UNIX

Live Free Or Die
Unices
Books
Links
Linux
Bunch Of Tricks
Daemontools
Security
PHP-sysinfo

Unices

I'm a huge fan on the concept of UNIX. The UNIX philosophy is to design small tools that do one thing, and do it well. There are so many Unices out there these days, it's just great. My personal favorites are Mac OS-X (of course) and FreeBSD. NetBSD and Linux are also very nice; NetBSD for running on nearly every platform, Linux for its huge commu nity and support for those cool 3D-graphics cards (If I'll ever own a big iron with 16 CPUs, I'll add scalability to this Linux feature-list).

Solaris is also a very fine OS (and one of the few systems to have POSIX streams), but I lack the money to buy a decent Sparc-Workstation just for checking it out en detail (o.k. there is a x86 port of Solaris, but I probably should get some nice Opteron workstation for that one). If you want to have a glint of Apple elegance on your Intel-PC, perhaps you want to try Darwin, the underpinning of OS-X as it runs on x86-hardware, also. For the paranoid there is OpenBSD, a checked not only twice, uber-secure operating system.
If you prefer die-hardcore real-time systems, have a look at QNX, a commercial UNIX aimed at embedded systems (but with a freeware x86-version for development).

If you want to programm in an unix environment, you'll probably need the Single UNIX Specification maintained by the Open Group. Also extremely cool is this history of UNIX - printable as a big poster.

Books

There are two awesome Unix programming books out there. If you do not need an encyclopedia, Advanced UNIX Programming from Marc J. Rochkind might be for you. If you want it all, Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment (2nd edition) is the reference.

Links

• The UNIX Cult
• UNIX Socket FAQ
• UNIX Programming Frequently Asked Questions
• Creating Multiple GDM Logins on a Single Workstation, howto have more than one X-Server running
• Graphics from the command line, for everyone interested in how ImageMagick works
• Using rsync over ssh
• Introduction to FreeBSD jails
• another article about FreeBSD jails, (german)
• also about jails, from the FreeBSD diary
• cvsup and make buildworld your FreeBSD system
• encrypted file system on a USB key - on FreeBSD
• Benchmark comparison of NetBSD 2.0 and FreeBSD 5.3
• Short UNIX Examples, some nice example code in unix programming
• Socket programming, a short client-server example
• Deploying Tomcat on FreeBSD, a howto
• Build a wireless access point on Linux
• Connect your LAN to the ipv6-bone through your Linux gateway

Linux

In June 2003 I checked out Redhat Linux for the first time in years, and I have to admit that it is really cool. Its running smooth on my desktop PC without making any trouble, yet. I just installed the nvidia linux-drivers and had to play Neverwinter Nights all night long. But for all these hours there was no crash... (great game besides). I would have used my macintosh for playing, but my iBook simply did not give these framerates, you know.

At Siemens AG I updated a Knoppix derivat Live-CD including a PostgreSQL database, Apache webserve, Tomcat Servlet Engine and of course the demo software of IS. If you own a SIMATIC and want to have a look at a native Linux interface, you can get a Live-CD from them.

My brother was at LinuxTag 2004 and got two X-Boxes modded by the cool Xbox Linux freaks. I have yet to check out mine, but one thing is sure: Thanks Bill for subsidizing the Xbox and making me buy the cheapest (new) PC ever!

Bunch Of Tricks

To mount an iso-image under linux:

mount -t iso9660 -o loop,ro /path/to/isoimage.iso /path/to/mount/point/

To create an iso-image from an inserted cd:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/path/to/isoimage.iso

To create an iso-image from the contents of a directory use mkisofs from the cdrtools:

mkisofs -o /path/to/isoimage.iso /path/to/files/

Daemontools

Bernsteins Daemon Tools are very useful indeed. This is a daemon for watching over other daemons, so that if one of them crashes, it can be restarted. It can sometimes be rather difficult to get the startup options needed by different daemons, as it is unwanted that they fork away from the watching parent process. Therefore I've collected some run scripts.

#!/bin/sh
echo Starting Apache
exec /opt/local/sbin/httpd -F

#!/bin/sh
echo Starting ddclient
exec fghack /opt/local/sbin/ddclient -daemon 300

Security

In terms of security, most UNIX systems seem to declass Microsofts Windows OS by far. This ain't babble as you may have a look for yourself:

• Linux has fewer bugs then Windows, a four year analisys from Stanford University computer scientists
• Security Report: Windows vs Linux, a report clearing up some myths (like that Linux just is not attacked because if lacks the installed base of Windows)
• Apple Mac and SCO UNIX least vulnerable, "Windows regains mantle of most vulnerable OS"
• FLOSS - Free/Libre and Open Source Software: Survey and Study
• Closed source versus open source in a model of software bug dynamics
• Allchin, disclosure of Microsoft APIs may endanger U.S. - particulary funny as the Windows 2000 source code leaked to the internet..

Most people I know don't care for security. "Why should I switch browser? My Internet Explorer is doing just fine!" is about the most common sentences when its about this important issue. Few realize that they not only risk their own data, including online banking accounts, papers, tax declaration, digital photos etc., but also bring havoc among those who are attacked through the hijacked computer, be it by spam, denial of service attack or just ebay impostors making their biz untrackable by using your PC.

Even if you do not have any interest in security for yourself, you should (at least if you enjoy your life just a little) be concerned about your safety, as Windows for Warships will control British thermo-nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles.

PHP-sysinfo

Some time ago I created a meta-theme (metal) for the phpsysinfo project. phpsysinfo shows information about the current state of some unix operating systems (incl. FreeBSD, Darwin/OS-X, Linux), like disk and memory usage, hardware installed, etc..