Live Linux Wireless and Security Distributions

Listed are some of the more Wireless and Penetration Testing specific Linux distros available.

Example of Linux Process Creation

In this example, we use the ls command to list a file. Because the ls program is the child of its local shell, we need to trace the shell from which the ll (ls -al alias) command is executed. Two shell windows are required to perform this test.

Process Accounting HowTo

Process Accounting is used for

1. Keeps track of user processes.
2. Originally intended as a way to keep track of resources in order to bill departments/users for their usage.
3. Packages

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First look at FreeBSD 7.0

I remember well the first time I attempted to set up FreeBSD 4.x as a desktop system. After configuring the X window and launching KDE, I was greeted with something that only a computing masochist could find enjoyable - no mouse or sound, unsightly jagged fonts, lack of a graphical package manager and other configuration tools... It took hours of searching and following "geeky" documentation before I was able to load the correct kernel modules for the USB mouse, install prettier fonts and set up anti-aliasing - all by editing obscure configuration files in Vim. Needless to say, the first impressions weren't good. Despite an obviously elegant system with a large number of packages available for installation, the tedium of setting it up as a desktop system was discouraging, to say the least.

So when FreeBSD 7.0 was finally released last week, I decided to make a new attempt at installing and configuring FreeBSD for the desktop. Have things improved? Would I be able to tweak the FreeBSD of today into a desktop system without wasting hours of searching and command line configuring? These were the questions going through my mind while booting the installation CD on my test box - an older Pentium 4 1.4 GHz machine with 384 MB of RAM, two 120 GB hard disks, an NVIDIA GForce4 graphics card, a generic LCD monitor with a maximum resolution of 1280x1024 pixels, integrated sound and network chips that are recognised by most Linux distributions, a USB mouse, a DVD burner... all pretty standard if somewhat outdated hardware.

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Creating Your Own FreeBSD 7.0 DVD

If you're in the FreeBSD world, you've probably already downloaded or csup'd FreeBSD 7.0 or are in the process of doing so now. As yes, after what seemed like waiting forever, the announcement of 7.0 went out last night.

I spent this morning making a DVD ISO of FreeBSD 7.0 to be included in the upcoming BSD magazine. Creating a DVD is easy and my instructions follow.

Linux: An Open Letter To NVIDIA

We the GNU/Linux community and the undersigned, kindly request that you, NVIDIA Corporation, increase your efforts in better enabling the open-source community to develop free software drivers for your graphics hardware. Your major competitors in this market, AMD/ATI and Intel, have not only supported the community in open-source driver development efforts but they are now openly releasing hardware programming documentation.

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Virtual Hosting Howto With Virtualmin On CentOS 5.1

This tutorial shows how to set up a CentOS 5.x server to offer all services needed by virtual web hosters. These include web hosting, smtp server with (SMTP-AUTH and TLS, SPF, DKIM, Domainkeys), DNS, FTP, MySQL, POP3/IMAP, Firewall, Webalizer for stats.

HowTo Use GPG

linuxpoison tips.

Beginner's Guide to Python

New to programming? Python is free, and easy to learn if you know where to start!
This guide will help you to get started quickly.

Google language tools API ( PHP 5 class )

This PHP 5 class API is developed on the base of a tool that I wrote some years ago.
Simply works querying Google translation / language tools with the text and language pair choosen.

"I find it useful because of Google haven’t released yet an API for its translation tools."

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Sending Emails with the Zend Framework

Many PHP applications require the ability to send emails nowadays from simple plain-text emails confirming a registration to advanced HTML newsletters.

PHP allows us to send emails using the mail() function but this can quickly get complex when you begin to add HTML, attachments and different character encoding.

Luckily for us developers, the Zend_Mail component from the Zend Framework greatly simplifies the process by providing easy-to-use methods for creating and sending emails.

This article will walk you through creating and sending plain-text and HTML emails, adding attachments, multiple recipients and much more.

Gmail Hacks, Tips & Tricks

You already know that Gmail beats all other email providers with its endless customization capabilities, Google product integration and fantastic spam filter. Take it to the next level with these Gmail power user tips and Greasemonkey extensions for Firefox. We haven’t forgotten the Mac users, either.

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Faster Performance, Fewer Machines For FreeBSD?

In the newly released FreeBSD 7.0, speed is a key improvement with gains of up to 1,500 percent at high load utilization over its predecessors in the FreeBSD 6.x branch.

While performance improvements are a key aspect of FreeBSD, it's not necessarily the most important new item in the free open source operating system...

Drawing with PHP: array to graph

Ever wanted to make something like this with PHP ?



Well, today I will show and explain the script that generated this beautiful graphic.

jQuery Tutorials for Designers

This article contains 10 visual tutorials intended for web designers and newbies on how to apply Javascript effects with jQuery. In case you don’t know about jQuery, it is a "write less, do more" Javascript library. It has many Ajax and Javascript features that allow you to enhance user experience and semantic coding.

How to clear the cache from memory

Linux has a supposable good memory management feature that will use up any "extra" RAM you have to cache stuff. This section of the memory being used is SUPPOSED to be freely available to be taken over by any other process that actually needs it, but unfortunately my linux (two distros now, mandriva i586, and mandriva x86_64) thinks that cache memory is too important to move over for anything else that actually needs it...