This week’s TechMail was How to create LXC system containers to isolate services which goes into further details on using LXC, using an OpenVZ template to create a new LXC container for use, and a brief rundown on how to configure it, start it, etc.
Tag Archives: Linux
Introducing Linux virtual containers with LXC
This week’s techmail is Introducing Linux virtual containers with LXC. I played with LXC for the first time a little while ago when writing this tip, and it’s pretty slick. It’s not quite as feature-complete or as robust as OpenVZ, but it’s very close. It also has some benefits over OpenVZ, like direct integration with the upstream kernel. LXC is something to watch; it would be extremely cool to see things like Firefox stuffed into an LXC application container in the future, so it can really only ever mess with specific files/directories. LXC is definitely something to keep an eye on.
iChat-like remote desktop sharing for Linux
Does anyone know of such a beast? Last night I had to drive to my mother’s place as she insisted there was a problem with her email and needed me to come check it out. Sadly, it was due to the Buzz stuff and if she actually read the page, she’d have seen the “skip the Buzz, take me to my inbox” link. Instead, I arrived to a half-dozen firefox windows open to the same Buzz introduction page.
In light of that, I know I can setup VNC or NX or whatever to get onto her computer. That’s fine, but I’d like something like iChat that does screen *sharing* so I can see what silly thing she’s doing and prevent me from getting in the car in the first place (not that I dislike visiting my mother, understand, but this is a fairly routine occurrence that would best be done by remote since I’m not so good at hiding the irritation in my face).
I’m not aware of anything that can do this… is there something out there that will do the trick? Right now she’s running Mandriva 2009.0, but I plan to upgrade that to Fedora 12 one of these days.
Learn and use regular expressions with Kodos
This week’s Linux techmail is Learn and use regular expressions with Kodos which is a slick little app written in python that lets you learn regular expressions and build them in a nice GUI interface. This is a great tool for testing regular expressions outside of your code. I’m no regexp guru, so tools like this are really handy for me.
Why PostgreSQL is a better enterprise database than MySQL
This week’s techmail is Why PostgreSQL is a better enterprise database than MySQL which takes a look at what makes PostgreSQL a compelling database, when compared to MySQL. Particularly in light of the whole Oracle/MySQL thing, I think it’s good to remind people that choice still exists, and that the “runner up” might actually be the better choice. This one mostly focuses on authentication, but that is definitely one area where PostgreSQL shines over MySQL (among many others).
Manipulate monitor displays easily with the xrandr extension
This week’s techmail is Manipulate monitor displays easily with the xrandr extension which talks about how to automatically resize, re-orientate, and reconfigure your monitors using xrandr. xrandr is really cool and shines especially bright when used with laptops and dual-head displays. It certainly makes docking my laptop much simpler, and is really easy to use.
