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mylvmbackup is a Perl script for quickly creating MySQL backups. It uses LVM's snapshot feature to do so. To perform a backup, mylvmbackup obtains a read lock on all tables and flushes all server caches to disk, creates a snapshot of the volume containing the MySQL data directory, and unlocks the tables again. This article shows how to use it on an Ubuntu 12.10 server.

Well, CES has come and gone for another year, and not a moment too soon! One more new phone announcement, and Linux Girl's head would have surely exploded. There's no doubt it was a mad, mad week -- so wild, in fact, that a curious event occurring outside CES could have escaped the notice of more than a few observers.

Hackers from Anonymous on Sunday claimed credit for posting messages to Massachusetts Institute of Technology Web sites commemorating the life of RSS co-founder Aaron Swartz and calling for an overhaul of computer crime laws. Swartz, 26, was an outspoken advocate of open information and had been embroiled in a legal battle over digital copyright for scraping articles off of the JSTOR academic article database. He hanged himself Friday at his apartment in Brooklyn.

Flex, the project for building Flash-based applications, completes its journey from external open source to Apache top-level project after a year in the incubator. The developers celebrate with the release of Apache Flex 4.9

John Carmack, the veteran game programmer that co-founded id Software and was the lead developer on the id Tech engine and their most popular game titles, has shared some new opinions on C/C++ programming as it pertains to the id Tech game engine...

The X.Org state tracker target, which allows for providing basic 2D/EXA acceleration with the X.Org Server over GPU shaders using a generic Gallium3D state tracker, is no longer supported by the R300 Gallium3D driver. Support has been eliminated and the X.Org state tracker targets for other Gallium3D drivers might also be dropped...

Three updates to CouchDB include fixes to stop cross-site scripting, code execution in client browsers through JSONP, and the ability to retrieve arbitrary files from Windows systems

Despite Oracle’s assurances that it’s safe for surfers to go back in the water, security experts remain uncertain about the safety of Java. On Information Week, writer Mathew J. Schwartz quotes at least one security expert who gives the security patch a thumbs up... However, Reuters reports that the same security expert still has reservations about Java security due to other unresolved issues:

Version 9 of the Independent JPEG Group's libjpeg library is reported to compress lossless images more efficiently than PNG, giving a smaller file for the same image

Ubuntu Developer Center monthly publishes the list of the most popular commercial and free applications in the Ubuntu Software Center. In December, the most popular games were a racing game RC Mini Racers and a real time strategy Command & Conquer Tiberium Alliances.

Don’t Starve is an uncompromising wilderness survival game full of science and magic.

For kicking off a new week of Linux benchmarking at Phoronix is a round of ARMv7 performance benchmarks using Linaro 12.12. The Linaro 12.12 release from December was compared to Ubuntu 12.10, Linaro 12.10, Fedora 17, and Arch Linux on the PandaBoard ES with its Texas Instruments OMAP4460 Cortex-A9 SoC.

LAS VEGAS--Microsoft launched Windows RT with grand ambitions only a few months ago, but CNET has learned the operating system is facing yet another setback. This time it's Samsung having second thoughts about the computer software that runs on cellphone chips. Mike Abary, the Samsung senior vice president who oversees the company's PC and tablet businesses in the U.S., told CNET today at the Consumer Electronics Show that the Korean electronics giant won't be launching its Qualcomm-powered Windows RT device in the U.S. It's unclear what the company's plans are for the non-U.S. markets.

While roksbox will recurse your web server and display your media for streaming you also have the option of pointing the application to an XML file which better describes your videos. This results in a superior interface where poster artwork can be displayed as well as descriptive information such as: title, description, actors, mpaa rating, etc. The generation of these XML files is supported through GUI tools available for Windows O/S, or through an online tool located here, but there didn’t seem to be a convenient GUI method for creating or editing these XML files in Linux. This was the inspiration for proks...

Now is an exciting time for Linux and gaming as we are currently in the middle of a transition of traditional native gaming to a format of several different types. Where will the future of gaming go? And more importantly, what will it mean for Linux gamers?

'Appropriate action taken as necessary' against Windows RT hack Microsoft is suddenly serious about tackling RT Jailbreak, a slick tool that unlocks Surface tablets using a hack publicised just days earlier.…

VMware has joined the Open Source Software Institute (OSSI), a non-profit industry organisation aimed at increasing open source adoption within the US government, specifically the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense

The GPS Map app can turn an Android device into a handy tool for keeping track of locations you’ve already photographed or plan to photograph later.

How to install Java on Ubuntu Linux? Although, this topic is a quite self explanatory to an experienced Linux system administrator it still creates lots of confusion for beginners in terms what version of Java I need, how do I install it or how to change my system settings between multiple different types of Java versions. The aim of this short article is to shed some light on this topic as we will show how to install Java JDK for both Oracle and as well as OpenJDK.

LibreOffice 4.0 is on the horizon, and the first release candidate is out. The candidate includes new features like importing ink annotations and an XOR function