Carla Schroder

Last week we dug into the whys and wherefores of using IPv6. Today we’re going to learn all about how to understand IPv6 addressing by breaking it down into nice understandable chunks, and we’ll cover some shortcuts for writing IPv6 addresses. You’ll be able to look at an IPv6 address and understand exactly what it […]

Today’s theme is “No Escape,” or "How to use Asterisk to hunt you down and find you no matter where you are." We’ll cover transferring calls, parking calls, and setting up hunt groups that ring every phone you own until you pick up. We’ll also set up a ring group, which is handy for ringing […]

Last week we took a close look at the heart of an Asterisk VoIP server: the dialplan. Today we’re digging under the hood of Asterisk’s channels. Channels and dialplans are what make it all go. A channel is any configured connection between your Asterisk server and another VoIP server. Every individual call is then placed […]

Red Hat and its many clones and offspring, like Fedora, CentOS, White Box Linux, and so forth have long had a simple built-in mechanism for cloning installations on diverse hardware: Kickstart. With Kickstart you can easily create a customized configuration, set up an installation server, plug a new PC into the network, and perform an […]

So there you are, dutifully wading through the documentation for whatever gnarly Linux application you’re rassling into submission. You’re running commands and editing configuration files and things are working and life is good. Until — yes, you knew the good times weren’t going to last — until you hit the dreaded “send the process a […]

Build a Secure Logging Server with syslog-ng You’re not a mole, and our guide to building your own secure logging server will help you quit digging through logs like one so you can get to the information you need quickly. In Part 1we learned the the basics of how syslog-ng works. Today we’ll look at […]

Managing Linux system and application logging is important and a bit tricksy. You want to capture important information, not bales of noise. You need to be able to find what you want in your logs without making it your life’s work. The venerable old syslogd has served nobly for many years, but it’s not quite […]

Deploying a new Asterisk PBX is not a trivial task, so the wise admin first sets up a test lab. This three-part subseries will show you how to be up and running in an hour, and how to spend little or no money in the process. You should have knowledge of basic networking and Linux […]

Last weekwe successfully navigated the thorny thickets of wireless security standards and rampant milling acronym herds. Today we shall puncture common wireless security myths, and learn how to configure WPA Personal on both Debian clients (and its many offshoots) and Red Hat (and its many spawn). Access points are so diverse I’m afraid you’re stuck […]

Who among us has not experienced the joy of rebooting a multi-homed Linux server, and found that our network interfaces have come up in a different order, and been assigned different names by the kernel? This is especially amusing when doing a kernel upgrade on multiple servers, and all of them do the random-re-assignment dance. […]

Us amazing system and network administrators are frequently required to believe six impossible things before breakfast. Everything is supposed to be easily accessible and convenient, yet everything must also be locked down and controlled. The sane response is to smile and nod wisely, then do what we think is right. Having tools to assist the […]

Oldtyme Unix and Linux geeks love to rail endlessly about the wonders of the command line, and the perfect awfulness of graphical interfaces for system administration. It is true that the full power of an operating system is found at the command line, and that it is difficult for a GUI to include all the […]