CentOS Pulse #0906 - 22 October 2009

1. Foreword

And another month has passed and so it is time for the Newsletter. The big news this time is the release of CentOS 5.4 which looking at the mailing list and #centos so many people have been desperately waiting for. Further the featured article explains a different view on Linux and the Interview is with Tim Verhoeven.

Enjoy reading

GeerdDietgerHoffmann

2. Announcements

Actually there was only one big announcement this month.

2.1. CentOS 5.4 released

The long awaited release of 5.4 has been pushing to the mirrors and a  yum update  should reveal a big list of packages that have improved.

CentOS 5.4 is the fourth update to the CentOS 5 distribution series. It contains a lot of bugfixes, updates and new functionality. Before reading any further we advise you to read the UOP Release Notes (or Single Page Release Notes) and Technical Notes (or Single Page Technical Notes).

You might want to read http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS5.4 for more information too.

3. Featured Article: Linux Hacker Diary

Day 1

Today I decided to install Linux. You can’t be a hacker if you don’t have Linux. Actually I want to hook up with Mary and threaten my friends that I’m a hacker and I can easily steal all their passwords, their money, and have Interpol and CIA chasing them. I asked Didi, who already has Linux and is a hacker, and he told me to download a 'bistro' ... and I can't remember the other thing but it was something that ended in –tos. This is what all hardcore hackers have. That’s why I want to be a hardcore hacker!

P.S.: Despite the fact that Didi is a hacker, he is still a virgin. Weird!!!!

Day 2

I’ve searched the Internet for 'bistro'. Something weird is going on according to the Internet, bistros are restaurants and the only thing I found that ended in –tos was Star Trek: TOS. And the only guy who knows about that is Jeff Albertson, if I remember correctly. I have to ask Didi again I must have misunderstood something he said. Otherwise, either Linux has something to do with food or stars!

Day 3

According to Didi, it was distro and not bistro and also that I should search for CentOS and not Star Trek.

But I’m not going to speak to him again, because when I asked him if he would help me to steal Mary’s MSN password, he gave me the finger and told me to go f*** myself. I think that is because he likes Mary too!

I found CentOS. While I was downloading it, I searched and found a guide on how to steal MSN passwords. I followed the instructions and sent an email to all_your_base_are@belong.to.us with my username and password and he answered that he would send me Mary’s password in 3 hours. I’m so excited. I am already feeling like a real little hacker!

Day 4

I’m copying CentOS to a CD and for some reason I can’t get into MSN! I’m certain that it's Microsoft’s fault (Micro$oft or Microsucks, as Didi used to say). I really have to start making fun of Micro$oft as Didi does, that’s the hacker way! I also have to figure out what is this GNU thing that Didi used to talk about, apparently it is some sort of animal.

Day 5

Finally I’m going to install CentOS. I can’t find anywhere the setup.exe file in the CD probably something went wrong when I was downloading it, I will download it again. I also created a new MSN and resent my account details in order to have Mary’s password but this time I added a background image with a penguin that says 'Linux Rules'.

Day 6

At the end, there wasn’t anything wrong with the CD. Today when I switched on my pc, it said to press Enter in order to boot CentOS. What happened??? I’ve never pressed Enter with so much excitement.

• It told me to choose a language: English (as Didi said, everything should be in English)
• Then it asked me to choose a country: Cambodia (this way, when I hack someone, he will try to find me in Cambodia)
• Then it was asking something about a keymap, I didn’t understand it. I only know googlemap!!!
• After that, Host Name, I should enter something really cool, after a while, I’ve got it: Cyber Hacker of Doom!
• What? Another name? Domain Name???? I entered the same. I was bored to search for a new one.
• Partitions? What are these now? There were some stuff explaining about partitions, but I was bored to read them so I pressed Enter four times what can go wrong?!?!?! Linux is pretty easy!
• It told me to choose some packages but I admit I got lost there were 6489 packages with weird names like term, amf, gtk and some other acronyms. 1309 of them were editors why do hackers need so many editors? In Windows I’ve never used notepad not even once. I picked randomly some packages. I did the same thing with some other weird stuff, called kernel modules!

Day 10

Finally I managed to install CentOS the downside is that I have no internet, the sound doesn’t work, one of DVD drives doesn’t open, the display resolution is only at 640x480 and 16 colours, keyboard writes only in Japanese and I lost Windows with all the files I had as well as Mary’s MSN I’m sure it’s Micro$oft’s fault. I have to find a way to get to internet. I have to talk to Didi.

Day 11

Didi told me that I’m an idiot - I think he is jealous - but he explained me how I can get online, of course I didn’t understand much. I bought a new modem, because the old one was a win-modem, but when I tried it there were some weird noises.

Day 15

Finally I understood what these weird noises were, the modem was calling a number in Cambodia and the noise was Pot Sen Xoa, a villager from Pailin luckily he spoke a little English and we managed to communicate. He understood what I was going through and he proposed to call him and he would read the local newspaper to me so that I will be learning the world news!

Day 16

I asked some kids in a net café in my neighborhood and they told me how to get online. I did it!!!! I connected to the internet! I found some hacker forums and I told them that I had CentOS and that I wanted to steal Mary’s password. They told me to press: sudo rm –rf / . Suddenly everything went black the PC is no longer booting up! I’m sure it’s Micro$oft fault!

Day 17

I talked to Mary and she told me that she became an emo. I decided to drop out of being a hacker

I WILL BECOME AN EMO!

Day 18

Mary hooked up with Alex is not an emo, but he has a personal website!

P.S.: Is it hard to create a personal website? I’ll ask Didi!

4. Interview

First can you say something about yourself? (Job, where do you live, etc ...)

I'm Tim Verhoeven. I live in Leuven, Belgium. Leuven is located close the Brussels, the capital of Europe and is one of the big university cities in Belgium. I currently work at DNS.be which is the instance that manages the .be top level domain. There I'm responsible for all technical operations. This mostly means managing all the servers and the applications that run on them, but also means working on things like the desktops, network, telephone system, etc. So its a diverse job.

What was your first Computer?

My first computer was not a Commodore 64 like a lot of people in that time, but a Acorn Electron that ran BBC Basic. That coupled with a basic taperecorder to store all our hard workd Around the same time I also got a DIY microcontroller board that allowed you to wire your own connections and make simple programs.

How did you start with *NIX?

In my second year in college there was a group of guys that started a small student club with the goal to educate the other students about the internet, which was relative new in those days. And soon as I saw there posters announcing their club I joined them and the server they were running happened to run Red Hat Linux. So I got thrown into things like Linux, shell acounts, SSH and IRC. And soon I installed Linux on the PowerMac at home to learn more about it.

How did you come to be a CentOS developer?

I have to thank Dag Wieers for that We were colleagues at IBM and he dragged get me introduced to CentOS and dragged me around to some Linux events like Linuxtag and Fosdem. And that is how I got more and more involved with CentOS and in the end got "promoted" as developer after a while.

What are your main areas of contribution?

That would be trying to manage he QA process each time we do a new release. Besides that I do some things for the infrastructure team, I just finished setting up a VOIP server which is used to hold meetings. Next on the todo list would be to have a look at the Nagios setup to improve the monitoring. And in between I'm trying to be active on the mailinglists and IRC. I've also packaged the CentOS Directory Server a while back.

What would you like to dig into in the future?

I don't have any specific plans right know, whatever needs to done I guess. I'm a pretty flexible guy. And I'm a bit busy with some stuff at home that is limiting my time for the moment.

What is your favorite program?

Mmm, though question. What I use most of the time a shell, Firefox and Pidgin. But there is no real one favorite that I can think of right know.

What do you do if you are not looking at a screen?

For the moment renovating at home But normally I like to go to a concert or festival from time to time or got out and have beer with my friends.

What is your favorite drink?

Any Belgian beer would do We have the best beers in the world so it would be a shame not to try them from time to time.

5. Tip Of The Newsletter

This will be a section in which tips and useful programs will be introduced. If you have a good tip or know of a really good program that you want everyone to know about send us a mail.

You can add several virtual IP addresses to a physical network interface. A good starting point is to copy the interface definition file of the device you want to add a virtual IP address to.

cp /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0:0 

You may have to modify ifcfg-eth0 to match your physical interface name.

Now you can edit the new file ifcfg-eth0:0 and specify the network settings of the virtual interface.

To make the changes take effect please restart the network services using:

service network restart

6. Jokes and Funny Stuff

6.1. Dictionary

{{{PROGRAM (pro'-gram)

• [n] A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input into error messages. [vi] To engage in a pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward.

}}}

6.2. BMW

7. CentOS in the Spotlight

The following articles mention CentOS and are a good resource to understand how the media (and public) looks at CentOS.

• A view of the free and non free Linux market (Not the view of CentOS)

• Oracle and Novell Linux: Caught between a Red Hat and a CentOS (CentOS vs. commercial distros)

• The 10 Best Linux Distributions of 2009 (CentOS makes #4 on this list)

• Open-Source and Mac Alternatives to Windows 7 (Who needs Windows 7 when you can have CentOS for free?)

8. Event Reviews

Reviews of recent Events

• 2009-10-05 → 2009-10-07: cPanel Conference 2009, Houston, US -- official site

From October 5th through October 7th cPanel, Inc. held their annual Conference in downtown Houston, TX. For those unfamiliar with cPanel, they provide software geared toward the management of web hosting environments. Exhibitors and attendees of the conference included web-hosting providers and ISV organizations from all over the globe. Representing CentOS at cPanel Conference 2009 were Karanbir Singh and Johnny Hughes, Jr. from the CentOS Development Team. Additionally, a member of the CentOS community, Garry Dale, helped to organize the promotional aspects for CentOS during the conference.

As part of the conference program, Karanbir Singh gave a keynote presentation on the topic of "Rapid Deployment and Provisioning on the CentOS Platform". Within the 30 minutes allotted, he was able to touch upon numerous methodologies and tools available to the community. The presentation was given to a packed room, and many attendees were eager to gain more in-depth information not available due to time constraints. Thus Mr. Singh and Mr. Hughes were kept busy by members of the CentOS community who seized upon the opportunity to visit with members of the CentOS Development Team, ask a question, collect a promotional takeaway, and extend thanks to the CentOS Project for providing such a stable foundation for the hosting industry. The CentOS Development Team also spent valuable time encouraging the industry to contribute back to the CentOS Project. Many business cards and handshakes were traded around discussions of servers, bandwidth, and skills. One particularly promising offer came to the CentOS table in the form of additional mirror presence in South America. The CentOS Developers are eager to bring all offers to fruition. In addition to the presentations, demos, and meetings, several vendors at the conference sponsored after-hours networking events for all attendees. One of the more notable events was a cPanel-sponsored, private gathering at Houston's Joystix Amusements which is a downtown pub and arcade packed with classic pinball machines and video games. Toward the end of the conference the two members of the CentOS Development Team met with officials from cPanel Operations and Development for an in-depth discussion of software packaging and security.

Overall, the cPanel Conference 2009 served as a great opportunity for the CentOS Development Team to mingle with a significant and prosperous faction of the CentOS community. Likewise, having CentOS well-represented at the cPanel Conference served as a great opportunity for the CentOS community to meet some of the CentOS Development Team. The CentOS Promo Team would like to extend its sincerest thanks to cPanel for their gracious hospitality and for enabling CentOS to create such a visible presence at the conference. Furthermore, the CentOS Promo Team would like to thank Karanbir Singh and Johnny Hughes, Jr. for volunteering additional time and effort toward making this CentOS Promo Event an overwhelming success.

9. Upcoming Events

The CentOS Promo SIG organizes CentOS presence (booths, presentations) at various conferences and tradeshows. Here we highlight upcoming events. If you are interested to help out, join the Promo SIG.

• 2009-11-07 → 2009-11-08: Open Rhein Ruhr Conference 2009, Bottrop, Germany -- official site

• 2010-02-06 → 2010-02-07: FOSDEM 2010, Brussels, Belgium -- official site

10. Contributing to this newsletter

We are always on the look-out for people that are interested to help report on CentOS community activity, maintain a section in the newsletter, write an article or hint us an interesting topic, thread, article or person to talk about. If you want to appear in the newsletter, you have to contribute positively to the CentOS community and hopefully get noticed by one of our reporters

We have a special page with more information about contributing !