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A kernel crash dump is a snapshot of system state taken at the time that the kernel crashed, useful for finding and debugging the problem that caused the crash in the first place. There is no standard mechanism for automatiaclly collecting a crash dump on Linux, but there are a number of existing projects working toward efficiently meeting this goal. A "Linux Kernel Dump Summit" was recently mentioned on the lkml, with participants from some of the many crash dump projects looking to standardize the dump process and information collected. A followup email noted, "as memory size grows, the time and space for capturing kernel crash dumps really matter." It went on to examine partial dumps, and full dumps that are compressed. The former risks not collecting information necessary for proper debugging, while the latter risks greatly increasing the amount of time required to collect a dump.

Tokyo, Japan (AHN) – In a bid to reduce dependence on Microsoft Windows, Japan is planning to install the Linux operating system in some government computers. An official at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications says Japan is currently preparing guidelines recommending its ministries look to open source software, like Linux, as an "important option" for government procurement.

If you want to make use of open source software on a Macintosh running OS X, you have plenty of options. The Fink project modifies Unix/Linux open source packages to run on Mac OS X, and gives users the ability to build from source or download precompiled binaries. Many open source packages have native OS X versions -- Firefox, Thunderbird, Abiword, Nvu, and the GIMP among them. But if you dig deeper, you will find quite a few Mac-only open source software gems. Here are a few of the best open source programs written specifically for Mac OS X.

Alan Cox, sometime maintainer of the Linux Kernel and well-known open source advocate, picked up a lifetime achievement award at the LinuxWorld awards in London on Wednesday night.

With just one more week to go before the final release of Ubuntu 5.10, the Ubuntu team is proud to announce the Ubuntu 5.10 Release Candidate.

Learn how to propagate files quickly and do backups easily when you set up scp to work without needing passwords.

The US Patent and Trademarks Office has thrown out two Microsoft patents on its FAT file system. The case had been raised by open source defenders who feared that Microsoft was preparing a legal offensive against Linux based on enforcement of intellectual property rights. But the Patent Office rejected the patents because of an administrative technicality - not because of prior art submitted by the F/OSS team.

When I first heard of MitraX, I thought it was just a Linux distribution with an assortment of network tools, and that working with MitraX would come down to typing endless commands at the console. Perhaps such a distribution would be interesting to a few experienced administrators or skillful hackers, but most users would simply run away from it. However, once I tried MitraX, I was pleasantly surprised to find it a nice, little, stable, and practical live CD distribution.

The Company said that, its expanded training partner strategy is a direct outcome of the increasing demand for certified professionals in the country. With this authorization, SQL Star will now be able e to cater the training needs of students on the Linux platform. SQL Star will be able to train students for certifications like Red Hat Certified Engineer, Red Hat Certified Technician.

BERLIN The European Commission on Wednesday called on Neil Barrett, a former computer hacker who is now an expert on fraud, to monitor whether Microsoft is complying with orders to change the way it operates in Europe.

The system will work with Linux, Solaris and other Unix operating systems but not Windows at the moment, although that is "coming soon" the company said

Socialtext Inc. plans to open-source more than 80% of its software, the company announced Wednesday. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up specializes in software and support for enterprises looking to set up their own internal wikis and Web logs. The wiki concept of "open editing" is used in Web sites such as free-content encyclopedia Wikipedia, where anyone accessing the site can create, edit or annotate its Web pages.

Three small companies involved in hacking on the Linux-based software environment that will power Nokia's forthcoming 770 Internet tablet have joined the Gnome

Looks like Suse 10.0 has been release. It is available on http://ftp.suse.com but has not reached the mirrors yet. ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/10.0/iso/

I don't think the license wars matter. I have used all manner of open-source licenses in systems and have contributed to open-source projects. The fact of the matter is, once software gets open-sourced it has become a commodity. The genie is out of the bottle. Whether it is licensed under the BSD, GPL, LGPL, APL or MPL is irrelevant. Once software is commoditised, the most competitive organisational form in that market is an open-source developer and user community. It is an extremely rare business that can beat zero dollars, and the productivity rates of a distributed software developer system.

Opera's browser seems to be music to the ears of Internet surfers. After the Oslo-based company served up about 1 million browser downloads in the first two days following its launch of the ad- and license-free Opera v8.5, some 3 million additional copies were downloaded in next two weeks.

The High Court of Australia has considered the case and has unanimously concluded that the chips are not technological protection measures - reversing the decision of the Full Court affirming the decision of the court at first instance The case relates to Mr. Steven's sale of "mod chips" for the Sony Playstation a couple of years ago. The case is relevant for its interpretation of the term "technological protection measure". I also believe that this is the first time DMCA provisions have been considered by a court of final appeal anywhere in the world.

LAMEDA, Calif. – Wind River (NASDAQ:WIND) has announced its Linux® device software platform for consumer devices, delivering a commercial-grade quality Linux product line that scales to support a full range of device requirements from the smallest handhelds to the most robust network equipment.

The Mozilla Quality weblog has announced the availability of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 Beta 2 release candidates. Testers are asked to check that they can successfully log in to webmail accounts and finance/banking sites, ensure that extensions and themes can be installed correctly and verify that the software update feature works.

IBM announced the first application vendors -- SAS Institute and Absoft -- to support its Grid and Grow bundle of software, hardware and services Tuesday. Big Blue first unveiled the bundle two months ago positioning it as a starter pack for midsize and large companies wanting to move into grid computing. IBM is now looking to extend the offering in a variety of ways both in terms of targeted users and vendor support.