Open letter to abolish software patents in Australia

Software patents are dangerous and costly to business and the community. Please sign this letter to support abolishing patents on software.

In August, we will collate the signatures and deliver them to Senator Kim Carr (the relevant federal minister).

The Australian government is currently reviewing patents legislation, but there is little action to make them aware of the harm that software patents cause. We have an important opportunity to inform our government.

Your sincerely,

Ben Sturmfels
Software Freedom Labs

Please sign now !

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What if you want one user to run a command as an another system user without exchanging passwords. For example, you may want an user john to run a find command or custom bash shell script as an user greg or even as a user root ( superuser ) without password exchange. In this case a sudo utility with its /etc/sudoers configuration file will be your friend. This utility is very widely used but at the same time very little understood by Linux users of all levels.

This short article describes some basic of sudo usage and format of sudoers configuration file.

sudo install

First we need to make sure that sudo and /etc/sudoers the sudo configuration file is available. To do that run:

$ which sudo

or

$ sudo -V

The first command should reveal a location of a sudo binary executable and the second program will output a version number of sudo command its self. The sudo configuration file sudoers is in most cases located in /etc/sudoers. You can use ls command to locate this file.

$ ls -l /etc/sudoers
-r--r----- 1 root root 481 2010-04-08 21:43 /etc/sudoers

This article is a quick configuration manual of a Linux DNS server using bind. I believe that bind do not need much introduction, but before you proceed with the installation and configuration of bind nameserver make sure that bind DNS server is exactly what you want. Default setup and execution of bind on Debian or Ubuntu may take around 200MB of RAM with no zones added to the config file. Unless you reduce the memory usage of a bind via various bind "options" config settings, be prepared to have some spare RAM available just for this service. This fact is even more important if you pay for your own VPS server.

Another DNS nameservers available on a Linux systems are NSD ( Name Server Daemon) or djbdns ( tinydns ). Both are lightweight alternatives to bind9 DNS server and have less RAM requirements. Apparently are even faster.  
In this article we will not go into details of what Domain Name Service ( DNS ) is nor how DNS works. Rather we simply concentrate in a simple configuration of a custom zone and config file for a given domain / host  supporting www, mail services.

Sample scenario notes to help you ready this DNS bind howto:

• nameserver IP address 192.168.135.130
• sample domain / host: linuxconfig.org
• authoritative nameservers for a linuxconfig.org zone: ns1.linuxconfig.org ( 192.168.0.10 ) and ns2.linuxconfig.org ( 192.168.0.11 )
• www and mail services for linuxconfig.org will point to: 192.168.0.10
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The best way to memorize all linux commands and techniques used in Linux administration to gain Linux Professional Institute certificate is by practice. The following LPI sample exam should be taken as a middle way between reading a book and practice on command line. It includes questions from all topics required for LPIC 101 ( the first step in Linux certification progress ). Currently the test consist of 20 questions randomly taken from pool of 50.

The Linux Professional Institute is a provider of Linux Certification (LPIC). Each LPIC level requires a candidate to pass two exams. For example to gain a certification for Level 1 a of LPIC a candidate must pass both, 101 and 102 exams.

Each LPIC level requires successful completion of two exams for certification. A first level 1 of LPIC is considered as Junior Level Administration. Candidate should demonstrate solid knowledge of Linux operating system in terms of Linux installation, troubleshooting as well as demonstrate the ability to work from a command line by use of various CLI tools.

The pass score for each subsequent LPI 101 sample test is 85% with unlimited time.  You can test your Linux skills with this test as many times as needed.

Click here to begin your sample LPI 101 exam:

LPI 101 Linux certification