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The Linux Workshop was a success, Intrepid Ibex rawks!

Thanks to those involved in organizing the Linux Workshop in my workplace. The event was a success as things went on smoothly even though there have been few hiccups along the way.

I use Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) to introduce Linux to the audience, and they were surprised to discover that it is easy to install GNU/Linux operating system on their laptop (thanks to Wubi), let alone using it.

Ubuntu Logo

As for the training manual, I use a subset of GNU FDL LPI 101 study guide manual which I found useful during the course of the workshop.

All in all, this event has renewed my faith in FOSS adoption in Malaysia as I saw people happily using GNU/Linux and free software during and after the workshop, without breaking a sweat.

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How to find cause of heavy usage on your Apache webserver

Here’s a quick and dirty tips on how to find cause of heavy CPU resources usage on your Apache webserver (especially when running php scripts).

First you need to locate the Apache 2 “access.log” file. By default in Ubuntu, this file is located in “/var/logs/apache2” directory.

Then you need to run this command to find out which IP address accesses your website the most in a short time.
[code]
tail -10000 access.log| awk ‘{print $1}’ | sort | uniq -c |sort -n
[/code]

The output of the command should contain a list of IP addresses along with the number of hits it made in the last 10,000 access of your website
[code]
47 117.58.252.98
81 202.124.242.186
84 202.124.245.26
182 194.164.101.217
220 208.101.22.146
225 72.167.131.144
3946 93.135.xxx.xxx
[/code]

From here you can easily locate the offending ip address and proceed to block it from accessing your website further using .htaccess file or other blocking method.

Here is an example to block certain ip address from accessing your website using .htaccess file
[code] order deny,allow
deny from 93.135.xxx.xxx [/code]

Save .htaccess file in the root directory of your web server (example /var/www), and the ip address wont be available to access your site again.

Hope that would help you!

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Preparing Training Materials for Linux Workshop in my workplace

Hey there,

I’m given roughly one month to prepare training material for an in-organization Linux training workshop in my workplace. Target audience are mostly from non-IT background who wished to know more about GNU/Linux based operating system.

I was given freedom to choose any Linux distro that I see fit for the workshop and for that matter I choose Ubuntu as it has an ultra friendly Wubi Installer that would simplify the installation exercise during the training session.

Other than that, i’m still struggling with the materials to be included during the one day (8 hours) workshop aside from Ubuntu installation.

Suggestions from Ubuntu’ers are welcomed as I’m pretty swamped with other work while working on this workshop.

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Linux Laptop Hardware Compatibility List

If you are a serious Linux user, probably the first thing that come across your mind when shopping for a laptop is how compatible it is with GNU/Linux operating system.

Fortunately sites like The Linux Laptop Wiki, Ubuntu Linux Hardware Support and Mandriva Hardware Database provides a good starting point to find out about your laptop hardware compatibility with Linux.

As for my personal experience, I find out most hardware incompatibility ranges from unsupported 56k softmodem driver to unsupported hard-disk controller which i consider as the worse case scenario.

So please bear this in mind that not all laptop are 100% compatible with Linux. Do ask around, and check for its compatibility status before you finally made a decision to purchase a new laptop.

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Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex has been released, but my pc died!

Probably most of you have heard about the latest Ubuntu release – Intrepid Ibex, with all of its nifty features, including :

  • The new Network Manager 0.7 (which supports 3G broadband connection)
  • Support guest login support
  • Encrypted private directory support (via encryptfs)

The only thing that might need a little bit polishing is Cruft Remover tool, which happily classify important files as unneeded files to be deleted (which is dangerous).

but the sad part was….

I don’t know if this is a coincidence or otherwise, but my 7 years old Pentium 4 1.8 GHz died shortly before Intrepid Ibex release. I’m now left with an aged laptop and unreliable wifi internet access at my current workplace to surf the internet.

Bottom line – I might need a new PC.