UpFRONT

Red Hat, Inc., a provider of open-source Linux-based operating system solutions, announced that Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corporation has purchased support services from Red Hat for its nationwide Linux deployment. Under the agreement, Red Hat Services will provide telephone-based support to more than 260 Burlington Coat Factory stores nationwide (including subsidiaries). Red Hat will provide ongoing maintenance for customized Dell OptiPlex PCs and PowerEdge servers running factory-installed Red Hat Linux. The Red Hat Linux OS-based systems will host Burlington Coat Factory's Gift Registry and will facilitate all other in-store functions, such as inventory control and receiving.

International Data Corp. research states that Linux was the fastest-growing server operating environment in 1998, growing more than 212 percent in that year alone and capturing more than 17 percent of new licensed shipments of server operating systems.

Andover.Net announced it has completed extensive hardware upgrades to its influential Slashdot (www.slashdot.org) and Freshmeat (www.freshmeat.net) news and resource sites. With a major investment in the IT infrastructure of both sites, Slashdot and Freshmeat can now serve the growing Linux community, without delay, the same news and information that has made these sites the most popular destination for Linux news and information.

Oracle Corp., a provider of Linux-based database software, and Red Hat jointly announced that Oracle has certified Oracle8i on Red Hat Linux and that future Oracle product releases will also be certified on Red Hat as they become available.

Tripwire joined ISS' Adaptive Network Security Alliance (ANSA), an industry-wide initiative dedicated to developing and delivering adaptive network security solutions. Through ANSA, real-time adaptive security capabilities are being integrated across systems and applications, providing automated responses to security risks, including intrusions. Tripwire will use the ANSA modules to integrate Tripwire and ISS products. Any modifications made to operating system or user files will be detected by Tripwire. Tripwire will then send an alert to the ISS product set, which will conduct another set of security checks to monitor and combat the intrusion. More information on ANSA can be found at http://www.ansa.iss.net/.

KeyLabs Inc., an e-business testing facility, announced that Motorola Computer Group's (MCG's) SLX2020 network appliance has passed KeyLabs' network server compatibility tests in support of major Linux operating system distributions. KeyLabs' compatibility testing showed the SLX2020, the first of Motorola's recently announced SLX Series of network appliances, to be compatible with Caldera Systems' OpenLinux 2.2 and 2.3, Red Hat 6.0, SuSE Linux 6.0 and TurboLinux 3.0.1. KeyLabs' “Linux-Tested” certification results for the SLX Series may be found at www.keylabs.com/linux/results/motorola.html.

Ariel Corporation, a supplier of open-architecture remote-access solutions for Internet service providers, announced that KeyLink Systems, a Pioneer-Standard Electronics, Inc. company, is now offering bundled remote access solutions for ISPs based on Ariel's PowerPOP architecture. KeyLink Systems also announced a dedicated sales and support team for the assembly of these ISP solutions.

Transparent Firewalling by Federico and Christian Pellegrin presents the solution to one of the difficult problems encountered when building a firewall: how to split the existing network without affecting the configuration of the machines already in use on the network. They do this by using a proxy arp technique. All the information you need to know about requirements and configuration can be found here.

Kerberos by Cosimo Leipold is an introduction to this powerful set of programs which give you encrypted connections to TELNET, FTP, e-mail, etc. Mr. Leipold explains the configuration files and commands needed to give the administrator complete control of the system.

What Can You Expect? by Denny Fox describes the end-to-end process of defining and implementing a data collection project that illustrates the use of Expect, stty, cron, a little C programming, gnuplot and ioctl to the serial device driver. Learn more about Expect, a powerful tool used to automate UNIX programs which interact with a user or processes needing a command or trigger and then return some kind of response. Just the sort of tool System Administrators need on a regular basis.

Building a Firewall with IP Chains by Pedro Bueno is a very short article which gives you the basics on using IP firewall chains. Developing adequate security for your system is one of the most important steps you can take.

Customizing the XDM Login Screen by Brian Lane shows you how to jazz up your login screen, explaining how to set up XDM, change your background pattern, randomly display a background image and change your prompt.

The Use of Linux in an Embedded System by Dave Pfaltzgraff presents one company's solution to a customer problem using Linux and open-source software. Mr. Pfaltzgraff tells us how to implement the serial interface and control program and interface with the database, in his case, PostgreSQL.

Porting Progress Applications to Linux by Thomas Barringer is an explanation of the steps required to port an existing Progress application to the Linux system, including the advantages and disadvantages of doing so.

Army National Guard Using Linuxby Richard Ridgeway is a look at how a military war game simulation was ported to Linux workstations. Included is a comparison of graphic refresh times on different platforms and operating systems. Saving money and getting high performance are two very good reasons to port to Linux.