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Upgrade to Fedora 12

max — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:58:02 +0000

Fedora release 12 became available to the public November 17, 2009. New features are plentiful and many are centred around KVM virtualization.

If you are like me and still running Fedora 10 or 11 and do not wish to wait till a yum based update is pushed out you can kick off your adventure into Fedora 12 land manually. Set aside at least Amoxil price an hour of time where you will not be able to use the PC while the update is taking place. First thing is to review Preupgrade Wiki Page, once you feel confident that your system is ready (enough space in /boot, created backups of your data) issue (as root):
yum update && yum install preupgrade
Followed by:
preupgrade-cli "Fedora 12 (Constantine)"
After a lengthy download, reboot and update process you should be looking at Fedora 12 login prompt.

If you used ext3 filesystem in your Fedora 10/11 system you can also migrate to ext4 filesystem by following the Fedora ext4 Wiki guide.

Apple sold 3.1 million Macs in the last three months, 17% more than a year ago

andrew — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:57:21 +0000

I thought that at least 10% of our readers would appreciate this information – or at least be already aware of it. For a more details and a full story – you can check out the apple.com investors section or the WSJ article.

Why 10%? According to our analytics here is our visitors operating system breakdown is as follows:

linux system admin blog google analytics operatin system breakdown

Our top three visitors OS:

1) Windows 63%

2) Linux 26

3) Macintosh 10%

We’re drawing a different audience than the typical install base according to wikipedia.

Wikipedia os distribution September 2009

Install TrueCrypt on Fedora 10

max — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:25:20 +0000

TrueCrypt is an open source encryption application, it has an ability to create hidden encrypted containers and file systems/volumes, it is portable and cross platform compatible. It allows to use cascading cyphers and encrypts/decrypts files on the fly. Be sure to read the FAQ and documentation before fully committing your files to TrueCrypt.

- install via yum:
sudo yum install fuse fuse-devel wx_Base wx_GTK wx_GTK-devel

- download source code package:

http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads2

tar -zxvf TrueCrypt\ 6.2a\ Source.tar.gz
cd truecrypt-6.2a-source

- Download RSA Security Inc. PKCS #11 Cryptographic Token Interface files
wget ftp://ftp.rsasecurity.com/pub/pkcs/pkcs-11/v2-20/pkcs11.h
wget ftp://ftp.rsasecurity.com/pub/pkcs/pkcs-11/v2-20/pkcs11f.h
wget ftp://ftp.rsasecurity.com/pub/pkcs/pkcs-11/v2-20/pkcs11t.h

- build package
make

- copy binary to /usr/bin
cd Main
sudo chown root:root truecrypt && sudo cp truecrypt /usr/bin

- copy icon files to icon repository
cd ../Resources/Icons
sudo chown root:root * && sudo cp * /usr/share/icons

One last order of business is to setup your sudoers file to so that TrueCrypt does not complain about requiring tty for sudo command needed to mount encrypted volumes. There are 2 ways of doing that:
1. The less secure way — disable requiretty globally by adding an exclamation mark in front of requretty,
# Defaults specification # # Disable "ssh hostname sudo ", because it will show the password in clear. # You have to run "ssh -t hostname sudo ". # Defaults !requiretty

2. The more secure way especially for multi-user environments — create user alias called WHEELUSERS, assign users to this user alias:
## User Aliases ## These aren't often necessary, as you can use regular groups ## (ie, from files, LDAP, NIS, etc) in this file - just use %groupname ## rather than USERALIAS # User_Alias ADMINS = jsmith, mikem User_Alias WHEELUSERS = max

– Create a defaults entry for user alias disabling requiretty.
# Defaults specification # # Disable "ssh hostname sudo ", because it will show the password in clear. # You have to run "ssh -t hostname sudo ". # Defaults requiretty # added for truecrypt requiretty complaint Defaults:WHEELUSERS !requiretty

Video below is a walk through of creating a TrueCrypt desktop short-cut and creation of encrypted container.

Running ASDM client from your Linux desktop

max — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:13:30 +0000

For those of us who use Linux as a desktop replacement for Windows would find it nice to be able to run the ASDM client natively. If you haven’t upgraded your ASA/PIX to the latest ASDM you should do so. The steps are described here.

Once you do upgrade your PIX/ASA to the latest version you may run into another issue where your bundled version of java not connect with ASDM. The remedy for this if you are using Fedora 10 can be found here.

Now assuming that you have asdm loaded and opened access to outside over port 4443 with:
http server enable 4443 http 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 outside

You can connect to your PIX/ASA over port 4443 and download the asdm.jnlp file to your pc via web browser at https://external_ip_of_asa:4443

Once you posses the asdm.jnlp file issue javaws asdm.jnlp in terminal. Upon successful login this will create .asdm folder in your home directory with files inside, as well as a desktop shortcut. After this the asdm.jnlp is no longer needed and can be erased.

Upgrade to Java SE 6 update 12 on Fedora 10

max — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:10:53 +0000

After our ASA units were updated to the latest version of ASDM my Java client would no longer connect to ASDM. An upgrade to the latest version of Java was in order. Since fedora yum repository does not yet offer the latest version of Java I downloaded the latest rpm variant of JDK from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp

The install steps are:

Grand executable permission to installer file
chmod +x jdk-6u12-linux-i586-rpm.bin

Run installer file
./jdk-6u12-linux-i586-rpm.bin

Rename symbolic links pointing to old java programs
cd /etc/alternatives mv java java_old mv javaws java_old mv keytool keytool_old

Create new symbolic links
cd /etc/alternatives ln -s /usr/java/latest/bin/java java ln -s /usr/java/latest/bin/javaws javaws ln -s /usr/java/latest/bin/keytool keytool

Verify that new java version is installed
javaws
Java(TM) Web Start 1.6.0_12
Usage: javaws [run-options]
javaws [control-options]

Virtual desktop in Gnome 2.22 / Fedora Core 9

max — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:11:15 +0000

Trying to figure out how to put your second monitor and dual port graphics card to good use in FC9? How about creating a virtual desktop that will span the second monitor. Resist the urge to edit xorg.conf and think about the layout or position the second monitor will take. I like to have my 1600×1200 display right of the 1280×960 laptop display.

Since I want the virtual desktop to span both screens horizontally I need to specify a virtual screen of 2880×1200. I derived at this number by adding the the pixel length of both displays together (1280+1600) and the pixel height of the biggest monitor (1200).

In xorg.conf I added “Virtual 2880 1200″ in the Section “Screen”

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Screen0″
Device     “Videocard0″
DefaultDepth     24
SubSection “Display”
Viewport   0 0
Depth     24
Virtual   2880 1200
EndSubSection

Now restart Xorg by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace and run gnome-display-properties to adjust the position of the screen (left of right) and set the proper resolution. Be sure to uncheck “Mirror Screen”