Open source, command line, low "impact", png-producing, full-featured, good-looking graphing on Linux and other Unices? [more inside]
posted by DU on Sep 29, 2009 - 13 answers

I'm curious as to what are the current "best practices" when it comes to centralized administration of a network of Unix (primarily Linux, but not necessarily so) machines? Essentially, what is the equivalent of Active Directory for a network with one or more Unix hosts? The immediate answer I come up with would be something like OpenLDAP plus PAM but what I'm looking for is the suite of tools (GUI and CLI apps) for managing the directory, deploying software, centralizing sign-on and security, managing printers, etc. In a perfect world, I would like to centralize administration of Windows, Unix, and OS X machines via a single directory service, though I imagine such a solution would be expensive and/or cumbersome if it even existed. Or is this something Samba 4 will do?
posted by Imhotep is Invisible on Sep 9, 2009 - 5 answers

Could anyone recommend a color laser printer for ca. 500 GBP for a small office? Compatibility with Linux and Solaris---essential. BONUS question: should I also buy a monochrome laser for B&W printouts or is an unnecessary overkill when one has a color laser?
posted by noztran on Aug 31, 2009 - 3 answers

Unix mavens: is there a way for ls on a Mac OS X install to alphabetize its listing case-insensitively, while still preserving any other ls flags you may be using? If not, does another ls variant offered by anybody offer case-insensitivity, and if so, how can I supplant one with the other, without risk of any harm to anything else on my system? (If it matters, my shell of choice is tcsh.)
posted by WCityMike on Aug 16, 2009 - 17 answers

I need to pick a seminar/conference/class/training/whatever for work to attend within the next 6 months or so, I have until 10PM to choose, and I have no idea where or what the cool stuff is. It should be at least tangentially related to my job as a Unix Systems Engineer/Python Guy, and preferably within the Northeast (NYC is where I'm located), although feel free to recommend anywhere in the US. [more inside]
posted by Mach5 on Aug 7, 2009 - 3 answers

I'm using a shell script to handle some excel docs by converting to csv and reformatting it a little bit. I'm having some difficulty going on with the next part of the script. Some help would be great. :) [more inside]
posted by fightoplankton on Jun 10, 2009 - 11 answers

on Mac OSX Leopard(10.5.7), which log file, archived or not, would I find when a user account was renamed? [more inside]
posted by neilkod on Jun 4, 2009 - 6 answers

I'm being tasked with creating a simple integer calculator, which I have effectively done, up to the point of it being a calculator, however, even after hours of searching I cannot get any scripts to work correctly. [more inside]
posted by InsaneRhino on Apr 30, 2009 - 11 answers

Help me administer a mail server on OS X. [more inside]
posted by rkent on Apr 22, 2009 - 6 answers

Why is it OK to have no reserved blocks in ext2 on the Acer Aspire One? [more inside]
posted by Busy Old Fool on Apr 6, 2009 - 4 answers

UNIX PDP-11 Riddle Filter: help me outsmart my much-beloved but smug computery friend... [more inside]
posted by lalalana on Apr 5, 2009 - 16 answers

I have a podcast that downloads as multiple segments over multiple days. Its format arrives as YYYYMMDD_showcode_segment.mp3; so, for example, one download might result in files as 20090323_goofa_01.mp3 through 20090323_goofa_21.mp3, and also within the same download 20090324_goofa_01.mp3 through 20090324_goofa_21.mp3. What I'm looking for is a Unix script (shell, perl, what have you) that would look at a directory and look at what dates are represented there, and let me join all of the segments together by day. I can use mpgtx -j to do the actual joining; I'm looking for the code that would let the script determine what dates are in the directory and then get each day's segments united into a single MP3 for that day's show.
posted by WCityMike on Mar 25, 2009 - 5 answers

I'm looking for a command-line tool that can return a volume value for specific points of time in an MP3 file. [more inside]
posted by joe vrrr on Mar 10, 2009 - 7 answers

Can someone give me any pointers, tips, or caveats about installing BSD on sun hardware for use as a firewall/router? [more inside]
posted by Myles on Feb 1, 2009 - 6 answers

Found an old computer in the basement. What steps should I go through to get it up and running? [more inside]
posted by djgh on Nov 26, 2008 - 10 answers

vi / vim editor: Can I paste text inside a colon command? [more inside]
posted by alb on Oct 21, 2008 - 6 answers

Question about changing my terminal prompt (and other matters) in an OS X Bash shell. [more inside]
posted by grumblebee on Oct 15, 2008 - 3 answers

Can I restrict access to a symbolically-linked path using htaccess? [more inside]
posted by jpoulos on Oct 14, 2008 - 1 answer

Obscure linux/unix text processing command: what is 'dt'? [more inside]
posted by logicpunk on Oct 6, 2008 - 9 answers

How can I grant user access to one directory only, so they can edit a file? [more inside]
posted by media_itoku on Oct 3, 2008 - 3 answers

Linux/Unix Admin Filter: What is your preferred method for monitoring bandwidth use per virtual host in Apache? [more inside]
posted by Brian Puccio on Sep 16, 2008 - 3 answers

Would anyone care to comment on the most practical way, given access to a command line Fedora box, I can obtain a copy of a folder and its contents? [more inside]
posted by dance on Sep 2, 2008 - 7 answers

Multiple sources credit this Hivelogic post as the definitive guide to getting MySQL up and running on a Mac OS X. But I can't get past the first few steps. [more inside]
posted by metajc on Aug 20, 2008 - 12 answers

How do I log in as www? I am running a bunch of scripts on my webserver/svn server, but they are having some problems, so as a troubleshooting measure, I would like to log in as the user so I can test scripts and other random things. [more inside]
posted by brent_h on Aug 19, 2008 - 7 answers

UNIX experts: what's the best way to take a pdf file, cut out a few (non-sequential) pages, insert a few more pages from another pdf file, and end up with one new pdf file? [more inside]
posted by tractorfeed on Aug 11, 2008 - 6 answers

What were your greatest victories and punishing woes as a unix/linux system administrator? [more inside]
posted by Myles on Jul 21, 2008 - 11 answers

How can I get Quicksilver-style completion in the bash shell? [more inside]
posted by dmd on Jul 11, 2008 - 11 answers

Is there a way that I can access some very old PDF files that are encrypted with a password I cannot remember any longer? I have a system running Mac OS X (Leopard), and I do need to do the decryption myself. [more inside]
posted by WCityMike on May 16, 2008 - 12 answers

We're a small research lab, that uses a series of servers. A smart person would have these machines backed up regularly. But we're not that smart ... [more inside]
posted by outlier on Apr 30, 2008 - 22 answers

UnixFilter: How can I split a file by blank lines? [more inside]
posted by jacob on Apr 17, 2008 - 10 answers

How to delete a huge directory on Linux without overloading the system? [more inside]
posted by justkevin on Apr 10, 2008 - 14 answers

Unix folk: I'd like to reformat a long text file in a very specific manner using command line tools. [more inside]
posted by aiko on Apr 1, 2008 - 13 answers

Using Windows to query Unix RPC rquota? [more inside]
posted by lundman on Mar 10, 2008 - 7 answers

I'm interested in aspects of benchmarking with the help of UNIX's time, specifically, what user, system and elapsed times correspond to, within the functional context of the system and the tested application. [more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Mar 4, 2008 - 4 answers

I have a month to cram for a vendor certification.... any vendor certification. Which one should I go after? [more inside]
posted by Slap*Happy on Mar 4, 2008 - 5 answers

How do I copy a file to multiple folders, and rename it based on those folders? I know the answer is "unix", but I need hand-holding. [more inside]
posted by O9scar on Feb 21, 2008 - 9 answers

Site security experts: Talk to me about chmod 777 directories. [more inside]
posted by maxwelton on Feb 14, 2008 - 14 answers

Is there any way to move UNIX terminals on from VT100 emulation? [more inside]
posted by dehowell on Feb 7, 2008 - 16 answers

I need to change sendmail from sending emails from individual machines as user@host.domain.com to user@domain.com. [more inside]
posted by brent_h on Feb 5, 2008 - 6 answers

Some colleagues and I will soon be leaving our current employer and starting a new company. How can I best replicate our current relational database/SQL abilities from scratch? [more inside]
posted by raz5 on Jan 23, 2008 - 11 answers

I have been using tcsh for a number of years now ( at least 12), and it seems that most OSes and most users have moved on to something better. Is there a reason for me to change, and if so, what is the best shell out there? ( main os is OSX 10.5, but use all sorts of linux/unix OSs ). [more inside]
posted by brent_h on Dec 25, 2007 - 25 answers

OS X-filter: I've been searching but having a hard time finding an answer anywhere. I have a command I put into the terminal each time I boot my Mac that disables some third party firewall I can't find to delete. I'd like a shell script that would launch and just execute the command each time I start up my computer. [more inside]
posted by mattoly on Dec 13, 2007 - 8 answers

What common unix apps have built-in support for tunneling over ssh, besides rsync? [more inside]
posted by nomisxid on Nov 27, 2007 - 7 answers

How do I get the correct return code from a unix command line application after I've piped it through another command that succeeded? [more inside]
posted by ChrisR on Nov 24, 2007 - 22 answers

Can I apply for a full-time position then ask for a part-time job? [more inside]
posted by ellenaim on Nov 14, 2007 - 6 answers

I'm using the 'make' utility on a Linux system. Is there a way in a Makefile to set all the intermediate files as PRECIOUS without having to list them individually?
posted by bluefly on Nov 2, 2007 - 1 answer

How do I get bash to automagically execute a line or two of code at login? [more inside]
posted by nakedcodemonkey on Oct 22, 2007 - 25 answers

Best *nix distro for SSH, RDC, router and print server. Or i could use windows if that would satisfy the conditions. [more inside]
posted by DJWeezy on Oct 11, 2007 - 17 answers

In UNIX (specifically FreeBSD, if it matters), is there a way to *randomize* the interval and/or size and/or destination of pings? [more inside]
posted by allterrainbrain on Oct 11, 2007 - 9 answers

I have a server running Centos 5. It's currently refusing outside connections to any port except port 22. ip-tables and SELinux are both disabled. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? [more inside]
posted by signalnine on Oct 1, 2007 - 20 answers