goozbach's Techtips

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October 31, 2005

Updated VIM Goodies

I took the time to update the movement table to use the new GuruLabs KeyCaps font. Check it out
here

Posted by sjansen at 10:41 PM

October 24, 2005

A Call to Action!

The Red Hat Network, or RHN for short, is a powerfull centralized administration system created by Red Hat for their product RHEL. It has saved me on various occasions. Managing a large number of Linux systems becomes very easy when RHN is involved. The problem is, RHN is only available for RHEL. To manage systems which are using Fedora Core or other distrubutions. I've decided to start ambitious path and create a system availble to all yum-capable distros.

Introducing YUMAMP. This project has been knocking around in my head for the past couple weeks. I finally decided to jump to it and start getting to work on it. And here's the best part... YOU can help. Check out the current project page here and see if you have some of the skills that could be used to make this project a reality. If you think you'll have some time and/or skills to put towards this project please email me: derek at gurulabs dot com with the subject line yumamp. Thank you and goodnight.

Posted by sjansen at 9:43 PM

Keep your pants on

Understanding the initialization process of your Linux distro is quite important, as the boot sequence is where the majority of problems occur. It's also very useful to know and understand how to create or modify a System-V init script for dealing with starting and stopping of services.

For this reason, I've taken the Pants script originally written by one Conrad Parker and updated and improved it.

I've updated the script to be the 'best practice' on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Fedora Core system running RHEL3/4 or FC3/4 respectively.

Here are some of the various improvements I've made:

• Comments -- I've added various comments describing the functionality of each piece.
  The script is now over 25% comments
• Functionalize -- The original script as written by Conrad calls itself for restart for the restart function.
  My script uses bash subroutines for increased performance / decreased resources.
• SYS-V includes -- This pants script makes use of the /etc/sysconfig/ directory to store an included config file which houses the tunable parameters.
• Real-World example -- Instead of just going through the actions of running a SYS-V script we start and stop an actual network daemon.
• Distrofy -- Made use of the Red Hat specific sysvinit included functions file. /etc/init.d/functions
  This includes the daemon, action, status, and killproc functions.
• Packagfacation -- I've created a RPM package which includes the script, config files, .spec file, and everything one would need to recreate this package elsewhere.

There are various other small improvements that I may have missed, if so I'll update this page later listing them.

NEWS!

Pants script just been released. Find the rpm package here.
Find the spec file here.
And the script itself here.

Posted by sjansen at 8:38 PM

October 7, 2005

VIM freebies

VI or VIM... there is a name which will inspire hope or despair in the hardiest of the command line jockies. I have adopted as my goal to teach the layperson the beneifits of learning the big VIM monster, and here are some of the tricks and tools I've come across

To begin, lets first talk about the ULTIMATE of all VIM resources: VIM.org. This website is the holy grail for all things VI / VIM. You can find scripts, tips & tricks, and various other tools. Quite a resource.

The second and third resources I want to talk about are a VIM cheat sheet created by Laurent Grégoire. And a VIM movement table created by your's truly. The cheat sheat card is relased under the GPL and is avalible in a variety of formats including pdf txt and others. Find this cheat sheet here.
The movement table was created as a guide to use as I'm teaching the GL120 Intro to Linux course. I provide it here as little more than a "here ya go". Basicly it's the commands you can use to move in specific directions. Here's the movement table:

And finally, the ULTIMATE VIM learning tool would be to take our GL120 course. There isn't much better than an instructor led, lab task re-enforced learning experience.

Enjoy. And don't forget to defend your editor of choice to the death :) VIVA EL VIM!!!

(edit) updated picture with keycaps version

Posted by sjansen at 5:08 PM