Online Computer Guides

We maintain mirrors of selected guides for Linux and other open computer products used by the ISM. You can search these documents separately from the rest of the ISM web site.

Linux administration

Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide

This tutorial assumes no previous knowledge of scripting or programming, but progresses rapidly toward an intermediate/advanced level of instruction (...all the while sneaking in little snippets of UNIX wisdom and lore). It serves as a textbook, a manual for self-study, and a reference and source of knowledge on shell scripting techniques. The exercises and heavily-commented examples invite active reader participation, under the premise that the only way to really learn scripting is to write scripts.

Linux Administrator's Security Guide

There are many issues that affect actually security setup on a computer. How secure does it need to be? Is the machine networked? Will there be interactive user accounts (telnet/SSH)? Will users be using it as a workstation or is it a server? The last one has a big impact since "workstations" and "servers" have traditionally been very different beasts, although the line is blurring with the introduction of very powerful and cheap PC's, as well as operating systems that take advantage of them. The main difference in today's world between computers is usually not the hardware, or even the OS (Linux is Linux, NT Server and NT Workstation are close family, etc.), it is in what software packages are loaded (Apache, X, etc) and how users access the machine (interactively, at the console, and so forth). Some general rules that will save you a lot of grief in the long run:

Linux Administration Made Easy

The "Linux Administration Made Easy" (LAME) guide attempts to describe day-to-day administration and maintenance issues commonly faced by Linux system administrators. Part of the Linux Documentation Project.

Linux Kernel 2.4 Internals

Introduction to the Linux 2.4 kernel.

Linux Network Administrators Guide

This book was written to provide a single reference for network administration in a Linux environment. Beginners and experienced users alike should find the information they need to cover nearly all important administration activities required to manage a Linux network configuration.

The Linux System Administrators' Guide

An introduction to system administration of a Linux system for novices. Copyright 1993--1998 Lars Wirzenius.

Securing and Optimizing Linux

RedHat Edition -A Hands on Guide

BIND 9 Administrator Reference Manual

Copyright © 2000, 2001 by Internet Software Consortium

Technical Publishing

LDP Author Guide

The Linux Documentation Project (LDP) is working on developing free, high-quality documentation for the GNU/Linux operating system. The overall goal of the LDP is to collaborate in all of the issues of Linux documentation. This includes the creation of "HOWTOs" and "Guides". We hope to establish a system of documentation for Linux that will be easy to use and search. This includes the integration of the manual pages, info docs, HOWTOs, and other documents.

DocBook, The Definitive Guide

DocBook provides a system for writing structured documents using SGML or XML. It is particularly well-suited to books and papers about computer hardware and software, though it is by no means limited to them.

Selected Software

Using Samba

Samba is a suite of Unix applications that speak the SMB (Server Message Block) protocol. Many operating systems, including Windows and OS/2, use SMB to perform client-server networking. By supporting this protocol, Samba allows Unix servers to get in on the action, communicating with the same networking protocol as Microsoft Windows products. Thus, a Samba-enabled Unix machine can masquerade as a server on your Microsoft network.

Persistence of Vision ^TM Ray-Tracer

The Persistence of Vision^TM Ray-Tracer creates three-dimensional, photo-realistic images using a rendering technique called ray-tracing. It reads in a text file containing information describing the objects and lighting in a scene and generates an image of that scene from the view point of a camera also described in the text file. Ray-tracing is not a fast process by any means, but it produces very high quality images with realistic reflections, shading, perspective and other effects.

Blender 3D

Developed as the in-house software of a high quality animation studio, Blender has developed into a suite of technologies enabling the creation and replay of realtime, interactive 3D content. The software offers a versatile animation system, contemporary modeling principles, advanced rendering tools, an editor for postproduction and game creation and playback. Blender has the singular benefits of cross-platform, cross-network operability and a file size of less than 1.5MB and is freely available over the Internet.

PHP

PHP, which stands for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor", is an HTML-embedded scripting language. Much of its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with some unique features thrown in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly.

MySQL

MySQL, the most popular Open Source SQL database, is provided by MySQL AB. MySQL AB is a commercial company that builds its business providing services around the MySQL database.

PostgresSQL

This is not yet local, but may be if we begin using this software.

Apache Webserver

The web server software used here, and most other places.

Grokking the GIMP

The guide to the wonderful GIMP

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Last updated 19-Nov-2001 by eks