nixCraft Linux Sys Admin Blog

Posted: 21 May 2008 06:15 PM CDT

If you wanna run Linux any time, any place, any computer, try USB device. Here's what to do with popular distributions like Puppy Linux, Ubuntu, and Fedora, so you can boot up directly from your thumb drive:

Most of the time, Linux is run from either an installation on a hard drive or a live CD/DVD distribution. The first is fast, but not very portable; the second can be run anywhere you have a computer and a CD drive with boot access, but typically isn't very fast. Over the last few years, though, we've seen the emergence of something that combines the speed of a hard drive install with the convenience of a live CD: running Linux from a USB flash drive.

=> How To Run Linux From A USB Flash Drive

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 Released

Posted: 21 May 2008 04:14 PM CDT

Red Hat enterprise Linux version 5.2 has been released and available via a Red Hat Network subscription. This update brings broad refresh of hardware support and improved quality, combined with new features and enhancements in areas such as virtualization, desktop, networking, storage & clustering and security.

Virtualization of very large systems, with up to 64 CPUs and 512 GB of memory, is now possible. Virtualization support for NUMA-based architectures is provided, as well as security, performance, manageability and robustness improvements. CPU frequency scaling support for virtualized environments also allows for reduced power consumption.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 provides enhanced capabilities for several hardware architectures, covering x86/x86-64, Itanium, IBM POWER and IBM System z, which provide improved performance, power usage, scalability and manageability. For example, support for Intel's Dynamic Acceleration Technology permits power saving by quiescing idle CPU cores, and offers performance gains by potentially overclocking busy cores within safe thermal levels. Other hardware enhancements include extensive device driver updates, covering storage, network and graphics devices, and certification of IBM's new Cell Blade systems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux becomes a certified operating system for IBM's new high-performance blade server based on Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E) Architecture.

Desktop version includes latest cutting edge softwares:

Evolution 2.12.3
Firefox 3
OpenOffice 2.3.0
Thunderbird 2.0

Red Hat Cluster Suite, which is included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Advanced Platform, now has a Resource Event Scripting Language that enables sophisticated application failover capabilities. It also newly supports SCSI-3 reservation fencing support for active/active and active/passive DM/MPIO (multipathing), which widens the range of storage devices that can be used in clusters.

Improved iSCSI support allows users to set-up diskless systems with a root volume on the iSCSI server, a common requirement in high-density Blade environments.

How do I upgrade my system?

First, make sure you backup existing configuration and data. Next, simply type the following two commands:
# yum update # reboot

Verify that everything is working fine including all services:
# netstat -tulpn # netstat -nat # tail -f /var/log/messages # egrep -i 'error|warn' /var/log/messages # egrep -i 'error|warn' /path/to/apps/log/file

Alternatively, you can click on the "Red Hat Network Alert Notification GUI Tool" - which is a notifier that appears on the panel and alerts users when software package updates are available for the systems. This is point and click method.

If you are CentOS Linux user wait for some time to get all updates. More information available at Red Hat web site.

Download of the day: Unbound DNS Resolver

Posted: 21 May 2008 11:33 AM CDT

Unbound is a validating, recursive, and caching DNS resolver. The C implementation of Unbound is developed and maintained by NLnet Labs. It is based on ideas and algorithms taken from a java prototype developed by Verisign labs, Nominet, Kirei and ep.net.

Unbound is designed as a set of modular components, so that also DNSSEC (secure DNS) validation and stub-resolvers (that do not run as a server, but are linked into an application) are easily possible.

Download Ubbound

=> Visit the project web page to grab latest Unbound source code.

New Linux Platform For Car Electronics From Intel And Wind River Systems

Posted: 21 May 2008 10:38 AM CDT

Moblin.org is an open source community for sharing software technologies, ideas, projects, code, and applications to create an untethered computing experience across Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), Netbooks, and embedded devices.

Now, Intel and Wind River Systems have teamed up to create a Linux/x86 platform for car electronics, which will debut at the Telematics Detroit 2008 conference today (May 20). The offering is based on Intel's low-power Atom processor and a new variant of Wind River's embedded Linux.

Wind River announced that its Linux Platform for Infotainment, optimized for Intel's Atom, should be available in August. It will include speech-recognition and speech-to-text software from Nuance Communications, Bluetooth and noise reduction from Parrot, music management from Gracenote, networking from SMSC and DVD playback from Corel.

The software will provide connectivity with Apple iPods and support 3D interfaces. It will also support the Controller Area Network and Media-Oriented Systems Transport buses used to link electronics in many cars.

More information: Wind River, Intel ride Linux into car market