Great article describing level one and two memory caching in zfs."L2ARC is a new layer between Disk and the cache (ARC) in main memory for ZFS. It uses dedicated storage devices to hold cached data. The main role of this cache is to boost the performance of random read workloads. The intended L2ARC devices include 1K/15K RPM disks like short-stroked disks, solid state disks (SSD), and other media with substantially faster read latency than disk." Understanding ZFS & ZFS ARC/L2ARC RootPrompt.org | 7/26/10 12:16 PM

The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is a robust application for editing and manipulating digital images. In this article, you will learn how to get started with the GIMP code, how to build the project from the Git repositories, and how to find your way around the code tree. And you will build an example application that creates a whole new painting tool for the program."Dive into the code base of the GNU Image Manipulation Program and add to it" RootPrompt.org | 7/24/10 12:21 PM

Java language is the tool of choice for Android developers. The Android runtime uses its own virtual machine, Dalvik, which is not the usual Java virtual machine that most Java developers are used to. In this article you will learn advanced Java features and how they are implemented on Android. This includes features such as concurrency, networking, and database access." Implement concurrency, networking, and database access in Android" http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-gourmetand RootPrompt.org | 7/22/10 12:17 PM

Look at how the leading Python testing frameworks provide robust auto-discovery of your application tests. Make sure your applications are written right the first time, and that they stay working through months and years of further tweaks and improvements. RootPrompt.org | 7/20/10 12:07 PM

In Part 1 learn to Install and configure a simple cluster and discover ways to monitor and manage Hadoop using its core Web interfaces. In Part 2 Install configure a multinode cluster and dig into the management aspects of Hadoop. "How to use Hadoop in a single-node and multinode cluster" http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-hadoop-1/index.html?ca=dgr-lnxw1HadoopP1dth-LX RootPrompt.org | 7/19/10 12:08 PM

In this five-part series, you will take a closer look at several new technologies that are part of HTML5, that can have a huge impact on mobile Web application development. Part 1: Combine HTML5, geolocation APIs, and Web services to create mobile mashups Part 2: Unlock local storage for mobile Web applications with HTML5 Part 3: Make mobile Web applications work offline with HTML5 Part 4: Using Web Workers to speed up your mobile Web applications Part 5: Develop new visual UI features in RootPrompt.org | 7/16/10 12:25 PM

With the Linux virtual file system switch (VFS), you can create file systems on a variety of devices, from traditional disk, USB flash drives, memory, and other storage devices. You can even embed a file system within the context of another file system. Discover what makes the VFS so powerful, and learn its major interfaces and processes. RootPrompt.org | 7/13/10 12:25 PM

Do you know what to do when the performance of your UNIX network and the speed at which you can transfer files or connect to services suddenly comes to a stop? How do you diagnose the issues and work out where in your network the problems lie? This article looks at some quick methods for finding and identifying performance issues and the steps to start resolving them. RootPrompt.org | 7/12/10 12:04 PM

Much like a vernacular, the universe of UNIX tools changes almost perpetually. New tools crop up frequently, while others are eternally modernized and adapted to suit emerging best practices. To speak UNIX fluently, you have to keep up with whats New and good. RootPrompt.org | 7/11/10 12:20 PM

Linux ordinarily uses Cron to automatically perform routine system maintenance on desktop or laptop computers, however not running Cron routinely can result in monstrously large log files and other problems. You can offload most or all of your usual daily and longer-interval Cron jobs onto Anacron enabling your computer to run regular maintenance jobs whenever the computer is powered on, even if those times are unpredictable. RootPrompt.org | 7/10/10 12:17 PM

Accelerate your porting efforts by following this six-step guide to porting from Solaris to Linux on POWER. Learn the differences between Solaris and Linux on POWER that you commonly encounter during a port. Also learn about tools for performance analysis and software packaging for Linux on POWER. RootPrompt.org | 7/9/10 12:09 PM

Was always a pine fan before I went to Gmail. "Many geeks ditch the heavy graphical or web-based mail clients for a lean, mean solution: mutt. Mutt's a character-based Mail User Agent (MUA) that snaps to your every command. It also provides powerful features for customization, organizing large volumes of email (especially from mailing lists), and interfacing to other applications." HOW TO: Teach your old Mutt some new tricks RootPrompt.org | 7/2/10 12:27 PM

Nice retrospective by computer world."After batting around some ideas for a new system, Thompson wrote the first version of Unix, which the pair would continue to develop over the next several years with the help of colleagues Doug McIlroy, Joe Ossanna and Rudd Canaday. Some of the principles of Multics were carried over into their new operating system, but the beauty of Unix then (if not now) lay in its less-is-more philosophy." Unix turns 4 RootPrompt.org | 6/12/10 12:22 PM

Learn how to better integrate scripts with command-line tools. Examine using shell_exec(), exec(), passthru(), and system(); safely passing information to the command line; and safely retrieving information from it. See how to integrate closely with underlying shell commands and folding any return values into your interfaces and processes. RootPrompt.org | 6/7/10 12:24 PM

The battleground has shifted from the Operating System to the hypervisor, and Linux has a clear role to play. One of the most important modern innovations of Linux is its transformation into a hypervisor. Learn about KVM and Lguest and why the most important modern innovations of Linux is its transformation into a hypervisor RootPrompt.org | 6/7/10 12:09 PM

The ideas in this article may help you breathe life (and some additional security) into your old machines and make better use of Linux on aging hardware. A lack of physical memory can severely hamper Linux performance. Llearn how to accurately measure the amount of memory your Linux system uses. You also get practical advice on reducing your memory requirements using an Ubuntu system as an example. RootPrompt.org | 6/3/10 12:26 PM

This article compares and contrasts some of the innovations of the latest releases of AIX 6.1, Solaris 1, and HP-UX. Learn the differences on how to work with certain tasks, such as networking and performance tuning. Also, see at a high level some of the virtualization differences among these big three. You decide what you prefer best. RootPrompt.org | 5/30/10 12:12 PM

Some nice info in this."Most of the time, your screen's capabilities should be identified using something called EDID - Extended Display Identification Data. This is a chunk of information sent from your display to your graphics card, and normally contains information such as your screen's model and manufacturer, resolution timings and display size. X then uses this data to create appropriate resolutions and bit depths that make optimal use of your hardware." Modify xorg.conf for better per RootPrompt.org | 5/28/10 12:19 AM

As data centers grow in both size and complexity, the ability to manage the configuration of each and every server from a central location becomes increasingly important. Two popular Open Source configuration management solutions exist: cfengine and Puppet."Puppet is written in Ruby, is easily installed, and as we will see, can be setup and taken live in less than fifteen minutes!" Puppet + subversion in 15 minutes RootPrompt.org | 5/26/10 12:19 PM

Android, a complete operating environment based upon the Linux V2.6 kernel, promises to be a market-moving open source platform that will be useful well beyond cell phones. In this article, learn about the Android platform and how it can be used for mobile and nonmobile applications, then build your first Android application. This simple first app you build will get you started quickly, but beleive me, you'll want to do more after that. RootPrompt.org | 5/20/10 12:17 PM

Why is virtualization so important? The short answer is that virtualization enables businesses to lower their technology Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), while increasing their Return on Investment (ROI). What do the top UNIX vendors have to offer with respect to virtualization? Find out what virtualization is more scalable. Here's a look at HP's Virtual Server Environment (VSE), Sun's xVM, and IBM's PowerVM. RootPrompt.org | 5/20/10 12:02 PM

Let the pictures tell the story. This is the next version of Fedora. Fedora 11 Screenshot Tour RootPrompt.org | 5/19/10 12:08 PM

I want an ebook reader like device. But am way to cheap to get anything I have seen on the market. If the Kindle was $15 I think I would be carrying one around. Well if there was more of an electronic version discount for the books at least.""Effectively what [Pixel Qi is] doing is creating a hybrid display that combines the best of E Ink and regular LCDs," says Robert Barry, director of business development for Team Research, a company that makes an e-book reader called the Astak Mentor RootPrompt.org | 5/15/10 12:10 PM

"MySQL's clustering storage engine is a unique take on database clustering, unlike Oracle's or Microsoft SQL Servers solutions. As with those, it has its strengths and weaknesses, so you'll of course need to test, test, and test some more before you can decide if the technology is right for your application, and organization. New features that are in development include the ability to add nodes while the cluster is up and running, storing data and index information on disk, and much more. RootPrompt.org | 5/14/10 12:16 PM

Who needs GUIs?"Based on ncurses, MOC (music on console) is a popular, text-based audio player which can play various audio formats, including Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP3, MP4, WMA and WAV. The release I'm going to talk about in this article is 2.5.-alpha3, as it comes with Debian Lenny." MOC: Text based audio player RootPrompt.org | 5/13/10 12:26 PM

Vimscript is a mechanism for reshaping and extending the Vim editor. Scripting allows you to create new tools, simplify common tasks, and even redesign and replace existing editor features. This article introduces the fundamental components of the Vimscript programming language: values, variables, expressions, statements, functions, and commands. These features are demonstrated and explained through a series of simple examples. RootPrompt.org | 5/12/10 12:12 PM

I am thinking that this is basically a toy. I may be wrong though may be some good use that it could be put to. It is interesting though."The only difference is that, unlike Kandor, VirtualBSD is trapped in VMware not in a bottle. You can't install it directly to your computer as an independent OS at this point. Nor can you run it as a Live CD to get a taste of it without installing anything. VirtualBSD exists solely as a VMware appliance right now." VirtualBSD Review--Inside and Out RootPrompt.org | 5/8/10 12:11 PM

For embedded Linux engineers and aficionados, one exciting aspect of cloud computing is the sudden interest in thin Linux clients. Explore cloud computing from a Linux perspective and discover some of the most innovative and popular Linux-based solutions with a particular view toward Linux thin clients and environmentally beneficial options. RootPrompt.org | 5/7/10 12:09 PM

While I still like the command line. This is pretty cool."There are several different ways to make a multi-touch surface, but we'll focus on the one that we employed: the FTIR screen. An FTIR (short for Frustrated Total Internal Reflection) setup involves three vital components: a sheet of transparent acrylic, a chain of infrared LEDs, and a camera with an IR filter. The LEDs are arranged around the outside of the sheet of acrylic so that they shine directly into the thin side surfaces." B RootPrompt.org | 4/30/10 12:11 PM

How could you kill an open source product?"Oracle's senior management has expressed its love for Sun Microsystems' software and hardware but warned tough decisions are coming on what people and products stay. President Charles Phillips and chief corporate architect Edward Screven have committed to keeping Java open and to not killing MySQL. They also mocked the idea Oracle would simply shut down or close off certain technologies and talked tough on Oracle's smarts as a hardware vendor." Or RootPrompt.org | 4/28/10 12:28 PM

In this article, learn how to use the open source Clonezilla Live cloning software to convert your physical server to a virtual one. Specifically, see how to perform a physical-to-virtual system migration using an image-based method. RootPrompt.org | 4/25/10 12:06 PM

In this article you will learn how Aptana makes it easy to develop applications based on PHP and MySQL, and how to deploy them to the cloud. Also explore some of the critical design differences between a cloud application and a traditional N-tier application. RootPrompt.org | 4/25/10 11:51 AM

Michael Widenius aka Monty is the founder and original developer of MySQL. Not that long ago he left his job with Sun. These are his thoughts on the purchase of Sun by Oracle and how it will affect MySQL. "This brings up the question, once again, how can one own an Open Source Project. Patrick Galbraith, summed up his feelings in a recent blog post, , that the "ownership" of Free and open source projects has more to do with who provides the best stewardship of the code, rather than who RootPrompt.org | 4/24/10 12:10 PM

This is one I did not see coming. Seems like a much better fit than IBM. But what do I know. The thing I am most wondering about is what is going to be happening with MySQL."So today we take another step forward in our journey, but along a different path - by announcing that this weekend, our board of directors and I approved the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by the Oracle Corporation for $9.5/share in cash. All members of the board present at the meeting to review the transaction vot RootPrompt.org | 4/22/10 12:17 PM

Never have used memcached, but looks straight forward enough. It is interesting to me that there really is no free lunch. If your database machine is not fast enough and you spread out the load to memcached, you then need a very fast network. and so forth. "A single instance of memcached was run on a SunFire X227 (2 socket Nehalem) with 48GB of memory and an Oplin 1G card. Several external client systems were used to drive load against the server using an internally developed Memcached be RootPrompt.org | 4/22/10 12:02 PM

AIX V6.1 has introduced a secure flavor of FTP (and ftpd) based on OpenSSL, using Transport Layer Security (TLS) to encrypt both the command and the data channels of file transfer. This article coveres the various aspects of the secure FTP setup, which includes the complete FTP service configuration on the server side, as well as the client side. RootPrompt.org | 4/22/10 11:47 AM

The open source Android operating system has allowed for sophisticated Cloud Computing applications to run wherever you are. Designed to be highly efficient on battery-powered devices like the T-Mobile G1 smartphone, at heart, Android is Linux. Learn more about the several layers to the Android programming model that permit the creation of secure applications that are tailor-made for Cloud Computing. RootPrompt.org | 4/16/10 12:04 PM

Pretty cool stuff. Prices from Ettus don't look too bad. For Ham stuff that is."GNU Radio applications are mainly written in Python; however, the critical and low-level algorithms and signal processing modules are written using the C/C++ programming language, with wide usage of floating-point specific instructions for the relevant processor. Python is primarily used to setup the flow graph, after that most of the work is done in C/C++. GNU Radio is simple to use and a radio receiver can RootPrompt.org | 4/14/10 12:04 PM

Wish you could have a dedicated, open source Web chat pop up in response to a system event that lets you know what's happening in real time. Your search is over with Ajax Chat, an application that's implemented in JavaScript, PHP and MySQL. You can get that function and much more with Ajax chat, a pop up chat perfect for system adminstrators. Learn how to change configurations, and add as many alert channels as you want. Put this in your Admin toolbox, and become aware of system problems fa RootPrompt.org | 4/7/10 12:25 PM

For some PHP developers, Ajax is still a mystery. It's something that the "cool kids" and "bad boys" of Web development do, and they've never had the time, patience, or skill to take it on. If you're one of these PHP developers, never fear: By the time you're done reading this article, you'll know enough to become a real Ajax pro. This article shows how to use jQuery to easily add Ajax functionality to any PHP Web application. When you're done, you should have a pretty good grounding in not RootPrompt.org | 4/3/10 12:14 PM

Learn to scale your UNIX Python applications to multiple cores by using the multiprocessing module which is built into Python 2.6. Multiprocessing mimics parts of the threading API in Python to give the developer a high level of control over flocks of processes, but also incorporates many additional features unique to processes. RootPrompt.org | 4/3/10 11:59 AM

The year 28 will forever be remembered as the year of the off-the-shelf (OTS) supercomputer, thanks to the Los Alamos National Labs (LANL) and IBM team that constructed the world's first machine (Roadrunner) to break the peta-FLOP (1,,,,, floating-point operations per second) barrier. Get an overview of OTS strategies to architect high-performance computing (HPC) systems as well as the methods and concepts behind building HPC systems from OTS components and open source software. RootPrompt.org | 4/3/10 11:44 AM

This is really clever. Even better that it is using the free option so you can give it a try without spending a bunch of money. And yet one more reason I should buy an Intel Mac."When you first create a virtual machine, it uploads the "virtual disk" to dropbox, which can take some time depending on your upload speed but once its created it gets synced with all your dropbox client computers." Sync and Share Virtual Machine with DropBox RootPrompt.org | 3/31/10 12:12 PM

Always interesting to read about zfs."With ZFS, compression is built directly into the I/O pipeline. When compression is enabled on a dataset (filesystem or LUN), data is compressed just before being sent to the spindles and decompressed as it's read back. Since this happens in the kernel, it's completely transparent to userland applications, which need not be modified at all. Besides the initial configuration (which we'll see in a moment is rather trivial), users need not do anything to ta RootPrompt.org | 3/28/10 12:06 PM

Life's certainties include death and taxes but also the advancement of the GNU/Linux operating system, and the last two kernel releases did not disappoint. The 2.6.28 and 2.6.29 releases contain an amazing amount of new functionality, such as a cutting-edge enterprise storage protocol, two new file systems, WiMAX broadband networking support, and storage integrity checking. Discover why it's time to upgrade. RootPrompt.org | 3/28/10 11:51 AM

This article describes how you can setup and configuration of iSCSI shared disks, and build a sample configuration of true shared disks and SD secondary servers on Ubuntu Linux. By following this procedure, you should be able to customize your own shared disks and SD secondary servers on Ubuntu Linux. You can also easily adapt the instructions for other Linux distributions. RootPrompt.org | 3/26/10 9:13 AM