To find out the World Wide Name / World Wide Identifier of a Fibre channel controller under Linux you actually have multiple possibilities. A very common way is to read the /sys directory. In this virtual file system there are e.g. special files which contain further information about the hardware. Below the folder …

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Sometimes it is necessary to patch the Linux source code - e.g. after new drivers or security bugfixes have been applied. As a rule this task is done by your chosen distributor - but maybe you don't want to wait for that (or you like doing this on your own). I'm currently preparing myself for the LPIC-2 certification - …

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Recently I stumped upon the following error while creating GPG keys for signing self-created RPM packages : 1can't connect to `/home/su-rpmdev/.gnupg/S.gpg-agent': No such file or directory 2gpg-agent[14392]: command get_passphrase failed: Operation cancelled 3gpg: cancelled by user 4gpg: Key generation canceled. For …

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If you use Open Monitoring Distribution (OMD) and don't want to setup a full-fledged Postfix or Sendmail service (e.g. because it is a test system) you might want to have a look at the alternative tool ssmtp for relaying mails to an external mail server. The tool is only recommend if you don't need any local mail …

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It is often unjustifiable said that implementing high-availability under Linux is way too complex. Of course you will have to be patient while spending some time in learning the required basics - but all this is feasible for an experienced administrator (or someone who wants to be such an administrator some day). This …

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OpenVPN Connect is a good OpenVPN client for iOS devices with version 5.0 or higher. Using this app VPN tunnels can be managed and used comfortably. Unfortunately the respective OpenVPN configuration files can't be edited directly on the iPhone, iPod or iPad like in the Android application. The first setup might be …

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Many administrators or IT enthusiasts still might know Common Desktop Environment (CDE) from old UNIX days. Introduced in 1993, it was Unix's standard desktop for HP-UX, IBM AIX, Sun Solaris and Tru64 for more than 10 years. Even if Solaris dropped its CDE support 3 years ago, the old desktop is still used in HP-UX, …

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nslookup and ifconfig are two well-known tools for configuration the network of Unix/Linux hosts and checking whether DNS is working properly. ifconfig was part of the 4.2BSD distribution in 1983 for the first time and quickly became the standard tool for network configuration - even commerical Unices like Solaris or …

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It's doubtless that Ubuntu is one of the most innovative Linux distributions - it made Linux desktops becoming more user-friendly and - thanks to this - raised the acceptance for end users in the last years. Currently the gossip factory is working overtime again - some reliable sources announced that some big strategy …

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If you install and configure a Postfix mail server for relaying mails using an external smarthost you might be puzzled about the following error message: 1Mar 19 17:00:22 hostname01 postfix/smtp[2003]: warning: SASL authentication failure: No worthy mechs found The reason for this issue can be really trivial - in my …

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