HOW-TOs

Designing Electronics with Linux

Joey Bernard — Wed, 22 May 2013 20:28:41 +0000

In many scientific disciplines, the research you may be doing is completely new. It may be so new that there isn't even any instrumentation available to make your experimental measurements. In those cases, you have no choice but to design and build your own measuring devices. more>>

Dynamic DNS—an Object Lesson in Problem Solving

Shawn Powers — Tue, 21 May 2013 18:47:39 +0000

The other day in the Linux Journal IRC room (#linuxjournal on Freenode), I was whining to the channel about no-ip.com deleting my account without warning. My home IP address hadn't changed in a couple months, and because there was no update, it appeared abandoned. more>>

Using Salt Stack and Vagrant for Drupal Development

Ben Hosmer — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:21:52 +0000

What if, just like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, you could wake up to a fresh and identical development environment completely free of yesterday's experiments and mistakes? Vagrant lets you do exactly that. more>>

Making Linux and Android Get Along (It's Not as Hard as It Sounds)

Aaron Peters — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:46:09 +0000

Many free software fans, if they were like me, breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Android operating system hit the market. more>>

Drupal Is a Framework: Why Everyone Needs to Understand This

Diana Dupuis — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:07:44 +0000

Everyone planning and building Web solutions with Drupal benefits from understanding what a "hook" is—and why Drupal is not a CMS. more>>

Home, My Backup Data Center

Kyle Rankin — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:24:03 +0000

New Linux users often ask me "what is the best way to learn about Linux?" My advice always comes down to this: install and use Linux (any distribution will do but something stable works better), and more>>

Trying to Tame the Tablet

Shawn Powers — Wed, 08 May 2013 18:50:57 +0000

Like many folks, I received a shiny new Nexus 7 tablet for Christmas. This brought me great joy and excitement as I began to plot my future paperless life. For most of the evening and an hour or so the next day, I was sure the new Android tablet would change my life forever. Sadly, it wasn't that easy. more>>

Working with Stdin and Stdout

Dave Taylor — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 17:33:58 +0000

Previously, I erroneously titled my column as "SIGALRM Timers and Stdin Analysis". It turned out that by the time I'd finished writing it, I had spent a lot of time talking about SIGALRM and how to set up timers to avoid scripts that hang forever, but I never actually got to the topic of stdin analysis. more>>

Updating the Firmware of Linux-Based Devices

Viktar Palstsiuk — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:29:16 +0000

This tutorial provides a general description of updating Linux-based firmware and illustrates it with some specific implementations. First, consider the sections of the memory system (Figure 1) and parts of memory that should be updated while transferring software to a new version. more>>

ConVirt: the New Tool in Your Virtual Toolbox

Jeramiah Bowling — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:29:47 +0000

Virtualization is now a staple of the modern enterprise. As more and more shops switch to the virtual paradigm, managing those new virtual resources is a critical part of any deployment. For admins using Microsoft- or VMware-based hypervisors, powerful management tools are available to keep their virtual houses in order. more>>

SIGALRM Timers and Stdin Analysis

Dave Taylor — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:19:31 +0000

It's not hard to create functions to ensure that your script doesn't run forever. But what if you want portions to be timed while others can take as long as they need? Not so fast, Dave explains in his latest Work the Shell. more>>

Chrome Extensions

Reuven M. Lerner — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 16:46:35 +0000

Create applications inside the Chrome browser with standard Web technologies: HTML, CSS and JavaScript. more>>

Troubleshooting with Telnet

Kyle Rankin — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 16:58:05 +0000

Poor telnet, it used to be the cool kid on the block. It was the program all sysadmins turned to when they needed to connect to a remote server. Telnet just wasn't that good at keeping a secret—all communication went over plain text—so administrators started switching to SSH for encrypted remote shell sessions. more>>

Pwn Your Phone

Shawn Powers — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 18:06:03 +0000

I've owned two different Android phones since they first were released, and I eventually rooted both of them. My Droid (original) was such a popular phone that rooting it was very simple. I used my rooted Droid until it wore out and rebooted every time I slid open the keyboard. My second Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy S2, is the phone I have right now. more>>

The Über-Skeleton Challenge

Dave Taylor — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 19:31:53 +0000

I received an interesting message from Angela Kahealani with a challenge: "Here's what I'd like to see in Work the Shell: a full-blown shell script template. It should comply with all standards applicable to CLI programs. more>>