The title alone is a mouthful, but you have to love a book that knows what it’s about.
‘Unix and Linux Systems Administration’. We all know what that is. Balding, bearded, bespectacled wizards wearing t-shirts, nestled deep in a corporate office, on a floor the CEO and VP’s never visit, tapping out incantations day and night, feeding the temperamental beasts caged in the data center.
No? What about a growing group of dedicated, professional, hard-working experts who keep servers–and consequently the rest of the business–running smoothly? Sure, some of them may have less than a full head of hair, or wear the occasional t-shirt to work, but if your job (which you only call ‘System Administrator’ on your resume) involves monitoring and maintaining expensive hardware that performs critical business functions, and if the CEO only notices you or your group when things have going horribly, horribly wrong… then this is the book for you.
Back up a bit. How did ‘Python’ sneak into the title? This is a book for System Administrators–I mean, sysadmins. These guys write bash scripts to do their laundry. Sure, some of them may have joined the cult of Perl, and what proper Linux shop doesn’t have a zsh fanatic locked in the supply closet (in case of emergency)?
Unless you’ve been asleep at the keyboard for a few years, it’s hard to miss the rise of Python as a language of choice among web developers–along with old favorites Perl, PHP, and Java, and the new kid on the block, Ruby.
Perl is an old standby for many sysadmins, especially in those moments when you realize there’s a CPAN module that does 90% of what you need, or you’re tired of guessing whether brackets should go around the test condition in an ‘if’ statement. Is Python ready to take it’s place alongside Perl in a sysadmin’s toolbox? The authors of this book make an excellent case that yes, it is. » Read more
Question: After downloading and burning ISO files from Red Hat Network (RHN) why will the system not boot from the first burned CD?
Answer:
First, make sure that you have downloaded the correct files. For each distribution there are binary files and source files. To complete an installation the four binary files for a particular distribution are required.
Simply burning these files to CD as files will result in a single file being burnt to CD with a .iso extension. If this occurs your disks will not be bootable. The files available from Red Hat Network (RHN) are disk images and need to be burned to CD as an image.
Your burning software will extract the files from the .iso and burn them to CD. See your specific burning software documentation for more information on how to burn images to CD.
To check if you have burned each image correctly, simply examine the contents of the CD. Instead of a single .iso file the disk should contain multiple files and directories. » Read more
My name is Adrienne, and I’m a graphic designer at Red Hat—I create meaning using type and image. The other day I stumbled upon a story involving music, sustainability, and open source. Needless to say, I was intrigued.
Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain are the artists and creators behind Monome. At first glance, this cool device is simply a white square with a grid of buttons. It produces music and the buttons light up. It seems random, but the lights and music are synchronized.
Monome is a musical interface that connects to a computer–and is controlled by the applications the computer runs. It respond to the keys being pressed, and the LEDs light up–it is, at its simplest, a programmable controller for music, video, games, or art.
The beauty of an open process allows people to build on the idea, creating more than anyone could originally imagine (just like Fedora). People have manipulated Monome to do a number of things. » Read more
Question: Is there an alternative module to the mod_jk module that is provided in the standard channel for Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 5?
Answer: The module mod_jk is currently included as part of the Application Stack channel and is not available in the base channel. However in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, the package httpd does provide a module by the name mod_proxy_ajp which helps connect between the two. The configuration file is located at /etc/httpd/conf.d/proxy_ajp.conf. Edit this configuration file according to the needs of the enviroment. At the very least, add i the webapps directory used by tomcat:
ProxyPass /tomcat/ ajp://localhost:8009/ ProxyPass /examples/ ajp://localhost:8009/jsp-examples/It’s the end of the week, and here’s a few stories that caught our attention:
Unlike Red Hat Enterprise Linux versions 2.1 and 3, there is no kernel-source package in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 distribution. It was deemed redundant to provide a kernel-source package and a kernel .src.rpm package at the same time. Users that require access to the kernel sources can find them in the kernel.src.rpm file.
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, The kernel-devel package includes the kernel headers files and you no longer require the kernel source package to build a third party kernel module. To install the kernel-devel package run the following command as root user in a terminal:
#up2date kernel-devel
A full source tree is not required in order to build modules against the current kernel you are using. You can simply point your Makefile to /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build. A more detailed explanation can also be found in the Release Notes. » Read more
John Halamka, CIO of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, was one of the keynote speakers at this summer’s Red Hat Summit. In this video, he explains how open source is critical to the healthcare industry and talks a little about his implanted RFID chip. Learn more about how Beth Israel saved $200,000 and reduced downtime to nearly zero.
Question: I got an error that stated: ‘error code 91: Red Hat software management exhausted’ what do I do?
Answer: This error is most commonly received when you are trying to use activation keys to connect a system profile to Red Hat Network (RHN) but you have exhausted all available management entitlements.
You would need to purchase additional Management level entitlements if you wish to continue using activation keys. Generally you will not get this error when using the up2date –register command unless you have previously created an activation key and designated it as the universal default key on your account. If you previously used an activation key flagged as the universal default, you would need to update the status on that Activation Key before you could create new profiles using the up2date –register command. » Read more
