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Download of the day: Linux Kernel 2.6.28

Vivek Gite — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 14:36:54 +0000

Linux kernel version 2.6.28 has been released and available for download. The new version includes following stable and new features:

a] ext4 file system - The ext4 filesystem can support volumes with sizes up to 1 exbibyte and files with sizes up to 16 TiB. ext4 removes ext3 64-bit storage limits and adds other performance improvements.

b] Graphics Execution Manager (GEM) - It is a a modern memory manager specialized for use in device drivers for graphics chipsets. It manages graphics memory, controls the execution context and manages the Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) environment on modern graphics chipsets. The "xf86-video-intel" device driver will feature GEM integration.

c] Other features - Stable USB drivers, KVM, bug fixes and other stuff.

=> Download Linux kernel 2.6.28 here. You may also find our kernel compile tutorial useful.

Security Update: Debian Linux Kernel Local / Remote Vulnerabilities

Vivek Gite — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:54:14 +0000

Debian project today released a pair of security updates to plug at least ten security holes in its core called Linux kernel. Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel that may lead to a denial of service or privilege escalation. This update has been rated as having important security impact.

mount forcedirectio: Disable Linux CIFS / NFS Client Caching

Vivek Gite — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:03:15 +0000

If your network is heavily loaded you may see some problem with Common Internet File System (CIFS) and NFS under Linux. By default Linux CIFS mount command will try to cache files open by the client. You can use mount option forcedirectio when mounting the CIFS filesystem to disable caching on the CIFS client. This is tested with NETAPP and other storage devices and Novell, CentOS, UNIX and Red Hat Linux systems. This is the only way to avoid data mis-compare and problems.

How To Use vi as Default Editor and Viewer in Midnight Commander

Vivek Gite — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 05:01:50 +0000

Midnight Commander (mc) is an user-friendly text-based file manager UI for Unix. Using mc, you can browse the filesystem easily and manipulate the files and directories quickly. You will not miss the standard command line prompt, which is also available within the mc itself. If you are new to mc, Midnight Commander (mc) Guide: Powerful Text based File Manager for Unix article will give you a quick jumpstart. In this article, let us review how to solve couple of common annoyance about viewing a file in mc.

Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder

Vivek Gite — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 23:52:30 +0000

Today Hans Reiser was found guilty of first degree murder in Oakland, California - In a murder case with no body, no crime scene, no reliable eyewitness and virtually no physical evidence, the prosecution began the trial last last November.

Download of the day: Linux Kernel 2.6.25

Vivek Gite — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:36:41 +0000

Linux kernel 2.6.25 has been released and available for download from the official website. After nearly three months of development and the merging of over 12,000 patches from almost 1200 developers, this kernel is now considered ready for wider use. Highlights of this release include the ath5k (Atheros wireless) driver, a bunch of realtime work [...]

Download of the day: FreeBSD 7.0 ISO / CD Image

Vivek Gite — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 07:58:28 +0000

FreeBSD 7.0 stable has been released and available for download. FreeBSD is back to its incredible performance. According to some benchmarks on both Intel and AMD 64 bit systems FreeBSD 7.0 being faster than Linux 2.6 when running PostreSQL or MySQL. It has experimental support for Sun's ZFS filesystem. gjournal can be used to set [...]

Comparison: Linux and UNIX ~ ZFS vs XFS vs EXT4 filesystem

Vivek Gite — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 20:51:58 +0000

This is an interesting filesystem comparison. If you are looking to build cheap storage for personal use file system decision is quite important: This is my attempt to cut through the hype and uncertainty to find a storage subsystem that works. I compared XFS and EXT4 under Linux with ZFS under OpenSolaris. Aside from the different [...]

Why my Linux server ext3 filesystem go read-only?

Vivek Gite — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 10:46:57 +0000

From my mailbag: We have 5 Dell server collocated running CentOS 4.x and 5.x server operating system. Sometime my file system (ext3) goes read-only. I’d like to know what could be causing such a problem? My guess: a) Hardware problem / hard disk problem, check harddisk for errors. b) High disk I/O aka busy I/O retry error can [...]

ZFS on Linux using FUSE

Vivek Gite — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 14:56:38 +0000

Linus Torvalds called ZFS one of the very few bright spots in Solaris. ZFS released under Sun's Common Development and Distribution License. Linux is under GPL v2 which makes ZFS incompatible with Linux. I’ve used ZFS under Solaris and it is absolutely rocking file system. Now this hot feature from OpenSolaris is taking a weird [...]

Configure lighttpd alias (mod_alias)

nixcraft — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 19:13:36 +0000

This lighttpd module provides for mapping different parts of the host filesystem in the document tree. You can use it for mapping various directories. For example cgi-bin directory mapped to /var/lib/cgi-bin. The alias module is used to specify a special document-root for a given url-subset. Configuration Open your lighttpd configuration file: vi /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf Append/add mod_ alias to list of [...]

Shell script to watch the disk space

n00b_Programmer — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 21:11:59 +0000

df displays the amount of disk space available on the file system containing each file name argument. If no file name is given, the space available on all currently mounted file systems is shown. Read man page of df if you are new [...]

Repairing ReiserFS file system with reiserfsck

nixcraft — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:37:33 +0000

The idea and commands in this article submitted by Jacques Wagener via email. In his own words, "After nuking my partition by accident (and through my stupidity) I was really disappointed in myself, especially in losing my bookmarks and rss-feeds". The following article is based upon our email communication. I am just [...]

Re-read the partition table without rebooting Linux system

LinuxTitli — Mon, 08 May 2006 13:35:53 +0000

If you are using hot swappable hard disk and created new partition using fdisk then you need to reboot Linux based system to get partition recognized. Without reboot you will NOT able to create filesystem on your newly created or modified partitions with the mke2fs command. However with partprobe command you should able to [...]

Linux command to gather hardware and software snapshot for troubleshooting

nixcraft — Mon, 01 May 2006 17:14:00 +0000

When you work in tech support department and deal with inexperienced clients debugging problems turns into a nightmare. As a sysadmin, you won't become too paranoid if less experienced people have root-access. As a consultant, you won’t feel isolated if you don’t have remote access to your systems. [...]

Why command df and du reports different output?

LinuxTitli — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 02:19:00 +0000

You will never notice something like this on FreeBSD or Linux Desktop home system or your personal UNIX or Linux workstation. However, sometime on a production UNIX server you will notice that both df (display free disk space) and du (display disk usage statistics) reporting different output. Usually df will output a bigger disk usage [...]

Linux / UNIX: Finding and locating files with find command part # 2

nixcraft — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 22:58:00 +0000

In the first part we talked about find command basic usage. Now let us see how to use find command (a) To gain lots of useful information about users and their files (b) Monitor and enhance the security of system using find command Finding all set user id files setuid ("suid") and setgid are access right flags that can [...]

Linux: Finding and Locating files with find command part # 1

nixcraft — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 22:14:00 +0000

Many newcomers find it difficult use the find command at shell prompt under Linux / *BSD or Solairs UNIX oses. Find is nifty tool on remote server where UNIX admin can find out lot of information too. Desktop users may find handy GNOME Search tool as a utility for finding files on system. Find command [...]