Lockergnome's Compendium of Linux Knowledge Focusing on the core functionality built into every Linux distribution, these tomes contain a wealth of information on everything from the kernel, to core services, to networking and printing issues. Find your way around the command line functionality, so that your Linux install works the way you want it to. You won't be an expert overnight, but it will certainly lead you in the right direction. Dowload your Linux tips today.

I do have one other Libranet note for the day, though. Jon at Libranet has been following the review. He dropped me a note on Wednesday with some concerns about a statement I made that Libranet is a single disc installation. In fact, I was just a bit inarticulate. Libranet is, indeed, a two-disc set. However, the configuration I installed didn't require the second disc. Add in the fact that the package install was aborted, and you end up with nothing but confusion. I hope that clears up the first issue. Whether or not the second disc will be required for a basic install should be answered in tomorrow's issue.

Regardless of the goings-on and confusion in our little corner of the Linux world, the larger picture seems to become clearer each day. None other than the Windows maven [which, by the way, kdict defines as,"n: someone who is dizzyingly skilled in any field"] himself passed along a press release regarding Linux. Intel is planning the release of Linux code optimization code. No, that's not a statement from the department of redundancy department. Intel's VTune software is designed to tweak Linux code:

The Intel VTune Performance Analyzer identifies lines of code in an application that consume excessive amounts of processor resources. Developers can use this analysis to quickly identify and remove potential performance bottlenecks by focusing on those specific lines of code, resulting in faster time to market with new applications.

Types of applications that can achieve enhanced performance include commercial, transaction-oriented computing, computationally intensive financial, engineering and scientific applications, digital media, games and multimedia.

Code to enhance code.

While I'm generally an AMD guy, I have to admire the contributions Intel has made to the Linux world. They've helped create other open source tools and have kicked in bucks to support the Open Source Development Lab. They're one of many tech movers and shakers that operate quietly to support Linux while maintaining their commitments to and relationship with Microsoft.

That's it for a quick little report today. The frozen pizza's not sitting well, and another day is mere minutes away. I'll be right back here with the continuing Libranet review tomorrow. In the meantime, have a great Thursday.

Happy just sittin' here in my tux,              
Tony Steidler-Dennison       

GnomeTWEAK

Drive Speed

Unless you have the latest and greatest in hardware, it's possible that your hard drive could use a little tweak for speed. If you're using an older machine for your Linux system, today's GnomeTWEAK could make a noticeable improvement in the speed of your disk reads and writes.

Most new hard drives utilize Direct Memory Access, or DMA. This enables them to operate more quickly by bypassing the CPU when reading or writing memory - the shortest distance between two point idea. Additionally, a faster drive requires that the data is transferred in 32-bit chunks. Today, we'll create the proper settings for these parameters using a tool called hdparm.

hdparm serves a dual role. First, it can be used to measure the speed of data transfers to and from your hard drive. Second, it can serve as a benchmark by which you can gauge the speed of your drive and the effect of today's tweak.

To benchmark the current data transfer rate on your drive, issue the following command:

hdparm -t /dev/hda

If you're on a Red Hat-like system, the hdparm binary is located in /sbin:

/sbin/hdparm -t /dev/hda

This command uses hdparm to measure [t]iming on your hard drive /dev/hda. This is the master hard drive on the first IDE channel. You can, of course, run this command to measure the speed of any additional hard drives. The command will return output similar to:

dev/hda:
Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  3.89 seconds = 16.45 MB/sec

That's a pretty good indication of the current transfer rate on your hard drive. For accuracy, this benchmark should be run several times, and your system should have no other active processes.

Now, you can reuse the hdparm command to enable DMA mode on your drive and enable 32-bit I/O support:

hdparm -c3 -d1 /dev/hda

This command uses two options: -c3 enables 32-bit transfers with a sync sequence. This sync is required by many chipset manufacturers. The -d1 option enables the DMA flag. In short, you're sending more data directly to and from memory with these two options.

With those options set, you can judge the improvements for yourself:

hdparm -t /dev/hda

dev/hda:
Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  2.82 seconds = 22.66 MB/sec

The example shows a 38% improvement in the data transfer rate of the hard drive.

If you don't see an improvement with these adjustments, it's likely that your drive is already using 32-bit transfers in DMA mode. No concerns - creating these settings will do no harm to a system already running in DMA mode.

I have a need -- a need for speed. hdparm, DMA and 32-bit I/O provide it by moving data at the maximum possible system speed.

Recommend It!
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GnomeSCRIPT

Directory Links
Scribbled by MasterRa

A small script i wrote today.. inspired by the one featured in today's 'Shell. Pretty much just illustrates the "many ways to do a task" idea. I happen to be partial to perl, and don't know any bash scripting. Also this is contained in one file, when i believe the other was not. It also has an extra feature, that really isn't that useful.

#!/usr/bin/perl
# --------
# index.pl
# --------
# Very simple perl script that outputs
# (in html) links to each file in
# the current directory. Prints to stdout
# unless a filename is given on the command line.
# Written by MasterRa
# (root@masterra.net / www.masterra.net).
# Inspired by a similar script featured in
# Lockergnome's Penguin Shell newsletter
# (http://www.lockergnome.com/issues/penguinshell.html).

if(@ARGV)
{
    if ($ARGV[0] eq "--help")
    {
        print "Usage: $0\n or: $0 outfile\n";
        exit(0);
    }
    open (STDOUT, ">$ARGV[0]");
}

print "\n";
print "\n";

my @files = `ls`;
foreach $file (@files)
{
    chomp $file;
    print "$file
\n";
}

print "\n";
print "\n";

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GnomeCORE

Get your favorite Linux flavor on CD: Pick your favorite Linux flavor and get it on CD for as low as $1.95. Find Linux gear, books, and software for Linux at Linux Central . Check out the selection today!

If you're not completely new to Linux, you've probably already seen what's likely the longest ongoing inner-Linux battle of all: vi vs emacs. Users of both are extremely loyal to their editor of choice. Open the question of which is best in a Linux newsgroup and you'll forever be branded a troll, stirring up a discussion that will certainly crash in a blinding ball of flames.

In the spirit of fairness, I won't enter the battle. The fact is, if you have a need for serious command line editing in Linux, you're going to have to choose sooner or later. We've spent the first part of the week looking at vi. We'll spend an equivalent few days looking at emacs and hopefully providing some useful background and commands.

Background first. Emacs stands for EditorMACroS. The name is as good a description of emacs as any. It's a powerful macro based editor. In the days when system memory was much less, other editor users often joked that emacs stood for "Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping." To be sure, emacs does have a larger memory footprint than vi, but the joke is even less relevant today than it was then.

Emacs is the creation of Richard Stallman, the creator of many of the core tools found in Linux. His first implementation of emacs was in 1975. In 1984, GNU Emacs was released, serving as the real predecessor to the emacs we know today.

But the origins of emacs are even older than feathered hair and bell-bottom jeans. Emacs is written primarily in LISP, a high-level programming language dating back to the 1950s and, for a long period of time, used almost exclusively in artificial intelligence applications. AI is, you see, the real connection between emacs and LISP. Richard Stallman was the "staff hacker" in the artificial intelligence lab at MIT during his college years, acquiring a particular fluency in LISP.

In this series, we're discussing only the text editing capabilities of emacs. While it's very powerful in this realm, emacs shouldn't be viewed as a mere text editor. In fact, it can quickly become a full programming and computing environment in the right hands. One of the real strengths of emacs is its extensibility. Leveraging LISP, a user can create an extension for emacs to perform a particular task. Many of the better-known extensions have been rolled into subsequent versions of emacs. Emacs can be used to read, retrieve and send email and usenet news, for local and remote file management, for editing binary files - the extensions are very deep and rich with power.

Armed with that background, we'll look tomorrow at some of the basics of the emacs program.

Recommend It!
Send us a GnomeCORE tip

GnomeFILE

KVoiceControl

http://www.kiecza.de/daniel/linux/index.html

"KVoiceControl is a speech recognition system that allows the user to connect spoken commands to unix commands. It automagically detects signals coming from a microphone then performs recognition on this speech input and in case of successful recognition executes the unix command the user hooked up to it."

Recommend It!
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GnomeVOICE

Linux Security
Scribbled by Tim Shelley

"I've been reading your newsletter for the three months, and have been running linux almost exclusively for the past two. Thanks so much for the great newsletter.

Anyway, I've come across an article at WinInfo (http://www.wininformant.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=27428) that claims Linux to be the most insecure OS (even more so than windows). Personally I found exception to a couple of the claims made in the article (specifically the reference to Linux not having as sophisticated an update software as windows does, which after sixteen (!!!) distro reviews I'm sure you can contest as well).

"Just thought you may be interested in reading it and sharing your opinions with the rest of your readers.

"Thanks again for the great newsletter."

Recommend It!
Speak your GnomeVOICE

GnomeCLICK

Why Open Source Software?

http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html

Why Open Source Software? is a timely read, if a bit long. It's a comprehensive look at why open source is the best possible path for business.

This paper provides quantitative data that, in many cases, using open source software / free software is a reasonable or even superior approach to using their proprietary competition according to various measures. This paper examines market share, reliability, performance, scalability, security, and total cost of ownership. It also has sections on non-quantitative issues, unnecessary fears, usage reports, other sites providing related information, and ends with some conclusions

In other words, it takes on all the arguments both for and against open source in the workplace, applying data that you can use to make your own judgment. I think you'll probably come to the same conclusion I did: cost, reliability and security. In a nutshell, that's why.

Recommend It!
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