. It's always wise to have a solid network behind you so that you can download and modify lots of libraries if you ever need to do so. It's also always a good idea to thoroughly back up even the finest software.

I've broken Debian builds, and I've done naughty things that you're not supposed to do, but I've never yet managed to render my system completely inoperable, it's always been in a state that I could recover. Therefore I have to wonder what the person was doing that broke the system. It's easy to fix what breaks on Debian software, that's one of the beauties of it.

In 10 years Linux will be where windows is today, in terms of trust, price and uptime.

All of these come from usability v functionality v greed v security.

You heard it here first!

For those of you out there who are using the 2.4.x kernels up to 2.4.22, and you do not know about this, read on.

A while ago, debian was broken into. It was later found that the exploit that was used was in every 2.4 kernel version.

The linux community has been relatively silent about this, especially the folks at kernel.org.

Even the major distros have silently released patches and discussions about this that usually exist on such highly regarded newsgroups such as bugtraq and slashdot, have been almost non-existant.

I'm not going to get into the techincal details of the exploit, but just to say you need either the kernel patch or the latest kernel 2.4.23.

Several distros have made available back ported kernels with the patch level included.

To see what your distro has done, a good place to look is: linuxsecurity.org

To get the white paper on the exploit go to:
http://isec.pl/papers/linux_kernel_do_brk.pdf

If your not on bugtraq then shame on you.
If you don't update your kernel and you get owned because of it, don't start crying about it.

Shame on the linux community for their silence. It is extremely shameful to think that we can dish it out but we can't take it.

LordInfidel

as tech republic have just trashed my carefully
thought out questions, I'll have to make em
shorter.Doh. Have installed Fedora core 1 as
part of a triple install. Win ME and MDK9.2 dual
boot using LiLo, Fedora Core 1 boots from floppy
as I had probs with the triple boot install.
Have updated kernel on MDK9.2 and that updates
the bootloader giving me options on which kernel
to boot. With the floppy boot on Fedora I need
help to make a new floppy so I can boot off one
of the later kernels that are on the OS. If
thats possible. Second ? Some help for a newbie
would be appreciated for setting Linux up as an
Internet gateway. I've got a choice of MDK10.0,
Fedora Core 1 and Fedora Core2 along with XP
(sorry for swearing) but works allright as a
gateway apart from the thro the roof security
thats on it.Mekon.

I was year under OpenBSD and 1.5 years under NetBSD. OpenBSD is good for secure boxes, and good for servers.
http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/ is the answer for many
questions.OpenBSD is bad desktop for non-english users,
because headquarters have no solution for localization (1.5 years ago). OpenBSD can beat any *BSD if it'll include UNICODE.

NetBSD is a 2 big projects, OS and pkgsrc which ports applications to different OSes (all other OSes ports only for own OS). It's the best in the world in pkgsrc effort and ultimate for supported platforms.Some troubles with nationalization on virtual consoles. I like it more than other *BSDs.

While, newb's might think linux will never replace windows. I am pretty sure in the new future with the growth of linux even M$ can not stop it. M$ has already made plenty of attempts to try and slow OpenSource and Linux down because it is the only competition to Windows but linux offers stability and open standards (which M$ is not good about) i.e.
minimal posix compliance only having posix.1 is not really a compliant system just enough to keep the feds happy. Governments and companies often find that linux can be more of a benefit because of its cost and stability not to mention the fact that there are only like 30 - 40 known viruses for linux as compared to thousands of known viruses in windows not to mention that windows default install is basically an open door for people to invade as they please but yet people think M$ can be better in linux in that sense takes a person that knows more to attack a proper linux setup than it would to attack a windows box that they tried to setup to be secure too reason I say that is windows has nothing like SELinux which is created by the NSA and has security features that are at a very low level and haven't seen anything close in windows I mean at my old school I pretty much owned bout 50 computers out of about 150 because windows was so easy to bypass its security
and could have done more but almost felt sorry for my school cause winodws couldn't stop it even with "the updates" no don't get me wrong I am not saying windows sucks I think it is good for perhaps you average users that don't know shit and
have a hard enough time knowing what a c: is but if they were brought up on linux they might have a better understanding or at least not fear everything because microsoft thinks it has to use FUD to keep people from using other products really if MS was so confident that they had good product don't think they would have to do a tactic like that cause I honestly hate microsoft for that reason it will not be civil they choose to make lies and hide the truth I mean I read a thing that Microsoft itself released saying that windows had a lower TCO and some idiot actually thought that would be a good reason to stay with windows is because MS said that it was cheaper to use windows than linux but remember why would windows say its competition is cheaper to maintain and "purchase"
mean at the fact each copy of windows can cost $200 - $500 USD why would that be cheaper than a free os that you are only paying the IT staff which would be trained and know how to use it rather than paying for 1000 licenses for the entire company and then having to pay your entire IT staff todo the same stuff they would have to do in linux do see how that would make a lower TCO for MS cause I know linux is easier to automate if you know how to use programming and shell scripting cause mean I get a free C++ compiler in linux another thing that cost money in windows the fact is that windows rips you for almost all products they can except for the ones that they want to kill there competition like Media Player
Internet Explorer ( both of those are only included cause they are trying to kill that competition IE took out netscape pretty much but netscape got smart and become part of the mozilla project and now is back in competition) because of linux but unlike IE mozilla is opensource so I can write my own version of mozilla if I felt like it something MS would never let you do without paying millions of dollars for the copyrights.

Who knows what lurks deep within the minds of debate starting writers? Who would have thought that anyone has a "window of opportunity" in which starting a debate is correct, but outside of that window it is not correct?

A parable: Suppose you cast a net and you catch some fish. You'd really like to catch more fish. So you cast another net in a different place. It may look a lot like the first net you cast. But if it is in a different place, you'll catch the fish that were not at the first place.

Moral of the story: Cast a new net, see if it catches any fish. If this thread had no activity, you would have one answer. Since it has quite a lot of activity, plain to see this net is "well cast". Whether you personally see the value is not particularly relevant. In fact, as you can see, nearly every response comes from a person that has made up his mind about things, so this is not perhaps a "value" forum but another playground where we battle over OS's.

In theory, seems to me we can debate BETWEEN various flavors of Linux whereas in other fora we debate between Linux and Windows (MacIntosh, etc).

Preech is to preach what leech is to leach. (analyze THAT!)

If we are saying that only people with 20 years experience should be preeching then I and many others here qualify.

"Linux" is used to mean many different things ranging from the Kernel itself to the entire contents of a distribution, all 600 utilities and applications.

Your dispute seems to be that some people equate Linux with Unix all the time. Others do so depending upon the context, which includes the lawyers of SCO which sometimes want Linux to be a derivative of Unix, and at other times, do not wish it to be so.

Linux is functionally similar to the AT&T Unix I remember using in the '80s, which itself was similar to Solaris (when running in AT&T work-alike mode; it could also function as BSD).

Therefore, when discussing Linux from a functional point of view, they are enough alike that the difference between a current release of Linux and a current Unix is probably less than a current Unix with a previous Unix.

Free BSD is, of course, similar to the BSD fork of Unix.

Differences in code base are not generally known; so these comparisons are more or less always functional comparisons.

It speaks to an experienced Unix administrator being able to work a Linux machine, and vice versa, with very little difficulty.

This equivalence simply does not exist between Unix/Linux and MS Windows.

A cultural difference is that Linux applications, to a large extent, keep their configurations either in /etc or in text files in the user space. This has profound implications for disaster recovery and application portability. Back in the days of MS-DOS, you could sometimes copy an entire application just by copying its installation directory to another machine or location -- its configuration was kept in "ini" files in the same folder. Later, those "ini" files moved to c:\windows\ or c:\windows\system32 and became much more integrated with Windows, and consequently harder to back up and restore (frequently impossible actually). Now the "ini" files are much less used and the registry is used for everything and moving applications, restoring them from backup is really a non-starter in Windows but it is pretty easy in Linux.