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In part 1 of our little series, True IT Tales of Horror: Dave's Not Here we were introduced to the Precious Progeny Public School District, and learned that the combined efforts of IT staff, a teacher, and multiple administrative assistants are almost adequate to the task of ordering a laptop battery. Today we return to PPPSD to try to liberate the school district from the tyrannical grip of its crazed wax custodians.

As we continue the classic Networking 101 series, Charlie Schluting gives us a clear, understandable introduction to routing, which is quite possibly the most important part of computer networking.

A reliable network monitoring and management solution must accurately detect network devices such as routers, servers, and client workstations. It must be able to display a map of the whole network, monitor the health and performance of each device, and have a way to notify someone of a problem by email, text message, or other form of communication. It should be able to fix a problem by restarting services or running specific programs. It should generate detailed reports that you can analyze easily to help prevent future incidents. Finally, a decent monitoring system must be easy to use, deploy, and customize according to your monitoring needs. Let's use these standards to see if GroundWork Monitor Community Edition is up to the task.

Linux-Kongress is by far one of the most traditional Linux conferences, with a focus on development and cutting edge topics. If you're not able to join the program in Hamburg, Germany, in person, enjoy the keynotes from James Bottomley and Jason Corbet for free on Linux Magazine Online.

AppDeploy, an online community for both systems management professionals and application and computer administrators has released a free software tool called"AppDeploy Repackager." The tool is the industry's first free application dedicated to the complex task of Windows Installer repackaging, according to the company.

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install images of Xen on an Ubuntu Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04) server system (i386). Linux distributions that can run as Xen guests out of the box, obviating the need to create your own custom filesystems. The filesystems on jailtime.org have already been tweaked to deal with Xen’s idiosyncracies, and are also designed to be lightweight and minimally divergent from the original distribution.

Sidux, a relatively new desktop Linux distribution, is based on Sid, the unstable developmental branch of Debian. The developers strive for an easy-to-install and easy-to-use modern Debian derivative, and pride themselves on remaining true to the principles and values of the Debian project. Despite a few inconveniences, I like Sidux a bit more each time I use it. Sidux comes as a live CD in a few different configurations. I chose the 2GB DVD with a full KDE desktop for both i686 or AMD64 architectures, but you can also choose from a KDE-Lite or XFCE desktop version for either architecture; each uses less than 500MB.

One of the most annoying experiences for any desktop Linux user is installing a Linux on a laptop, switching it on, and... discovering that the Wi-Fi chipset doesn't support Linux. That used to be a commonplace experience, but over the years it's gotten much better. Unless, of course, you were using a laptop with a Broadcom chipset; then, chances were, you were in for some trouble. -

In the old childhood folktales, trolls are big, mean, ugly creatures that live under bridges and exact payments in exchange for allowing travelers to pass. That, according to Jeff Matsuura, is very similar to how patent trolls operate. Matsuura is an intellectual property attorney with the Alliance Law Group, based in Falls Church, Va.

Once we moved to VMWare ESX 3.+ we ran into a very annoying issue. The issue was that if you have multiple NICs from Multiple vendors, VMWare will reorder your NICs and cause havoc to you guys who use PXE boot/Kickstart. So I had to come with a work around that will alleviate this issue. I went ahead and created this script and I injected it in the post section of our kickstart profile and had it run after rebooting 3 times. Since After the third reboot the VMWare is done with its configuration, after the third reboot the script will run and then delete itself. Once all said and done your NICs will be in the proper order.

Sun Microsystems has lost a key individual responsible for getting its aspiring open-source software included in leading Linux distributions. Barton George has quit Sun after 13 years, hard on the heels of having helped secure the inclusion of an open-source friendly version of Sun's Java Development Kit (JDK) - OpenJDK - with major GNU/Linux distros.

"The Green Penguin" is a new blog devoted to ‘green’ IT related to Linux (though at times loosely). This week´s topic is about Google and General Electric´s recently announced plan to promote a ‘smart’ electric power grid and thus encourage greater use of renewable energy.

Some are apparently up in arms that Google is refusing to allow Chrome developers to use its trademarks and the comic book it released to help explain Chrome. To these and others that equate open source with"up for grabs," please pay attention..

Technology is wonderful and useful in more ways than this post can effectively address. I did something today I have wanted to do for quite a while, but just didn’t take the time to tackle the task. Now that it’s done, I’m wondering why it took me so long to take care of business.

The international standards body ISO has offered to help maintain the ODF document standard alongside its work on the rival Microsoft-originated OOXML specification, saying its creator Oasis is not dealing with defect reports quickly enough. At a meeting in Korea last week, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) committee for document standards, SC 34, issued a liaison statement to Oasis, the body that created ODF. It requested an "alignment" of maintenance of ODF between the work done at Oasis and that within ISO.

Run with the puppies or stay behind to defend what isn't there anymore ;) More than a few people wrote in to let me know about other interesting "live" distro's of Linux after our post on using LinuxDefender Live CD to Fix NTFS problems ran. I've been a bit busy with my son, now that he's started school and isn't completely exhausted at the end of the day (like I always am ;), but I will post each and every comment I received (at least, with the consent of the commenter's) as soon as I can.

Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox browser, has released technology that helps websites detect the physical location of computers. The system will allow users, for instance, to find local restaurants when they travel to a new town. The Geode project is an experimental add-on ahead of a full blown launch of geolocation technology in version 3.1 of Firefox.

Commercial Linux distributor Red Hat hosted its annual analyst day in New York today, and as Wall Street continues to hemorrhage, the company couldn't have picked a gloomier time for the occasion. But harsh economic conditions tend to accelerate technology shifts, so the top brass at Red Hat were a pretty chipper bunch as they explained to Wall Street how they intend to make money in the coming years. Those in attendance were probably just grateful to have something else to listen to and talk about, and more than a few were probably reminiscing about the killing they made when Red Hat went public so gloriously little more than nine years ago.

The largest conference devoted to Linux technology is changing its name to embrace open source software on other operating systems (OSes). Next August, LinuxWorld will relaunch as the OpenSource World Conference & Expo, but will retain existing LinuxWorld features, says show organizer IDG World Expo.

The Amarok Squad is proud to announce the second beta release of Amarok 2.0. This release includes a lot of bug fixes and improvements, like the switch from SQlite to MySQL-embedded. The LibriVox service is back, as is lyrics support. We hope you enjoy this release which we have worked so hard to produce. Stay tuned for upcoming releases, and please do not forget to donate for Roktober!