Linux Tips & Tricks

What I love about our global Linux community - is that everybody tries to help the other. Maybe, it is changing, but I never heard anything like “pay me and I will tell you why this thing is not working”.  Of course, not everybody is savvy, some folks just give you plain wrong advice, so watch it, guys.

Yet, one may see, who knows his subject really well, when you start meeting the guy and try to do what he says and it, basically, works. In the previous entry I was talking about CentOS and how good it is.  Now, there is this guy whose nickname is “falko”. I don’t know where he is from. For all I know, he is from Europe, possibly from Berlin (but I could be wrong).

For several years he helps Linux community with Howto tutorials. He has the whole series that he calls “perfect server”, where he tells how to set up a LAMP server with DNS, E-mail and FTP and put on top of it open source web hosting panel ISPConfig. I can’t agree 100 % with what he recommends and this is understandable. First of all, I don’t use ISPConfig, I avoid ProFTPd and  I am not in web hosting business, I work for web analytics company.  Yet, I must admit, that falko is pretty consistent and with a little tweaking,  you can adjust his recommendations to your needs.

So, I appreciate this guy’s help because he has been writing his stuff about perfect CentOs, Fedora and RedHat Linux server installation for several years. As soon as a new version appears, I bet there will be  new falko’s tutorials with pictures and detailed explanations. I also like that in each tutorial he tells how to set up Postfix with TLS, and that part always works, if you follow him line by line.

To make a long story short,  I recommend you to try his latest stuff, related to CentOS installation for web hosting, and if you like it you can read more of his words of wisdom spread all over  HowToForge web site.

I still like RedHat servers and Fedora, what can I say? It is like an old heartache that never really goes away. I used to install RedHat Linux on multiple boxes when it was really free, if you know what I mean. Fedora, naturally, was another story. Due to its experimental nature, it was kind of risky to set it up as a production server - too much headache if something goes wrong. But I know a lot of system administrators braver than me, who, actually, run Fedora versions as production servers.

Well, I don’t know about you, guys, but I can’t afford to pay thousands of bucks for RedHat server “support”. That is why, it was such  a relieve for me when CentOS showed up and  saved the day. For those who does not know (is there anyone, I wonder?),  CentOS is a clone of RedHat server and a damn good one.  Its name has nothing to do with cents. This is just an abbreviation for Community Enterprise Operating System.

When I downloaded for free and installed my first CentOS I could not believe my eyes - it turned out as stable as its expensive daddy RedHat.  And if fact, that is what this company aims to - to be 100% binary compatible, as RedHat. You know that when a company has great product, in most cases this simple fact guarantees company’s longevity. I don’t know, if the guys there make any decent money. All I can say is that CentOS recently turned its 4th year of existence - this proves something, doesn’t it?

CentOS is pretty consistent, they produce a new version as soon as RedHat comes out with a new server.  So, I would say, it is, basically, the same as RedHat, but better, because it is free. And a number of web hosting companies are using CentOS for the same reasons.  And my web analytics company is no exception. So, why don’t you go and try CentOS too?

I think many pros would agree that Putty is still the best free ssh client to use on Windows machines. It has  always been loyal to me and, practically, never let me down for the last ten years or so, since I’ve been working for my web analytics company. Putty comes in various versions: you can download just Putty for all your telnet and ssh needs, or you can also add to it PuttyTel, PSFTP and other clients. Putty.exe is just one file, after download you can move it right on your desktop and open directly from there.

I noticed not so long ago, though, that there were no recent updates for Putty. The last client 6.0 beta was produced for download on April 29, 2007. I really don’t know what happened, maybe developer just got tired of us or moved to some other venues. But the client is still working great. In fact, I just installed it on another new Windows XP box  and use it without any issues. Here is the link, so you can download your Putty client.