Good introductory article on monitoring disk usage, with a nice little script to send a mail as filesystems approach their limit:
System Administrators Toolkit: Monitoring disk space and usage
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Archive for the ‘03. LAN’ Category
Monitoring disk space and usage
Sunday, June 18th, 2006How can 6 people use one computer at the same time?
Tuesday, March 7th, 2006… by attaching 6 keyboards, mice, and monitors to it, of course. Need to provide a place for guests or workers to get online, and not much more? This can be a very cost-effective solution. Build a Six-headed, Six-user Linux System.
BackupPC: Open Source Backup to disk
Thursday, December 1st, 2005Just stumbled upon a pretty cool web interface to a centralized backup system. You can manage a series of snapshot backups of all the computers on your network. It can automatically send a user an email if there’s a repeated problem of missed backups. And users can restore their own backups through the web site. BackupPC: Open Source Backup to disk.
I found this while reading an article in Linux Journal that also has some helpful hints for setting up a Linux-based backup system: Build a Home Terabyte Backup System Using Linux.
Kerberos, LDAP, and Single Sign-on
Monday, October 31st, 2005Another very technical article. This one describes how to set up an infrastructure for securely providing single sign-ons to multiple systems in a LAN. Paranoid Penguin – Single Sign-on and the Corporate Directory, Part I | Linux Journal
Advanced Linux LDAP authentication
Friday, October 28th, 2005This is a bit technical, but contains steps for securing LDAP to control user access to your network. Linux.com | Advanced Linux LDAP authentication.
VoIP Security
Tuesday, October 25th, 2005Voice Over IP (VoIP) is becoming a main part of the small business infrastructure. As phone networks converge with data networks, security becomes more of a concern. This group is assembling a taxonomy of security issues associated with VoIP: VOIPSA : Activities : Working Groups : Threat Taxonomy.
Linux thin clients in schools
Thursday, September 22nd, 2005This school made 60 Pentium I and Pentium II computers useful for their students, using a Linux thin-client solution, on a tiny technology budget. Check out their story: Rescuing a School Technology Program: Linux Thin-client Overview OP/ED
Active Directory Solutions for Linux
Monday, September 19th, 2005There are a number of ways to integrate Linux clients and servers into an Active Directory environment. This article discusses a few of them.
Clearing the Active Directory hurdle
Saturday, May 14th, 2005Can you tell I have posts stacked up to write? Taking a bit today to post some links I’ve stumbled across in the past few weeks. Here’s an article discussing the issues of migrating a Windows NT office environment to Linux, discussing some of the issues resolved by Active Directory and the alternatives. Windows-to-Linux migrations: Clearing the Active Directory hurdle.
Linux.com | Using a Linux failover router
Saturday, May 14th, 2005Technical note: here’s how to configure a Linux router to handle multiple Internet connections, providing automatic redundency should your primary Internet connection goes down: Linux.com | Using a Linux failover router.
Configuring Mandrake as a Firewall
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005I’ve used Mandrake Multi-Network Firewall (MNF) as a firewall for a couple of clients. Just yesterday I had to reinstall it when the hard drive of the firewall failed after a client moved their office. While the web interface is a bit buggy, what you can do with this firewall is pretty astonishing, and a new version is coming out soon.
A couple of tips if you want to install this firewall:
- Get it running first, before you try to do anything fancy like add additional public interfaces.
- Reset (or at least check) the password aging policies on the server, before your password expires. It’s set to expire after 60 days, but this hardened firewall can easily run for months before you bother to log in and check it. It’s easy to get completely locked out…
Flexbeta has an article on turning a normal Mandrake installation into an MNF: Flexbeta – Setting up Mandrake 10.1 as a Firewall.
Linux will command a much greater share of the Desktop Market
Saturday, January 15th, 2005A Linux Journal article by Tom Adelstein argues that studies that show 6% of desktops to be run on Linux in the next three years doesn’t take into account all the viruses, worms, and vulnerabilities of Windows. He predicts more like 25% market penetration in this space. Linux in Government: Planning for Open-Source Application Deployments
Small Business network support
Thursday, November 18th, 2004Robin Miller has written an interesting essay about providing network and desktop services based on open source software in NewsForge | Where is the ‘plug-and-play’ Linux office system? We find this story especially interesting, because it’s very close to what we’re trying to do at Freelock Computing. Sign up for our newsletter if you’d like to keep posted on our progress…
LAN Chapter Resources
Sunday, May 23rd, 2004Books
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DNS and BIND, by PaulAlbitz and Cricket Liu, O’Reilly and Associates, 4th edition, 2001
Networking: A Beginner’s Guide, by Bruce A. Hallberg, McGraw-Hill, 2001
Software