The Linux Live CD

It's been 12 years since Mark Knopper first created Knoppix, ushering in an amazing way to try running Linux: directly from a CD.

No installation hassles, no worries about losing data during an upgrade. No getting stuck in the middle of an install and not having a machine to use to track down documentation.

Just a running machine. Easily, quickly, and best of all temporarily.

Recovering from motherboard failures, and clean computing

When last we left the scene, one server was dead, the desktop dieing. However, ordering two new motherboards was successful. They arrived from Magic Micro quickly and in good order, and it was time to clean things up and make two working machines.

First, a note on cleaning. I am sick (and tired) of computer hardware that cannot be cleaned. Laptops that require being sent back to the manufacturers in order to be cleaned, things like that. I remember one call to Circuit City for a Sony Vaio laptop I owned, where the person who answered the phone simply did not understand what I meant when I said the fan needed to be cleaned.

I had to let her go to her script and answer the question "Is the machine overheating and shutting down?" with "Yes", because if I didn't say "yes" she didn't have any option for having me send it in for cleaning at all. So they did the cleaning, and wiped Linux, but I've learned always to do a full backup before letting anyone else even touch my machines.

SSH, X11, and You

SSH Encrypted Network Connections


Recently I read an article where the author went through great pains to launch an application on a remote system and display it locally, over an encrypted session.


Doing this is actually far, far easier to do than ggarron makes it out to be. It's no more difficult than a single option in SSH. But first, what is SSH to you?


Right off the bat, please, don't fear the command line. If you're new to UNIX style systems, like Linux, the command line can seem daunting. It just sits there waiting for you to type something. Don't let it bother you, as long as you're not root you can't do much harm.

The logo of OpenSSH

Secure Shell is a command line application that allows you to replace telnet, ftp and xhost with a secure link to a remote system with serious protection of the data you transfer.


SSH uses passwords, or can be configured to use Public Key encryption, like GunPG or PGP do. Passwords can work into a system the first time, Public Key authentication has to be set up ahead of time.


For a good SSH primer, if you don't have a "Unix Power Utilities" volume sitting around, this article on WikiHow.com seems quite straight forward. There are lots of results if you use Google to look for "ssh howto", and I've noticed that the Ubuntu forums tend to cater well to "first time users". The OpenSSH.com Frequently Asked Questions list gets rather technical.