Why You Want to Include an FAQ In Your Site

Congratulations! You've got a brand new site and it's doing pretty well. You check your statistics every day and the hits and page views keep climbing, your links are all in order and everything looks very good. On top of that, your guestbook is filling with great comments and you're getting a few emails now and then with praise and perhaps a question or two.

Now is a good time to sit back and examine the subject (or subjects) of your site. What is the theme? What are you trying to accomplish? Then once you've got your site visualized, start to think about it from the perspective of a new visitor. Put yourself in their shoes, and assume you know nothing. What questions would you have? Write down these questions or type them into a document as you think of them.

What you are creating is a list of frequently asked questions (commonly abbreviated as FAQ). These are questions that your visitors may have about your site, the subject or theme, or even about you. Just about any question is valid, as long as it is helpful to your visitors.

Let's create an example of, say, a web site about model railroading. Now, what questions would you have if you surfed to that site? You might want to know "what is it?", "when did it start?", "how much does it cost?", "why does this site exist?" and "who is the webmaster?".

That last question is more important than it seems at first glance, as putting a face behind a web site increases it's credibility and makes it more likely that your visitors will (a) return, (b) tell their friends, and (c) purchase something (if your site is commercial). Some web guru's will tell you never to include information the webmaster - these people simply do not understand human nature. In general, people will trust another person far more easily than they will trust a web site or a machine.

Once you've got your list of questions, go ahead and create one or more web pages (create as many as you like). Add the questions to the pages, along with the answers. If you feel like linking to articles within your site go ahead. I would avoid including external links at this point, as you want to get people interested in your site, not someone else's.

Remember to keep your answers short and to the point. You are not trying to duplicate your web site. Your goal is to give your visitors some quick answers to their questions to get them more interested in looking around further.

As you are adding your questions and answers, you will most likely come up with additional questions. By all means, add those to your frequently asked questions as well.

Some webmasters like to include a form at the bottom of their questions to allow people to submit additional one's if desired. This is a great idea, as it is an easy way to improve your web site's interactivity - which is usually very good for getting people to return later.

I would not recommend, however, doing what I've seen some webmasters do - automate this function. I guess the idea is to get your visitors involved in answering the questions. In this case, the FAQ becomes more or less a moderated message board.

I prefer just to receive my visitors questions in an email, which I can then either answer directly or add to the FAQ when I get the chance.

FAQ's are great for answering simple questions that your visitors may have before they send you an email. It is important to remember to include a link to the FAQ in a prominent place on every single page of your website - you want people looking at them when they have questions.

In summary, FAQ's tend to pull visitors into your site and make them feel better about it, which means they are more likely to return for more again and again.

Source: http://www.internettipsandsecrets.com/article-077.asp

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Internet

Windows XP Safe and Secure?

Microsoft has come under fire lately because of their habit of releasing software which has serious flaws, most especially problems with security. Unfortunately the criticism is justified and verges on the criminal: flaws (implementation bugs as well as just plain silly design decisions) have resulted in literally tens of billions of dollars in damage and losses worldwide.

Don't believe me? Think of all of the viruses that have devastated not hundreds, not thousands, not even millions, but tens of millions of systems. All of these viruses are allowed to "breed" (spread) because of one of the silliest, misguided, downright stupidest decisions ever made by a major corporation. This was the addition of email scripting - without that incredibly powerful and almost totally unused (and many would argue not necessary) feature viruses could not spread in a matter of days or even hours. Since when does anyone need to script their email program anyway? I've never heard of a single person or corporation using this feature legitimately.

On top of this kind of issue (and there are several others), Microsoft's products tend to have blatant bugs - problems in programs which should have been caught by adequate design, testing and quality assurance. The most famous of these is probably the series of bugs that led to Nimda and Code Red. Again, millions of systems were damaged and countless millions of man hours were wasted in efforts to eradicate these issues.

The firestorm that landed on Microsoft as a direct result of these and other problems and issues was fantastic to behold. Naturally Microsoft responded, trying desperately to reduce the impact on their business. They claimed the problems were with administrators who did not apply patches, with people reporting problems too early (thus giving hackers information before fixes were complete) and any number of other problems. It seemed that everyone except for Microsoft was doing the wrong thing - of course, the mighty Microsoft could do no wrong.

In spite of what the left side of their face was saying, Microsoft did introduce some changes. They announced a new security service to help keep systems locked down and system administrators happy. Automatic security patch downloads were added to Windows XP and, I'm sure, dozens of other changes happened.

With the release of Windows XP, Microsoft was adamant that they had tested it from top to bottom. The software giant even claimed it had written a special program to check for the nastiest kind of software problem - buffer overflows. You see, a buffer overflow is one of the most common ways for a hacker to break the security of a system. It does this by writing some code beyond the end of where it is supposed to write it. The code is then executed in privileged mode to give the hacker entrance to the system.

Well, a short time ago Microsoft released a patch to Windows XP to fix exactly this problem. It seems there is a buffer overflow problem in the UPnP service. What the heck is UPnP, you ask? That's a good question.

UPnP is a special plug-and-play service. What is plug-and-play? Well, when you install a new device on Windows XP it automatically detects it and configures it for you. Plug-and-play is a very nice feature, and it works very well in Windows XP.

On the other hand, UPnP is a special kind of plug-and-play. This looks for printers and other devices added on the network (wired and wireless). It's actually a pretty cool idea. Now, when someone adds a printer to the network you must configure it on each and every workstation. With UPnP the configuration is totally automatic.

However, UPnP is very, very new and there is almost no real support for it with any devices. So UPnP is more or less not used, and it is certainly not needed by home computer users. By shipping Windows XP with the product Microsoft was solving the classic "which came first, the chicken or the egg" problem. They had to send out support for these devices in order to convince vendors to start providing them.

But Microsoft made one big mistake - when you install Windows XP, this unused service is turned on! What that means is everyone who has ever installed Windows XP is running this service.

And the service has a bug - a huge bug, the kind of bug that if it hit your windshield would smash the car and cause it to explode in flames, killing all of the passengers and the driver.

The problem is very bad, and Microsoft has released a patch to fix it. But the story gets even more interesting.

The National Infrastructure Protection Center released an advisory stating that everyone who is not using this service should disable it. This is an incredible statement from this agency. What they are implying is the UPnP service problem directly puts the United States computer infrastructure at risk (that's what this agency protects)! That's a big thing for them to be saying.

What are they afraid of? That hackers and perhaps hostile governments can use the bug to their advantage. You see, special programs called Zombies can be installed on Windows XP machines with this problem, and Zombies can be used to launch distributed denial of service attacks on computers throughout the world.

In fact, I'll bet you heard about the denial of service attack performed by the Code Red worm recently against the Whitehouse (the attack failed, if you remember). That's exactly what this agency is afraid of and what they are trying to prevent.

So the next time you are thinking about giving all of your credit card data to a site which uses Microsoft Passport, think about this article. Do you want to trust all of your confidential data to a company which cannot keep it secure? Just think about it, read some more, and make the rational decision.

For more information, check out the following articles.

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS01-059 http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url= /technet/security/bulletin/MS01-059.asp

eEye Digital Security http://www.eeye.com/html/Research/Advisories/AD20011220.aspl

NIPC ADVISORY 01-030.2 Universal Plug and Play Vulnerabilities http://www.nipc.gov/warnings/advisories/2001/01-030-2.asp

Source: http://www.internettipsandsecrets.com/article-287.asp

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Internet, Tips Windows

Writing For The Web: More Places To Get Ideas

There are many places all over the place to get article ideas. Part 1 of this series explored some of the locations on the internet. This part goes into some of the places you can find ideas outside of the web.

Libraries - Believe it or not, libraries still exist and are going string. In fact, there are dozens of libraries in just about every major cities, and most towns have at least one. Even the town where I grew up, Lake Arrowhead, California, had a small public library.

Libraries are great places to get ideas for articles. I like to just visit and wander up and down the isles, looking at titles, occasionally opening a book and flipping through the pages. It's rare that I don't walk away with at least one or two ideas which turn directly into articles.

Botanical Gardens - A few miles from my house is one of the best places on the planet - the Huntington Library. This is an awesome collection of art museums and displays which is not equaled anywhere in the world (at least in my humble opinion). One of the things that makes this magical place even more enjoyable is the surrounding botanical gardens.

The library gardens are divided up into different habitats, duplicating most of the major environments of the planet. I've spent many enjoyable hours wandering through the place, just looking at the plants and environments, getting dozens and dozens of article ideas.

Something about the gardens relaxes my mind and causes the thinking process to become calmer and more organized. Ideas just seem to float up to the surface, waiting for me to just pluck them up and convert them into articles.

Museums - Of course, museums are excellent places to get article ideas. I have the pleasure of living just a few miles from a number of excellent museums including La Brea tar pits (dinosaur and extinct animal articles), the Air And Space Museum (obvious), Museum of Science and Industry (technology articles), the Natural History Museum (thousands of article ideas just waiting to be found) and art museums galore.

I like to visit with a pad of paper and just wander up and down the corridors, just looking at things. Ideas pop into my head and I write them down. Quite a few of these become articles (and a few stories).

Magazines - I skim over a dozen magazines every single day, looking for anything interesting. Sometimes I'll stop and read and article, but mostly I am looking for ideas for articles of my own.

I must stop here for a moment and discuss copyrights for a moment. The concept I present in these articles is how to find ideas for articles, not to copy or paraphrase other people's works. Anyone can do that, and by the way, it is illegal to "borrow" another person's work.

It is perfectly fine, however, to read an article and get an idea or two for your own. What I like to do is read an article or book and jot down a few ideas. I then let it lie for a few days, come back to it and write my own, completely original article.

For example, I read an article about raising children, and for some reason thought about how to protect plants from small kids. What a great idea for a story. So I wrote it down, and one day I'll write an article about it.

So that's the secret. Just wander around looking at things. It doesn't matter where and it doesn't matter what you look at. Your mind will start working, and before long an idea will percolate to the surface. This may be followed by another and another.

A short disclaimer. If you are not used to this kind of creative process, please understand that it can be pretty frightening. Especially to some of the students produced by our modern education system, who have been conditioned to not have original thoughts anymore. Don't worry, that strange feeling you get when you visit a museum or a library is just your brain cells waking up from the long hibernation that began when you entered Kindergarten. It's not dangerous and once you get used to the feelings they can be quite intoxicating. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Source: http://www.internettipsandsecrets.com/article-122.asp

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Internet

Writing For The Web: Where To Get Article Ideas

A friend and I were talking the other day about writing. He liked to write, but even so his biggest problem was finding things to write about. My friend was astounded at the volume of writing that I do - at least one article and something as many as six, per day. Where do I get all of the ideas from?

I, in turn, was astonished myself. Why on earth would anyone have any trouble finding things to write about? In fact, my main problem has been I have so much to write about that I often find myself locked in a silent battle over which subject should be put on paper first.

People find it even more amazing when I tell them I try very hard to only write about positive events and provide helpful articles. Only rarely will you find any of my writings containing criticism, complaints or, worst of all, whining. Occasionally I will write an article which recommends against purchasing a product, seeing a movie, reading a book or visiting a web site, but these are the exception.

The world is a huge, amazing, wondrous place. Things are going on around us all of the time. There is so much good to see and do all over the planet, so very many wonderful things going on all over the place, that it's easy to find something to communicate about if only you open your eyes and look.

One of my passions is the internet. I've written over 1,000 articles about all aspects of this massive communication medium. Much of this is taken from my 23 years of experience in the computer field, and the rest is from research, reading and, most of all, questions from other people.

Although much of my writing is about the internet, I also find time to communicate about many other subjects as well. These include relationships (marriage and romance), raising children, building a career, handling office politics, current events, hobbies and history. I have yet to find a subject which I don't have something useful to contribute to other people.

How do I find so much to write about? Let me tell you some of the ways:

Many of my article ideas some from real life - For example, I have a long and happy marriage, so I like to write articles which help people with their relationships. I've also worked hard most of my life, as have most people, building a career, which is another area where I enjoy passing along tips to help others.

Question and answer sites - Sites like askme.com and askjeeves.com are perfect places to visit once in a while looking for ideas for articles. I visit and just scan the questions (and there are thousands of them), looking for anything which looks interesting. When I find something, I write an article.

Newsgroups - There are over 70,000 newsgroups. Most of these are worthless, but several thousand of them contain useful information and varied conversations. Lurk in any active newsgroup for a while and you should find something worthwhile to write about.

Yahoo and DMOZ - Visit any big directory site and you will find thousands of subjects to explore.

Egroups and Topica - There are thousands of email discussion lists available at these two sites. Sign up for a few and get articles ideas from them.

There are many other places to look for article ideas all over the internet. I tend to avoid looking at things like ezines, ebooks and web sites for article ideas. Why? Because when I look for article ideas I am not looking for answers.

What I tend to look for is questions. What kind of questions are people asking? Is there a question which begs some further analysis and a little more explanation than a simple sentence? It does not matter if someone else has already answered, as my primary purpose is not to provide raw information.

My primary purpose is to help people understand. You can find out raw information from any number of books or encyclopedias, but finding out how to clean up the clutter in your bedroom, well, that takes something different. That requires the experience and knowledge passed from someone who has had to go through the experience of cleaning many times, so many times that it has become easy.

Interestingly, I've found that television is not as worthwhile as one would expect for article ideas. Excluding a few reviews, I've found television to be a vast wasteland, void of anything but the most trivial or violent concepts in our society. The exceptions are, of course, channels such as Nova, History channel and Discovery.

So the next time you are trying to figure out something to write about for your own ezine, web site or ebook, just check out a newsgroup, elist or directory on a subject which you find interesting. Sooner or later, you will get an idea and you can start writing.

Source: http://www.internettipsandsecrets.com/article-121.asp

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Internet

Yahoo Reluctantly Takes A Stand

A fact that many journalists miss is that communicating something gives that thing power. If you communicate something enough it will gain a life all of it's own.

An example is the Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles a few years ago (I was stuck in the middle of these). A fight broke out on a street corner, and before long it had spread all the city, eventually requiring the governor to call out the National Guard to restore the peace.

What really happened here? In my opinion, we had a crisis which was created by the news. If the fight had not been covered live on television in the manner under which it had been reported, there may not have been any riots at all. Certainly they would not have spread as quickly and lasted as long...

Another great example is your average terrorist or hijacker. These people and groups are actually quite weak (otherwise they would fight in the open instead of in the shadows) and need media attention in order to survive and spread.

Following this line of reasoning, the reporter who prints a story and justifies it by saying, "I only report the news", is misguided at best, and evil at worst. He is not just reporting the news ... he is granting power to whatever he is reporting on and he must use that power wisely.

That's why I was very happy when Yahoo (however reluctantly) announced it will "no longer allow items that are associated with groups which promote or glorify hatred and violence, to be listed on any of Yahoo's commerce properties."

Freedom of speech advocates are up in arms over this (of course) as Yahoo was strongly pressured by the French government. However, this is a victory for thinking and peaceful people everywhere. There is no need in our society to grant power to hate groups and violence mongers. And there certainly is no need to give them an outlet for their wares.

With the right of Freedom of Speech comes a grave responsibility ... the freedom to choose NOT to speak. Sometimes what you don't say (and what you don't allow to be said) can be far more powerful than what you say. Of course, governments have no business telling the people that they govern (or the media) what they can and cannot say ... it is up to the people to decide what they do not want to say.

Source: http://www.internettipsandsecrets.com/article-009.asp

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Internet

You Can Do Better Than Banner Exchanges

They look so tempting, don't they? The promotional materials sound great: get 2 impressions for every three you show, get one impression per impression, get ten thousand free impressions when you sign up! Sometimes they are real fancy, with different size graphics, pop-up windows and the new fad, pop-behind windows. There is even one service (and probably many more) that will pop-up a full page of ads (which they nicely allow you to add a couple of banners to) behind your site!

Of course we are talking about banner exchanges. The concept here is simple. Create a banner and submit it to the banner exchange. They will show your banner on other sites, and in return you will display other people's banners on your site.

There is usually a ratio of their impressions to your impressions. This means for every 2 or 3 times you display a banner from the exchange another site will show your banner a specified number of times. A common ratio is 3:2, which means every three times you show a banner, your's will be displayed twice.

So what's the problem? Well, I've personally experimented with many different banner exchanges, including some of the more exotic versions, and I have yet to run across one that actually produces any meaningful traffic. By that I mean the number of hits generated by the exchange did not increase by a detectable amount.

You see, a couple of years ago when the internet was much younger and more innocent, banners were all the rage. Everything seemed new and fresh, and it was not uncommon for as many as 5% of the people who viewed a banner ad to click it (this is known as click-thru).

Now you are lucky is a banner produces a click-thru rate of .5%, and rates of less than .1% are increasingly common. What's happened? People are just plain tired of banners. Thus, as a method to promote a web site banners are simply not useful anymore. (The exception is professionally designed, precisely targeted, perfectly tested banner campaigns).

In addition, banners take away space from your web site viewing area. This is especially true of the higher ratio programs, as they often require the banner to be placed on the top of your home page. This not only takes away from your web site viewable area, it's takes it from the most premium area - the top of the home page.

Even if you do place the banners at the bottom of the page you are still reducing the load time. Banners tend to load slowly anyway because of their site, and it often seems as if the servers running the exchanges are slower than most. Thus, adding one or two banners at the bottom of your page could cause it to load very slowly.

On top of all of this, you generally do not have very much control over which banners display on your site. Some programs do allow you to specify categories or exclude certain types of sites, but that is just about as far as you can go. Most exchanges do manually check each banner to be sure it is suitable, but you are basically giving up control of a part of your web site to someone you do not know and who may not have the same taste as you.

Even worse are the pop-up window variations on banner exchanges. The windows which pop-up in front of a web page are truly obnoxious and should, in my opinion, never be used. I don't know about you, but I really hate it when the first thing that I see when I surf to a web site is a pop-up ad!

There are several kinds of pop-up windows. Your standard window will pop up when you enter the site. An exit window (also known as an exit console) will display when you leave the page (and the smarter ones display when you leave the site, not the page).

Another variation is to have the window jump behind everything else (I refer to these a "pop behind" windows). The theory here is you (the viewer) will eventually have to look at the window, at the very least to close it. I've also seen these windows immediately minimize to the tool bar, and recently I noticed that these are starting to include timers. By this I mean the window minimizes, then periodically a small window pops up to give you an advertisement. This could occur long after you have left the site.

The most obnoxious, horrible banner exchange program combined the worst of all of these features. If you signed up your site for this program you would get a web page which includes a couple of dozen banners of all sizes. You will then get to add your own banners to the exchange to be displayed randomly on other pages for other sites. The idea here was to cause a pop-behind window to display with all of these ads. The program offered an incredible (sarcasm intended) 10:1 ratio (meaning you display the window 10 times and you get one display on someone else's site). This is truly one of the most loathsome derivations of banners and pop-up windows that I have ever witnessed.

The final kicker is not only will you receive little or no extra traffic from these banner exchange programs - you will most likely loose far more traffic than you gain. First, by presenting a pop-up window or banner you are giving someone an opportunity to leave your site. Second, by including banners and increasing your load times you are improving the odds that someone will simply surf along somewhere else.

So the question that begs to be answered is "are banner programs useful". And the answer is a resounding "no". You've got far better tools at your disposal to promote your site.

Source: http://www.internettipsandsecrets.com/article-045.asp

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Internet

Your Own Name Servers

I've gotten downright tired of moving my site again and again. It seems there are no competent hosting companies anywhere on the planet. I don't ask for much. In addition to the usual features for a paid web host, I just want my site to be up and relatively quick. Downtime should be measured in hours per year, and at it's slowest the site should respond in less than half a second.

So far I haven't found a single hosting company that even comes close. I've tried about a dozen different firms, and they've all come up short. In fact, the most important rule of any web host is violated on a regular basis time and again. The sites are down and very slow. Virtually anything else can be tolerated, except for downtime.

Finally I sat back one day and thought long and hard about my options. I was getting very frustrated with my current hosting company because the server was timing out on occasion, causing my sites to become unavailable for a few minutes here and a few minutes there.

I started looking for hosts and saw a word that caught my eye. The word was "dedicated". Now that was a thought - a whole machine all to myself. There was some appeal to that thought, but the price was too high, or at least I thought so at the time.

Looking closer into the concept, I found a dedicated hosting service that was actually reasonably priced. For a couple of hundred dollars a month I had a web and mail server all to myself. Yes, I know that sounds high when compared to a shared hosting service, but remember this included an incredible amount of bandwidth, lots of disk space and plenty of power.

I paid for the first month and soon discovered the server had it's own name server software. This meant I no longer had to deal with an ISP for name server services.

What's so good about that? Well, as an example, some time ago I wanted to install Bigmailbox on a site. This would have allowed my visitors to have a mailbox named "theirname@renaissancefaire.org". I thought this would be a pretty cool service to offer my visitors.

The ISP would not make the change necessary to install this feature. The change requires about 1 minute, yet they would not do it. Not even for a charge. With access to my own name server I could have made this change myself. It's very simple really. Just a one line modification.

Another thing I wanted to do on occasion is create subdomains. For example, wallpaper.renaissancefaire.org. This would allow me to create sites within sites in a logical, easy to remember format.

Most of my previous ISPs would not allow me to make these changes. One of them wanted to charge $10 per change. Ten dollars for a one minute modification. Now I can do this kind of thing myself, as often as I want.

Another change that I've wanted to make also involved subdomains, but with a twist. I wanted to create a subdomain of search.renaissancefaire.org which called up a search engine on everyone.net. My old ISPs would not make this change - not one of them. Yet it was a simple one line entry in the nameserver. Now I can make these changes myself.

But a problem soon introduced itself. You see, the name server is actually entered into the domain definition at the domain registrar. This more or less informs the internet where to find your site, email server, subdomains and so on.

Registrars require at least two name servers. My site only had one. I could have defined two by asking my dedicated hosting company for another IP address, but this had a problem. The reason for requiring two name servers is redundancy. If both IP addresses are on the same machine, then that redundancy does not exist.

I needed another name server somewhere else on the internet. A little searching and I found one.

http://soa.granitecanyon.com/

This is a free service which allows people with exactly the same problem that I was facing to create their own name server entries. You simply enter the domain name, your email address and the raw DNS server table for the domain. These DNS server tables are a little tricky to set up, but the service provides excellent documentation and will not allow an invalid entry to be set up.

So what do you do? You create your entries at this service, then modify your domain at the registrar to use them (wait a couple of days after defining them, however).

I believe you can use this service even if you host your site on a normal shared host (and possibly even a free host). You would need to set up your site normally and get the ISP to set up their name servers as appropriate. Once that was done, you could go to granitecanyon.com and define your own name server entries, then proceed to the registrar a couple of days later to use those entries. Theoretically this should work fine.

What is the bottom line? If you are using a dedicated host or you want to gain some measure of control over your name servers, you can now do so. This will enable you to do what you need without paying high costs or begging your ISP for a favor.

Source: http://www.internettipsandsecrets.com/article-265.asp

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Internet

Disk Partitioning

How do I know what size to make my disk partitions?

This is one of the more often asked questions I hear. Usually the answer is "It depends", so here is my experience with partitioning Linux boxes for various applications over the last few years.

First of all it helps to know exactly what the file systems are all used for and where stuff goes. A good reference for this sort of thing is in the Linux Documentation Project's "System Administrator's Guide" or SAG. You can find a good bit of info on the file system here

Alternatively, if you have a copy of "A Practical Guide to Linux", then check out page 74.

Here is a brief rundown...

/       Root file system. Should just contain /bin, /sbin, /dev,
       /root,
       /lib, and /etc.
/usr    Programmes and source code.
/var    Variable data, such as spools, man pages, news and mail
       queues, database data.
/boot   Boot kernels.
/home   User data and "stuff".
/tmp    Temporary file locations

The / file system will never need to be more than 100Meg. Make it that.

The /usr file system will vary depending on how big your initial installation is and how much extra software you download. For a RedHat 6.2 minimal install you'll be needing about 250 to 300 Meg (typical server), and for a full install you need around 1.5 Gig (typical workstation). Other distributions will need more or less, but this is a good guide. Any extra software you download may also go in this file system, so if you are planning installing an office suite or a cad package, be aware it that it may go in here.

If you are installing software to build from a tar ball or installing software that isn't part of a vendor's distribution, like an RPM or a DEB is, you will probably want to install it in the /usr/local file system. This file system is usually left untouched by the installation or upgrade process of a linux distribution and is ideal for installing third party software. If you plan on doing a lot of this, a separate partition is a great idea, because if you want to do a re-install rather than an upgrade, you can simply tell your distribution not to format the /usr/local file system when installing and you will leave your third party software in tact. The format of the /usr/local file system is almost identical to the / file system. Handy huh?

/usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin are also the correct place to put any scripts you may write after you have your system up and running. This is preferable to placing them in /usr/bin and /usr/sbin or even /bin and /sbin, as these should really be static and left the way the distribution intended them. It also makes backing up a system much easier if all your locally created scripts are in one convenient place.

The /var file system is the most varying file system, hence its name. The function of the machine will determine how much you need. For a vanilla system, I recommend 400 Meg. This is usually sufficient for a workstation. If you are building a proxy server, you will need a separate partition, but preferably a separate disk, for /var/spool/squid. The same goes for a mail server, except the file systems of interest are /var/spool/mqueue and /var/spool/mail. The size of /var/spool/mail will depend on how much storage you want for user's mailboxes, and the size /var/spool/mqueue will depend on how much mail 'in transit' you wish to spool. Mail server's acting as a secondary MX might need a lot here.

There are other smaller directories in /var/spool that are of interest, so I would recommend a /var/spool of 300 to 500 Meg for any server application in conjunction with the /var of 400 Meg. For a workstation you may be able to use the 400Meg /var partition to house your /var/spool as well, but it may pay to enlarge it a bit.

/var/log, as the name suggests, is the final resting place for logs. Once again the size of this will depend on the function of the system, but as a general rule it is highly recommended that you have a separate /var/log to your /var partition, regardless of the machine's function. This way any stray system logs that fill up will have no effect on your system other than stopping logging. This goes for both servers and workstations alike. If you are running a heavily loaded proxy, mail or web server, you will need heaps and heaps of disk space here. Fully loaded proxy servers in peering arrangements can easily generate hundreds of thousands of bytes of log files an hour. The same goes for mail servers. The mail can come in and go out very quickly on a fast link, but the log files stay around. You also don't want a slash-dotted web site to fill up your logging directory, so careful thought here will pay off in the future.

The /var file system is also often used for the storage of database data. /var/db or /var/lib is the file system that is used, and you will need to keep this big enough to hold your data. Often a separate fast SCSI disk or RAID will make your database much faster. IO is often the biggest bottleneck in database systems, and an IDE drive in /var/db or /var/lib wont help.

The /boot directory is probably the most useful file system, and often the most forgotten. Having your kernels on a separate partition will make rescuing a system that has crashed a whole lot easier. This means that booting the system and recovering the partitions can be attacked as two separate tasks. Having a small /boot in a primary partition is also the best cure for the famous "I just installed linux and now all I get is 'LI'" LILO installation problems. LILO still has issues with hard drive space above 1024 cylinders. A small 20 Meg /boot partition as the first primary partition on the system will alleviate this. Some distributions, such as RedHat, are smart enough to assign automatically the first primary partition to /boot for just this reason.

/home is where you hang your hat. It is also where you "keep your stuff". Files you download, projects, mail, documents, mp3's, everything. This is the equivalent of Windows' "My Documents", "C:/download", the desktop, etc. Even if the system is only used by you at your desk, and no-one else, you should still have your own home directory in the /home file system. Don't be tempted to add partitions to the root file system such as /scripts, /downloads, etc. You are breaking stuff when you do that. Linux is still a true multiuser operating system, even if you are the only person using it. Try to keep this in mind when building a partition table. This all starts to make sense when you stop logging in as root, and start logging in as a regular user. It never ceases to amaze me how many people run X as root. *sigh*.

Many distributions nowadays are geared towards easy and quick upgrades and everything has it's place. If you keep you stuff in /home/yourname and no-where else, you can be sure that when your next upgrade of linux comes, you can just chuck in the CD and hit "upgrade" and your Metallica mp3's will still be there when your system comes back on-line.

/home is also where the storage file system for a file server should go. The same is true for web server pages, and ftp server data. Obviously if you are building a web server, have a separate /home/httpd file system on a nice fast SCSI disk. Same with /home/ftp.

Sometimes it's a great idea to have a separate /tmp directory, because temporary files can get out of control. Having /tmp on the same partition as the root file system can cause problems if you scan a 60 Meg picture into a graphics manipulation programme and it decides to store it in /tmp.

The only other partition of major interest is the swap partition. It is often a good idea to place this in the physical middle of the drive. Then the heads have less far to travel to swap out data when the system gets loaded. Alternatively you can just throw more memory at the problem.

Now I'll give you a few 'real life' examples of servers that I maintain. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Here is my bog standard workstation. It runs X. It may get used for some server functions in the future, so there is lot's of space ready. I even have a big block of space hanging of /mnt/tmp, and one day I'm sure I'll think of a use for it.

[alex@workstation alex]$ df
Filesystem           1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda13               85530     34264     46850  42% /
/dev/hda1               101089      6802     89068   7% /boot
/dev/hda6              1517920    154616   1286196  11% /home
/dev/hda12             2150420        20   2041160   0% /mnt/tmp
/dev/hda10              248895        27    236018   0% /tmp
/dev/hda5              2016016   1292380    621224  68% /usr
/dev/hda7               758936     37592    682792   5% /var
/dev/hda9               497829       657    471470   0% /var/log
/dev/hda8               758936       292    720092   0% /var/spool

This next beast is a mail server. Note the use of separate drives for critical server file systems.

[alex@mail alex]$ df
Filesystem        1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda12            79941     39339     36474  52% /
/dev/sda1             21011      5463     14463  27% /boot
/dev/sda11           701636     43332    622664   7% /home
/dev/sda9            202031        13    191587   0% /tmp
/dev/sda5           1210800    456856    692436  40% /usr
/dev/sda7            496695      7069    463981   2% /var
/dev/sda6           1009724    197880    760552  21% /var/log
/dev/sda8            496695       982    470068   0% /var/spool
/dev/sdb1           4382932    766640   3393648  18% /var/spool/mail

Here is a proxy server. Mix of SCSI and IDE.

[root@proxy /root]# df
Filesystem        1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda11           101485     28799     67446  30% /
/dev/hda1             23393      2647     19538  12% /boot
/dev/hda7            199085      2101    186704   1% /home
/dev/hda8             81954       985     76737   1% /tmp
/dev/hda5            809556    170444    597988  22% /usr
/dev/hda6            199085      4243    184562   2% /var
/dev/hda10          1611224     10408   1518968   1% /var/log
/dev/sda1          17654736    354220  16403692   2% /var/spool/squid

When partitioning a machine for use, it is often a bad idea to install everything into a single / partition. Even if you don't need separate partitions, the practice you get from partitioning disks and learning how much space each partition needs in a given situation will be invaluable when someone asks you to build a server for them. Spend a few minutes before installation considering the functions of the machine you are building and this will yield a useful and efficient partition table. The more often you do it the more of a feel you will get for how much space your distribution needs for different tasks. Now that you have the above information there is no excuse for poor partitioning, and you can help make the world a safer place for data!

Next time you see...

[lame@nothought /]$ df
Fileystem      1k-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1       17654736   1354220  15403692   8% /

...you can do something about it!

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Linux

IP Masquerading

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Linux

Command Pipelines

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Linux

Finding The Right Manual Page

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Linux

Superblocks

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Linux

Zombies

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Linux

IO Redirection

UNIX had the concept of IO redirection long before DOS copied and bastardised the concept. The UNIX IO redirection concept is fundamental to many of the things that you can do with UNIX, and it is quite a well-developed idea, so we will explore this concept here.

Why do I mention UNIX at all? Well, Linux is a UNIX operating system!

Under UNIX, all programs that run are given three open files when they are started by a shell:

$ some-command < /path/to/some/file

$ grep -i Fred < /etc/passwd

$ grep -i Fred /etc/passwd

$ some-program > /path/to/some/file

$ grep -i Fred /etc/passwd > /tmp/results

You will forgive me for starting the above list at 0, I am sure, when you learn that each of these IO 'channels' are represented by small numbers, called file descripters (FDs), that have exactly those numbers. That is, STDIN is FD 0, while STDOUT is FD 1, and STDERR is FD 2.

When the shell runs a program for you, it opens STDIN as FD 0, STDOUT as FD 1, and STDERR as FD 2, and then runs the program (technically, it almost always does a fork(2) and then an exec(3) or one of the exec?? calls). If you have redirected one of STDIN, STDOUT or STDERR, your shell opens that file as the appropriate FD before running the program.

Now, what does this all have to do with you, I hear you ask?

Well, there are lots of neat things you can do, but some things to watch out for as well.

A lot of inexperienced UNIX users assume that they can redirect a file into a program and use the same name for redirecting the output:

$ some-program <> mega-important-data-file

They become very upset after doing the above, especially if that mega-important data file has never been backed up anywhere. Why is this?

The shell opens the mega-important-data-file for reading and associates it with FD 0 (or STDIN), and then opens it for writing, but truncates it to zero length, and associates it with FD 1 (or STDOUT) as well.

So, if you want to do something like the above, use a different file name for the output file. Oh, you should also back up files as well :-).

Now, there are lots of redirection symbols that you can use, and here are some of them:

OK, here are some tricks that you might want to use in various places.

If you are gathering evidence for a bug report, you might want to redirect the output from a series of programs to a text file (never mind that you can use the script command to do the same :-). So you might do the following:

$ some-buggy-program > important-evidence.txt
$ echo '---------MARKER-------' >> important-evidence.txt
$ some-buggy-program some-params >> important-evidence.txt

The second and subsequent lines append the output from the commands issues to the evidence file rather than overwriting them. Try the following:

$ echo This is a line of text > /tmp/file.txt
$ echo This is another line   > /tmp/file.txt

What do you get?

Now try:

$ echo This is a line of text > /tmp/file.txt
$ echo This is another line   >> /tmp/file.txt

What do you get this time?

OK, for the last few tricks here. Sometimes you want to append STDOUT and STDERR to a file. How do you do it?

$ some-command >> /tmp/log.log 2>&1

The 2>&1 says make STDERR point to the same places as STDOUT. Since STDOUT is open already, and the shell has done a seek to the end, STDERR will also be appended to STDOUT.

If you want to append a line to a file, you can echo the line you want with a redirect, rather than firing up an editor:

$ echo Some text >> /path/to/some/file

It turns out that you can cause the shell to redirect to other file descriptors as well, and if you look in the configure scripts that come with many UNIX software packages, you will see examples of this.

Why is redirecting so important? Well, it is used in many shell scripts, it is a simple and conventient mechanism to sending output to any file without the programmer having to add code for handling command line instructions, and it is the UNIX way of doing things :-).

It is also the same as piping, where you redirect output to, or input from, a pipe device. The pipe device has a process living on the other side, but we will look at this later.

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Linux

Command line tricks

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Linux

About File Permissions

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Linux

Accessing Removable Media

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Linux

Linux Tips Linux, Clocks, and Time

Labels: Tips and Triks, Tips Linux

Need help finding help topics? Bookmark them

• Open the help file and go to the page that you want to bookmark.
  
• Select "Bookmark | Define..." from the main menu.
  
• Optionally type in a new bookmark name.
  
• Click on "OK"

Labels: Tips Windows

How to create a larger and scrollable DOS box

• Open a DOS box as usual (for example, select "Programs | DOS box / Command Prompt" from the "Start menu"
  
• Right click on its title bar and select "Properties..."
  
• Change to the Layout tab
  
• Change the Height parameter under Screen Buffer Size group to the number of virtual lines you'd like to have in your DOS box.
  
• Click "OK"
  
• Select a way to save the recent changes, if you get a "Apply Properties to Shortcut" or similar prompt.

Labels: Tips Windows

How to export the Outlook address book

• Run Outlook Express 4.x (if you don't already have it, install Explorer 4.x full version)
  
• Select "File | Import | Address Book..." from the main menu
  
• Select "Microsoft Exchange Personal Address Book"
  
• Click "Import" and click "Close" once the importing is completed
  
  To export the address book:
  
• Select "File | Export | Address Book..." from the main menu
  
• Select "Text File (Comma Separated Values)"
  
• Click "Export"
  
• Type a file name in the "Save exported file as" input box.
  

  For example type, "C:\MYADRBOK.CSV"
  

• Click "Next"
  
• Optionally select the fields you wish to export and click "Finish"
  
• Click "Close" once the exporting is completed

Labels: Tips Windows

How to edit or remove program sounds

• Go to the Control Panel ("Start | Settings | Control Panel" menu item)
  
• Double click on Sounds icon
  
• Scroll through the list of event sounds and select the program and the related event that you want to modify
  
• Use controls at the bottom to disable (set sound name to "None") or select a different sound
  
• Click "OK" and close the Control Panel before testing the event sound

Labels: Tips Windows

Copying data from DOS / console mode program screens

• Start a DOS box or a Command Prompt (DOS box) inside Windows.
  

  "Start | Programs | Command Prompt / DOS"

• Run the character mode program that you want to import data from, and go to the screen with the data you want to capture.
  
• Right click the title bar of the DOS box
  
• Select "Edit | Mark"
  
• Click and drag the mouse until you select the data area that you want to copy. Press ENTER when you've finished selecting.
  
• Switch to the Windows program that you want to import the just copied data to, and select its paste function.

Labels: Tips Windows

How to view bootup check disk results

• Open Event Viewer

  Windows NT 4.x:

  Select "Start | Programs | Administrative Tools | Event Viewer" from the Start Menu.

• Select "Log | Application" from the main menu.
  
• Scroll through the events until you see an event with "Autochk" as the "Source".
  
• Double click on the selected event to view the results of previous bootup check disk operations.

Labels: Tips Windows

Batch downloading multiple web pages and other files without using a browser

URL2File http://www.chami.com/tips/ tips.htm

• Open Windows Notepad
  
• Enter following three commands into the blank notepad (one command per file to be downloaded):
  URL2File http://www.chami.com/tips/file1.zip file1.zip
  URL2File http://www.chami.com/tips/file2.zip file2.zip
  URL2File http://www.chami.com/tips/file3.zip file3.zip
  
• Save the notepad file with a name of your choice followed by .BAT ("download.bat" for example)
  

download

Labels: Tips Windows