What does Wiki mean? The word ‘wiki’ is a Hawaiian word. Wiki-Wiki in Hawaiian means very quick or fast, and this perfectly describe one of the best features of Mediawiki.

Mediawiki is a software platform written in PHP that creates webpages for display in any web browser. The pages can be group into subjects, interlinked to each other with a lot of customization available depending on your needs.

For the technically minded, the backend utilises SQL for the database, with the software typically running on a Linux or Unix based operating system. The pages are served to you thanks to the web server (Apache on a linux box) that is running on your box. The resources that it requires are fairly minimal unless your database is quite large, but for small or medium business you don’t need to outlay thousands of dollars for a server. If the database is going to be large, one might consider getting a hosted server and installing Mediawiki on it there.

Most IT support staff would have operating system knowledge and would be able to set one up without too much difficulty. Maintenance would only be required at the beginning to finetune settings etc, and database backups kept regular like any other produvtion data.

It can not only be used for business, but charities or even at home dpending on your needs. With my limited knowledge, I had a mediawiki up and running on a OpenSuSe install in under 30 mins so i know it’s not rocket science.

Having said that, if you ever forget your admin password like I did, all is not lost. Check out my other post on this site.

I must admit, I was surprised how easy it was. I had an old test box at home, and was too lazy to rebuild it so I did a bit of searching on the internet. What I describe below worked on OpenSuse 11.2, 11.3 and also 10.3.

For other distros and version, I cannot guarantee that it will work. But please leave a comment at the end of the post to let me and others know.

Turn the computer on and select the normal boot menu from the list:

Once selected, tab down to the “Boot Options” box and type in the following:

init=/bin/bash if you are using GRUB Boot loader

linux init=/bin/bash if you are using LILO Boot Loader

If you are not sure what sort of bootloader you are using (and I certainly didn’t), I did notice that just before the boot screen appeared there flashed a quick message indicating the grub bootloader was there.

This will throw you straight into a Bash shell prompt which comes up even before the Single User mode loads and has the “/” root file system mounted. How cool is that?

Do a mount command to check if the root file system “/” is mounted as Read-Write.

If you notice the screenshot below, you will see that mine was mounted.

Next, simply type the passwd command and enter a new password (as per below):

opensuse_linux:~ # passwd
Changing password for root
New Password:
Reenter New Password:
Password changed

Type in reboot and that’s pretty much it:

opensuse_linux:~ # reboot

Now, if you’re thinking that your system in insecure because you can change the root password so easily, bear in mind that you will need physical access to the box in order to perform the above. Furthermore, you can secure things a bit by password protecting the BIOS of even the bootloader if so desired.

Hopefully, the above will work for you and save you a bit of heartache if you forget/lose your root password.

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The AVG Rescue CD also contains the following set of admin tools:

* Midnight Commander – a two-panel file manager
* Windows Registry Editor – simple registry editor for more experienced users
* TestDisk – powerful hard drive recovery tool
* Ping – to test the availability of network resources (servers, domains, IP addresses)
* Common Linux programs and services – vi text editor, OpenSSH daemon, ntfsprogs and the like.

Now I haven’t actually tried this yet, but from what I’ve read it’s not a bad little addition to the IT professional’s toolkit. If you want support for this from AVG, it is free if you have a purchased AVG product. Else check their forums.

Check it out here, and if you have tried it let me know what you think of it.

The challenge – a decent PC (not for gaming but one with a bit of grunt and the ability to run some virtual OS’s too)
The budget – about AUD$500 but as a guide only. There was room for movement (just as well)

So the research began. AMD or intel CPU? What sort of motherboard? How much RAM? What sort of graphics card? And certainly how big a power supply to run it all? And after the hardware was sorted out, what OS did he want to run?

After much deliberation, we decided on the following hardware (or very similar):

AMD X4 Phenom II 9650 CPU (the general consensus was a quad core of some kind)
Gigabyte motherboard
4Gig RAM
Sunflower case of some sort (a workmate told me they are pretty good)
ATI graphics card (at least 512M)
1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD
SATA DVD burner

As far as the OS was concerned, my friend decided on wanting to run OpenSuse 11.1 as the main OS, and probably Vista X64 in a virtual image for the stuff he could not find Linux equivalents for.

So, off to the shop I went with him to buy all the gear.

Next post, I will share what harwdware we ended up getting and the total cost …..

The clock is used not just by Unix, but also by Linux, Java, JavaScript, Mac OS X, and various other technologies.

That’s my bit of trivia for this week

So, for the dummies , here’s a summary so next time I forget I can quickly look at my posts:

For Creating Shell programs
# vi filename.sh (vi is one of many text editors for linux systems)

For Running Shell Programs
# sh filename.sh
or
# chmod 744 filename.sh (you need to change the permission so you, the owner, can execute the script)
#./filename.sh

Now before I go further, I should mention that my client owned a volume license for these XP machines.

I did a bit of research (as you will find further on not enough) and came to the conclusion that Norton Ghost would be best for the job. I purchased the applicable license and proceeded to make the image – or in Ghost speak it is called a recovery point. I liked how you were able to make an additional recovery point (during the same process) to an external hard drive.

It was fairly straightforward to do, and the recovery process was no problem either. Worked well.

The only thing I didn’t like was, for what I wanted anyway, was the idea of having to install the product and then make an image (with the software installed) – if you know what I mean.

It so happened the day, after I discovered Clonezilla, an open source imaging program that worked from a Live CD (which I believe is based on a Debian backend).

I decided to give it a go, and found that it required a little more nouse to get it going – by no means rocket science though. It’s just that they were a lot of user options available, and as you were reminded multiple times along the way, if you didn’t understand what was being asked just select the defaults. So I did and it all worked well. A restore was much the same deal.

In summary, both products performed well. The average time to backup was about 15 mins for both Ghost and Clonezilla, with the restore (again with both) being under 5 minutes.

For my particular needs, Clonezilla was the choice of imaging/cloning software.

But today I found something that does the job. It’s call the PuTTY Connection Manager.

The features are as follows (copied straight from the website):

* Tabs and dockable windows for PuTTY instances.
* Fully compatible with PuTTY configuration (using registry).
* Easily customizable to optimize workspace (fullscreen, minimze to tray, add/remove toolbar, etc…).
* Automatic login feature regardless to protocol restrictions (user keyboard simulation).
* Post-login commands (execute any shell command when logged).
* Connection Manager : Manage a large number of connections with specific configuration (auto-login, specific PuTTY Session, post-command, etc…).
* Quick connect toolbar to quickly launch a PuTTY connection.
* Import/Export whole connections informations to XML format (generate your configuration automatically from another tool and import it, or export your configuration for backup purpose).
* Encrypted configuration database option available to store connections informations safely (external library supporting AES algorithm used with key sizes of 128, 192 and 256 bits, please refer for the legal status of encryption software in your country).
* Standalone executable, no setup required.
* Localizable : English (default) and French available (only when using setup version, standalone is english only).
* Completely free for non-commercial, and personal use : PuTTY Connection Manager is freeware.

I must say it works quite well. I tend to have multiple SSH sessions to devices at once and it handles it quite well.

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Yes, the linux learning curve is steep but rewarding when you do start working it all out.

Here is a good website that lists the Windows/OS X software and the linux equivalents.

In a lot of cases there are multiple options which is good. You aren’t tied down to one thing which you may not like.

My operating system of choice for this ‘project’ was SUSE. The initial reason was that learning Linux is (in my opinion) a bit easier because if I got stuck with the command line, I could always fall back (ie cheat) with the GUI which I found quite comfortable to use. Other Linux distros I had difficulty using. I am currently using SUSE 10.2 – a vast improvement over 9.3 which I previously used on another one of my boxes at home.

Next was the software. As I said in my previous post, I had troubles getting windows drivers to work, and when that was sorted out, I could not find any suitable software (for my needs anyway). The PICO2000 software looks like what I was after, but as I wanted to use/learn Linux, I found a great product called Zoneminder.

First looks at Zoneminder indicated that that it was a popular (and free) piece of software, great support and very customizable for your own needs. What the hell – I’ll give it a go.

I first installed Zoneminder a couple of years back all via the CLI – not a problem if you are conversant with the file structure of Linux, TAR etc. But it was a steep learning curve for me. I worked it all out in the end, but an easier way (if you’re using SUSE) is to install the RPM using YaST. Here is the link for the SUSE RPMs. The beauty of doing it via YaST is that it can resolve your dependancies for you, so all the appropriate packages can be installed in one hit.

Anyway, I installed it without too many hassles. Next post I will show you some of the features and my setup.

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