Blog

2010

01.25.2010

progstat v0.1 has been released and is now available on SourceForge.


01.22.2010

ChmodPro v0.1 has been released and is now available on several sites.


01.11.2010

SysfO v0.1 has been released and is now available on several sites.


01.09.2010

FreeDiskO v0.2 has been released and is now available on several sites.
Code University now has an RSS feed!


01.04.2010

Happy new year ... and new decade! Hope you didn't find too many Y2K10 buggers. I had to put out a few of those fires myself.

Apologies for not posting anything in recent months. It was a busy year in 2009 which included relocating to another state. But I'm now back on track.


Lately, I've been studying up for the Zend PHP Certification. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is considering taking the exam:
http://shop.zend.com/en/php-certification/zend-php5-certification-guide-pdf.html

I'll eventually post a PHP cheatsheet that will come in handy for your daily PHP needs. After I take the exam I'll also post an update of my testing experience (no not a braindump .. sorry :-).


2009 - Archives

09.22.2008

Busy year ... no significant updates

2008 - Archives

09.22.2008


Ohio Linux Fest '08 is right around the corner. As in previous years it is slated to be hosted in Columbus Ohio this year. Register! and come on out for a great time of geek-dom. There will be plenty to wet everyone's Linux pallete from the newbie to the advanced users. Come one come all, all Linux geeks are welcome at this event.

Check out some pix from recent years at OLF

If you are interested in learning more about this very cool and "FREE" event click the banner above or "Read more" below:

Read more


09.20.2008

Linksys WRT54G ... Tomato Firmware installed. This is a continuation of my previous post about various firmwares for this exquisite router. I tried OpenWRT which was okay. But I was looking for something a little more tweakable and less bloated. Enter Tomato. What's great about tomato is that it gives some really good realtime reports about bandwidth usage and other statistical reports about your network traffic that are actually attractive. Another appealing aspect of Tomato is that it let's you adjust the range of the wireless part of the router. This is something that I needed because I was not getting good reception in one of the rooms of my house.

But I was looking for something a little more tweakable and less bloated.

So far this is the best firmware I have tried for this router. I know there are others out there but I see no reason to try any others at this time. This one does everything I need and then some. And for all of you DynDns'ers out there, there is a section just for you. You can now setup the router to auto ping your dynamic dns IP accounts so they will not expire. Currently it allows for 2 IPs to be setup for this. If anyone else is interested in giving it a shot, go here:

I've also include some screenshots of Tomato in action so everyone can get an idea of some of the stuff this firmware is capable of doing. [continued - Read more]

Read more


02.26.2008

Linksys WRT54G router ... need I say more? For you Linux fanatics out there you already know where this is going. That's right ... the Linksys WRT54G router series rules. Why? Because it was built ontop of Linux, which enabled several different open source projects to spring up and take full advantage of this technology. You can read all about the history of the Linksys WRT54G router and the projects surrounding it here:

Other than the coolness factor of all this, I had additional motives as well. I had been having trouble with outbound ssh clogging my router which of course required manual rebooting of the router on occasion. So I figured this may clear that issue up since it natively runs Linux, not to mention that I would also be able to remotely reboot the router if necessary using OpenWRT and my MacBook Pro Laptop.

Actually being able to ssh to my router was well worth the investment in itself!

So of course when I heard about this I immediately went to Ebay and bought my own WRT54Gv.4 router for around $50. (The router version number is very important! See article above.) Initially, I chose to go with the OpenWRT firmware as it seemed to have more documentation than DD-WRT. It was a snap to upgrade the Linksys firmware to OpenWRT. I simply downloaded the most stable firmware bin file and used my stock firmware's update feature to point to that file. Then I sat back and relaxed. It only took a couple minutes and then everything was good to go. [continued - Read more]

Read more


2007 - Archives

11.19.2007

LPIC 102 exam complete! I can proudly say that I have obtained my level 1 certification as a junior linux systems administrator!  The 102 test was much more difficult than the 101 exam, by far.  The funny thing is that I scored higher on it than the 101 exam.  The format was the same as the 101 exam I took about 3 months ago. I don't plan on jumping right into the level 2 certification any time in the near future.  Maybe next year.  Once I do, I'll be sure to update the site with more study guides and cheatsheets.  For now ... cheers!!!

09.16.2007

Linux Fest is coming to town!!! If you are a Linux head this is a must attend. Linux fest is an annual convention in the Columbus, OH area prodominently regarding the Linux OS. They usually have some pretty good speakers as well as various how-to sessions. Last year Rich Bowen from Apache showed off some of Apache2's features. Other past attendees included members from mySQL, Ubuntu and Fedora. Last year me and my friend Jay Fink, representing NetBSD, had a NetBSD booth setup. We had a great time and are looking forward to more goodtimes this year!

Here's the information on the conference. Check it out!:
http://www.ohiolinux.org/

08.01.2007

LPIC 101 exam complete! I passed. As it was my first certification exam it was more of a learning experience than anything. It took me about 30 mins to go through all of the questions. I chose to use the last 60 mins to go back over everything for good measure. The test itself was a mixture of single choice, multiple choice, and fill in the blank questions. I'd say my test has mainly single choice and fill in the blank questions with some multiple choices sprinkled in. Not everyone gets the same test however. Welp, I plan on taking the LPIC-102 exam sometime in the next month or so. I'll let you know how it goes.


07.25.2007

The dual boot system (Fedora / Windows XP Pro) I was working on is finally finished. It took some time as the Fedora 7 DVD iso I burned did not work as expected. During installation certain packages could not be installed as it complained about not being able to open them.

And there you have it! A fully functioning dual boot Fedora / Windows XP Pro machine!

Luckily, I had already burned a Fedora Live iso to CD to test out the OS to see what I was in store for before hand. Using this Live iso to do the install worked flawlessly. Here's how the whole process broke down: [continued - Read more]

Read more


07.11.2007

The LPIC exam is right around the corner for me.  It's been a long couple of months preparing but I think I'm almost there. Currently, there are 3 levels to the certification. I am going for level 1 (Junior Systems Administrator) which is broken into 2 seperate exams (101 & 102) covering different material. From what I have heard and read each exam is between 50 and 75 questions, 90 minutes timed and all multiple-guess or fill-in-the-blank. YIKES!   If anyone is interested in taking the exam I would highly recommend the following resources:

I am going for level 1 (Junior Systems Administrator) which is broken into 2 seperate exams (101 & 102) ...

Fedora 7 was the next Linux system I had planned on installing and getting to know. The goal was to install a dual-boot system with Fedora and Windows XP. (Boo .. Hiss) I know, but unfortunately I need XP for school. But hey ... I'm going from one full XP system to a 1/2 XP system so at least I'm downsizing. ;-) The reason I was using Fedora was because I needed to learn it's rpm packaging system for the LPIC. Typically I use Debian. Anyways, I decided to burn myself a Fedora 7 Live ISO CD to give it a whirl. No problem, worked great. My external USB hard drive even showed up and I was able to puruse the directory structure, all from within Fedora.

JOY, no more external hard drive ...

Here's where things take a turn for the worse. I'm now done taking a peak at the new Fedora, so I decide that I really want to go ahead and fry my external hard drive. To do this I carefully take the Fedora Live CD out of the tray and then shutdown the system. Error after error flew by and I really didn't think much of it at the time. I just figured it was freaking out because I took the CD out. As luck would have ... it was! JOY, no more external hard drive. Word to the wise .. "If you're going to mount, don't forget to unmount when it's time to go down".