Linux

Tips for Linux Users

Patch and Rebuild an RPM Package

The following describes how to derive a patch for a modification you need to make to the source code of a program, and apply that patch during the RPM building process.

1. Setup

By default, at least on a Red Hat box, rpm uses /usr/src/redhat as the location of the %_topdir macro, which specifies where most of the work involved in building an RPM takes place.

The BUILD directory is where sources will be extracted and compiled, and as such is more or less a temporary working directory. SOURCES is for source tarballs, patches, and additional files, which are extracted from SRPM packages you install, and used and included in packages you build. The RPMS and SRPMS directories are where packages you build will end up. The SPECS directory is where the specfile included with an SRPM will be placed.

AlternC Hosting Software

AlternC is a set of user-friendly automatic hosting software suite available in French, English, and Spanish. It features a PHP-based administration interface, shell and Perl scripts that manage server contents. It is easy to install and open-source software based on the Debian GNU/Linux system ('Woody' version), and requires other softwares such as Apache, Postfix, Mailman... It also contains a documented API, so you can customize your web panel quickly and easily.

Linspire Desktop

Interstesting article about Linux - no longer for techies...

http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/5546/1/

Also, recently NRP.org featured the ABCs of Linux mentioning Linspire on 8-27-04, Talk of the Nation .

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3875409

Linspire, was originally named Lindows (Linux + Windows) and had Microsoft chasing them which eventually resulted in a name change.

Technical Reference eLibrary

Came across this great technical reference elibrary while doing some code searches on google.

Please share your findings...

How do I find the dynamically allocated IP address on a remote bridge ->Linux

I'm sure it's obvious to someone.

How to determine the application listening to a particular port

For example, I run nmap and find that port 712 is open:

712/tcp    open        unknown

But it's easily identified:

# fuser 712/tcp
712/tcp:  2098

# ps -fp 2098
     UID    PID    PPID  C    STIME TTY    TIME   CMD
    root   22098   8999  0    Aug18 ?      22:33  /usr/etc/customd

# man -k customd
custom (1M)           - Custom daemon

UN-deleting files in Linux

I decided to investigate how easy it was to recover deleted files in Linux and came to the conclusion that using secure file deletion utilities is a must for safely deleting data. When files are removed in linux they are only un-linked but their inodes (addresses in the disk where the file is actually present) is not removed. This concept will be quite handy while recovering deleted files. Now i won't discuss specialized software but rather stick to utilities commonly present in linux distros. In this case it's the "debugfs" utility. Run "debugfs /dev/hda13" and then at the "debugfs" prompt use the command "lsdel"

RUST - Toolkit for creating RPM packages

RUST is both a drag & drop RPM creation GUI and a "sandboxing" toolkit that allows you to do software installations within a chrooted environment and automatically generate RPMs from arbitrary source code, without ever seeing a spec file.

Icecast Streaming Media Server - mp3 and ogg audio streams !!

Icecast is a streaming media server which currently supports Ogg Vorbis and MP3 audio streams. It can be used to create an Internet radio station or a privately running jukebox and many things in between. It is very versatile in that new formats can be added relatively easily and supports open standards for commuincation and interaction.

It comes well documented, however I would suggest the The Unofficial Icecast How To.

Listen in on my broadcast at: http://icecast.linuxweblog.com:8000/sandip.ogg.m3u

New Kernel Crash-Exploit discovered !!

The Linux kernel bug allows a simple C program to crash the kernel, effectively locking the whole system. The security hole affects both 2.4.2x and 2.6.x kernels on the x86 and x86_64 architectures.

The flaw was by accident discovered by Stian Skjelstad when he was doing some code tests while on vacation. He was quite surprised when he discovered that the code he was trying froze his machine. He reported it to the Linux-kernel mailing list and the gcc bugzilla 2004-06-09.

Click here for details

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