Colin Mattoon

(LinuxWorld) -- I compared network and system administration to cooking in Part 6, "How to install Red Hat over a network" and, in this installment, individual Debian X terminals are on the menu. First, let's tidy the kitchen and clean the stovetop -- because some more readers have reported that their Red Hat preparations boiled over! (All right, I promise -- no more kitchen references. For a while. Maybe.)   The department of "Not quite errata and not quite Murphy's Law" Several readers reported their X terminal machines will boot to a gray screen and nothing else -- the GUI login window of their remote application server never appears anywhere except on the application server's local console. Most of these readers are running Red Hat on their application servers and configured the machines to boot to runlevel 5, the networked, multi-user, graphical runlevel by edi... (more)

Adding Sendmail to a text messaging gateway

(LinuxWorld) -- Before we continue and begin the integration of mail and QuickPage on our Text Messaging Gateway, there are a couple of items that need to be addressed. The first comes under the general heading of "Errata." It is no show stopper, but in Part 10 of this series, I told you that Debian's Apt utility helps ensure that you get the benefit of their latest security enhancements. Then, I immediately proceeded to leave out an essential line in /etc/apt/sources.list! Okay, I'm an idiot! Let's take care of this right now. Change to the /etc/apt directory, and with a text ... (more)

Cheap & easy business accounting with Linux

(LinuxWorld) -- Why is accounting ignored by the Linux community? I find this puzzling. When I am puzzled, I sometimes rant and rave. If things get out of hand, sometimes the nice men in uniforms come to my side and inject me with a calming substance. I'm all better now, and let me tell you what I've decided to do instead of starting yet another rant. I'm going to find a Linux-based business accounting system that I like and that dovetails nicely with our Linux Network for Peanuts. I think I may have found one. It is called Nola. Today, we will prepare you to set up your own serv... (more)

Laying a foundation for free Linux accounting

(LinuxWorld) -- A problem inexperienced Linux users (like me) must overcome is the diversity of Linux distributions that result from free access to source code. Freedom comes at a price, and part of that price is paid when one attempts to install software that comes from third party developers. Their time and resources are limited, and the tendency is to focus on one Linux distribution, particularly during the early stages of development. Red Hat, as the most widely known commercial Linux distribution, receives the lion's share of attention from developers. Our purpose is to evalu... (more)

How to install Nola, the free accounting package for Linux

(LinuxWorld) -- The Information Technology (IT) industry serves acronyms for breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven da... (oops! I meant to write, "24/7 365"). I've searched diligently for the right Linux accounting solution since Q4 Y2K minus 2, and naturally enough, there's an acronym for the type of application we are evaluating together here. Nola (as we are deploying it) is a LAMP application, which merely means that it runs on Linux, it's Web enabled and served to the network with Apache, while data is handled by the MySQL database, and users see, and interact with dynamic Web ... (more)