Security: The Latest and Greatest of Bastille Kristy Westphal First and foremost, Bastille Linux is an operating system lockdown tool. It goes through many default settings on a Linux system and recommends settings that are more secure. Bastille Linux currently works on the major flavors of Linux (Red Hat, Gentoo, Debian, Fedora Core, SUSE), as well as HP-UX and Mac OS X (for developers only right now; a more complete user version is to be released soon). However, the team has only tested the assessment mode on the Red Hat and SUSE Linux platforms. Wed, 16 Aug 2006
Review: G2 8.2 Cameron Laird It's much different from almost any other software you've encountered, though. It's likely to feel very much like a program from a parallel universe. Wed, 16 Aug 2006
Book Review: Nagios: System and Network Monitoring Cameron Laird "Nagios is an open source host, service and network monitoring program." That's how the Nagios home page accurately begins. While systems administration remains a domain immature enough to support a broad variety of processes and products for managing computer systems, Nagios is probably as widely used now as any of its Unix-oriented competitors (early adopters will want to keep an eye on Zabbix, though). Note that you might have first encountered Nagios as "Netsaint", an earlier name whose development has now been entirely subsumed by the Nagios project. Wed, 16 Aug 2006
Certification: Test Your Knowledge of A+ Elective Topics Emmett Dulaney As reviewed earlier this month and last, one of the latest certifications to get a major overhaul is A+ from CompTIA. It now consists of four exams — one that you must take (Essentials), and three from which you can choose an elective. The following questions are intended to allow you to test your knowledge of topics tested upon on the elective exams — specifically 220-602 (since all other electives are a subset of it) — and make certain you are ready for this certification before you begin considering it or preparing for it. Tue, 15 Aug 2006
Book Review: Red Hat Fedora 5 Unleashed Emmett Dulaney Fedora Core is a free, open-community, version of Red Hat. Not only does this book walk you through every major aspect of the operating system from installation to game playing, but it also includes a DVD that that has the full distribution on it as well as OpenOffice.org and a number of the other more common Linux programs. Tue, 15 Aug 2006
Certification: Further Examining Changes to the A+ Certification Emmett Dulaney Last month, I introduced the changes that have been announced to the A+ certification, which is one of the most popular certifications currently in the IT industry. After a quick glimpse of the existing two-exam certification, the new path was presented. Although this certification also requires passing two exams, there are now three electives from which to choose after passing the one required test. For all practical purposes, the 220-602 exam (IT/Enterprise Technician) is the most comprehensive elective and the other two — 220-603 (Remote Technician) and 220-604 (Depot Technician) — are just subsets of that one. Wed, 2 Aug 2006
Book Review: How to Break Web Software Kristy Westphal How to Break Web Software shows you how to do exactly that. It is, in a word, awesome! It is chock full of attacks for which all Web sites should be tested. Each attack description includes a detailed explanation, when to use it, and how to protect your site from the attack. The book is easy read, clear and complete in its explanations. Accompanying the book is a CD full of the tools that are referenced throughout the book, including the "hacme" bank application from Foundstone to practice on. Your biggest dilemma when reading this book will be deciding who else should read it — Your developers? Your QA team? Your security team? The answer is probably all of the above. Tue, 1 Aug 2006
Regular Expressions: Simplest possible not always so simple Cameron Laird, Kathryn Soraiz We all know about "Hello, world." It finally dawned on us how different is what we know about this simplest possible program, though.
Non-programmers who hear us talking about "Hello, world" (feel free to choose a different spelling if you prefer) seem to assume it's some sort of techie humor. It's light-hearted, true, but at the same time it's serious enough to merit, for instance, the article-length treatment Wikipedia accords it. Mon, 24 Jul 2006
Security: The adventure continues — SELinux Kristy Westphal An advantage of upgrading to the latest Fedora Core version (5) is the latest and greatest in SELinux advances. I mentioned in a previous article that a plethora of Linux kernel improvements were available, and SELinux was one of them. Created by the NSA, it now comes by default with the free version of Red Hat: Fedora. Figuring out the many pieces of it and its vast capabilities are a bit of a mystery, but once that is done, it is very powerful. Wed, 19 Jul 2006
Certification: Test Your Knowledge of A+ Essentials Topics Emmett Dulaney As reviewed earlier this month, one of the latest certifications to get a major overhaul is A+ from CompTIA. It now consists of four exams – one that you must take (Essentials), and three electives from which you can choose. The following questions are intended to allow you to test your knowledge of topics tested upon on the Essentials exam and make certain you are ready for this certification before you begin preparing for it. Answers are at the end of the article. Good luck! Wed, 19 Jul 2006
From the Archives
Changes to the CIW Associate Certification Exam Emmett Dulaney The CIW (Certified Internet Webmaster) Foundation exam has recently upgraded to version 5. This vendor-neutral exam is at the core of all the CIW offerings, as outlined in a series of articles that originally started in June and July of 2002. This is the only exam you must pass to become certified at the Associate level, and it starts you on the path toward the higher-end CIW certifications such as Master CIW Administrator and Master CIW Enterprise Developer. Tue, 4 Jan 2005
MySQL Administrator Russell Dyer MySQL Administrator allows an adminstrator to configure a MySQL server easily. You can manage users, as well as server connections and threads. You can check performance and server logs related to general database activities, slow queries, and errors. A couple of sections provide assistance in making backups of databases and restoring them if necessary. If you take advantage of replication, MySQL Administrator provides an interface for monitoring their status. Finally, you can examine table schema and make changes to the layout of tables. Mon, 30 Aug 2004
Book Review: The Cult of Mac Peter Salus I think you can get The Cult of Mac even if you don't use one. Perhaps not. I'm not a member of the cult. But I have used a Mac, and I've even authorized purchases of cubes for folks working for me. But this book is fun, even for a guy like me. Tue, 4 Jan 2005
Book Review: Classic Shell Scripting Peter Salus If you program on a Unix box or a Linux box, you use the shell. It doesn't matter whether it's sh, csh, ksh, bash, or... You use the shell. And, in all likelihood, if you use the shell, you use scripts.
Robbins and Beebe have produced a book that is really good in a variety of ways: it is well-written; it is well-organized; it is full of worthwhile examples and instances; and the code is lucid and clear. Wed, 25 May 2005
Find white papers, case studies, Webcasts and analyst reports on everything from design through development to testing and implementation at Unix Review's Research Papers and Reports.
The Advantages of HP-UX 11i over Linux on IA-32 The ultimate goal for IT Management is improving customer service while reducing the company's lifecycle costs. There are so many solutions out there, but how are IT Managers to choose? This whitepaper will serve as a guide as it analyses HP-UX 11i vs. Linux on IA-32.
Approaching A Virtualized IT World With Confidence Virtualization is about reducing IT costs through better resource utilization while at the same time providing greater flexibility of resources. Potential cost savings include initial hardware and software costs, reduced ongoing costs, manpower requirements, and reduced time to deploy new solutions. A virtualized world is available to you now.
Learn the Financial Benefits of HP-UX 11i versus Alternate Platforms Organizations continue to look for more ways to make each dollar of computing investment go further, driving the continued need for application and server consolidation, and better availability. Read this analysis of a five year lifecycle TCO of two platforms, HP-UX 11i running on HP Integrity Servers vs. IBM AIX 5L running on IBM eServer.
Virtual Server Environments - Optimizing Server Utilization In Real Time Virtualization is an approach to IT that pools and shares resources so utilization is optimized and supply automatically meets demand. To learn how a virtual server environment can help you double your resource utilization, maintain continuous service levels, and pay only for what you use, read this new white paper now.
Learn how to recover critical data from the RAID storage experts at DataRAID. DataRAID provides RAID data recovery and salvaging services for hard disk drives and RAID arrays to recover critical data from failed servers.
IBM Puts Weight Behind New Open-Source Markets
Among the projects under way are tuning the Linux kernel to run faster and more securely on IBM's new Cell processor, shipping versions of Lotus desktop apps that run on Linux, and expanding IBM's open-source Web server business.
Dell Recall Shows Laptops Becoming A Risky Business
Dell's recall of millions of laptop batteries goes to show that the industry hasn't adequately tackled the dangers of overheating in today's portable computers.
With Cuts Coming, CA Goes Back To Basics
One day after announcing a major downsizing in which it will slash its headcount by 11 percent, CA said it is going to reverse much of the go-to-market strategy it implemented during the past two years.
Microsoft Delays 11 Patches To Push 1
The move was a first for Microsoft, as was its admission that it prioritizes patches provided by its update mechanisms.
Firefox 2.0 Now To Ship In Late October
You'll have to keep waiting for the next rev of Firefox, at least until sometime around Halloween. Mozilla has a few bugs to squash first before shipping.
Web-based Customizable Photo Editor PXN8 is an online photo editor for install on your Web Server. Developed using web standards, PXN8 requires no plugins and can be easily customized and themed to suit your website identity. Sample themed editors are provided in JSP, PHP and ASP.
UNIX and Linux Performance Tuning Simplified SarCheck is a UNIX performance analysis and tuning tool for most UNIX and Linux systems. It produces recommendations and explanations, complete with supporting graphs and tables. Get the most from your hardware by keeping your systems tuned.
Used IBM pSeries Servers Did you know that clients worldwide are making their budgets work by purchasing refurbished and used IBM pSeries servers and parts at up to 80% off list pricing? Many of the latest models and features are available now used at Vibrant Technologies!
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