Tiny Linux Computer Punches Above Its Weight

Network World (03/06/12) Jon Gold

The $25 Raspberry Pi computer could have an impact far beyond the educational sector, with early production runs showing significant demand for the technology.  The credit card-sized Raspberry Pi is a fully functional Linux computer, complete with Ethernet and USB ports and HDMI output.  To use it, people need to plug in a keyboard and attach the device to a TV.  The device was created by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which wants to improve computer science education by making an affordable, flexible platform available to budding programmers.  The group believes that people who are applying to university computer science programs today are not as skilled as applicants years ago.  One reason is because they do not have access to highly programmable devices that the previous generation used to learn about computing.  Aside from educational applications, the open source technology could catch on with activists around the world.  For example, a developer of an encrypted communication app designed to circumvent online censorship says he can use Raspberry Pi as a tiny, inexpensive server for activists in countries that suppress freedom of speech.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/030612-raspberry-pi-256985.html

Dedicated servers for total online independence

Configuration relayhost use a Google Apps (gmail) smtp with postfix

All the commands are done under the root user (or you could use sudo)

as root apt-get install postfix libsasl2 ca-certificate libsasl2-modules

Configure Postfix

This tutorial will not outline how to configure your postfix server, but we’ll jump directly to the relayhost section.  You’ll want to add the following lines to your /etc/postfix/main.cf

relayhost = [smtp.gmail.com]:587
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous
smtp_tls_CAfile = /etc/postfix/cacert.pem
smtp_use_tls = yes

The above lines are telling Postfix that you want to relay mail through gmail on a specific port, telling it to authenticate, and where to find the username and password.  The last three lines specify the authentication types supported, where the certificate authority file is and that it should use tls.At this point you can restart Postfix and it should work, however it will complain about not being able to authenticate the certificate.  To take care of this issue we’ll use the ca-certificate package we installed and tell it where it can validate the certificate.

Define Username and Password

Next we’ll need to populate the sasl_passwd file.  Create the file /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd with the following contents:

[smtp.gmail.com]:587 user.name@domainGoogleApps:password

This file should have restrictive permissions and then needs to be translated into a .db that Postfix will read.

sudo chmod 400 /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
sudo postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

Then reload postfix (/etc/init.d/postfix reload) and you should be set.

Using & validating CA certificate

touch /etc/postfix/cacert.pem
cat /etc/ssl/certs/Thawte_Premium_Server_CA.pem >> /etc/postfix/cacert.pem

cat /etc/ssl/certs/Equifax_Secure_CA.pem >> /etc/postfix/cacert.pem 

Oracle Enterprise Unbreakable Linux forks over Red Hat

SAN FRANCISCO -- Oracle last night rolled out a new Linux distro, Oracle Enterprise Unbreakable Linux, optimized for running on its latest high-end hardware.
Over the past four years, Oracle has offered its own version of Red Hat Compatible Linux, claiming 5,500 customers. Our 2010 data center survey showed around 11% of our audience running Oracle Linux.
But Oracle CEO Larry Ellison claimed that Red Hat does not apply patches and updates to its kernel fast enough for his taste.
Some Linux backers disagreed with that contention.
"Red Hat's kernel version doesn't tell the full story, as they employ a number of kernel hackers who backport any necessary fixes from newer kernel releases to their current version, so while the kernel number itself might seem old, the latest release typically contains any important security updates and fixes," said a Linux admin and author who asked not to be named. "It sounds to me more like Oracle simply wants to not have to rely on Red Hat to apply their personal kernel patches they would like to apply"
Ellison assured the crowd that Oracle will continue to support Red Hat Compatible Linux on Oracle for the long term. Customers can choose to run the Red Hat Compatible Kernel if they prefer strict Red Hat compatibility over a system optimized to run Oracle and other enterprise software.
Red Hat Linux Kernel out of date?
During his Sunday night Oracle OpenWorld 2010 keynote, Ellison threw Red Hat under the bus. "Red Hat is very slow to take up enhancements from the Linux community," he said. "It runs a four-year-old version of the Linux kernel, it's slow to introduce community enhancements. We can't afford to be four years behind on the mainline of Linux."
Oracle Enterprise Unbreakable Linux is supposed to offer some big benefits for large-scale Oracle users:

• 75% performance gain demonstrated in OLTP performance tests over a Red Hat Compatible Kernel;
• 200% speedup of Infiniband messaging;
• 137% faster solid state disk access optimizations for large NUMA servers;
• Improved power management and energy efficiency;
• Fine-grained CPU and memory resource control.
• Possible integration of Solaris features like dtrace, which was not in the press release, but Ellison mentioned by name in the keynote.

"Oracle has optimized their distribution to get the best database and storage performance. The question is at what price to other functionality?" said Gregory Rosenberg, Chief Technology Officer of Tinley Park, Ill.-based VAR RICIS Inc. "I see Oracle as having a niche market and not a mainstream market -- which isn't a bad thing by any means. But I don't think Oracle will ever have a strong game like SUSE in the real-world. They may, on the other hand, win at marketing wars."
Linux community doesn't trust Uncle Larry
The Linux community shrugged off the announcement, noting that Solaris features like dtrace would be nice to have, but Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Linux wouldn't have much impact outside of existing Oracle customers.
"I think dtrace would be a compelling feature that might be enough to encourage people to make the move to Oracle Linux, however I would be disappointed if they kept the port closed source," said one Linux admin. "After all, Oracle is taking advantage of all of this free operating system software and user space software, so it would be a shame for them to not do the same with dtrace."
Barbara Darrow contributed to this article.
Matt Stansberry is Executive Editor of SearchDataCenter.com. Let us know what you think about the story; email Matt Stansberry.

Tags: Linux in the data center,

Nouvelle version 2.6.35 du noyau Linux

La sortie de la version stable 2.6.35 du noyau Linux vient d'être annoncée par Linus Torvalds. Le nouveau noyau est, comme d'habitude, téléchargeable sur les serveurs du site kernel.org.

Le détail des évolutions, nouveautés et prévisions est dans la seconde partie de la dépêche (qui est sous licence CC BY-SA)

Serveur dédié Linux a prix imbattable!

Une distro que nous aimons

UBUNTU desktop ou UBUNTU server 9.04!, asseyez!

Editing Your Digital Photos

You don’t need a Mac to edit your digital photos. Linux and some free software can unleash your inner Ansel Adams.
...
You probably noticed, however, that your camera comes with Windows or Macintosh software — that doesn’t do much good on your Linux desktop platform. When combining your digital camera and Linux, there’s good news and bad news.
...
Read more ...

recordMyDesktop : desktop session recorder for Linux

recordMyDesktop is a desktop session recorder for

GNU / linux

that attemps to be easy to use, yet also effective at it's primary task. As such, the program is separated in two parts; a simple command line tool that performs the basic tasks of capturing and encoding and an interface that exposes the program functionality in a usable way.
The commandline tool (which essentially is recordMyDesktop), is written in C,

while there are two frontends, written in python with pyGtk (gtk-recordMyDesktop) and pyQt4 (qt-recordMyDesktop).

recordMyDesktop record audio offers also the ability to through ALSA, OSS or the audio server JACK

Before using recordMyDesktop, it is suggested that you visit the Documentation section of this site and in particular, read the User Guide, in order to get a better understaning of how to use the program.
Also,
recordMyDesktop produces files using only open formats
These are theora for video and vorbis for audio, using the ogg container.

(To learn more about free formats visit Xiph.org, the foundation responsible for the aformentioned formats).