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This document describes how to install a Proftpd server that uses virtual users from a MySQL database instead of real system users. This is much more performant and allows to have thousands of ftp users on a single machine. In addition to that I will show the use of quota with this setup.

Thank you so much for releasing Flash Player 10 beta 2 for Linux. Thanks even more for (finally) building in support for video4linux2 Webcam technology. You have no idea how much we appreciate that. The only problem is that many (if not most) of us can't use it. You see, it crashes our browsers within seconds.

Over the weekend we had posted our synopsis of Solaris Express Community Edition Build 93, which brings a great deal of needed changes to the Solaris Nevada code-base in order to bring its packages up-to-date. While OpenSolaris 2008.05 is only two months old, work at Sun is already underway in preparing for the second OpenSolaris release, which will be known as OpenSolaris 2008.11 and has been codenamed Jericho. OpenSolaris development packages for this next release, which are currently based upon Solaris Nevada Build 93, are now available through an IPS update along with early ISO spins.

Many LinuxInsider readers are probably familiar with OpenMoko's FreeRunner -- the new Linux-based cell phone. This smartphone uses the Linux kernel along with various other free and open source software packages, including X.org Server with Matchbox window manager. This phone is so open source that you can get scans of the hardware off the Web site, but OpenMoko is just the tip of the iceberg.

Two days ago I reviewed Xfe, a pretty good file manager built using the FOX toolkit, so today I'll continue in the same fashion by reviewing with PCMan FM, a GTK file manager with a simplistic interface and basic features.

QNAP's TS-409U is an excellent centralized storage solution that not only requires minimal setup and maintenance, but runs embedded Linux and software RAID 0, 1, 5, and 6. BIOSLEVEL.com looks at the unit's performance and value.

It's been a slow distro week, but not completely dead. We've had a few releases, several developmental releases, and a bit of news. We also have a guest writer with us this morning, Maurice Lawles. You might know Maurice from his TechieMoe website and hard-hitting distro reviews. Today he shares some of his thoughts on the KDE 4 situation. All this and more in this week's DistroWatch Weekly - happy reading!

Simple C program to convert binary numbers to decimal. Written to appeal to a mass audience I may not have ;) Anyone can learn to code!

How do you put a value on the products created through open source?

Malware includes not just virii, but worms, trojans and root-kits. These known and widely available tools are not the only options available to intruders either... GNU/Linux users should not have any false sense of security just based on the fact that viruses designed for exclusively for windows won't run on GNU/Linux.

Awk is a very nice language with a very strange name. In this first article of a three-part series, Daniel Robbins will quickly get your awk programming skills up to speed. As the series progresses, more advanced topics will be covered, culminating with an advanced real-world awk application demo.

On the evening of July 12, Yahoo! Inc. released a statement relating to recent discussions involving Yahoo!, Microsoft Corp., and Carl Icahn. Microsoft believes the statement contains inaccuracies that need to be corrected. Among other things, the enhanced proposal for an alternate search transaction that we submitted late Friday was submitted at the request of Yahoo! Chairman Roy Bostock as a result of apparent attempts by Mr. Icahn to have Microsoft and Yahoo! engage on a search transaction on terms Mr. Icahn believed Microsoft would be willing to accept and which Microsoft understands Mr. Icahn had discussed with Yahoo!

The study Package Management Security, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the University of Arizona Tech Report, analyzed 10 package managers and found that all were vulnerable to exploits, allowing attackers to install unsafe software on target systems. Package managers are designed to automatically keep software up-to-date and thus safe from known vulnerabilities. The packages analyzed in the study were APT, APT-RPM, Pacman, Portage, Ports, Slaktool, Stork, Urpmi, Yast and YUM.

A new Ubuntu-based Linux distribution has arrived, aimed at both Linux newbies and content creators. Boasting "out of the box" multimedia codecs, the freely downloadable PC/OS incorporates the lightweight XFCE desktop, and is said to offer a similar layout to the groundbreaking, but ultimately doomed BeOS. According to a blog by chief facilitator, Roberto Dohnert, "PC/OS is designed to play videos, music, and create content on a very simplified interface and platform. That's why my two-word mission statement is 'simplified computing.'"

Google's strict code of secrecy may work fine for protecting its internal operations. But the company isn't ingratiating itself to software developers by keeping major updates to its Android mobile software platform locked away in a Mountain View dungeon. Now, even those developers once very committed to pushing Google's technology forward are thinking about abandoning Android – the most closed open platform to not yet exist.

Adeona may have been the goddess of safe returns, but if a group of computer science professors and graduate students get their wish, they'll be viewed as the patron saints of secure laptop computer data, thanks to their new open source software service named after the Roman deity. Also, for those who worship at the altar of bargains, Adeona may indeed be a godsend: It's free.

I'm very sorry to let everyone know that Uwe Thiem, a long term contributor to KDE, passed away yesterday at 14:45 of kidney failure. Uwe was one of the longest contributors to the KDE family and was one of the original members of the core development team. He moved on to become the main KDE representative in Africa. Uwe was one of the first people to write a book on KDE development, which helped many people who have become regular contributors today, and was still writing about KDE last week.

Concerned about the increasing popularity of Web applications, Marco Barulli of the Clipperz project has written one of the first detailed suggestions about how free and open source software (FOSS) should respond to the trend. Although neither Barulli nor Clipperz is well-known, his ideas are being listened to by such figures as Richard M. Stallman of the Free Software Foundation and Fabrizio Capobianco, the CEO of Funambol and a long-time advocate of FOSS in Web applications.

Installing Ubuntu-related software is simple, but choosing which software to install can still be a challenge. The more than 20,000 packages that Ubuntu offers up can be daunting. This is where sites like Gnomefiles.com can help. Here's how

For three health care centers, the challenge was clear: Find a way to improve internal communications by expanding e-mail accounts to all employees, including doctors, nurses, security staffers and dietary workers, without breaking their IT budgets. To do it, the hospitals needed to look at alternatives to traditional ways of creating and administering e-mail accounts. In the end, all three health centers chose an application that could do the work of Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange e-mail administration package while maintaining calendaring and other group features.