FlyBack is a tool similar to Apple's TimeMachine. It is intended to create snapshot-backups of selected directories or even your full hard drive. From the FlyBack project page: "FlyBack is a snapshot-based backup tool based on rsync. It creates successive backup directories mirroring the files you wish to backup, but hard-links unchanged files to the previous backup. This prevents wasting disk space while providing you with full access to all your files without any sort of recovery program. If your machine crashes, just move your external drive to your new machine and copy the latest backup using whatever file browser you normally use." This article shows how to install and use FlyBack on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon).

Vlogger is a little tool with which you can write lighttpd logs broken down by virtual hosts and days. With vlogger, we need to put just one accesslog.filename directive into our global lighttpd configuration, and it will write access logs for each virtual host and day. Therefore, you do not have to split lighttpd's overall access log into access logs for each virtual host each day, and you do not have to configure lighttpd to write one access log per virtual host (which could make you run out of file descriptors very fast). At the end of this tutorial I will show you how to use webalizer to create statistics from the lighttpd access logs.

This tutorial explains how to turn an old PC with additional hard disks into a simple home file server. The file server is intended for home use. The home file server is accessible by Windows and Linux computers in the home network.

djbdns is a very secure suite of DNS tools that consists out of multiple parts: dnscache, a DNS cache that can be used in /etc/resolv.conf instead of your ISP's name servers and that tries to sort out wrong (malicious) DNS answers; axfrdns, a service that runs on the master DNS server and to which the slaves connect for zone transfers; and tinydns, the actual DNS server, a very secure replacement for BIND.

Bazaar is a distributed version control system (VCS) available under the GPL; it is similar to Subversion (svn). Bazaar is sponsored by Canonical, Ltd., the company that develops the Ubuntu (GNU)Linux distribution, and therefore the Ubuntu project is the most prominent user of Bazaar. This article explains how to set up and use Bazaar on a Debian Etch system, and how to configure an SFTP-/HTTP server to host your Bazaar repository.

If you have a dual-boot Windows/Linux system, you probably know this problem: you can access files from your Windows installation while you are in Linux, but not the other way round. This tutorial shows three ways how you can access your Linux partitions (with ext2 or ext3 filesystem) from within Windows: Explore2fs, DiskInternals Linux Reader, and the Ext2 Installable File System For Windows. While the first two provide read-only access, the Ext2 Installable File System For Windows can be used for read and write operations.

Are you using SSH in the best way possible? Have you configured it to be as limited and secure as possible? The goal of this document is to kick in the new year with some best practices for SSH: why you should use them, how to set them up, and how to verify that they are in place. All of the examples below assume that you are using EnGarde Secure Linux but any modern Linux distribution will do just fine since, as far as I know, everybody ships OpenSSH.

This document describes how to install a Postfix mail server that is based on virtual users and domains, i.e. users and domains that are in a MySQL database. I will also demonstrate the installation and configuration of Courier (Courier-POP3, Courier-IMAP), so that Courier can authenticate against the same MySQL database Postfix uses. The resulting Postfix server is capable of SMTP-AUTH and TLS and quota (quota is not built into Postfix by default, I will show how to patch your Postfix appropriately). Passwords are stored in encrypted form in the database (most documents I found were dealing with plain text passwords which is a security risk). In addition to that, this tutorial covers the installation of Amavisd, SpamAssassin and ClamAV so that emails will be scanned for spam and viruses.

This howto outlines the process by which one can set up the Subversion version control system, and have it work in tandem with Trac, the project manager for software development projects, on a server running Ubuntu (or possibly Debian).

This tutorial shows how to set up a CentOS 4.6 based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and web hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. This tutorial is written for the 32-bit version of CentOS 4.6, but should apply to the 64-bit version with very little modifications as well.

This tutorial shows how to install and use alterMIME. alterMIME is a tool that can automatically add a disclaimer to emails. In this article I will explain how to install it as a Postfix filter on Debian Etch.

This document is a step by step guide for configuring Ubuntu 7.10 as a Samba Domain Controller with an LDAP backend (OpenLDAP). The point is to configure a server that can be comparable, from a central authentication point of view, to a Windows Server 2003 Domain Controller. The end result will be a server with an LDAP directory for storing user, group, and computer accounts. A Windows XP Professional SP2 workstation will be able to join the domain once properly configured.

This document describes how to set up, configure and use TimeVault on Ubuntu 7.10. The resulting system provides a powerful backup system for desktop usage. TimeVault is a simple front-end for making snapshots of a set of directories. Snapshots are a copy of a directory structure or file at a certain point in time. Restore functionality is integrated into Nautilus - previous versions of a file or directory that has a snapshot can be accessed by examining the properties and selecting the 'Previous Versions' tab.

When you rent a dedicated server nowadays, almost all providers give you FTP backup space for your server on one of the provider's backup systems. This tutorial shows how you can use duplicity and ftplicity to create encrypted (so that nobody with access to the backup server can read sensitive data in your backups) backups on the provider's remote backup server over FTP. ftplicity is a duplicity wrapper script (provided by the German computer magazine c't) that allows us to use duplicity without interaction (i.e., you do not have to type in any passwords).

This document describes how to set up a CentOS 5.1 desktop. It provides all you need for daily work and entertainment, incl. multimedia codecs, Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, Skype, TrueType fonts, VMware Server, ntfs-3g, Sun Java, and many more.

This document describes how to set up and configure a Samba Domaincontroller for small workgroups (up to 250 users) on Fedora 8 with the Samba Web Administration Tool. The resulting system provides an easy-to-manage domaincontroller for your Windows network.

This document describes how to install a Postfix mail server that is based on virtual users and domains, i.e. users and domains that are in a MySQL database. I will also demonstrate the installation and configuration of Courier (Courier-POP3, Courier-IMAP), so that Courier can authenticate against the same MySQL database Postfix uses. The resulting Postfix server is capable of SMTP-AUTH and TLS and quota (quota is not built into Postfix by default, I will show how to patch your Postfix appropriately). Passwords are stored in encrypted form in the database (most documents I found were dealing with plain text passwords which is a security risk). In addition to that, this tutorial covers the installation of Amavisd, SpamAssassin and ClamAV so that emails will be scanned for spam and viruses.

In this tutorial I will describe how to install and configure MyDNS and MyDNSConfig on Fedora 8. MyDNS is a DNS server that uses a MySQL database as backend instead of configuration files like, for example, Bind or djbdns. The advantage is that MyDNS simply reads the records from the database, and it does not have to be restarted/reloaded when DNS records change or zones are created/edited/deleted. A secondary nameserver can be easily set up by installing a second instance of MyDNS that accesses the same database or, to be more redundant, uses the MySQL master / slave replication features to replicate the data to the secondary nameserver.

This tutorial shows how to set up a CentOS 5.1 based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and web hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Dovecot POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc.

This guide shows how you can create a Live-CD from your Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon or Linux Mint 4.0 system with a tool called remastersys. Remastersys is available in the Linux Mint romeo repository. You can customize your Ubuntu/Linux Mint system and then let remastersys create an iso image of it which you can then burn onto a CD/DVD.