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This guide explains how to set up WebDAV with MySQL authentication (using mod_auth_mysql) on Apache2 on a Debian Etch server. WebDAV stands for Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning and is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol that allow users to directly edit files on the Apache server so that they do not need to be downloaded/uploaded via http://FTP. Of course, WebDAV can also be used to upload and download files.

Recently, I did a laptop install for an individual that needed to upload files to his home computer from his laptop. It was important to him to do so. He didn't need a full feature SSH protocol or anything remotely (sorry) close to it. Many of the files are too big to get past his email size limit so he was worried that his Linux Box wouldn't be able to do what his Windows install did. That is where droopy comes in. That fact that it is a Python script endears me immediately but more so, the absolute ease by which it is utilized makes it the perfect little app for almost anyone's use.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project -- which aimed to give underprivileged children around the world a better chance at modern education -- may have been stifled though a combination of disinformation and other coordinated efforts by hardware and software monopolies that wanted to stop it.

Part one of a five part post series on setting up Linux and Unix servers securely.

The office where I am network administrator switched most users to OpenOffice.org (OOo) back at version 1.1, and has followed the upgrade process to the current version 2.3 (a few poor users who have to exchange documents outside the office with high fidelity are still clinging to their MS Office 97). Our receptionist does a lot of general secretarial duties, including lots of letters, envelopes, and labels that involve mail merge. Since this seems to be a sticking point for many people, I am putting everything I have learned from helping her and have gleaned from various sources on the Internet together in this tutorial.

Wine is well-known on Linux forums. Many a new Linux user has sought to run their old Windows applications on their new operating system. Short of having a clear open source alternative that reads and writes to the same file formats â?? for instance, Open Office is a viable solution to opening archived Microsoft Word documents â?? the venerable Wine is regularly touted as the first option. Wine, simply put, facilitates running Microsoft Windows applications within Linux. The programs will display in their own windows just as if they were native Linux applications.

Now that Firefox 3 has been officially released, the Google Gears team wasted no time in pounding out a new version of the API that works with FF3. Coincidentally, this means that Google Gears now works with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, which began its life a couple of months ago with the then-non-Gears-supported FF 3 beta.

One of the unsung heroes of the Unix realm is — I kid you not — IBM. Stop laughing, I'm serious. I completely realize that IBM is a (if not the) giant of Unix and Linux on just about any platform it makes, and to assign the label "unsung" probably sounds a bit ridiculous. But, at least in one area, I don't think it is given nearly as much credit as it deserves.

Android developer advocate, Dan Morrill had a prototype unit to show delegates when he presented on the Android platform and the software developers kit. iTWire was not able to get a look at it, but Morrill said his presentation was very similar to one given at the Google IO developer event in the US at the end of May, a video of which is available online. Morrill confirmed that the first Android handset would hit the market before the end of 2008, but declined to say who would manufacture it or to name any manufacturers that had commited to make Android handsets.

I had no idea that the Debian-derived apt and Synaptic are viable choices for package management in Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the free RHEL-like CentOS. Not that I have anything against RPM and Yum, but it's nice to have choices.

Andrew Morton is well-known in the kernel community for doing a wide variety of different tasks: maintaining the -mm tree for patches that may be on their way to the mainline, reviewing lots of patches, giving presentations about working with the community, and, in general, handling lots of important and visible kernel development chores. Things are changing in the way he does things, though, so we asked him a few questions by email. He responded at length about the -mm tree and how that is changing with the advent of linux-next, kernel quality, and what folks can do to help make the kernel better.

I have recently read an eye-opening email from Ian Lynch about what happened in the UK with BECTA. I have received his permission to republish here his thoughts. I think his email speaks volumes about what happened.

As expected, the US has the greatest number of computers in the list, in fact slightly more than half. Of the rest, most (37%) are in Europe with a small number of systems in Japan (22), China (12) and India (6). Of much more interest, as I alluded to in a recent article is the penetration of Linux into this arena. Depending upon how you count the numbers provided by TOP500, between 85% and 89% of the Supercomputers are running some version of Linux. Of those that identify the distro, SuSE outnumbers Red Hat 10 to 1. No others are identified.

Free and open source software (FOSS) is only beginning to find a foothold in computer science departments in North America. FOSS tools may be used in teaching or be the subject of research or special committees, but few departments include courses that introduce students to the FOSS community. As a result, when North Carolina State University created a FOSS graduate course in the 2008 spring semester, it turned to Red Hat to find an instructor with a suitable background of FOSS involvement and university teaching experience. Community manager Greg DeKoenigsberg recommended performance tools engineer Will Cohen, who now looks back at the experience with an eye to how what he and his students learned might help other instructors.

Building a MythTV digital video recorder (DVR) is a series of small battles -- configuring digital sound, aligning your video sources and channel guide data, getting XvMC running, and so on. Any tool that simplifies one of those battles is welcome, and GNOME LIRC Properties promises to be just such a tool. It is a shortcut to configuring infrared receivers and remote controls, and although it is not perfect, it is a good step in the right direction.

The traditional file permission model, where read, write, and execute permissions are set on each file for the user, group, and others (UGO) has one drawback: It can't be used to define per-user or per-group permissions. For that, you need to employ access control lists (ACL). Eiciel is a graphical tool that integrates with the Nautilus file manager and allows for easy ACL management. The UGO model lets you associate only one group with a file. If you try to define read permissions on a file for user Charlie and read and write permissions for user Alexia, and Charlie and Alexia belong to different groups, you'll see what I mean. With ACLs, you can specify elaborate permissions for multiple users and groups.

SSHMenu adds a button to your GNOME panel that displays a configurable drop-down list of hosts that you have might like to connect to with SSH. SSHMenu is packaged and available in repositories for both Ubuntu (as sshmenu-gnome) and Fedora (gnome-applet-sshmenu). Other SSHMenu packages available for both distributions do not include GNOME support. In those, the button for the SSH menu is started in its own window and an xterm is started when you wish to connect to a host with SSH. If you install the GNOME-aware SSHMenu packages, you can add SSHMenu to your panel by right-clicking the panel and choosing "Add to Panel..." and selecting the "SSH Menu Applet." When using the GNOME-aware SSHMenu, a gnome-terminal is started to handle your SSH connections, and you can select the profile gnome-terminal should use on a per-host basis. That lets you specify a font and background color in the terminal that can act as a reminder of which host that terminal is connected with.

Amarok gained its huge popularity due to a vast number of features and very good functionality, like a complex collection management, support for iPod and several other MP3/OGG players, integration with Wikipedia, lyrics fetching, and another great number of features. The latest Amarok version, 1.4.9.1, is the most stable release in the 1.4.x series, and also the most fully-featured Amarok up to date.

Microsoft's strategy goes like this: invade open source, redefine open source, make open source work better on Windows, force open source to 'license' for software patents

Everyone is familiar with PCLinuxOS by now. And most of us have preconceived thoughts and opinions on this Linux distribution. And yet, I could not get my head around the attraction of this distro over Ubuntu, Simply Mepis, Linux Mint, Freespire or any other beginner-friendly Linux release.