Carla Schroder

Most network administrators are familiar with old standbys like Nessus and Nmap for vulnerability scanning. Although these are useful and simple to use apps, admins who want to kick up their penetration testing a few notches should give Metasploit a try. After all, penetration is the one tactic available to network administrators to get ahead […]

The Asterisk open-source iPBX is known for its power and flexibility, but no one would call it fast or easy. Until now, that is. AsteriskNOW is a software appliance that includes a specialized operating system based on rPath Linux, Asterisk 1.4 and an excellent Web-based graphical administration interface. AsteriskNOW is billed as “Asterisk in 30 […]

Setting up an open source IPSec implementation has traditionally been difficult and complex, to the point that as a security solution it almost doesn’t make sense. Even high-end commercial implementations tend to cause hair loss and frustration. But finally, there is an open source IPSec implementation that is easy to administer, free of cost and […]

Red Hat’s Kickstart is a versatile, easy-to-use customization tool that gets better with age. With Kickstart, Fedora and Red Hat Linux users can easily customize and replicate installations. Every installation automatically creates a Kickstart file, so one way to create a perfect installation image is to perform a custom installation, selecting exactly the desired package, […]

Virtualization has come to the x86 platform in a big way, with hardware support on both Intel and AMD CPUs and every shade-tree code mechanic in the land writing new virtualization software. So much so that seeing the word “virtualization” is enough to give me the itches. So this week let’s talk about something else […]

A good network or system administrator is also an ace penny-pincher. The x86 hardware platform has made powerful, customizable computing affordable to the masses, and hundreds of gigabytes of free and open source software are available free of cost. But there are some places where you should never pinch pennies, and computer power supplies are […]

When you need to set up a computer lab, classroom or meeting room in a hurry, look no further than Edubuntu, “Linux for Young Human Beings.” Edubuntu is targeted at the classroom, but it’s a dandy Linux terminal server for all occasions. You can literally have an entire network up and and running in an […]

As nice as Nagios is, configuring the beast has driven many a network administrator to drink and premature hair loss. If you’re in the mood for something a little sleeker and a little easier, give the Fruity configuration tool a try. Like everything else these days, Fruity is a PHP-based HTTP configuration front-end to Nagios. […]

Conserving electricity is always a worthy goal, and is more so in the summer months. Reducing the amount of power that desktops and servers consume also reduces heat, which reduces the overall cooling load. Power supplies, CPUs, CRT monitors, hard drives and high-end graphics cards aren’t major energy hogs all by themselves, but when they […]

GNU ddrescue is a must-have rescue utility for all system and network administrators. GNU ddrescue operates like dd_rhelp, which is a clever and useful front-end to dd_rescue. I know, that’s some beastly naming there, but you want the non-hyphenated GNU ddrescue. Sometimes an underscore can make a world of difference. GNU ddrescue, for example, takes […]

Need a Definition? Ubuntu streamlines the server install process by offering a prebuilt server stack. With the latest version, a click of a mouse leads to a complete setup for whichever servers you want, including, DNS, mail server, PostgreSQL and OpenSSH. While the Linux and Unix universes have always provided a wealth of high-quality, powerful […]

I’ve never been comfortable with Windows-based e-mail scanners because they run on the same porous, malware friendly platform they’re supposed to protect. Paying big bucks for software licensing fees year after year isn’t a very attractive proposition either. If you’re in the market for an e-mail scanner, consider MailScanner or ClamAV. Together, they offer stout […]