February Linux Freeware

A sampling of system utilities

By James Morris

Common scenarios where a tomsrtbt disk might come in handy include when you forget the root password to a system or a file system crash on the root partition. Tomsrtbt can also be useful for troubleshooting general hardware and network problems on PCs that don't normally run Linux. Tomsrtbt is available as preconfigured packages for installation from DOS or Linux. In both cases, installation is a simple matter of inserting a floppy disk into the drive and then running a script.

Once booted, a small file system and kernel are loaded into RAM, then a couple of ASCII penguins greet you at the LILO prompt. After logging in, kernel modules for specific hardware components may be loaded as required. Common system utilities such as mount, fsck and vi are available, along with around 100 man pages for reference. As some of these utilities are heavily cut down and even implemented as sed scripts in some cases, the man pages are useful for determining their expected behaviour. Luxury items include telnet and 'snarf' (a multipurpose network client).

Tomsrtbt will run happily under 8M of RAM or more (don't forget that it needs space to set up the ramdisk as well as the kernel and any loaded modules). Check with the documentation if you need to work on systems with less memory.

Currently in early development, GtkSamba essentially provides a front end to the editing of the system samba.conf file. Alternative configuration files may also be managed from the GUI. It is probably best to grab the latest version from the Web site at this stage, as new versions are being released regularly with bug fixes and more features. Recent changes include the addition of extensive built-in help based on the manual page.

The package is available in RPM and Debian formats, and building from source requires Gtk development libraries to be installed. GtkSamba is probably not ready for use on production systems (at least not at the time of writing), but it may be useful for home users as it helps to develop an understanding of Samba. Developers may also find it an ideal OSS project to become involved with.

This is a very promising application and is well worth a look.

Rsync normally uses existing rsh or ssh mechanisms for communication, the latter providing strong authentication and privacy facilities. It may also be configured to provide standalone services, and is commonly used in this way to provide anonymous mirror access to CVS repositories. Rsync is very well conceived and implemented, and is in wide use by system administrators across the world. Typical uses include network-based backups and mirroring of FTP, CVS and Web sites.

Installation is simple. If compiling, ensure that you have either rsh or ssh installed then unpack the source archive and run the configure script. Type 'make install', and you should be ready to start. Check the man page for useful examples and extensive usage information.

Rsync is a great example of a successful open-source project, where solid design, strong leadership and ongoing collaborative efforts combine to create a high quality software package. Highly recommended.

For anyone even remotely familiar with text formatting or markup systems, SDF is a breeze to get started with. Simple tags are used to specify common formatting directives such as headings, paragraphs, lists and tables. Once the source file has been created, the Perl-based sdf script is used to convert it into the required format. In some cases, such as RTF and PostScript, further conversion stages and external tools may be required, details of which are provided in the documentation. Specialised format types such as email addresses and URLs are expressed logically. This allows SDF to generate the correct formatting for the target format, and eliminates some of the common problems experienced when converting between higher level formats.

SDF is an ideal candidate for use in organisational documentation projects where multiple output formats are required. Extensive documentation is provided and may be found at the Web site, along with details of useful resources such as mailing lists and related packages.