Tux Watch

Tectonic: Ten things you didnt know about open source

Some things about open source you probably did not know. Interesting list

Here is a short list of the most popular security applications for linux. I will be updatin this with links shortly

Clam AntiVirus Popular antivirus solution for UNIX based machines. Includes real time virus scanning and a virus definition database updated several times per day.

AVScan Front-end for Clam AntiVirus.

Avast Home Edition – Antivirus suite including real time scanning, email protection, internet traffic filtering, a firewall and more.

Housecall [Web Linux – Web based scanner that detects and removes viruses, worms, trojans and spyware. Also points out system vulnerabilities and offers advice on obtaining security patches.

chkrootkit – A solution for finding and removing rootkits from Linux machines.

Firestarter – Real time firewall that monitors all of the open ports and active network connections on your computer. Allows you to specify a very strict rule set.

Firewall Builder – Useful tool for assembling a firewall rule set or policy for popular UNIX based firewalls including iptables, ipfilter, etc.

TuxGuardian – Verifies the integrity of applications trying to gain access to the network. Useful for preventing viruses, trojans, spyware, etc. from spreading throughout the network.

HardWall Firewall – Iptables based script that performs detailed packet inspection and filtering to keep your computer free from malicious traffic.

BullDog – Complex firewall for advanced users.

PeerGuardian – Blocks IPs from accessing your network. Especially useful for protecting your privacy when using peer to peer software.

Thunderbird – Highly customizable secure email client. Comes equipped with spam email filters, phishing protection and encryption capabilities.

Sagator – An interface for the postfix, sendmail and other smtpd gateways that run popular antivirus and antispam solutions.

Tiger Envelopes – Encrypts email messages. Integrates into Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac Mail and KMail.

Tor – Uses a network of virtual tunnels to provide anonymity for surfing the internet and transferring files over a network.

BarracudaDrive – Free secure web server implementation. Useful for managing files remotely.

Firefox – A fan favorite browser for it's secure architecture and available add-ons. Uses SSL browsing by default.

McAfee Site Advisor [Windows, Linux, Mac] – Rates websites by their ability to infect your computer with malware. Advises you if a site is safe or not.

Opera – Secure multi-platform web browser.

PuTTY – Telent and SSH client for running remote sessions. Main features include command line based SCP and SFTP clients. Frequently used to communicate between a Windows machine and a Unix machine.

WebCleaner – Allows you to control the type of data your proxy parses. Useful for eliminating dangerous malware and removing annoying popup ads.

SmoothWall – Firewall, IDS and VPN system for home users and networks.

Nagios – Comprehensive web based tool equipped with virtually every imaginable feature for knowing exactly what’s going on in your network.

nLive Core – Monitors the traffic that traverses your network via packet inspection and filtering.

Network Mapper – Uses packets passing through the network to find out what hosts are available, what services they’re offering, what operating system they’re running and what type of packet filtration/firewall they’re using.

Wireshark – Powerful tool for capturing network protocol data for analysis. Contains more than 25 methods for reading packets making it useful for a wide array of networks.

Nessus – Industry leading open source network vulnerability scanner. Highly scalable and very thorough.

Snort – The premier free IDS solution. Detects a wide variety of attacks including buffer overflows, OS fingerprinting, CGI scans and more. Uses real time traffic analysis and packet logging on IP networks.

Open Source Host-based Intrusion Detection System – Personal IDS performing log analysis, registry monitoring, malware detection, time-based alerting and active response.

Prelude – Detects system anomalies and reports findings to the user. Also analyzes logs for anomalies.

Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund

April 16, 2007, will be remembered as one of the darkest days in the history of the Virginia Tech community and the world beyond.

To remember and honor the victims of those tragic events, the university has established the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund to aid in the healing process and generate financial support.

The fund will be used to cover expenses including but not limited to:

• Grief counseling
• Memorials
• Communication expenses
• Comfort expenses
• Incidental needs

If you plan to give, please click the link below:

Michael Dell’s Linux choice? Ubuntu

Interesting article on Michael Dell and his choice of open Source Software

Linux.com | Zenoss builds a competitive advantage with open source infrastructure

I have been using ZenOSS for awhile now and I have had a hard time explaining why I like it. Also, it seems that most other network engineers are discovering and loving it too.

This article goes into why ZenOSS is different from the other hundreds of other network monitoring programs.

Do you use ZenOSS ? let me know your experiences

full circle - issue #0 | full circle
This is just a preview issue of whats to come. It contains ;
History of Ubuntu - from Warty to Feisty and
Ubuntu 7.04 - Feisty Fawns New Features

Over two weeks in the making and dozens of forum posts later its finally released

I want to thank all the people in the Ubuntu community whove really dug deep and begun contributing articles for issue #1.

As I said previously; ill be installing Feisty Fawn when its released 19th April then ill begin preparations for issue #1 which, all going well, will get released at the end of May.

Kyle’s Ubuntu Edgy Cheat-Sheet

Here is a fairly comprehensive cheat sheet for those of you using Ubuntu. It broken down into useful files and folders, needed applications and best habits to have when working with Ubuntu.

Source: ls - list directory contents Linux Man Page

The command of the Day is ls
# NAME

ls - list directory contents

# SYNOPSIS

ls [OPTION]… [FILE]…

# DESCRIPTION

List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default). Sort entries alphabetically if none of -cftuSUX nor –sort.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

-a, –all
do not hide entries starting with .

-A, –almost-all
do not list implied . and ..

–author
print the author of each file

-b, –escape
print octal escapes for nongraphic characters

–block-size=SIZE
use SIZE-byte blocks

-B, –ignore-backups
do not list implied entries ending with ~

-c
with -lt: sort by, and show, ctime (time of last modification of file status information) with -l: show ctime and sort by name otherwise: sort by ctime

-C
list entries by columns

–color[=WHEN]
control whether color is used to distinguish file types. WHEN may be `never’, `always’, or `auto’

-d, –directory
list directory entries instead of contents, and do not dereference symbolic links

-D, –dired
generate output designed for Emacs’ dired mode

-f
do not sort, enable -aU, disable -lst

-F, –classify
append indicator (one of */=@|) to entries

–format=WORD
across -x, commas -m, horizontal -x, long -l, single-column -1, verbose -l, vertical -C

–full-time
like -l –time-style=full-iso

-g
like -l, but do not list owner

-G, –no-group
inhibit display of group information

-h, –human-readable
print sizes in human readable format (e.g., 1K 234M 2G)

–si
likewise, but use powers of 1000 not 1024

-H, –dereference-command-line
follow symbolic links listed on the command line

–dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir
follow each command line symbolic link that points to a directory

–indicator-style=WORD append indicator with style WORD to entry names:
none (default), classify (-F), file-type (-p)

-i, –inode
print index number of each file

-I, –ignore=PATTERN
do not list implied entries matching shell PATTERN

-k
like –block-size=1K

-l
use a long listing format

-L, –dereference
when showing file information for a symbolic link, show information for the file the link references rather than for the link itself

-m
fill width with a comma separated list of entries

-n, –numeric-uid-gid
like -l, but list numeric UIDs and GIDs

-N, –literal
print raw entry names (don’t treat e.g. control characters specially)

-o
like -l, but do not list group information

-p, –file-type
append indicator (one of /=@|) to entries

-q, –hide-control-chars
print ? instead of non graphic characters

–show-control-chars
show non graphic characters as-is (default unless program is `ls’ and output is a terminal)

-Q, –quote-name
enclose entry names in double quotes

–quoting-style=WORD
use quoting style WORD for entry names: literal, locale, shell, shell-always, c, escape

-r, –reverse
reverse order while sorting

-R, –recursive
list subdirectories recursively

-s, –size
print size of each file, in blocks

-S
sort by file size

–sort=WORD
extension -X, none -U, size -S, time -t, version -v status -c, time -t, atime -u, access -u, use -u

–time=WORD
show time as WORD instead of modification time: atime, access, use, ctime or status; use specified time as sort key if –sort=time

–time-style=STYLE
show times using style STYLE: full-iso, long-iso, iso, locale, +FORMAT FORMAT is interpreted like `date’; if FORMAT is FORMAT1FORMAT2, FORMAT1 applies to non-recent files and FORMAT2 to recent files; if STYLE is prefixed with `posix-’, STYLE takes effect only outside the POSIX locale

-t
sort by modification time

-T, –tabsize=COLS
assume tab stops at each COLS instead of 8

-u
with -lt: sort by, and show, access time with -l: show access time and sort by name otherwise: sort by access time

-U
do not sort; list entries in directory order

-v
sort by version

-w, –width=COLS
assume screen width instead of current value

-x
list entries by lines instead of by columns

-X
sort alphabetically by entry extension

-1
list one file per line

SELinux options:

–lcontext
Display security context. Enable -l. Lines will probably be too wide for most displays.

-Z, –context
Display security context so it fits on most displays. Displays only mode, user, group, security context and file name.

–scontext
Display only security context and file name.

–help
display this help and exit

–version
output version information and exit

SIZE may be (or may be an integer optionally followed by) one of following: kB 1000, K 1024, MB 1000*1000, M 1024*1024, and so on for G, T, P, E, Z, Y.

By default, color is not used to distinguish types of files. That is equivalent to using –color=none. Using the –color option without the optional WHEN argument is equivalent to using –color=always. With –color=auto, color codes are output only if standard output is connected to a terminal (tty).

Techzone: OpenSUSE vs Ubuntu

This is a great article on the difference between Ubuntu and OpenSuse. I have been using both distributions now and I prefer Suse on my laptop and Ubuntu as my desktop and server operating systems.

Let me know which distributions you prefer

The Coding Studio Linux & Unix Screenshots

Holy screen-cap batman !

This is probably the most exhaustive list if screenshot of the various Linux distributions I have seen. Want to see what Linux looks like? You will probably find it here.

Free and Easy Remote Access with VNC Reverse Connections » Raymond.CC Blog

If you have ever tried to troubleshoot your friends PC over the phone, this is a great tip. Reverse VNC allows you to control the PC and make the necessary fixes. You end up looking like a a hero

Ubuntu Home Page | Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a community developed, linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. It contains all the applications you need - a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging and much more.

This is probably one of the easier distributions to install. It is gaining wide popularity and support from a large community. If you are just starting out in Linux, this is the one to use.

Ubuntu Hacks

Now that you have Ubuntu installed, whats next? Here is and excellent resource for really getting to know Ubuntu. This is the blog companion site for the book: Ubuntu Hacks.

The book and website include tips and trick to get your Ubuntu machine running smoothly.

I use this book almost daily

This site is currently in need of a writer. If you have any interest in writing on the topic this site covers, feel free to submit an application at 451 Press. Thank you.

451 Press, Writers Needed

The results of Linuxquestion.org’s Voting for its Members Choice Awards [here] have finally been announced [here] with Ubuntu taking the lead again on the Linux Distribution of the Year Choice by the website’s users with KDE being the dominant Desktop Environment. Knoppix still leads the show for Live Distros and Firefox continues to be the king of web browsers. Mysql continues to the bag Mr. Favorite choice while GIMP is the best Graphics App of the year. Cheers to Linuxquestion.org users, great going!

Here are the official results for the 2006 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards:

• Distribution of the Year - Ubuntu (26.44%)
• Live Distribution of the Year - Knoppix (26.22%)
• Browser of the Year - Firefox (74.61%)
• Database of the Year - MySQL (61.68%)
• Office Suite of the Year - OpenOffice.org (89.79%)
• Desktop Environment of the Year - KDE (56.58%)
• Video Media Player Application of the Year - mplayer (41.93%)
• Video Authoring Application of the Year - Kino (27.81%)
• Audio Media Player Application of the Year - amaroK (57.07%)
• Audio Authoring Application of the Year - Audacity (67.07%)
• Multimedia Utility of the Year - K3b (69.51%)
• Messaging Application of the Year - Gaim (51.52%)
• Window Manager of the Year - Fluxbox (21.44%)
• IDE of the Year - Eclipse (34.47%)
• Mail Client of the Year - Thunderbird (52.74%)
• Text Editor of the Year - vi/vim (38.42%)
• Graphics Application of the Year - GIMP (65.60%)
• Security Application of the Year - nmap (20.94%)
• Windows on Linux Application of the Year - Wine (50.10%)
• Web Development Editor of the Year - Quanta (36.34%)
• Shell of the Year - bash (89.45%)