You might think, because of the nature of the task surrounding this tool, that MP3 Diags would be challenging to use. It’s not. In fact it’s quite simple to scan and repair your music collection. In this tutorial you will learn how to install and use MP3 Diags to diagnose and repair your broken MP3s.

NOTE: Martin covered using MP3 Diags for the Windows operating system in his article “Diagnose your MP3 collection with MP3 Diags“. Since there are issues to over come when using this application in the Linux operating system, I decided it was beneficial to cover it once again.

What can it fix?

Some of the problems that MP3 Diags can repair are:

• Adding/fixing track info.
• Correcting song duration times.
• Correcting seek problems.
• Renaming files based on fields.
• Low quality audio.
• Missing VBR header.
• Missing normalization data.
• and much more.

Now before I continue on, I will tell you that MP3 Diags can be resource intensive. If your collection is large you can expect this to take some time. During an initial scan MP3 Diags was running at approximately 2,000 files every 15 minutes. You can do the math from there.

Installing

MP3 Diags should be found in your distributions repositories. If you are using Ubuntu you can either open up Synaptic or the Ubuntu Software Center, do a search for “mp3 diags” (no quotes) mark the application for installation, and apply the changes.

When the application is installed you will find it in your Sound & Video menu entry.

Usage

When you first start up MP3 Diags a window will appear asking you to create a file which the application can save its configuration data. You can place this file anywhere you have write permission. In that same window you can set up a scan by including the directories you want to scan. In most modern Linux distributions you will find a ~/Music directory. If you’re like me (and you like to keep everything well organized), you can just select that folder and begin the scan.

During the scan expect your machine to become a big sluggish. You might want to start the scan and walk away (to keep yourself from getting a wee frustrated). When the scan is over, the real fun begins.

Scan results

Figure 1

Take a look at Figure 1.  What you are seeing is the results of a first-run scan containing over 2,000 audio files. Near the top (under the tool bar) is a listing of all the possible issues that each file contains. Let’s just look at one file. To show only one file highlight that file and click the “Show One Song At a Time” button (Sixth button from the left on the toolbar). I will select a file, downloaded and converted from Youtube, of Rush’s La Villa Strangiato. Obviously, since this was a download from Youtube, the audio quality is going to be poor. So let’s repair that as much as it is possible.

Figure 2

Once you have your one file selected (see Figure 2) click the first work icon on the left (that’s the first hammer on the left) which is a drop-down. When you first click this you will get a warning that says “although this works on the developers’ machine, it might not work on yours”. Take this as a caution and back up your files before you start working on them.

From the drop-down you will see numerous fixes for your file. However, instead of searching from the drop-down, you can hover your mouse over hammer icons labeled 1-4. Each of these contains a pre-configured set of fixes that allow you a single click to fix numerous, related issues on a file. For my poor audio quality file you can see it suffers from four issues:

• fa – No ID3V2.3.0 tag found
• ea – ID3V2 tag doesn’t have APIC frame.
• ab – Low quality MPEG audio stream.
• an – No normalization undo data found.

When you go to fix these problems you will instantly come across an issue when using MP3 Diags in Linux. MP3 Diags uses the application mp3gain to normalize mp3 files, which is not installed by default. And, to make matters worse, MP3 Diags does not install this dependency for you. So you will have to fire up Synaptic, search for “mp3gain” (no quotes), select the results for installation, and apply the changes.

Once mp3gain is installed you can now normalize with MP3 Diags.

Another issue, specific to Linux, is that if you want to configure MP3 Diags to not erase original files, but instead to move them to another directory, you will need to make sure you change the destination directories in the preferences window. By default all of the temporary directories are set to /tmp which you will have write access to, but if you want to archive that file you do not want it saved in the /tmp directory, because it will be deleted automatically. Different distributions handle this task differently – some clean up /tmp regularly, some upon reboot, some will empty a file in /tmp after it has gone untouched for a pre-determined span of time (usually 30 days). If you want to keep those original files around, you will want to reconfigure MP3 Diags to use a different directory than /tmp.

Final thoughts

After running MP3 Diags on my music collection, I have found that all MP3 files do, in fact, sound better and have far fewer issues. You should definitely give this application a go if you have a collection of MP3s lying around in need of repair.

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Martin has posted his concerns about Chrome OS in his insightful “Google Chrome OS: My concerns“. I am in full accord with Martins’ take on cloud computing. But instead of discussing my feelings on the cloud or why we need another OS, I thought it would be beneficial to take a look at a running instance of the Google Chrome OS. I will preface this by saying the OS is in the very early stages of development. But even with the early stages it is quite obvious where this fledgling operating system is heading.

Getting and “installing”

In case you are interested in trying Chrome OS out you can with the help of either VirtualBox or VMware. Since we’ve covered VirtualBox here on Ghacks (read my article “Install VirtualBox with USB Support” to learn how to install VirtualBox) I will show you how to get Chrome running with that application.

After you have VirtualBox up and running you will need to download an image file to use. I have tried both the Chrome OS VirtualBox image and the VMware image on VirtualBox. The results of the VirtualBox image was a black screen that wouldn’t boot. The VMware image, however, was able to successfully boot. So it is my recommendation that you hop over to the Google Chrome page on Gdgt and download the VMware image. You will have to register on the site in order to get to the downloads page.

The download is just over 300 MB and will come in zip form. After you unzip the file you will have a vmdk file ready to use. What you will need to do is move that file to your VirtualBox hard disk directory with the command:

mv *vmdk ~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks/

When that file is properly located you can then create a new virtual machine using that image as your hard disk.

What you get

Figure 1

When Chrome OS boots (and it does so fairly quickly) you will be at a login prompt. It shouldn’t surprise you to find out the login/password is your GMail username/password credentials. As you can see, in Figure 1, your Google Chrome OS experience will very closely resemble the experience you have in Google Chrome – the browser.

But what else can you do? So far not much. I have read about application panels, but it seems as if you have to have a google.com login to experience them. I am, sadly enough, only the holder of a gmail.com login so I can not witness, first hand, some of the other features of the OS. Without having that login there is so little to the OS, in its current state, that it seems nothing more than a web browser running without an apparent operating system (which I believe is the point).

One of the few features of the OS I have managed to find is the ability to pin a page to a tab. What this effectively does is allow you to create a tab dedicated to a page (or Google application). For example: If you use Calendar, Mail, and Documents frequently you could pin each of these tools to their own tabs so that, in order to use a tool, you only have to click that that tools’ tab.

It should be pretty obvious what the intention of the Google Chrome OS is – a foolproof, web-based, single minded operating system who’s experience will only be as good as the applications available to it. This type of operating system seems as if it wants to take the metaphor of the mobile OS and put it square in the middle of your desktop. But with the way the web experience is growing vs. the computing habits of the average user – it makes perfect sense. You have a stripped down OS that can do everything you need to do without having anything on the periphery to confuse or confound the user.

“Features”

Figure 2

After playing around with the OS I have found a few features in place that are usable. You can add a compact navigation bar (see Figure 2). By default this bar (text area to the left in Figure 2) is not there. You have to click on the Options menu and select “Compact Nav Bar” for this to appear. But where is the Options menu? Take a look in Figure 2. The downward-pointing arrow in the far right corner is clicked in order to reveal the Options. You will be surprised to see that this menu is very similar to the Google Chrome Options menu.

As I mentioned earlier, you can pin a page to a tab. Say you use Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Documents frequently. Instead of creating bookmarks for these pages, all you need to do is open that page up, right click the tab, and select Pin Tab. This will create a tab for that page (or App if you will). Now, as Google Chrome OS is very much in the early stages, these pinned tabs will disappear upon reboot.

Final thoughts

It’s only a start, but the Google Chrome OS has all of the underpinnings of something that could have remarkable impact on a very specific application. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest using this early release, but when it hits beta, it will certainly be worth a try.

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When someone puts a file up on a server for download, how does the host or the end-user know, for sure, the file they are about to download (or are serving up) is the valid file? What if someone hacked into the server and replaced the file with a bogus file that contained malicious code? It’s happened before and it will happen again. Fortunately there is a way to avoid downloading invalid files – checking the md5 hash. The only problem is that this method only works if the host and user knows how to use md5 tools. In this tutorial you will learn how to add an md5 checksum to a file and how to run a check on a file you have downloaded.

What is md5 and checksum?

Before we continue with the actual steps, you might benefit from knowing exactly how the process of checksumming works. MD5 stands for Message Digest algorithm 5, which is a cryptographic 128 bit hash function and serves as a “fingerprint” for a digital file. A checksum is a fixed-size datum that is computed from a block of data. When it is crucial for a piece of data (such as a download) to be valid, the datum is compared to the original block the datum was computed from to check for a match. When an md5 checksum matches, the user/host can be certain the file is valid. When the md5 checksum does not match, a red flag should immediately go up and the original block of data should be discarded. If a file changes by so much as a byte, the checksum will fail.

For most users these tasks are handled from the command line. There are GUI tools available (such as GtkHASH) that can tackle the same tasks. But for the purposes of this tutorial we will stick with the command line tool.

Creating an md5 sum

For those who plan on hosting files for download, you will want to know how to create an md5 sum. This is very simple. Open up a terminal and change to the directory holding the file you want to work with. Say, for example, you want to create an md5 on the file /var/www/files/download.tgz. To do this you would change to the /var/www/files directory and issue the following command:

md5 download.tgz

The above command will output something like:

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One of those tools is PackageKit. PackageKit is a background service charged with updating and installing software on your computer. But because PackageKit itself is just a background service, it requires a front end so that end users can take advantage of the system. One very powerful front end is KPackageKit. KPackageKit is the KDE front end for PackageKit, whereas Gnome PackageKit is the GNOME front end (see my article “Installing applications in Linux with GNOME PackageKIT.”)

One of the things I like about KPackageKIT, over the Ubuntu Software Center, is that it can not only install applications, it can update your already installed applications. But unlike USC or Synaptic, you will have to know the name of the software package in order to find it. KPackageKIT does not show all software available. Instead you start up the tool with a blank slate and search for what you want to install. You can search by:

• Description.
• File name.

But you can also apply various filters to your search. Included search filters are:

• Collections.
• Installed.
• Development.
• Graphical.
• Free.

Let’s take a look and see how software is installed with KPackageKIT.

Starting KPackageKIT

Figure 1

You can start the application two ways: Command line or from the menu. To start from the command line hit <Alt>F2 to open the run dialog and enter the command kpackagekit. To start the tool from the KDE menu click on the menu, click on the Computer tab, and then click on the KPackageKIT entry (see Figure 1).

When KPackageKIT starts what you will see is a fairly simple interface (see Figure 2). From this window you are able to:

• Install software.
• Update your system.
• Configure KPakcageKIT.

Figure 2

Let’s install the Scribus DTP tool as an example. Follow these simple steps:

1. Select Software Management.
2. Open up KPackageKIT and enter “scribus” (no quotes) in the search area.
3. Click the downward-pointing arrows of the software(s) you want to install.
4. Click Apply.
5. When the new window appears, click Install Now.
6. If dependencies are necessary, OK them.
7. Enter your sudo (or root – depending upon your distribution) password.
8. Wait for the installation to complete.
9. Click OK to dismiss the window.

Updating your system with KPackageKIT is just as simple. Follow these steps:

1. Open up KPackageKIT.
2. Click on the Software Update section.
3. If there are updates available, either select the updates you want to run or click the Select All Updates button.
4. Click Apply.
5. Enter your password.
6. Wait for the update to finish.
7. Click OK to dismiss the window.

Configuration

From within the Configuration section there are a minimal number of options to configure. The primary configuration to take care of here is adding new software sources. To add a new repository follow these steps:

1. Click on the Settings section.
2. Click the Edit Software Sources button.
3. Click on the Other Software tab.
4. Click on the Add button.
5. Enter the complete apt line for the source (not just the address).
6. Click OK to dismiss the address window.
7. Click Close to dismiss the Software Sources window.

If you manually edit your /etc/apt/sources.list (or your Yum repository file – depending upon your distribution) these changes will appear in KPackageKIT.

Final thoughts

Although not perfect, KPackageKIT is certainly a viable solution for Linux software installation. If you need a simple KDE-based means of installing software, and do not want to use the command line, this tool might be just what you need.

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So what do you do when you’re brain reaches critical mass for passwords? Simple, you let a single application store and encrypt them for you so all you need is a single password to access all of those crucial passwords. And what Linux distribution is without a tool (or twelve) to enable such a feature? One of those many tools is Password Gorilla. Password Gorilla manages your logins as well as all of your passwords for web sites, encrypted files, etc. But PG does more than just store those passwords. Password Gorilla makes logging in to various websites easy by copying and pasting your username/password to the clipboard. Those passwords are never revealed on the screen so you’re even safe from prying eyes. But how does it work? Let’s find out.

Installation

Installing Password Gorilla is quite simple as you will most likely find it in your distributions’ default repositories. In Ubuntu just fire up the Software Center enter the string “gorilla” (no quotes) in the search field, and install the resulting entry. That’s it.

To launch Password Gorilla click on KDE’s “K” menu and enter “password” (no quotes) in the search string, select the entry for Password Gorilla, and hit enter.

When you first start the application up you will be asked to select a password database. Well you can’t because you’ve not created one. So just click Cancel and the main window will open. The first step here is to create a new password database. To do this click the File menu and select New which will open up a new window asking for a password and a password confirmation. Make sure you use a strong password here because it will be the database containing your passwords. After you confirm your password click the OK button.

Adding Logins

The first thing you will want to do is to add a login. Now don’t confuse this login with your user account login. A login for PG is, for example, your login to your Slashdot account.

Figure 1

To add a new login click on the Login menu and select Add Login. This will open up a new window (see Figure 1) where you will enter the details for your login.

You will notice, by default, when you enter a password it is visible. If you are a paranoid person, right before you enter the password, click the Hide Password button so your password will be obscured.

Once you have entered all of the details of the login click OK to save the new login details.

Figure 2

Now if you look in the Login menu you will see the entry Add Group. Adding groups allows you to keep your various logins better organized. You can see, in Figure 2, I have created a group called “Work”.

Using Password Gorilla

Now let’s take a look at the real benefits of Password Gorilla. Go back to the main window and right click on one of your login entries. You will see a menu (see Figure 3) that allows you to copy username, password, and even URL to the clipboard.

Figure 3

In order to login to a website you have a login for follow these steps:

1. Right click the login entry and select “Copy URL to clipboard”.
2. Go to your browser and click the middle mouse button (or click <Ctrl>v) to copy the URL to the browser address bar.
3. Go back to the Password Gorilla and right click the entry again and select “Copy username to clipboard”.
4. Go to your browser and click the spot where you would enter your username and either click the middle mouse button or click <Ctrl>v to paste the username.
5. Go back to Password Gorilla, right click the entry, and select “Copy password to clipboard”.
6. Go to your web browser and click the the spot where you would enter the password and either click the middle mouse button or click <Ctrl>v to paste the password.

It sounds like a lot of steps, but it beats trying to remember numerous login credentials.

Final thoughts

When the amount of credentials you have exceeds your brains ability to remember, a handy tool like Password Gorilla comes in handy. But it’s not just about trying to remember, it’s also about keeping those password secure.

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The only problem you will find is that some of the many distributions do not ship with KDE installed. If you want KDE on these distributions you must install it. In this article I am going to walk you through the steps for installing the latest KDE on a Ubuntu system. Now you may be saying to yourself: “Why don’t I just install Kubuntu and be done with it? That’s a good question. The answer? Most new users have no idea that Kubuntu even exists and will have already installed the GNOME-based Ubuntu. For those people who already have their Linux running, they might want to give the KDE desktop a try as well. That is where tutorials like this come in handy. And of course, once we get KDE installed, we will also take it one step further and install support for Compiz so you can have your 3D effects just like you can on GNOME.

Installation

Unfortunately you can’t just open up the Ubuntu Software Center, do a search for KDE, and install. You will have to add repositories to you /etc/apt/sources.list file before you can run the installation command. Fortunately, this is as simple as issuing a few commands.

The first two commands you need to issue will add the proper repositories to your sources.list file. With the help of these commands you will not need to open that file up in an editor, as they will simply add the necessary lines for you. So open up a terminal window and issue these two commands (NOTE: Each command is one line long so just copy and paste each command, one at a time, into your terminal. After you copy one command hit enter and then copy paste the next command.):

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/backports/ubuntu jaunty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"

and:

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/staging/ubuntu jaunty main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"

Now that you have the necessary lines you will need to add the correct GPG key with this command:

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 8AC93F7A

Finally, for the installation, issue the command:

sudo aptitude install kubuntu-desktop

This will require a fairly hefty download, so give this some time. During the installation you will have to do one bit of configuration which is to choose your graphical login manager. I would suggest sticking with the GNOME login manager GDM.

Compiz support

Now it’s time to build in some Compiz support. You will find, after you install KDE that, no matter how you configure it, KDE will not work with Compiz – even if Compiz is working perfectly with GNOME. That is because you have to add KDE Compiz support. To do this issue the command:

sudo apt-get install compiz-kde

Once that installation has completed you will then need to open the Compiz Configuration Settings Manager (use the command ccsm) and then, under the General category, check the KDE Compatibility check box. You should now be good to go with both KDE and Compiz.

Final thoughts

Do not judge KDE 4.x on previous releases. You owe it to yourself and to the developers of KDE to give the 4.3 release a try. Once you do I think you will see it has matured quite a bit over the last year. And now, with the help of this tutorial, you can do just that.

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But is GNOME office and alternative that you should overlook? More than likely most readers didn’t even know there was a GNOME office. And of those that have heard rumors of this suite, many probably didn’t even know it was ready for installation. It is. But the big question…is it worth try? In this article I will highlight the tools that make up GNOME Office and help you to decide if this suite is worth your time.

Installation

The first thing I should bring up is the installation. Previous incarnations of GNOME Office required the user to install the pieces separately. That has changed and now you can open up the GNOME Software Center and follow these steps:

1. Search for ‘gnome office”.
2. Select GNOME Office.
3. Click the right-pointing arrow.
4. Click the Install button.
5. Enter your password.
6. Sit back and watch the installation happen.

What GNOME office installs is the following (some may already be installed):

• Abiword: Word processor
• Gnumeric: Spreadsheet
• Evolution: Email, contacts, calendar
• Planner: Project manager
• Inkscape: Vector graphics
• XSane: Scanning

There are other tools that are supposed to be included with GNOME Office, but are not installed:

• Gnucash: Finances.
• gLables: Label designer
• Glom: Database designer.

Why the above tools are listed on the GNOME Office official site and not installed I have no clue.  Of course those are simple enough to install, just by going to the Software Center and going through the same steps above.

Value of the applications

Instead of taking each piece apart and showing you how they work, I want to spend a little time on whether or not each application is a worthy usurper of your current tool. And since I do not know the tool you are using, the usurper is going to have to be pretty good.

Abiword: I have always wanted to like Abiword. And, in some instances I do. But the problem is that Abiword really stinks at document exchange. Abiword’s idea of formatting doesn’t always gel with another Office Suite’s idea. But I will say that Abiword has come a long, long way. And if you are just needing a simple word processor that is lightweight and fast, Abiword is a great alternative. Does it match the skills of OpenOffice? Not so much.

Gnumeric: Another tool that I have always wanted to like, but have been prevented from doing so because of its poor ability to work with other tools. Any spreadsheet that uses complex formulas or formatting will most likely wind up a bit of a mess in Gnumeric. But for basic spreadsheet use, Gnumeric will get the job done.

Evolution: If you are looking for a groupware suite to take the place of MS Outlook, this is where you need to go. Evolution is, without question, the best groupware suite available for Linux. It’s power, easy to use, reliable, and includes everything you need for a groupware suite. This is, by far, the best tool of the GNOME Office suite.

Planner: Because most office suites do not generally include a project management tool, planner is a surprising addition to the suite. Not only does planner bring a much needed tool to the office suite, it does so with aplomb.

Inkscape: There is only one office suite that includes a vector graphics application – OpenOffice. Inkscape brings to GNOME Office one tool that the competition can not touch. Inkscape is the best vector graphics tool for the Linux operating system. There is, however, a rather steep learning curve that comes with using Inkscape. So don’t expect to just jump into this tool without any idea of what you are doing.

XSane: You can read my article on Xscane (”Scanning in Linux with iScan and XSane.”) I think most readers will agree that XSane is an overly complex tool for a simple task. However, XSane can be made simple by simply closing all of the unnecessary windows.

The verdict

Although GNOME Office makes a valiant attempt at replacing your current office suite, it fails in too many categories to actually usurp the big dogs in this space. Now, if are in a situation where you are not having to trade documents with others and you do not need the power features of tools like Excel or Calc, and you don’t need a tool for presentations then GNOME Office might be your go-to suite of tools. Otherwise, stick with OpenOffice or MS Office.

What do you think? Is GNOME Office a worthy entry in the office suite category?

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There are a hundred and one thousand things that can go wrong with any web server installation. From a fresh installation to an installation that has been running for a long time, you never know when something is going to cause your web server to go astray. When it does happen, it’s always nice to know that, usually, Occam’s Razor applies.

In this tutorial you will find some advice that will help you through some of the more common issues that can pop up with an Apache web server.

Is your server actually running?

Believe it or not, this has happened to plenty of administrators. You take the server down, do some maintenance, and when you go to check out the server you’re getting errors. The first thing you do, naturally, is check out that /etc/apache2/apache.conf file to make sure your syntax is correct. But it’s perfect! What’s up? The first thing you might want to check is to make sure the server is running. But you don’t want to just issue the command to start the server or reload the server. Instead, issue the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 status

Which should return something like:

* apache is running (pid 9751).

If not, start the server with either:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start

or

sudo apache2ctl start

NOTE: If you are using a distribution like Fedora, SuSE, or Mandriva you will need to first su to the root user and issue the above commands WITHOUT using sudo.

It’s not running and it won’t start

Did you just make changes to your Apache configuration file? Are the changes correct? If you’re not sure, you can use the apache2ctl command to check the syntax of your configuration file. This is done with the command:

sudo apache2ctl configtext

The above command should report:

Syntax OK

If you don’t get an OK, you will get information that points to the errors in your configuration file.

Apache wants to download .php files!

This is another common issue. When you add a new tool on your web server (such as Drupal), if your configuration file is set up properly, any .php file might not be displayed. Instead any attempt to view a .php file will instead have your browser trying to download the file. Why is this? Apache must be informed that certain extensions are to be displayed, not downloaded. This is done from within the Apache configuration file. Open up that file (in the Ubuntu server it will be /etc/apache2/apache2.conf) and first look for the following line:

DirectoryIndex index.html

If that file doesn’t include index.php nearly all sites that use php will be rendered useless.

The second line to look for is:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .php

If you find this line, and it is commented out, make sure you uncomment it by removing the “#” character. If it is not there add it to the bottom of the configuration file.

And, as always, when you make a change to the configuration file, restart Apache.

Know where to look for problems

Finally, it is crucial that you know where to first turn when the above doesn’t help you out. Any time I have an issue with Apache where Occam’s Razor does not apply, the first place I turn is the log files.

If you look in /var/log/apache2 you will find, at least, the following files:

• access.log: This keeps track of any connection made to your server.
• error.log: This keeps track of any errors that occur with Apache.
• other_vhosts_access.log: This is where virtual hosts will log when the virtual host has not been prescribed its own log file.

Of course, as your site evolves so will your available log files. Regardless of what you find in /var/log/apache2, that is where you should always first turn when you have problems. Even before you google.

Final thoughts

Now you should be able to handle some of the more common issues with the Apache server. And if your problem isn’t common, you also know where to turn to find clues that will lead you down the right path to correction.

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And what’s best is you don’t have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get munin up and running. In this tutorial you will see how to get your Munin server up and running and monitoring your system and a sample client configuration that will monitor a client node. As you might expect, I will continue to build upon the Ubuntu Server series and install Munin on a Ubuntu 9.04 installation. NOTE: This same installation will work on Ubuntu 9.10 as well.Server installation/configuration

Installing Munin on the Ubunter server is simple. Open up a terminal window (or log into your server console) and issue the command:

sudo apt-get install munin

The above command will also install munin-node which is the client-side software. This is fine, so let it happen. Upon installation Munin will install the configuration files in /etc/munin, the executable in /etc/init.d/, and the web files in /var/www/munin.

The first thing that will need to be done is to configure your server correctly. Open up the /etc/munin/munin.conf file and look for this section:

dbdir     /var/lib/munin
htmldir    /var/www/munin/
logdir     /var/log/munin
rundir     /var/run/munin

Out of the box, this will work just fine.  But if you have any other needs that would dictate any of these directives change, change them here.

The next section to look for is this:

# a simple host tree
[localhost.localdomain]
address 127.0.0.1
use_node_name yes

What the above section does is monitor the server Munin is installed on. This configuration only needs to change if you have specific requirements. Also, if you need to add a client (node), this is where you add it.

In order to instruct Munin to monitor a remote machine you need to add a new host tree. Say, for instance, you want to monitor a machine on the IP addres 192.168.1.150. To do this you would add:

[MACHINE NAME]
address 192.168.1.150
use_node_name yes

Where MACHINE NAME is a name to indicate the job (or user, or department, etc) of the machine.

Once you have these configurations and save the file. Now to move on to the /etc/munin/munin-node.conf file. There is only one configuration you would need to add in order to monitor nodes. Look for this line:

allow ^127\.0\.0\.1$

Beneath this line you will want to add (in order to enable our new node):

allow ^192\.168\.1\.1$

Save this file and restart the Munin server with the command:

/etc/init.d/munin restart

Installing for client

All you need to do for your client is to install the munin-node package. To do this issue the command:

sudo apt-get install munin-node

On the client machine. Now start munin-node with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/munin-node start

Munin will begin to monitor this client now.

The graphs

When all is up and running, point your browser to http://ADDRESS_TO_SERVER/munin/

Figure 1

Where ADDRESS_TO_SERVER is the actual address of the server. Very shortly after you install Munin you may only see a listing of the nodes being watched (see Figure 1). This is okay, it will take some time before data is actually collected.

After a while you will notice data collected and graphs developing. If you click on the localhost.localdomain link you will see data beginning to collect (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

Final thoughts

Munin is a very powerful tool that allows you to gather crucial data about your systems and networks. Now that you have Munin installed and running you can begin to extend the server by adding more and more clients as well as plugins. You will quickly find Munin to be a very valuable tool for data analysis on your various systems and networks.

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Because different distributions handle this task differently, we will examine how Fedora (and friends) handle the task and how Ubuntu (and friends) handle the task. As well we will also examine a neutral method that can always work in a pinch. All three methods will be command line, so stretch out those fingers and get ready to type.

Fedora (and friends)

The Fedora distribution uses the chkconfig command to update and query system run-level information for system services. The usage of this command is:

chkconfig OPTIONS SERVICE ON/OF

Where:

• OPTIONS are the various options the command offers.
• SERVICE is the service you want to add at startup.
• ON/OFF is either on or off – depending on if you want the service to start or not.

The confusion with the chkconfig command generally boils down to runlevel. The typical Linux runlevels are:

• 0 – Halt
• 1 – Single user mode
• 2 – Multi user mode
• 3 – Multi user mode with networking
• 4 – Not used
• 5 – X11
• 6 – Reboot

So with chkconfig you can also define at which point the service starts. So let’s say you want Apache to start at boot and you want it to start for levels 3, 4, and 5. For this you would issue the command (as the root user):

chkconfig –level 345 httpd on

Now, if you don’t want Apache to run at boot you could issue the command:

chkconfig httpd off

If you want to know what services are running at boot you can issue the command:

chkconfig –list

The above command will list out all services that are starting at boot time.

Ubuntu (and friends)

Ubuntu (and friends) takes a totally different route to the same destination. Instead of using chkconfig Ubuntu uses the update-rc.d command. This command makes things pretty simple. The command structure is:

update-rc.d SERVICE OPTIONS

Where OPTIONS are available options and SERVICE is the service you want to start.

With update-rc.d there is an option that makes it simple: defaults. So to add sshd to the start up process, you would issue the command:

sudo update-rc.d sshd defaults

To remove the same service from start up you would issue the following command:

sudo update-rc.d sshd remove

Now let’s take a look at a fail safe, nearly-universal method

rc.local

There is another means of getting a service to start. I recommend using either of the two above before you try this means. The rc.local file is a file that is executed at the end of the multiuser runlevel. By default, this script does nothing, but you can add to it so that it does.

Say you want Apache to start at boot up, and you want to do so from rc.local. You can do this by adding one of the following lines at the end of your /etc/rc.local file.

Fedora:

/etc/init.d/rc.d/httpd start

Ubuntu:

/etc/init.d/apache2 start

Save that file and you should be good to go. If you change your mind and do not want that service to start at boot, just remove the line you added.

Final thoughts

The above should allow you get that service that needs to start at boot working correctly. Make sure, however, you use the distribution-prescribed method before you use the rc.local method.

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One would think that an easy task. It actually is, once you know how it is done.  And in this article I am going to show you two different ways of making the connection to your Samba server. You will need to have a working knowledge of how the Samba server is set up as well as a username/password configured on the Samba server. There are also a few steps to take on the desktop for one certain method of connection.

The two methods I will describe are: Using GNOME’s Connect To Server dialog and the command line. The latter will be used to show you how to set up auto mounting for Samba.

The graphical method

Figure 1

If you take a look at the GNOME Places menu you will see an entry labeled “Connect to server…”. This is what you want to use in order to connect to your Samba server. When you click on that a new window will open. From the Service type drop-down select “Windows share” (see Figure 1).

When you select that entry some of the configuration options will change. As you can see (in Figure 1), I have entered the necessary options to connect to a Samba server on my internal network. You will want to replace the information so it reflects your needs. The only tricky bit of information might be the Folder entry. If you are connecting to the root directory on the share you will not need to enter anything there. Say, for instance, you share is /media/samba/user. If you want to connect to that directory leave the Folder entry blank. Say, however, you want to connect directly to a sub-folder within that share – you can enter that folder here. This, of course, isn’t needed because you can always traverse the sub-directories with simple navigation. You can also choose to add a bookmark instantly, from in this window.

Figure 2

Once you have all of the information entered click Connect and you will be greeted with a new window that requires you to enter a password. Also, if you do not supply a Domain name in the previous window, you will be required to enter it here.

You can also set this up to remember your password either until you logout or until, well, forever. Once you have entered the password/domain click the Connect button and a new Nautilus window will open inside of your Samba Share.

Using the command line

Now we’re going to use the command line to accomplish a similar goal. The biggest difference is that we are going to actually mount the Samba share into another directory, very much the same way we would mount a second hard drive.

There are a few pieces to put together before we actually take care of the mounting. First let’s create a directory that the Samba share will be mounted to. So from the terminal window issue the following command:

sudo mkdir /media/samba

Now let’s make sure our users can read/write to this directory with the command:

sudo chmod -R u+rw /media/samba

Okay now let’s make sure we can see the Samba shares from the command line. We’ll do that with the smbclient command like so:

smbclient -L //SAMBA_SERVER_ADDRESS

Where SAMBA_SERVER_ADDRESS is the actual IP address of the Samba server.

Figure 3

You will be prompted for your username and password. If you get an error it could be that the usernames don’t match on each end. If that’s the case you could add the -U switch to the command like so:

smbclient –user=jlwallen -L  //SAMBA_SERVER_ADDRESS

You should see output similar to that shown in Figure 3.

Now it’s time to try to mount the Samba share to the /media/samba directory. To do this issue the command:

sudo mount -t cifs //SAMBA_SERVER_ADDRESS/SHARE -o username=USERNAME /media/samba/

Where:

• SAMBA_SERVER_ADDRESS is the IP address of the Samba server.
• SHARE is the share name.
• USERNAME is the username to connect with.

If that works you can now make this an automated mount by adding the following line to your /etc/fstab file:

//SAMBA_SERVER_ADDRESS/SHARE     /media/samba    cifs  credentials=/etc/samba/user.cred 0 0

Where SAMBA_SERVER_ADDRESS is the IP address of the Samba server and SHARE is the share name.

Notice the user.cred file. This is one last thing we need to create. With your text editor create this file and place into it:

username=USER

password=PASSWORD

Where USER is the username to log in with and PASSWORD is the password to use for authentication. The final step is the give this new file the proper permissions with the command:

sudo chmod 600 /etc/samba/user.cred

You can ensure this works by issuing the command mount -a which should mount your Samba share.

Final thoughts

You should now have an auto-mounting Samba share – or the ability to easily connect your GNOME desktop to a Samba share. Samba is a very powerful tool that not only can share files with Windows machines, but with Linux machines as well.

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The first thing you will want to do is check the Sane supported scanner listing on the Sane Project site. But don’t let your scanner not being on that list stop you. My Epson Perfection V30 was not on the list and I still managed to get it working with the help of iscan. The iscan package is a simple scanning tool for Epson scanners.  You can find the iscan tool within Synaptic. The iscan tool also integrates perfectly into The GIMP, so all your image needs can be met within one tool. But iscan is not the only option. There is also the Xsane tool, which is far more powerful than iscan. Let’s take a look at both of these scanning utilities to see how scanning is handled under the Linux operating system.

NOTE: This article is not going to cover getting your scanner to work under Linux. If your scanner is not listed in the Sane hardware listing, your best bet is to google your model numer and your distribution. For example, in my case I would google epson perfection v30 ubuntu 9.10. You should come up with results that will tell you what approximate drivers to use to get your scanner working.

iscan

Figure 1

We’ll first look at iscan. This tool is, by far, the easier of the two tools to use. And, like its bigger brother XSane, it integrates perfectly with The GIMP. That doesn’t mean you have to use iscan from within The GIMP. Once installed you will find iscan within the Graphics sub menu of the Applications menu. The entry will be called “Image Scan!” (No quotes). Or, if you’d rather, you can start iscan from within The Gimp by going to the File menu, then to the Create sub menu, and selecting the “Scanning (iscan)” entry. Both will start the iscan interface.

When you fire up iscan you will notice how simple the interface is (see Figure 1). This scanner utility is just as easy to use as any Windows or Mac utility. The only configuration option for iscan is your print command. That is how simple this tool is.

With your picture in your scanner hit the Preview button to first get a preview of your image. Once the image is up you can then select the portion of the image you want to scan, select the Destination (either file or printer), and click the Scan button. When you click the Scan button you will be asked to give the file a name. The scanner will then do it’s job and save the file for you. It’s that simple.

XSane

Figure 2

XSane can be found in your distributions repositories. So whether you use Ubuntu or Fedoar (or anything in between), you should be able to open up your distributions Add/Remove Software tool and find XSane easily. XSane, like iscan, is a graphical frontend for the Sane project. But XSane is a bit more serious of a tool. You can see (in Figure 2) there is much more to XSane than your average scanning tool. In Figure 2 you see the standard windows that open along with the Main window. Pictured are the  Main windows (far left), Preview window (center), Standard Options window (top right), and Histogram (lower right). You can also include an Advanced Options window, and a Batch Scan window.

But even with all of the extra options, acquiring a scan with XSane is just as simple as with iscan. Follow these directions:

1. Place your photo on the scanner.
2. Open XSane.
3. Click the Aquire preview button in the Preview window.
4. Adjust the size, rotation, and scale at the bottom of the Preview window.
5. Adjust the color in the Main window.
6. Select the file type in the Main window.
7. Adjust the scan resultion in the Main window.
8. Click the Scan button in the Main window.

When the scan is complete a new window will open that allows you to further adjust your image. In this window you can apply a despeckle or blur filter, adjust the geometry, rotate the image, clone image, do optical character  recognition, and save the image.

And what about the Histogram window? This window allows you to fine-tune the color of your image. You use this tool after you preview and before you scan. You will be suprised at how well you can perfect the color of your scans with this tool.

Final thoughts

For my preferences, I lean toward XSane to handle my scanning tasks. But iscan does the job quite well. Either tool will allow you to take advantage of that flatbed scanner you have in your office while using Linux. One less excuse to continue using Windows. ;-)

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The Firefly Media Server (formerly mt-daap) is a fast DAAP server that is simple to install and even easier to configure. Firefly resides on a single Linux machine that doesn’t have to be a powerhouse. In fact, you can install this lightweight server on Ubuntu Server and you’re almost ready to go. In this article you will see how to do just that – install and configure Firefly Media Server on Ubuntu Server.

Features

The Firefly server has all of the features you will want in a DAAP server:

• Supports Unix/POSIX
• Beta for Windows in the works
• On the fly transcoding of OGG, FLAC, Apple Lossless, and WM
• User-created smart playlist support
• Integrates with iTunes and many other DAAP-supporting media players
• Serve streaming radio stations

Installation

Since we are installing on a Ubuntu Server, the installation is simple:

1. Open up a terminal (or just log into your servers’ console)
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install mt-daap
3. Enter your user password

That’s it. Now it’s time to set it up.

Configuration file

There is only one configuration file for Firefly: /etc/mt-daapd.conf. This file is quite easy to set up. For a basic DAAP server, out of the box, there is really only one option you must configure. If you open up the configuration file look for the line:

mp3_dir = /home/media/music

This is the line you will need to change to reflect the directory you will serve your media from. For my setup I created a new sub-directory in /opt called music. Do this with the command:

sudo mkdir /opt/media

Now you have to make that directory readable by the DAAP server with the command:

sudo chmod ug+r -R /opt/media

Now all files and sub-directories created with the /opt/media directory will have the proper permissions such that the DAAP server can serve up the files.

Of course what you have just set up is a very basic DAAP server. There are a lot of other options within the configuration file you can set up, such as:

• servername: This is the name your DAAP server will broadcast. By default the server will be listed as Firefly RELEASE_NUMBER HOSTNAME (Where RELEASE_NUMBER is the release number of the Firefly installation and HOSTNAME is the hostname of the server.)
• password protection: This will cause any user attempting to access the DAAP server to have to enter a password in order to see the files.
• port: If you need to use a port other than the default (3689), configure it here.
• extensions: The file types you want to allow to be served by your DAAP server.
• Valid codectypes: These are the configurations for the format conversion. There are already lines for this in the configuration file – you just have to uncomment the ones you want to add for internal conversion.
• rescan_interval: If you want to enable background scanning you need to uncomment this entry and set an interval. This will enable you to add new files without having to restart the DAAP server to pick up the new files. Very handy if you frequently add new files.

There are other configuration options, but those are the ones you will want to focus on first.

Start the daemon

After your configuration file is complete, go ahead and move your media files into the directory and then start the server with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/mt-daap start

With the server up and running you can fire up a DAAP enabled client, like iTunes or Songbird (Note: Songbird requires the addition of a DAAP add on), and you should automatically see the files on the DAAP server.

Final thoughts

Setting up a DAAP server is a great idea for a small internal network where you want to be able to share out a multi-media library. Anyone looking to set this up, and has a Linux server up and running, would do well to give Firefly a try. The simplicity, size, and speed of this server makes it the perfect candidate.

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Fortunately there is a tool for that. The tool? Spamassassin. Spamassassin is a very versatile SPAM tool that is part of the Apache Foundation. Spamassassin uses numerous means to detect SPAM including: DNS and Checksum based SPAM detection as well as Bayesian filtering, external programs, black lists, and online databases. These tools together make for a fairly powerful detection system.

In this article you are going to see how to install and configure Spamassassin to work in conjunction with Postfix to further enhance your email server.

Installing Spamassassin

Obviously the first thing you need to do is install Spamassassin. You will find Spamassassin in the Ubuntu repositories. And since this entire series has been laid on top of a Ubuntu Server installation, that is quite convenient. So, to install Spamassassin, open up your terminal window and issue the following command:

sudo apt-get install spamassassin

There may or may not be some dependencies to install in order for the Spamassassin  installation to complete. Go ahead and OK those. Once this installation is complete you are ready to start configuring.

Configuration

Before we actually get to the configuration it is important to understand the SPAM scoring system. With Spamassassin, messages are tagged as SPAM only when they have enough SPAM-matching characteristics (according to a scoring level). The scoring level is 0-5, however it’s not as simple as saying a 0 means it is 0% SPAM. The system is set up so that every characteristic can add to the overall score. For example a message tested to find a base64 attachment does not have a file name filtered with both bayes+net will add 0.224 to the over all score of the message. When all of the characteristic scores are added up, if they exceed the default score you have set in the configuration file, that message is considered SPAM.

Now that you have a basic understand of how the scoring system works. Let’s start configuring Spamassassin.

The main configuration file is /etc/spamassassin/local.cf. The first option you want to configure is the default score. Look for the line:

# required_score 5.0

The first thing you want to do is uncomment that line (by removing the “#” character) and then changing the score. A score of 5 is pretty high and sure to be SPAM. Understand the more you lower that score the likely you are of missing message messages that are tagged false-positives. A score of 3.5 is a fairly reliable score that will catch a lot of SPAM but not a lot of false positives.

Above this line are a couple of other options that are important. The first is the option to set the option:

report_safe

To 0. This option can be set to either 0 or 1. A zero means that if a message is found to be SPAM the message will not be deleted, but instead the subject line will be rewritten to include a message marking it as SPAM.  This is handy to prevent users from losing important messages to false positives. This also allows you to set a lower score threshold.

To do this first look for the line:

# report_safe 1

Uncomment this line by removing the “#” character and then change the “1″ to “0″ (no quotes).

The next step is to uncomment the line:

# rewrite_header Subject *****SPAM*****

Now you can alter the “*****SPAM*****” section of this line to reflect what you’d prefer it to say. Just make sure it is clear to your users that a message with this rewritten subject line is most likely SPAM.

Now restart the Spamassassin daemon with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/spamassassin restart

Configure Postfix

The last step is to set up Postfix to use Spamassassin. To do this open up the file /etc/postfix/master.cf and look for the line:

smtp     inet    n   –   –   –   –   smtpd

You need to alter this line to look like:

smtp      inet   n   -   -   -   -   smtpd -o content_filter=spamassassin

Finally, at the end of this file add the following:

spamassassin
unix - n n - - pipe
flags=R
user=spamd
argv=/usr/bin/spamc
-e /usr/sbin/sendmail
-oi -f ${sender} ${recipient}

Now all you need to do is restart Postfix with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/postfix restart

Your mail server should now be scoring incoming message as SPAM or HAM.

Final thoughts

The mail server is a tricky beast. You have to ensure that users are getting their mail, but you have to make sure they aren’t receive SPAM or viruses. After completing this series of articles, you should have a pretty solid server running that will send out mail that is safe for users eyes.

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One of the best anti-virus systems for a Postfix server is ClamAV. This anti-virus tool kit is open sourced and can be used on all UNIX-like operating systems. It’s easy to install and effective. In this article we will be following our series started way back in the Installing Ubuntu Server 9.04 article. Of course we will be installing ClamAV on a Ubuntu server running LAMP and Postfix. With that in mind, let’s get busy!

Installation

The first thing to take care of is the installation of ClamAV. There are a number of tools you will need to install. Open up a terminal window and issue the command:

sudo apt-get install clamav clamav-freshclam clamsmtp

The above command should also pick up all of the necessary dependencies. The installation will also start the clamav daemon. You will restart that momentarily

Configuration

Once installed you have some configurations to take care of. There are three files you are going to have to edit:

• /etc/clamsmtpd.conf
• /etc/postfix/main.cf
• /etc/postfix/master.cf

The first file to configure is the clamsmtpd.conf file. The configuration in this file is simple. Look for the lines:

OutAddress: 10025

127.0.0.1:10026

Change them to:

OutAddress: 10026

127.0.0.1:10025

That’s it for the clamsmtpd.conf file. Now let’s move on to the heavier configurations.

Open up the /etc/postfix/main.cf file. Scroll down to the bottom of this file and add the following:

content_filter = scan:127.0.0.1:10025

receive_override_options = no_address_mappings

Save that file and now move on over to the /etc/postfix/master.cf file. Again, scroll down to the bottom of this file and add the following:

# AV scan filter (used by content_filter)
scan unix - - n - 16 smtp
-o smtp_send_xforward_command=yes
# For injecting mail back into postfix from the filter
127.0.0.1:10026 inet n - n - 16 smtpd
-o content_filter=
-o receive_override_options=no_unknown_recipient_checks,no_header_body_checks
-o smtpd_helo_restrictions=
-o smtpd_client_restrictions=
-o smtpd_sender_restrictions=
-o smtpd_recipient_restrictions=permit_mynetworks,reject
-o mynetworks_style=host
-o smtpd_authorized_xforward_hosts=127.0.0.0/8

Save that file.

Restarting

The first thing you need to do is restart Postfix with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/postfix restart

Once that has restarted you need to restart clamsmtpd with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/clamsmtpd restart

Now, if nothing has gone horribly wrong, you should have a virus protected Postfix mail server.

Updating signatures

You should never go without updating your virus signatures. This is critical for keeping your mail server virus-free as new viruses are created or old viruses mutate. Fortunately ClamAV has its own tool for this. You will need to go back to that terminal window and issue the command:

sudo freshclam

Which will update the signatures.

You might even add the freshclam command into the root users crontab for regular signature updates.

Final thoughts

Your Postfix mail server is getting better and stronger each day. Adding anti-virus is a critical step in the grand scheme of Postfix things. In our next addition to the Postfix series, we will add Spamassassin for anti-spam measures.

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Gnumed is developed by doctors and programmers from around the globe and is gaining plenty of traction. Gnumed is broken into a client and a backend server and is released for both the Linux platform and the Windows platform. In order to use Gnumed you do have to have the Server up and running. You can, however, demo Gnumed by connecting to one of the public demo databases.

For the purposes of this introductory article, we will connect to the public demo. In a later article I will outline setting up the backend server for Gnumed.

Installation

Fortunately the Gnumed client will be found in your distribution repositories. So to install the software you will only have to follow these steps:

1. Open the Add/Remove Software utility.
2. Search for “gnumed” (no quotes).
3. Select the results for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

Figure 1

There are a few dependencies to meet, but the Add/Remove tool will take care of that for you. Once installed the application can be started from the Office sub-menu of the Application menu. When you first start Gnumed you will be welcomed by the connection window (see Figure 1). In this window you enter your credentials and connect to a server.

For those that are just testing out Gnumed you will want to connect to the public testing server. Here is the information to enter in order to connect to the public server:

• Backend: public Gnumed database
• username: any-doc
• password: any-doc

Once the authentication is successful you will be greeted by a welcome screen warning you that, since this is a publicly accessible database, any data you add will be lost. Once you OK that window you will see another window that requires you to set the database language. By default the language will be “None” and it needs to be set (for the demo) to “en_US”. To do this all you need to do is click the Set button.

Figure 2

After the db language is set the main window will open (see Figure 2).  As you can see, all entered patients are listed in this window. From here you can do just about anything you need to do. And that is the crucial question. Just what can you do with Gnumed? The feature list includes:

• Appointment managment.
• Client creation/import/management.
• Staff management.
• Allergy records.
• Forms and letters.
• Inbox.
• Track patient progress.
• Doctor journal.
• Document management.
• Drug information.
• Built-in report generator.

A word of note: The public database is fairly slow, so your experience with Gnumed may seem a bit lackluster. Do not assume this is the case with a private database, because Gnumed runs much, much faster when using a local backend.

Final thoughts

Gnumed is an outstanding open source tool for medical practices. With similar features as very costly proprietary solutions, any practice looking to cut costs need look no further than this application. Now, in our next look at Gnumed we will visit setting up a backend server so you can begin to actually use Gnumed for your practice.

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With the help of the GNOME Nettools you can have a sweet collection of powerful tools that will help you to troubleshoot your network in no time. And this collection of tools is all wrapped up into a user-friendly graphical interface. So without any further adieu, let’s take a look at this powerful suite of tools.

Features

The GNOME Nettools includes the following tools:

• Devices: Have all information about your networking devices at your fingertips.
• Ping: Get detailed information using the ping tool.
• Netstat: Get detailed information about your routing table, active network services, and multicast information about your machine.
• Traceroute: Trace the path to a network host.
• Port scan: Scan for open ports on servers and desktops.
• Lookup: Get detailed information about a server.
• Finger: Lookup a users finger entry.
• Whois: Lookup a whois entry for a domain.

GNOME Nettools also features:

• Copy information to text report.
• Help system.
• Drop downs for previously entered addresses/domains.
• Easy to use GUI.

Now let’s take a look and see how this tool is used.

Usage

Figure 1

As you can see there has been no mention of installation. That is because GNOME Nettools is installed by default. In order to start up the tool you only have to go to the Administration sub-menu of the System menu. Once you have fired up the tool you will be greeted with main window at the Devices tab. This tab is where you gather the information about your installed networking devices. As you can see (In Figure 1) there is plenty of detailed information about my default eth0 interface. You can switch this to display information about any connected internet device you have on the machine by using the Interface drop-down.

The next tab, Ping, is where you can actually start troubleshooting networking issues. Ping is almost always one of the first tools I use, but I generally use it in command line form. Since most new Linux users prefer to not use the command line – you can still get your ping on with Nettools. Click on the Ping tab to reveal how the Ping tool works (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

By default the Nettools Ping tool will be configured for a limited 5 requests. You can up that number or even change it to an unlimited number if you need. In Figure 2 I have sent 5 ping requests to an internal server and received 100% sucess on my packets. I know this server is at least responding.

The other tools will all work exactly as you would expect them. One thing that is nice is as a tool is working you can switch over to another tool without disrupting the original tools task. This is especially nice when running a traceroute that can take a while (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

The traceroute tool will follow a path, hop for hop, to a destination you enter. In Figure 3 I ran a traceroute on www.google.com which ended before it reached its goal. This, of course, was only to show you the output of the traceroute (as there is not much I can personally do if my route to www.google.com is stopped outside of the boundaries of my network or my service providers network. But it gives you an idea of where the route stops. If this were a corporate issue, and the destination was one I had to reach, I would know precisely where the last known successful hop was (in the case of Figure 3 – after the 65.222.158.82 address).

I can then use the Whois tool to discover who is connected to that address. By clicking on the Whois tab and then entering the IP address above I receive the following information:

MCI Communications Services, Inc. d/b/a Verizon Business UUNET65 (NET-65-192-0-0-1)
65.192.0.0 - 65.223.255.255
SPLICE COMMUNICATIONS, INC. UU-65-222-158-80-D4 (NET-65-222-158-80-1)
65.222.158.80 - 65.222.158.87

If www.google.com were a critical address for me (and my company) to reach for work (or a host of my company’s web site) I could at least contact the owner of this domain.

Final thoughts

As you would expect, the rest of the Nettools tools work in a very similar fashion than their command line counter parts. The only difference? You don’t have to open up a terminal window to use them. No commands to remember, no commands to type. Just easy network analysis, with the help of a user-friendly GUI tool.

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With Secure Shell there are a number of ways to use (and configure) this tool to make it more useful and more secure. In this article  you will learn five different (and handy) secure shell tips to make sure your ssh usage is as good as it can be. And for some basic secure shell knowledge, check out my article “Get to know Linux: Secure shell“.

Password-less logon

Have have dealt with this before (as a side note), but wanted to re-iterate this process. Because I use ssh so much I get tired of having to enter passwords constantly. Now I will preface this by saying only do this on a network you trust. Yes you will be logging into ssh with a certificate, and that certificate will be on your machine, but you don’t want to employ this method on a network that can not be trusted. With that in mind, here are the steps for setting this up.

On the local machine issue the command:

ssh-keygen -t dsa

This command will generate a public key that will be then copied to your server. During this creation process you will be asked for a password – just press enter to use a blank password for this. You will have to verify the password, so hit enter again. )

With the key created you have to copy it to the server you want to ssh into. To do this enter the command:

ssh-copy-id -i .ssh/id_dsa.pub username@destination

Where username is the username you will be logging into on the remote server and destination is the IP address of the remote server.

Now when you go to secure shell into that remote machine you will not have to enter a password.

Block root login

Although secure shell is a secure means of logging into your server, you do not want to allow root access (for obvious reasons). Blocking root access is simple. Open up the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file and look for this line:

PermitRootLogin

and make sure it is set to “no” (no quotes). So the complete line will read:

PermitRootLogin no

Once you have saved that file, restart the ssh daemon with the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

Now the root user can no longer log in remotely via ssh.

Enable X tunneling

Secure shell is made even more powerful when you can run a remote X application on your local machine. And what is better is that it’s not difficult at all. In order to allow X tunneling you will first need to open up the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file and search for this line:

X11Forwarding

and make sure it looks like:

X11Forwarding yes

Once that is set save the file, restart sshd, and you are ready to tunnel and X Windows application through ssh. To accomplish this you have to add the -X flag to your secure shell command like this:

ssh -v -l USERNAME IP_ADDRESS -X

Where USERNAME is the username you want to log in with and IP_ADDRESS is the actual IP address of the machine you are logging into.

Final thoughts

There are so many cool tricks and tips with secure shell, but the above three are, in my opinion, the most helpful. Have you come across a helpful ssh tip you’d like to share? Or are you looking for a particular behavior out of secure shell? If so. share with your fellow Ghacks readers.

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Most email clients contain some sort of SPAM prevention. On the Linux operating system you can employ such tools as Bogofilter or Spamassassin. Either of these tools are great for stopping SPAM – but what about using them with your favorite email client? With some Linux email clients you have to add extra applications in order to have one of these SPAM filters doing their job with your client. Some clients, however, have built-in tools to save you a little work. KMail belongs to the latter category. So long as you have either/or Bogofilter or Spamassassin installed, you are one step closer to having solid SPAM filtering.

In this article you will learn how to set up reliable SPAM filtering in the KMail mail client.

Bogofilter and Spamassassin

KMail can use either Bogofilter or Spammassassin easily. Read up on either tool and decide which application you want to use. I have had good luck with both, but I do believe Bogofilter is easier to set up. And since KMail will automatically detect either, the choice is yours.

You can install either tool from within the Add/Remove Software utility by following these steps:

1. Open Add/Remove Software utility.
2. Search for either “bogofilter” or “spamassassin” (No quotes).
3. Select either (or both) tools for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it. Now you are ready to move on to KMail.

Kmail SPAM Wizard

Figure 1

When you have KMail set up and running click on the Tools menu and select the “Anti-SPAM Wizard” entry. When the Wizard opens the first thing it will do is detect which SPAM tools you have installed (see Figure 1).

Once the wizard has detected your SPAM tools, select the tool you want to use and click Next. For the purpose of this article I will select Bogofilter.

The next step in the wizard will ask you for two configurations:

• Mark detected SPAM as read: I prefer to unset this, because of the next configuration option.
• Which folder to relocate SPAM: By default KMail will move SPAM to the trash folder. I prefer to create a new SPAM folder in order to catch any false-positives.

By moving SPAM to a specific SPAM folder (and not the trash folder) and keeping SPAM unread, you are less likely to miss any email mistakenly marked as SPAM (false-positive).

The final window of the wizard gives you a report on what you have set up. In my case the wizard creates the following filters:

• Bogofilter Check
• Spam handling
• Classify as Spam
• Classify as NOT Spam

Click the Finish button and your KMail client is ready to learn. And learning is the key.

Help Bogofilter learn

Figure 2

Before Bogofilter can become a reliable SPAM filter, it has to learn what should be classified as SPAM and what should be classified as HAM. Here’s how I like to do it. Allow plenty of email to collect in your inbox. As the mail comes in take all SPAM (that is not already marked and moved) and move it to the SPAM folder. Once you have cleared your Inbox of all SPAM, select all mail in that folder and then click the Ham button (see Figure 2).

Now, once you have collect a good amount of SPAM in your SPAM folder open that folder up, select all the SPAM, and click the SPAM button.

You may have to do this trick a few times before Bogofilter has been properly trained. You will know when Bogofilter has become accurate with your SPAM/HAM.

Final thoughts

It couldn’t be much easier to catch and mark SPAM with KMail and Bogofilter. But if you find Bogofilter not as reliable as you would like, run the Wizard and try Spamassassin instead.

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In this article I will outline a few of the possibilities that can be used to replace the beloved applications often used in Mac. In some cases their may be equivalents that are nearly identical. In some cases, however, there may be equivalents that miss some features, or even offer better features. Either way, after this article, you should feel much more comfortable about migrating from OS X to Linux.

In the previous article I already mentioned using Songbird as a replacement for iTunes. Personally I prefer Songbird to iTunes. The only downfall is that Songbird can not yet communicate to either the iPhone or the iTouch. Yet. There is another tool that is currently in development that will most likely change that. But for now – you can use Songbird as a replacement for iTunes – just don’t expect Songbird to communicate with your iPhone/iTouch.

Garage Band

For those looking to compose music on your Linux machine, a good replacement for Garage Band is Jokosher. Jokosher is a simple, powerful multi-track recording studio. With this outstanding tool you can import music, record instruments, mix down, set tempos, and more. You will not, however, find a large collection of pre-recorded instruments and sounds to add and manipulate. But, if you have a Freesound account, you can import anything from their. Unlike Garage Band, Jokosher is really more a user-friendly multi-track recorder. So don’t expect to just open up the application and start piecing together music without picking up an instrument.

For more information on other audio creating software take a look at Linux-Sound.org. In my humble opinion, if you are looking for mult-media creation, your best bet is to download Ubuntu Studio which will include so man pre-installed applications for media creation/editing.

iWork

This one should be obvious. If you’re looking for an office suite to take care of all your office needs, look no further than OpenOffice. Although OpenOffice may have a different look and feel, you will find it just as easy to use AND it includes more features and applications than iWork.

iCal

If you like Apple’s stand alone calendar (that also integrates with other applications) you can install the stand alone Sunbird calendar. Sunbird was created by Mozilla so it has a very Firefox/Thunderbird feel to it. Sunbird is very close to a feature-for-feature equivalent to iCal.

iPhoto

My wife uses a Mac and she HATES iPhoto. But it is the standard for Mac photo management. For Linux there is the F-spot photo management tool. F-spot not only manages your photo collections, but will work with your digital camera as an import tool. F-spot is actually easier to use than iPhoto and will not have you fighting to try to get a piece of software to do something you KNOW it should do, but won’t.

Final thoughts

It’s not an exhaustive list, but it will help you get by with the main applications one would use on a modern Mac computer.  If you have a Mac-based application you are looking for a Linux equivalent, let me know what that is and I will attempt to locate an equivalent for you.

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