The saying, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," is never truer than when it applies to backing up your data. We look at five of the best tape drives to help you decide which one is right for your Linux system.
If you've networked more than one or two systems together, you already know how difficult it is to maintain consistent user and password information across all your machines. Here's a better way.
To GNOME founders Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman, open source software is all about people. Here they share their thoughts on Free Software development, the GNOME and KDE projects, and their new company, Helix Code.
After much anticipation, the Linux 2.4 kernel is finally ready to make its debut -- and with this release, Linux truly becomes "Enterprise Ready." We will fill you in on all of the new and improved features.
Prospective Linux users often ask, "How does Linux differ from Microsoft Windows?" Depending on the background and interests of the person inquiring, there are a variety of answers to this question. However, the questioner is seldom prepared to understand what is probably the best answer to this question.
Open source software development is often perceived by corporate America as a risky business proposition. The thought of numerous independent, geographically dispersed developers collaborating on a software project, in some vague way, seems to make many members of the Fortune 1000 uncomfortable. However, before dismissing open source out-of-hand, let's take a few moments to consider the risks that are inherent in a more traditional software development environment.
As we approach the real turn of the millennium in the year 2001 (that's right people, after all that Y2K hullabaloo, we're still in the 20th century!), I can't stop thinking about Stanley Kubrick's movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, based on Arthur C. Clarke's classic sci-fi novel. If you have never seen it, then by all means, drop this magazine, go out and rent it now -- you're depriving yourself of seeing probably the best sci-fi film ever made. Go right now. Watch it. Make popcorn. And don't skip the slow-moving monkey part -- it's important.
In last month's column, I used a small Expect script to communicate with a highly accurate clock that was attached to my system's serial port. In this month's column, we will take a more extended look at this very useful tool.
One of the nice features of Linux (and other Unix-like operating systems) is its ability to chain together a number of small utility programs so that they act like one larger program. I'm referring, of course, to the "pipe" feature that is supported by most popular shells and is denoted by the | character. This feature allows data to flow from the standard output of one application directly into the standard input of the next application in the chain, much as if you placed a pipe from the end of the first application to the beginning of the second. For example, the four utilities cat, grep, sort, and less can all be chained together like this:
Dynamic content on a Web site is cool. It keeps people coming back and creates the appearance that there are people behind the scenes actively updating the site to provide new and improved information. However, in the real world, you'll regret the day you added that SSI include directive in your homepage when you finally do something important enough that Slashdot notices you. Running a CGI script on every single Web hit is a great way to get your Quake game interrupted.
I've been given an account on a server that has disallowed telnet and ftp access in favor of ssh. What is ssh, and how can I use it? Why have they disabled telnet?
Well, here we are -- January 2001. Arthur C. Clark and Stanley Kubrick would be proud. Last year, everyone was waiting to see if the turn of the millennium would cause the world to explode, and if you had a publicly traded company (or wanted to have a publicly traded company), all you did was add the words "Linux" or "dot-com" to your name and then watch your stock run skyward.
