Miscellaneous

When Cacti Are Too Prickly

LJ Staff — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:28:42 +0000

I'm a clock watcher. I'm a tachometer hound. I'm a speedometer freak. And, as cool as that might seem, more than anything, I love graphs. One of the problems with setting up good SNMP graphs is that not only do they require a server on which to run, but also those servers often are difficult to configure. Programs like Cacti offer incredible features, but for home use, they're usually not worth the effort to configure.

That's where odmon.com comes in. Odmon offers a free service that queries your SNMP devices and hosts Cacti graphs for your local devices. Setup couldn't be easier, and odmon even offers “wizards” to help configure your home router. Part of the process is opening your firewall to its servers, but because you need to provide only read access, and you can limit access to its specific IP address, the security is tolerable—at least for me on my home system.

To set up your free odmon account, go to www.odmon.com. You can be a bandwidth watcher like me in no time!

Odmon offers a wide variety of graphs and the ability to publish them publicly or privately.

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SuperGamer, 8GB of Linux-Only Gameplay

Shawn Powers — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:26:34 +0000

by Shawn Powers

I admit, I'm one of those people who dual-boots so I can play video games. I've tried running programs like CrossOver Games in order to feed my need for fragging, but in the end, it seems I always have to install Windows to enjoy some real gaming fun. Thankfully, I'm not the guy in charge of things worldwide, because the folks over at www.supergamer.org have created a bootable, dual-layer DVD full of native-running Linux games. Yes, I said native. Check out the impressive list of preinstalled games you'll get when you download the ISO:

Quake Wars
Doom 3
Prey
Unreal Tournament
Quake 4
Savage 2
Postal 2
Enemy Territory
Penumbra Black Plague
Sauerbraten
Urban Terror
Soldier of Fortune
Torcs
Tremulous
AlienArena
True Combat
America's Army
Nexus
OpenArena
PlaneShift
Drop Team
Frets On Fire
Chromium B.S.U.
Mad Bomber
X-Moto
BZ Flag
Mega Mario
Glaxium
GL-117
NeverBall
NeverPutt
Super Tux
PPRacer

So much for gaming being a Windows-only adventure! Based on Vector Linux, SuperGamer is ready to perform on all modern video cards without additional downloads. Just pop it in, boot it up, and frag.

This is SuperGamer's official screenshot. Notice all the game icons on the bottom of the screen.

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Brain + Keyboard = T-Shirt

Mitch Frazier — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:21:05 +0000

by Mitch Frazier

Engage your brain, send us a Tech-Tip, and we'll send you a T-Shirt. Or if you prefer one of our new Calendars.

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Nicaragua Builds An Innovative Agricultural Information System Using Open Source Software

Johannes Wilm — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:48:28 +0000

by Johannes Wilm

An experiment in Nicaragua shows just how powerful Open Source software can be in leveling the playing field. The second poorest country of the Americas now has one of the best software solutions for displaying agricultural data in the western hemisphere.

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Book Excerpt: Exploratory Software Testing

LJ Staff — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:42:01 +0000

by LJ Staff

This chapter excerpt is from Exploratory Software Testing: Tips, Tricks, Tours, and Techniques to Guide Test Design by James Whittaker, published by Addison-Wesley Professional, Aug. 2009

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Book Excerpt: Chapter 6: Functions and Functional Programming

LJ Staff — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:01:46 +0000

by LJ Staff

Read an excerpt from the 4th Edition of the book Python Essential Reference by David Beazley.

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Book Excerpt: The Official Ubuntu Book

LJ Staff — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:41:25 +0000

by LJ Staff

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Read an adapted version of chapter 3 from the book The Official Ubuntu Book By Benjamin Mako Hill, Matthew Helmke, Corey Burger.

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Book Excerpt: Programming in Python 3

LJ Staff — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:39:08 +0000

by LJ Staff

#print_title{margin:10px;padding-right:10px;} div#acontent p{margin:0 10px 10px;line-height:20px;padding:0 10px;} div#acontent pre{margin:0 10px 10px;padding:0 10px;} #right_align{text-align:right;} .thumbnail {margin-right:4px;} .override_padding {padding:0;margin:0;} .override_padding2 {padding:0;margin:5px;} .thumbnail {margin:10px;padding:0 10px;} img {border:0;} div#acontent table{font: 95% arial,sans-serif; margin-left:10px;margin-bottom:5px;}

Read chapter 12 from the book Programming in Python 3: A Complete Introduction to the Python Language by Mark Summerfield.

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OpenOffice.org Base: Editing Information in a Database

Bruce Byfield — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:11:39 +0000

by Bruce Byfield

Once you have a database set up, sooner or later you will want to edit its tables or add a new record. You have four ways to do so.

If you created a database using an existing OpenOffice.org Calc or MS Excel spreadsheet, you must edit the spreadsheet itself—in Base, the database will open read-only, and you will be unable to edit it.

For other databases, you have three choices: editing the tables directly, using the form wizard to create a form or using the design view to create a form. Whichever way you create a form, you can then use it as a more user-friendly way to edit your database.

Editing a Table Directly

Editing a table directly is the purist's way of adjusting a database. It is not hard to do, but some users find it intimidating and may prefer one of the other methods.

To edit a table in a database directly, open the database and change the view in the Database pane on the left side of the window to Tables. Then, select the Table in the Tables pane, and right-click for the context menu.

If you want to add a field to the database, select Edit to open a view of the table. Click the first vacant role to start adding a new field. As with other fields, you need to enter a name in the first column and a field type in the second column. You also can enter the field properties in the window of the pane that opens below the main editing window, setting whether the field is required, the number of characters it can contain and, optionally, a default value and example. In addition, back in the main window, you have the option of adding a brief description of the new field in the unnamed third column.

When you are done, right-click on the gray left-hand column to select the new field, and use the context menu to cut and paste it into the position you want. You also can alter, delete or move existing records using the same technique.

If you want to add a record to the database, select Open from the context menu in the Tables pane, or double-click the table to open the editing window. With this selection, you see the fields listed at the top of columns and the individual records in rows. Otherwise, just as when you edit fields, you add new entries at the bottom. Because records are far more flexible than fields, you can change how records are viewed by using the icons on the right of the toolbar to sort all records in the table, in ascending or descending order, or to display only those you set in a filter.

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Call For Articles - Cool Projects

LJ Staff — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 03:20:59 +0000

by LJ Staff

We're the first to admit that Linux is cool. Just using it is cool, but if you're doing something extra cool with Linux this is your chance to share it with the community. Our Cool Projects issue is coming up quick and we're looking for a few more project articles. We're partial to Cool projects that have a hardware slant, but if you have a Cool software project let us know about that too.

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