nixCraft Linux Sys Admin Blog

Posted: 26 Mar 2008 12:02 PM CDT

ASIMO is a humanoid robot manufactured by Honda which is quite high tech and expensive gadget. You can hired out it for US $166,000 per year. However, as usual Linux provides you an opportunity to build your own robot. Linux-based robots are tricky to create, but Michael Surran’s Robotics class found out it can be done:

Robots have been a passion of mine since I was a child, so imagine my excitement when I was given the opportunity to add a robotics class to our high school’s computer curriculum! We recently celebrated our second year of offering robotics at Greater Houlton Christian Academy (GHCA), the school where I teach. During this time, we’ve produced three different robots, each based on a PC running Linux. We work with a tight budget, so we have to be creative in our design, use of materials and tools. This results in robots that any do-it-yourself hobbyist can build.

Though, this article doesn’t give step-by-step instructions on how to build a DIY robot. It proivdes some getting started hints. Linux and robotics are a perfect combination!

=> Do-It-Yourself Robots with Linux

Fedora Linux 9 Beta Released

Posted: 26 Mar 2008 11:50 AM CDT

Fedora Linux 9 beta has been released and available for download. Some highlights of Fedora 9 Beta:

=> GNOME 2.22, with new features like a helpful world time clock, better file system performance, security improvements, power management at the login screen, the ability to dynamically configure displays, better Bluetooth integration, improved podcast support, and many other enhancements

=> KDE 4.0.2, which includes a brand new desktop and panel with many new concepts, integrated desktop search, a brand new visual style called Oxygen, a new multimedia API called Phonon, and a new hardware integration framework called Solid — all integrated by Fedora’s KDE SIG

=> Firefox 3 Beta 5, featuring a native look and feel, desktop integration, the new Places that replaces bookmarks, and a reworked address bar

=> Support for resizing ext2, ext3 and NTFS partitions during install

=> Support for creating and installing to encrypted filesystems

=>PackageKit, a cross-distribution package management solution with a complete yum backend, designed to unify different distributions’ software management with the latest technologies

=> Kernel 2.6.25-rc5 etc

(Fig. 01: Fedora 9 Desktop)

Download Fedora 9 Beta Software

To download, visit:

Official Project Home Page

Restore Selected Files From Secondary Backup Hard Disk

Posted: 26 Mar 2008 02:14 PM CDT

Q. I’ve backup created using rsync command stored at /disk2/home/tom/ directory. Accidentally, I had deleted files from /home/tom directory. I’d like to restore all file names starting with alpha numeric characters from /disk2/home/tom/ to /home/tom. How do I restore selected files in a batch mode?

Answer to "Restore Selected Files From Secondary Backup Hard Disk"