Open Sourcery

Extract text with awk

Like sed, awk can be used to transform text. Awk is both a general purpose text transformation tool and a programming language in its own right. Awk is especially useful in scripts and on the command-line.

Manipulate text with sed

Sed is a very handy and very powerful little text manipulator. Sed is short for "stream editor" and what it does is manipulate and filter text. We'll show you some of it's uses.

Set up user accounts quickly and securely

When you need to set up a user account to give a user shell access to the system, the only logical choice of login tool is OpenSSH. With SSH keys, all you need from the user is his SSH public key, and all he needs from you is the IP address or hostname with which to log in. Usually, this is sufficient.

Get the most from the du and df commands

While Linux has a number of very nice GUIs, using the command-line interface can be faster and produce more information than GUI tools can, especially when it comes to reporting and viewing disk usage.

Get more out of the ls command

The ls command is a well-known and often used command-line program that is used to list directory contents by name; in fact, it could be argued that it is the most used Linux command-line program.

Monitor network traffic with ntop

Like the command-line tool with a similar name (top), ntop is a monitoring agent. Instead of monitoring system resource usage like top, ntop monitors network usage and provides some very sophisticated and informative data.

Automate subversion backups

ubversion is increasing in popularity and usage, and while it makes a fantastic version control system -- as with all things -- it needs to be properly backed up. Backing up subversion can be painless and protects against the rare case of data corruption.

Install Microsoft core TrueType fonts in Mandriva Linux

The default fonts packaged with Linux are definitely passable; however, Microsoft has some freely available TrueType fonts that make Linux look even better.

Create encrypted loopback filesystems on Linux

Using the loopback filesystem interface, you can create encrypted filesystems very easily. These filesystems are great for storing sensitive documents be it SSH or GnuPG keys, financial documents, etc.

Is the demand for desktop Linux negligible?

There's been much fanfare about Linux replacing Windows on desktops but we've yet to see any major adoptions take place -- this may have something to do with the fact that in Australia, none of the major PC manufacturers have offered Linux as a pre-installed option.

Sourceforge Community Choice Award winners are....

Sourceforge has been running a community-driven awards process over the last month, trying to discover the top open source projects. The ones selected say a lot about those who frequent Sourceforge.

Monitor bandwidth with vnStat

Keeping track of bandwidth usage is a good thing for a variety of reasons, particularly in situations where bandwidth accounting is required, such as paying for Internet services that are dependent upon the amount of bandwidth used.

Tuning the Linux kernel for more aggressive network throughput

The Linux kernel and the distributions that package it typically provide very conservative defaults to certain network settings that affect networking parameters. You can tune then to optimise your network performance.

Automatically update your Ubuntu system with cron-apt

Updating all the software on your system can be a pain, but with Linux it doesn't have to be that way. We'll show you how to combine the apt package management system with a task scheduler to automatically update your system.

Tuning NFS for better performance

The Network File System is still very popular on Linux systems, but it can use some help to increase performance

< Previous123456Next >

Delivered Mondays

It's more than just Linux now, open source software permeates almost all computing in some way. Every Monday we spread our net wide to cover topics from Firefox to BSD without forgetting to have a healthy dose of Linux.

Log in


Sign up | Forgot your password?

Blogs

RSS feed

  • Staff XP stays on life support for longer

    This week's Roundup looks at Microsoft's decision to extend the life of Windows XP, the release of Microsoft Surface SDK, Firefox's new Geode plug-in, Yahoo's new tool -- Smush It and more. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Chris Duckett The good and truly awful celluloid depictions of computers

    Ever wonder why your lawyer uncle leaves the room whenever you turn over to Boston Legal? Or why your forensic science cousin can't stand crime drama? You know the answer: it’s the horrid trivialisation and dumbing down of an occupation to make it appear entertaining. Sometimes it is so unbelievable that it actually hurts and yelling at the screen is the only outlet. Read more »

    -- posted by Chris Duckett

  • Brendon Chase Apple's iPhone engineers to tour Sydney, Melbourne

    Aussie developers will be able to get up close and personal with some of the iPhone engineers in November to learn how to build applications for the platform. Read more »

    -- posted by Brendon Chase

What's on?