The Best Linux Security Tools

You can never be too safe these days. Viruses, spyware, rootkits, remote exploits, you just never know what security issue is going to be your downfall. That’s why it is important as a Linux administrator to have an understanding of some of the best Linux security tools available to you. In this article, you will learn about ten of the best Linux security tools, and resources on how to use them to your advantage.

Mount remote folders via SSH

This document describes how to install and use sshfs, a FUSE based filesystem that uses SSH to mount remote folders. Since it is based on FUSE (userspace filesystem framework for Linux) your kernel will need to have the fuse module available. FUSE is included in kernel newer than 2.6.14, so I will assume that you will have it already included in your kernel.

List of Ajax form Validators

First off I’d Like to say Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!! Inputing correct data into any web application or website is very important. There is two different ways to validate forms by either Server-side or Client-side. The list below is Client-Side Ajax Form Validator.

Linux Server Hardening

In this article I want to give you an overview about the various software available to harden a Linux server. The possibilities are almost endless and operate on different levels of the operating system.

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Ajax Forms With jQuery

There are so many different javascript frameworks out there, but I have recently started to use jQuery, and I love it. Not only is the library much smaller than others, but it is so simple to use. I wanted to show how easy it is to turn a regular form into a AJAX form.

Protect your Linux computer

Properly installed and maintained, Linux is a very secure operating system. However, it needs careful setup to achieve its potential and it is easy to overlook vulnerabilities. This article outlines a very high-level security checklist for Linux users.

First look at PC-BSD 1.5

I've followed the development of PC-BSD with enthusiasm since my first test drive three years ago of version 0.6. I was highly impressed with the developers' ability to provide a free BSD that was easy to install and even easier to use. Truthfully, I thought it was just amazing. I've tested various versions since, including 1.0 and 1.4, and was never severely disappointed. So, when 1.5 was released, I expected things to only be better. In many ways they were, but in the most significant way they weren't.

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Speed Up Linux

Overall, Linux is not known as a resource hog. The free operating system is a fairly lean machine out of the box -- some distributions moreso than others. Still, there are some tweaks you can make to any Linux installation to speed things up.

Most of the tips covered in this article involve using the command line and editing system files. Therefore, it goes without saying that you should be fairly comfortable with your command line skills before attempting any of these tweaks. However, if you're new to Linux, these system tweaks can serve as excellent feet-wetting exercises.

Secure PHP Programming

When a web site is cracked, it typically tends to be a simple common sense mistake by a program author who forgets what an attacker can do with his code. By keeping good, secure practices when programming, you should be able to produce solid code.

However, before I even get into the code part of this shin dig, one obvious fact should be stated that you should never give a public_html directory (or any other directory that you are using to host your files) nor any of its files ownership by any user with root privileges. This and any other techniques you can think of must be implemented in order to minimize the damage an attacker can do.

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Perfect pagination style using CSS

This tutorial explains how to design a pagination for search results or more in general to split a long list of records in more pages. It's a question I often receive, so I decided to publish a very simple post which explains how to design a perfect pagination style using some lines of HTML and CSS code.

MonoDevelop 1.0 officially released

The official 1.0 release of MonoDevelop was announced late last week. The open source development environment includes a number of advanced features such as project management tools, a graphical user interface designer, a unit testing system, version control integration, and an add-in system that facilitates extensibility. MonoDevelop provides code completion, passive error notification, code navigation, and autoindent functionality for several programming languages, including C#, VB.NET, and C/C++.

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HEADSUP: DTrace support in current

This is an early headsup for DTrace support being committed to current. I plan to start committing stuff bit-by-bit starting a week from now, subject to review of the bits.

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Summer Programming Opportunities for Students (Summer of Code)

The FreeBSD Project is happy to again participate in Google's Summer of Code program. This program provides $4500 in funding to allow students to spend the summer writing open source software. If you or someone you know would be interested in this program, please visit our website at :

http://www.freebsd.org/projects/summerofcode.html

There you will find a large list of interesting projects in diverse areas of modern Unix operating system development. Some example tasks involve writing kernel/networking regression test suites, working on peripheral device driver infrastructure, improving multibyte character support, improving the IPv6 support in userland utilities, and much more.

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PC-BSD 1.5 - the FOSSwire review

When it comes to free software desktop solutions, Linux tends to get most of the coverage. Now Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE etc. are all well and good, but it’s all too easy to forget that there are other operating systems out there too that can do th e job.

BSD-based operating systems have been around for a very long time, but traditionally, the big BSD distros like FreeBSD focus on the server and high-end workstation scenarios.

PC-BSD is a desktop-oriented BSD distribution which ships with a full KDE desktop and many of the packages you might be already used to from desktop Linux.

I thought I would review the new 1.5 release of PC-BSD, so, let’s dive in!

PHP 5.3 - A Heavy Hitter in Training

This release may be the most significant update PHP has seen since PHP 5. This is because many of the features planned for the first release of PHP 6 are being backported to 5.3. Anyone that has been folowing the development of PHP is likely aware that 6.0 will represent its entrance into what I like to call its adulthood. This milestone will mark the end of support for deprecated non compliant code, and will fully embrace an OO coding style. It's not going to be the end-all be-all version of PHP, but it will no longer attempt to cling to its procedural roots.

Let's take a look at some of the goodies in store for us in PHP 5.3.

Understanding MVC in PHP

This article series (continued in Implementing MVC in PHP: The Controller, Implementing MVC in PHP: The View, and Implementing MVC in PHP: The Model) demonstrates how to build an MVC web framework using PHP 5. This article covers the basics of MVC web frameworks, building the foundation classes for a framework that the other three articles in this series will build.