How To Make monit Send SMS Alerts When Your Server Goes Down
This tutorial explains how you can configure monit
to send alert messages per SMS to your mobile phone when a service
fails. Because monit can send only emails but not SMS, we will use an
email-to-sms gateway where monit will send its emails to, and the
email-to-sms gateway will convert the emails to SMS messages.
How To Set Up A Cisco Lab On Linux (CentOS 5.2)
I recently decided to study for the Cisco CSSP certification.
My main concern in the beginning was the fact that most of the lab
simulation software that I found out there could only run on Windows,
this was a problem for me given the fact that I do not own a windows
computer. After a quick search I found the wonderful Dynamips project that goes beyond what other simulators do by running actual Cisco IOS images, as well as the PEMU project
which allows for running of Cisco PIX images. To integrate the various
pieces of software and provide an interface for interaction with the
devices I used dynagen.
Upgrading VirtualBox and Virtualizing the Ubuntu 8.10 Alphas
If you’re upgrading from the version of VirtualBox you get from Ubuntu 8.04’s repository to the latest version from Sun, there are a few issues that could trip you up. I was doing this recently in order to run the latest Ubuntu alpha releases in a virtual machine, more on that in the second half of this post.
VirtualBox 1.6 adds seamless windowing for Linux guests, virtual SATA hard disks, PAE support (lets you boot Ubuntu server kernels), and better support for newer guests OSs.
Read more at Tombuntu
Cairo-Dock - Desktop dock for openSUSE Linux
Cairo-Dock is a simple but effective feature rich dock for your openSUSE Linux. Ever since, Fabounet proposed a version improved, with a very ergonomic configuration newer versions are followed at an intensive pace and with their new functionalities like the sub-docks, the effects on the launchers … Many people were grafted with the project, each one bringing its competences, of graphics, to the applet or plugins and development.
Cairo-Dock comes with different themes to choose from and addon plugins and applets can be installed and added at a later time.
Read more at www.susegeek.com
Howto Check Wireless link quality in Ubuntu Linux
Iwspy is used to set a list of addresses to monitor in a wireless network interface and to read back quality of link information for each of those. This information is the same as the one available in /proc/net/wireless : quality of the link, signal strength and noise level.This information is updated each time a new packet is received, so each address of the list adds some overhead in the driver.
Note that this functionality works only for nodes part of the current wireless cell, you can not monitor Access Points you are not associated with (you can use Scanning for that) and nodes in other cells. In Managed mode, in most case packets are relayed by the Access Point, in this case you will get the signal strength of the Access Point. For those reasons this functionality is mostly useful in Ad-Hoc and Master mode.
at - command to schedule actions
One of the most uses I give to this command is to turn the PC off after some time, sure there are other ways.
I like the way you may execute batch jobs at a given time, all you need is:
1. Write your shell script
Which actually is a list of commands in a text file
Record your desktop with Linux tools
You can capture video of all of the amazing things happening on your desktop with one of Linux’s many screencasting applications. These programs are perfect for creating demonstrations for blogs and tutorials, and for illustrating projects with more than just still images.
Get Your Webcam Working with GSPCA
Webcams are notorious for their lack of support under Linux. But thanks to GSPCA, many webcams now have functional V4L drivers. This tutorial covers the building, installation, and configuration of the GSPCA drivers, including how to adjust color balance and brightness directly at the kernel module level.
Screenlets - Desktop applications, widgets and screen addons for openSUSE
Screenlets are small owner-drawn applications (written in Python) that can be described as “the virtual representation of things lying/standing around on your desk”. Sticknotes, clocks, rulers, youtube, gmail and more. Screenlets are free opensource software released under GPL License. Screenlets use GTK2 & Cairo for drawing and windowing. The goal of the Screenlets base-classes is to simplify the creation of fully themeable mini-apps that each solve basic desktop-work-related needs and generally improve the usability and eye-candy of the modern composited Linux-desktop.
screenlets are easy to use and there are hundreds of free screenlets avaialble for download.
Manage Your Music Efficiently in Linux
Today PC’s have become a major source of entertainment … Whether its listening Music, watching Movies , playing Games or chatting in past time.. PC has does it all to keep you entertained for a long period of time.. PC has now turned to a jukebox now apart from what they are mainly meant for !
Today people generally store their Music in their PC .. Keeping Music in PC has lots of advantages like you have a Soft copy always accessible from anywhere, can easily backup/delete music collection, saves space by not utilizing DVD’s/Cd’s considering Online Music Shops. Easy management and Quicker Search..
Keeping Music in Cd’s and similar stuff is hard.. As you just can’t carry every Media’s with you and compiling you favorite song collection to Cd’s and DVD’s will consume too much recourse.. With the arrival of Portable Media player like iPod, Walkman, Zen and others carrying music was so easy..
Quick and simple usage of tcpdump (packet sniffer)
Tcpdump is a popular computer network debugging and security tool which allows the user to intercept and display TCP/IP packets being transmitted or received over a network to which the computer is attached. Tcpdump allows us to precisely see all the traffic and enables us to create statistical monitoring scripts.
At an ethernet segment, tcpdump operates by putting the network card into promiscuous mode in order to capture all the packets going through the wire. Using tcpdump we have a view on any TCP/UDP connection establishment and termination and we can measure the response time and the packet loss percentagesTo print
Interactive Physics Simulator for KDE 4
Step is a physics simulator for KDE 4. It’s meant to be an educational tool, but I’ve found it to be fun just to play around with also. Step was written as a Google Summer of Code project for KDE by Vladimir Kuznetsov.
If you’ve installed KDE 4.1 as I did in this post, then Step will be available in the repository. Step is a part of the KDE project, so if you’ve installed KDE from another source it shouldn’t be difficult to find.
Install Step from the package step-kde4 (click the link to install), or by running the command below in your terminal:
Inkscape tutorial: creating a simple ribbon
Inkscape is one of the most popular free software vector drawing applications. With minimal effort you can achieve some excellent results. However, for the inexperienced it can be a bit hard to find out how to get those results. In this tutorial I’ll look at creating a simple ribbon effect which will hopefully introduce some of the key Inkscape features along the way.
Tools of the trade
Before I start, you should know that for this tutorial I will be using Inkscape 0.46 on Debian Sid. Don’t let the apparently low version number put you off, Inkscape is pretty stable. It does have some quirks to iron out but it’s a while since I last had crash on me. Besides murphy’s law would suggest that it is always prudent to regularly save your work anyway. Figure 1 shows a typical layout of Inkscape interface. I’ve picked out a few buttons that I’ll be referring to through this tutorial.
Read more at FreeSoftwareMagazine
Zock: the free betting office
Zock is a new piece of free software for organizing betting games.
It is a “betting office” targeted at cliques of friends or co-workers which would like to organize a betting game for a sport event.
Right now, it needs testers. If you are interested in using it, read on.
If you like to bet only for fun and make a tournament with points, or if you want to bet money, Zock is the software for you.
Zock is brand new: the current version is 0.5.1. This means that there’s still more to come, although it is already quite sophisticated.
Read more at FreeSoftwareMagazine
Fixing Linux, Part One: “The Space Between”
I’ve been thinking about how to best improve the Linux* userland over the last few days. I was venting pretty loudly about my Linux gripe of the day–I don’t even remember what I was complaining about at the time, but it was a mess of shell scripting, pipes, and about half a dozen command line programs that were conspiring to drive me up the wall. Before I could get into a really quality rant, the kind that would peel paint off the walls, the friend who I was giving an earful to asked me a question, probably to shut me up.
“So what would you do to fix it?”
That’s not exactly a new question, but I hadn’t been asked it before. So I put a little thought into it. My first instinct was to look toward the kernel, but that was pretty stupid of me–the kernel no doubt has problems, but I’m not a kernel hacker and I’m not qualified to talk about them. The area where I routinely run into problems and annoyances is userspace, so why not look at that?