nixCraft Linux Sys Admin Blog

Google Code University: Learn How To Code / Program

Posted: 19 Mar 2008 02:20 PM CDT

Good learning stuff - at no cost!

From the page:

This website provides tutorials and sample course content so CS students and educators can learn more about current computing technologies and paradigms. In particular, this content is Creative Commons licensed which makes it easy for CS educators to use in their own classes.

The Courses section contains tutorials, lecture slides, and problem sets for a variety of topic areas:

* AJAX Programming
* Distributed Systems
* Web Security
* Languages

In the Tools 101 section, you will find a set of introductions to some common tools used in Computer Science such as version control systems and databases.

The CS Curriculum Search will help you find teaching materials that have been published to the web by faculty from CS departments around the world. You can refine your search to display just lectures, assignments or reference materials for a set of courses.

=> Google Code University (via Digg)

GCC Compiler 4.3.0 exposes a Linux / BSD kernel bug

Posted: 19 Mar 2008 01:13 PM CDT

Since version 4.3, gcc changed its behavior concerning the x86/x86-64 ABI and the direction flag, that is it now assumes that the direction flag is cleared at the entry of a function and it doesn’t clear once more if needed. According to LWN article GCC 4.3.0 exposes a kernel bug:

A change to GCC for a recent release coupled with a kernel bug has created a messy situation, with possible security implications. GCC changed some assumptions about x86 processor flags, in accordance with the ABI standard, that can lead to memory corruption for programs built with GCC 4.3.0. No one has come up with a way to exploit the flaw, at least yet, but it clearly is a problem that needs to be addressed.

=> GCC 4.3.0 exposes a kernel bug (via ./)

Sun To Offer Ubuntu Linux Based Servers

Posted: 19 Mar 2008 01:12 PM CDT

Good news for all Debian / Ubuntu Linux fans. Sun has started to offer Ubuntu Linux based servers. Sun has systems competitively priced for small and medium businesses. Ubuntu is based upon rock solid Debian core. Look like Red hat and Novell going to have some nice competition. Sun offers x64-based systems certified for Ubuntu Linux:
* x64 Rack Servers

* Blade Servers

* x64 Workstations

* Workgroup Disk Storage

* Tape Automation

=> Sun SMB Product Page (Via Arun’s blog)

Whatâ€™s new in OpenOffice.Org version 3?

Posted: 19 Mar 2008 12:51 PM CDT

OO is a decent free Office Suite for Windows / Linux / Mac and other platforms. This webpage provides OpenOffice.org 3.0’s new features, an early look:

OpenOffice.org 3.0 is 167 days away, but who’s counting? Maybe the software developers are counting because they have a whopping 2,278 issues targeted for this release. Even though OpenOffice.org 2.4 is not yet out the door, let’s see how far they’ve come with OpenOffice.org 3.0.

New features

Personal Information Manager (PIM), probably based on Thunderbird/Lightning
PDF import into Draw (to maintain correct layout of the original PDF)
Web 2.0 support for weblogs and wikis
Office 2007 OOXML document import filter
Support for Mac OS X Aqua platform
Redesigned, more modern GUI.
Extensions, to add third party functionality etc

(Fig. 01: OpenOffice.Org v3.x Splash Screen)

=> OpenOffice.org 3.0’s new features

Apache Web Server .htaccess File Configuration Not working

Posted: 19 Mar 2008 02:03 PM CDT

Q. I’m using CentOS Linux server with Apache 2 and PHP. I’ve created .htaccess file for URL rewrting and other configuration options. However, my Apache version 2 .htaccess configuration is not working at all. How do I fix this problem?

Answer to "Apache Web Server .htaccess File Configuration Not working"