Google has created its own repositories for its linux software applications.

http://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/index.html

At the moment the only software available is Picasa and Google Desktop.

A well written guide on how to upgrade Drupal using SSH commands

This guide is meant to augment the official Upgrade guide. Please read the official upgrade steps in UPGRADE.txt as well as in the Drupal.org Dcoumentation thoroughly to ensure that you understand every aspect of the upgrade process. This guide is for more advanced users with SSH experience.

This nifty little script allows you to monitor log files for instances of brute forcing as well as popular exploits that show up in your server logs files. Anyone that has many servers should check this out.

BFD (Brute Force Detector) Home Page

There is also a nice little write up of how to implement BFD without AFP and some extended rules.

BFD rules for Jag servers

If you're using Exim4 and PHP as a module or as a CGI with suexec. You may have noticed some issues with your mail. Specifically you would have noticed that either the "From:" header was using "nobody@machinename" or "user@machine name, its also possibly that you had an additional header called "Sender:".

There are two things you need to do to fix this. You first need to make sure that your "php.ini" has the following value "sendmail_path = /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i". Which is the default, double check this variable as it might be set to something else.

AutoMySQLBackup is a shell script that allows daily, weekly and monthly backups of your local and remote MySQL Databases. It's meant to run on Linux/Unix through a cron job. Its highly configurable, and easy to setup as I will show you today!

First you will need to acquire the shell script and drop it on your server. You can download AutoMySQLBackup on their SourceForge Project Page

XCache is an opcode cacher for PHP developed by the Lighttpd team. The full description directly from http://xcache.lighttpd.net/

I know everyone is loving the new Asus Eee PC and they should, its a wonderful device. But if you want to go even smaller you can take a look at Aleutia E1 it only takes 8 watts of power and can be charged using solar power. Definitely for the out and out and about type traveler that needs a small computer that can be charged easily, combined with a sattlite phone for data and you have all that you need in a remote location.

Those pesky little compatible stickers on all of the machines at work and your laptop can finally be removed. Coming to a install Linux Distribution PC near you, Vista Incapable stickers!

I am definitely going to to print these out and paste them all over the PC's I own and even the ones I don't :D

I stumbled upon a little application called "evtsys" that was created by some Computer Engineering folks at Purdue University. The program runs on Microsft Windows 2000/2003/Vista 32-bit or 64-bit version and sends eventlog messages to a networked syslog server. You can then have syslog either print out the alert or write to a file.

I was wondering the web looking at random items, when I came along an article at http://www.worldwidecreations.com titled Stopping spam before the door with SpamCop and IPTables

Its a great article with a lot of information and code on how the author is able to grab the offending hosts and place them within IPTables.

I had the chance to try Splunk out about 3 months ago. The software was rather easy to install, however one thing that did seem to a little hard to use was the interface and the general working with inputs for the software. The search function was really neat, and easy to find errors that were occurring. The free version is limited but still usable, in a larger environment this product would probably be a life saver. Single server deployments, not so much.

Microsoft has released an Update to its Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. This update improves on the interoperability of running "Qualified" Linux Operating Systems as guests or Virtual Machines. With added support for SuSE Enterprise Server 10, Guest and Host time synchronization, SCSI hard disk emulation and more!

The Qualified Linux Operating Systems don't include Debian, Ubuntu or any Unix/BSD OS. :(

InstantBird is a mutli-protocol Instant Messenger that uses parts of Pidgin and Firefox, it is open source and is available to Windows, Linux and MacOSX.

Instantbird is a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client. Using it, you can connect to all your different IM accounts. It uses the Mozilla rendering engine to display IMs, and the Pidgin libpurple to connect to the different networks. Instantbird is a free and open source software. So you are free to use, distribute and modify it. The project is just on its first release, many features are not implemented yet. We hope you will like it and look forward to get your feedback!

Visit the official InstantBird Site

A very promising Security Gateway with many features to protect your network, currently only available free if used within your Home.

Thunderbird is a pretty great open sourced mail client that is available on multiple platforms and for free. From the beginning its development has been mostly be shadowed by FireFox. The two core developers of Thunderbird have left Mozilla, which is a big blow to the ongoing development of Thunderbird. Will Thunderbird not longer get as many updates or new features? Will development complete stop? Only time will tell.

Again Microsoft is trying to bully open source distributions and projects to buy into their patent protection that Novell has already sank money into.

Microsoft Offers Further Open Source Patent Threats - An anonymous reader writes "Via Groklaw comes comments from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer at a UK event, in which the company once again threatens Linux distributions that haven't signed up with their program. '"People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us," Ballmer said last week ... Ballmer praised Novell at the UK event for valuing intellectual property, and suggested that open source vendors will be forced to strike similar deals with other patent holders. He predicted that firms like Eolas will soon come after open source vendors or users. Microsoft paid $521m to settle a patent claim by Eolas in August.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
[Slasdot]

This is one of the best xwindows/xorg windows managers ever made. I use this on all my work stations because of its awesome features which include.

BlockHosts 2.0.5 (Default branch) - BlockHosts is a script to record how many times a
local system is attacked, based on configurable
scanning of system logs for sshd or other
services. When a particular IP address exceeds a
configured number of failed login attempts, that
IP address is blocked using hosts.allow files, or
by using null-routing, or by using packet
filtering. An email notification facility is also
available.
License: Public Domain
Changes:
This release updates the vsftpd rule and adds an --enable-patterns option to enable specific rules at run-time. Email notification is now sent on both adds and deletes of host IP addresses, and the source distribution includes the test routines.
[FreshMeat]

Floola 1.0 - Floola is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod or your Motorola mobile phone (any model supporting iTunes) under Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation. Take a look at the feature list to find out what it can do and feel free to suggest anything that might be missing. Features * Cross plattform - Works on any Windows (98 and above), any Mac and any linux distribution with GTK installed. * No installation required - Put the application on iPod and launch it on any PC, immediately. * Playlists - Easily manage, import and export (m3u, pls) playlists. * Last.fm - Join the social music revolution. * Localization - Available in different languages. * Lyrics - Lyric support even on older iPods (3G and above). * Search for duplicates - Easily find duplicated songs on iPod. Read full story...
[NeoWin-Software]

Merged project consisting of Beryl and Compiz Extras becomes Compiz Fusion - The Beryl project reunited with Compiz by merging with Compiz Extras to form what is now known as Compiz Fusion. An assortment of impressive new features have already been implemented, including a stunning new reflection effect for the Compiz cube plugin.Read More...

[Ars Technica]

This really sucks. When I use Debin I have to install the flash player for FireFox from a different source you get all your other applications within Debian. This is done by modifying the apt-get configuration file. Other Distribution's you have to download the linux plugin from Adobe and install it manually.

Rumors of new Gnash functionality exaggerated - A free Flash viewer is one of the last major gaps in GNU/Linux desktop functionality, so last week's news that Gnash, the free Flash player, had reached the stage where it could play YouTube and Lulu.tv videos seemed too good to be true. Unfortunately, it was. [Linux.com]

This application suite is quite the AIO (All in One). I have used eGroupware, and was a joy. I was trying to find more projects to create in it than actually using it to manage them. This is defiantly an application you want to check out and play around with.

OfficeSpot.Net Collaboration Server Preview 2 (Default branch) - The OfficeSpot.Net Collaboration Server is a
one-stop solution for all your groupware needs. It
is based on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS and is preloaded with
eGroupWare, Postfix, OpenLDAP, MySQL, DBMail,
Spamassasin, and ClamAV.

License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

Changes:
This release contains updated versions of eGroupWare (1.4), DBMail (latest stable SVN revision), and ClamAV (0.90.3). The installation process was streamlined and the online documentation was updated.

[FreshMeat]

Another Ubuntu Release in the works!
To give you the rundown on the notable changes. The desktop version will be shipping with a new default windows manager that looks kinda like Mac OSX:

We are aiming for Ubuntu to be one of the first distributions to ship
the newly merged Compiz and Beryl projects (compcomm/OpenCompositing);
and enable it as the default window manager on systems with a supported
combination of hardware and drivers.

http://compiz.org

And the addition of AppArmour to the Server version of Ubuntu:

For increased security, the AppArmor security framework will be
available as an option for those that want it.

The following is the original statement by the Ubuntu Development Manager.

Now that the set of feature goals planned for Ubuntu 7.10 ("Gutsy
Gibbon") has been largely finalised, it seems like an appropriate point
to announce the plan to the world.
While this is based on the approved blueprints for gutsy[0], which are
expected to be implemented in time, we do release according to a
time-based schedule[1] rather than a feature-based one. It is not
unusual for some planned features to be delayed to later releases;
happily it is also not unusual for our developers to introduce neat
features we weren't expecting either.
[0] https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/gutsy/
[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GutsyReleaseSchedule
Desktop
-------
Ubuntu 7.10 will ship with the latest edition of the GNOME desktop,
2.20, released a few weeks before our own release. Kubuntu 7.10 will
ship with KDE 3.5.7, and should also include packages of KDE 4.0 rc 2
available for optional side-by-side installation.
We are aiming for Ubuntu to be one of the first distributions to ship
the newly merged Compiz and Beryl projects (compcomm/OpenCompositing);
and enable it as the default window manager on systems with a supported
combination of hardware and drivers.
Systems which do not support compositing, or those with it disabled by
user option, will use the existing metacity window manager.
Hardware Support
----------------
Ubuntu 7.10 will use the 2.6.22 Linux kernel, along with our usual
selection of updated and additional drivers.
We will also use Xorg 7.3, giving better graphics hardware support and
the option of hotplugging monitors (RandR 1.2) and input devices
(xserver 1.4).
As well as the easier configuration for hotplugging-supported drivers
("no xorg.conf"), we also aim to have better configuration for other
drivers and fallback settings for when there is a problem.
Some "winmodem" chips will be supported out of the box, where drivers
are available; though this may rely on the use of restricted drivers.
Improvements to the Restricted Driver Manager are expected, allowing
drivers to be disabled by default and proposed by the manager. As
previously announced, an edition of Ubuntu without restricted enabled by
default is in the works.
Mobile
------
As announced, Ubuntu 7.10 will be first release to include a new Mobile
and Embedded edition targeted at hand-held devices and other
mobile/embedded form factors.
This integrates the Hildon UI components developed by Nokia into Ubuntu,
on top of the existing Ubuntu platform.
Server
------
Development of the Ubuntu 7.10 Server Edition has received a new boost
with a dedicated development team at Canonical working on it. Features
aiming to improve the experience for new and hobbyist administrators are
expected, as well as features desirable for small businesses and
organisations.
For increased security, the AppArmor security framework will be
available as an option for those that want it.
Stability and Performance
-------------------------
Ubuntu 7.10 should function significantly better when the filesystem is
full or otherwise not writable, allowing the user to make room and then
continue working without undue interruption.
Improvements to our "apport" bug and crash reporting infrastructure are
planned, in particular integration with our software installation and
upgrade tools so that problems installing or upgrading packages can be
easily reported with relevant information attached. Kernel crashes will
also be intercepted on reboot, and may be reported using the tool.
Our efforts to improve boot reliability and performance continue;
unlimited and reliable stackability of software raid (MD) devices, LVM
volumes and software-managed (devmapper) devices will be supported with
no runtime ordering issues.
Ubuntu 7.10 will ship with Upstart 0.5, which will provide flexible and
reliable service supervision. We expect to harness this for suitable
core services, and some boot process tasks, as appropriate.
Scott
--
Scott James Remnant
Ubuntu Development Manager
scott at ubuntu.com
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