Slashdot Mirror

After you've had a couple sessions to go through the basics, you could consider using one of the HOWTO's at linuxdoc.org for a topic for each brown bag session.

A lot of people would probably be interested in some of the common time-suckers when you're getting started with a new linux box such as how to get your dial-up connection set up. Mix the HOWTO material with your own experience and tips so that people are getting more than what they just could have read themselves.

A really big favor you could do to your coworkers is start to teach them about security and linux. Nothing sucks more for a newbie than finally getting their first linux box up and running on their cable modem, only to have it cracked within the hour. Totally demoralizing.

I imagine you'll do a session on how to install a new machine -- this is a great time to go into why and how to shut down unnecessary services, install ssh, install patches, etc. etc.

Just include it as part of the standard installation process. That's the sort of stuff that will make your seminars really unique and valuable -- securing your new box is really important, but isn't covered very often in off-the-shelf documentation.

-- Scott

The only problem with rute is that you wouldn't be able to print out a copy and distribute it to the group -- the first page has that restriction:

Further, it may not be reproduced in hard copy for training material, nor for commercial gain, nor for public or organisation-wide distribution.

If he has an LCD projector at hand, that could work, but for brown-bag affairs, seems like a hard copy would be best.

Personally, I think the old Linux Installation and Getting Started is still one of the better free (GPL'ed even) introductions. Chapter 3 in particular is a great intro to any unix.

-- Scott

The only problem with rute is that you wouldn't be able to print out a copy and distribute it to the group -- the first page has that restriction:

Further, it may not be reproduced in hard copy for training material, nor for commercial gain, nor for public or organisation-wide distribution.

If he has an LCD projector at hand, that could work, but for brown-bag affairs, seems like a hard copy would be best.

Personally, I think the old Linux Installation and Getting Started is still one of the better free (GPL'ed even) introductions. Chapter 3 in particular is a great intro to any unix.

-- Scott

The most obvious thing would be the Linux Documentation Project at www.linuxdoc.org, but I'm under the impression that you want presentation oriented material and not self-study book style. In that case you probably won't find too much, and if you do it will probably be an HTML slide show or something.

SVG seems to be the best choice right now for presentation oriented stuff. I suppose it might be a noble effort for somebody to start converting some of the LinuxDoc knowledge into SVG slideshows with instructor notes.

Although the license is reasonably free, (and it comes in printer-friendly formats like pdf and postscript) it might not be free enough for you:

'This work may not be reproduced in hard copy except for personal use. Further, it may not be reproduced in hard copy for training material, nor for commercial gain, nor for public or organisation-wide distribution. Further, it may not be reproduced in hard copy except where the intended reader of the hard copy initiates the process of converting the work to hard copy.'

So it looks like it would be illegal to print it for them, and although I can't see anything wrong with telling them the location of it and letting it print it out, it would be illegal to use it as course material. [This is probably because the book is being published]

The LDP HOWTOs are much freer - hence the profusion of $20 books collating them all (generally badly labeled, so most people wouldn't realise that they are HOWTOs unless they'd seen the HOWTOs before).

Rute does leave some things to be desired, so why not write/start a 'Linux manual'?

It's not really a Perl book - it's a CGI with Perl book, covering things like JavaScript. If you want to learn Perl get Programming Perl.

OTOH, if you just want a cgi script for your guestbook, you should reject Perl - that is unless you have, and want to learn how to use, mod_perl - otherwise it's very slow. Learn PHP by reading the excellent manual; see also the HOWTO.

Of course if you want to become an expert in some of the seriously sick bits of perl (it's oo functions, etc.), then you'll need a book (not this one though - AFAICT, this book is redundant - wouldbe Perl hackers should get a dedicated Perl book, while everyone else should use PHP or ASP).

If you're interested in wearable computing, there is a very detailed FAQ here - it even tells you how to turn your Palm Pilot into a wearable PC.

If you want to save your money, you could read the advanced routing howto instead.

The people who wrote it really know what they're talking about.

Also, Linux router is a router on a floppy disk with most of the hard work done for you, so a lot of the information in the book will be redundant.

And just as a point, software routing is not really appropriate for large networks, so you're not going to throw away those Cisco boxes any time now.

the horizontal refresh rate can be calculated if you know the vertical

It's not that cut and dried. A vertical rate will yield a range of valid horizontal rates for a given dot clock frequency.

X isn't restricted to the off-the-rack common screen resolutions--you can run all kinds of oddball combinations in an effort to squeeze performance out of your gear. Try running 944x708 from the Windows control panel! See the the XFree Video Timings HOWTO for details.

-q

I like his argument, but his .sig really
pisses me off. Slashdot's forum is a public
place. Anything you say here can be quoted
as if you yelled it on the streets of Miami.
That is the result of public expression.

Quoting, or more properly, citation, is covered under fair use. Look it up at Brad Templeton's site: Myth 4, third paragraph:

Fair use is almost always a short excerpt and almost always attributed. (One should not use more of the work than is necessary to make the commentary). It should not harm the commercial value of the work -- in the sense of people no longer needing to buy it (which is another reason why reproduction of the entire work is generally forbidden.)

Also, by simple act of posting my comments here on Slashdot, I obviously implicitly allow copying of my content for the purpose of conducting a discussion on Slashdot. This includes viewing, printing, quoting, and all other uses necessary to have a discussion here on this site. Copyright law explicitly protects such uses.

Use of my text outside of Slashdot, for example in a book published by Andover, or on a Best Of Slashdot CD-ROM, or in other places or for purposes other than discussion here on Slashdot requires a license. That is, I have to explicitly grant you the right to use my words.

Copyright does not cover names, trademark law does that.

Copyright does not cover ideas, patent law does that.

So if you like what I write, but I would not grant you a license to use my words, you could always phrase the ideas I convey in your own words, or express them differently (i.e. using no words at all). That should be differently enough in order not to qualify as a derived work, though.

And finally, when asked, I usually grant the license to use my words for free - completely, unaltered and with correct attribution as well as a pointer to my homepage. I do like to get 1-3 free reference exemplars of printed matter, and pointers to the sites where my words are hosted. Also, I will not grant license to use my words for free, if you sell them. If you make a living by selling my words and my works, I demand a sensible share of that money.

If you want to read my words, and my works, please go to my homepage. You find it at http://www.koehntopp.de/kris. I keep freely accessible online copies of everything I have written and deemed useful, whether sold or not. I make my contracts in such ways that I can maintain this website with my works so that you can access all my published articles and USENET posts as well as my open source projects.

Copyright law may be not an ideal solution, and may be an annoyance sometimes. But there is (or at least was at some point in time) reason behind it and used sensibly and nonoffensively, it can be actually useful to protect the interests of the public as well as the interests of the author. Just try to think, and use Google, before you flame.

© Copyright 2000 Kristian Köhntopp

It frustrates most at first... you just have to know where to find answers.

A good first source is the Linux Documentation Project:
www.linuxdoc.org
This site has lots of good info... check out the HOWTO's in particular.

For more esoteric questions, I like to search Usenet postings. A good Usenet search can be found at Deja.com (for now, at least):
www.deja.com/usenet

While these still require reading more than 2 sentences, if you want to get Linux running, and have some time to spend, these will answer 90% of your questions. Posting to Usenet will often clear up the rest.

Everyone Linux user was once a newbie. When I was starting out, these sites were invaluable for me. I hope they can help you too.

Such a site is the Linux Documentation Project. It has gone through several updates in the past year or so and is much more up to date than it used to be. The problem is that Linux (and related software) is a swiftly moving target and there will always be more developers than documenters. This means that documentation will always be lagging. Think it's bad now? Wait for the 2.4 kernel. :)

I can't actually provide links, but I can provide some Linux common-knowledge.

As most Linux specialists probably know, the kernel calculates a rough estimate of the system's speed in BogoMIPs (bogus MIPs) when it is first initialized. This figure probably gets used a lot for imposing delays etc., especially I/O wise, where an I/O wait period is much smaller than the x86 clock chip's maximum speed. I can't be 100% certain of this because I'm not a mighty kernel hacker yet =P.

A word of technical detail on the x86 clock chip (skip if bored): every x86 chipset since the PC (I think) has at the very least a single system clock chip on it which gets split into three separate clock master signals. One is for DRAM Refresh (so you can't monkey with that one--much); another is equally vital, although I don't remember exactly what it does. The third is spare for system use, but is by default used for maintaining the BIOS software clock, whether a Real Time Clock (RTC) circuit is present or not.

This third signal can be set to a pretty high frequency, but it is sometimes not high enough to impose I/O wait periods in hardware drivers without making those wait periods longer than necessary and impacting system performance. I think this is usually where BogoMIPs get used...

The bad thing about BogoMIPs is that they are only a rough figure of performance and often get used as a more precise measure than they really are (usually not in a stable kernel though).

The bad thing about BogoMIPs and PowerNow is that BogoMIPs will become even *less* accurate than before. This is probably a very serious problem, as up until now, the kernel has been able to assume that a CPU will stay at the same speed it had at boot time and thus assume a fair degree of consistency in the actual BogoMIPs rate at any time. This assumption is no longer valid with PowerNow.

So...my guess is that this PowerNow thing WILL cause a severe problem--not just with Linux, but possibly with many other operating systems as well. This problem could be worked out, though; the kernel is capable of monitoring CPU clock frequency, so that clock speed at any given time, combined with clock speed at the time of BogoMIPs calculation, could be used to calculate a factor to apply to the original BogoMIPS calculation and thus get a fairly accurate current BogoMIPS calculation. This would probably impact performance a bit.

I'd guess that in future kernels, you would see the "Support PowerNOW!" config option within the CPU Features submenu of the kernel config script. For those who don't know about this (and are actually interested in knowing), check the Kernel-HOWTO at Linuxdoc.org .

Hoo...all that karma whoring. I feel dirty now...I think I'll take a shower.

Kelledin Tane, the Dreaming Minstrel

http://kelledin.tripod.com/scovsms.jpg

It's somewhat offtopic, but what you're looking for is covered by the Framebuffer HOWTO, avalible here. Your console resolution should be reasonably easy to change in most situations, and some distros (like Linux PPC) even ship with a higher resolution enabled by default.

Documentation for this stuff is all over the net - try the Linux Documentation Project for a start. A good site for Linux newbies is LinuxNewbie.org

I think it would be far easier to implement this using a linux (or unix) solution than with WindowsNT/2000. All the basic funstionality for an internet server (e-mail, web, basic network stuff, firewall) is standard in most distros.

Yes offtopic but this annoyed me too. What you have to do is enable portforwarding in your kernel and then route port 51200 on youir Linux box's external-Internet IP to whatever internal-net IP you're using... on my Slack7 setup here the syntax is something like (IPs changed to protect the innocent):

ipmasqadm portfw -a -P tcp -L 63.5.241.23 51200 -R 192.168.0.4 51200
ipmasqadm portfw -a -P udp -L 63.5.241.23 51200 -R 192.168.0.4 51200

No, I don't know if it needs both UDP and TCP, I was too lazy to test it ;) And all these instructions are just generalizations with emphasis on Slackware syntax; as always YMMV but if you're stuck I'd check your local copy of the IP Masquerade HOWTO and/or the Net HOWTO. Happy hacking!
BRTB

Yes offtopic but this annoyed me too. What you have to do is enable portforwarding in your kernel and then route port 51200 on youir Linux box's external-Internet IP to whatever internal-net IP you're using... on my Slack7 setup here the syntax is something like (IPs changed to protect the innocent):

ipmasqadm portfw -a -P tcp -L 63.5.241.23 51200 -R 192.168.0.4 51200
ipmasqadm portfw -a -P udp -L 63.5.241.23 51200 -R 192.168.0.4 51200

No, I don't know if it needs both UDP and TCP, I was too lazy to test it ;) And all these instructions are just generalizations with emphasis on Slackware syntax; as always YMMV but if you're stuck I'd check your local copy of the IP Masquerade HOWTO and/or the Net HOWTO. Happy hacking!
BRTB

For the hyperlink impaired (and a smaller more concise list as well, although mistakes made are all mine, and there are a lot of funny numbers in the main list...):

386DX/40...........7
486DX2/66.........33
P90...............36
P133..............53
P200..............80
PII/400..........400
AMD K6/233.......466
PIII/600.........600
Athlon 600.......600
Duron 700.......1400
Alpha 21264/730.1500
31 CPU Alpha...41000

So that makes it 100 times as powerful as my home computer. Let's see. My home computer does 133,000 times as many bogoMips as my home computer in 1985, and it does 10 times as many bogoMips as the desktop I used for my masters degree 5 years ago.

So... you only have to wait another 5-10 years, and yes, you too will have a home PC that does 50,000 bogoMips.

For the hyperlink impaired (and a smaller more concise list as well, although mistakes made are all mine, and there are a lot of funny numbers in the main list...):

386DX/40...........7
486DX2/66.........33
P90...............36
P133..............53
P200..............80
PII/400..........400
AMD K6/233.......466
PIII/600.........600
Athlon 600.......600
Duron 700.......1400
Alpha 21264/730.1500
31 CPU Alpha...41000

So that makes it 100 times as powerful as my home computer. Let's see. My home computer does 133,000 times as many bogoMips as my home computer in 1985, and it does 10 times as many bogoMips as the desktop I used for my masters degree 5 years ago.

So... you only have to wait another 5-10 years, and yes, you too will have a home PC that does 50,000 bogoMips.

A quick search on Google revealed that an 8x Pentium III (Xeon) at 500 MHz, SMP would run at 3996.06 BogoMips. Compared to 46170.90 BogoMIPS. Or about 8% of the box. Of course, I wonder how the price comparison point would be. :)

Ok, I finally tracked down the Alpha pricing. But I'll be danged if I can get it to work. Can someone else? yeeshk.

This mini-howto may be a little outdated, but its record for most BogoMIPS is 57648.96, with 144 PII's at 400MHz. Granted, that's substantially more processors...

The LDP is using CVS to store its documents (DocBook SGML) and I've collaborated with other LDP authors on the LDP Authoring Guide (formerly the HOWTO-HOWTO) via CVS.

In terms of editors, there are quite a few:

PSGML for Emacs (highlighting and validation)
gvim does DocBook highlighting
LyX has some rudimentary DocBook export support
nedit supports hightlighting and validation
tksgml is more tag-oriented, but has a nice layout
WordPerfect for Windows also has an SGML mode (the Linux version apparently does not)

I give a quick mention (along with URLs) of most of the above in the LAG.

-Mark

Check out the Diskless nodes Linux HOWTO. It describes the hows and whys of exactly this.

That's all that matters to me, like I said, I'm a selfish bastard. But if you had read my post you'd have noticed this isn't about ibiblio. Of course, you didn't pause to notice that and instead went on flaming... you probably missed the 4 other examples and how this is representative of a continuing trend in the linux community. One that I don't like. It's called an "opinion", and like an asshole everybody has one

I don't recall a note on the ldp-discuss list mentioning that $4mil is being donated to the LDP. Nor do I see anything of the sort regarding metalab/ibiblio. So I'm not sure how you equate a donation to ibiblio as a donation to the LDP.

When you check up on your history, imetasite has been one of the largest and longest-running source for Linux software. The other being tsx-11.mit.edu (is that still up).

On a side note, if you're so concerned about the quality of documentation for Linux, I suggest you write a HOWTO or even a guide and contribute instead of complaining. The tools for writing DocBook articles and books has increased, and the amount of documentation about writing documentation has increased as well. I suggest you start with the LDP Author Guide (formerly the HOWTO-HOWTO).

The methodology used is great if you're trying to figure out who's making how much money from selling Linux distributions, but isn't so great if you're trying to figure out which distributions are good ones, or popular ones. This article just goes to show that Red Hat is not Linux. There are many distro out there, each with their own pro's and con's. I am a big Caldera fan(1). The main thing I see from this article is which distro do businesses want to use, verses which distro do the geeks/nerds(2) want use. Obviously Japanesse business want Turbo Linux, IBM wants Caldera, Dell wants RedHat. The geeks well I would recommend the Linux from Scratch Distro.

(1)This is my personal opinion. Anybody can disagree if they wish(3).
(2)Geeks/nerds is used as a term of enderment in this case.
(3)They are coure will be wrong if they disagree ;)

No, *you* missed the point. A monitor isn't limited to the resolutions it claims on the box. It's an analog device, and can be run at whatever resolution you want so long as it's within spec. I'd like to run my monitor here at work at 1280x1024, but the refresh rate is too low. The next standard resolution down (1152x864) gives me the refresh rate I want, but it's too small. As a result, I devised my own resolution, and hence I'm running at 1232x944, which is nearly as good as 1280x1024, but it gives me a good enough refresh rate that it doesn't hurt my eyes. There's no reason whatsoever that I shouldn't run my Iiyama at 1600x1400. In fact, having done some quick modeline calculations, it looks like I can do it at around 85Hz, so I may well do that tonight, to give me that little bit extra screen real estate. See the XFree86 Video Timings HOWTO for more details.

Because of the USB cradle. It says they have a serial cradle in the works, but is still MS-only. Actually, the accessories page lists Windows 95 on both cradles. Hmm...

Anyways, any operating system should able to write to a serial port. If they don't support Win95 or MacOS, it simply means they are too lazy or too incompetent to write portable software.

Palm supports Linux, indirectly, by cooperating with the developers of the Palm-targetted gcc and the Linux Palm utilities, and have taken the Palm emulator (including the Linux port) under their wing.

Handspring actually promotes the palm-targetted gcc under Windows for those who don't want to use CodeWarrior, though, like Palm, I don't think they officially support Linux conduits. But that's ok, we have this and this, and I'd rather our stuff be open source anyways. I wonder how Sony will react when someone reverse-engineers their cradle protocol...

Because of the USB cradle. It says they have a serial cradle in the works, but is still MS-only. Actually, the accessories page lists Windows 95 on both cradles. Hmm...

Anyways, any operating system should able to write to a serial port. If they don't support Win95 or MacOS, it simply means they are too lazy or too incompetent to write portable software.

Palm supports Linux, indirectly, by cooperating with the developers of the Palm-targetted gcc and the Linux Palm utilities, and have taken the Palm emulator (including the Linux port) under their wing.

Handspring actually promotes the palm-targetted gcc under Windows for those who don't want to use CodeWarrior, though, like Palm, I don't think they officially support Linux conduits. But that's ok, we have this and this, and I'd rather our stuff be open source anyways. I wonder how Sony will react when someone reverse-engineers their cradle protocol...

The second addition of the Network Administrator has been out for some time. The second edition is also on the LDP website and can be found here.

There is also a great book on security and optimization (which the NAG doesn't cover). It is called Securing and Optimizing Linux: RedHat Edition. It can also be found on the LDP Website. It can also be purchased from LinuxCentral.Com or LinuxPorts.com and comes with two CD's.

The second addition of the Network Administrator has been out for some time. The second edition is also on the LDP website and can be found here.

There is also a great book on security and optimization (which the NAG doesn't cover). It is called Securing and Optimizing Linux: RedHat Edition. It can also be found on the LDP Website. It can also be purchased from LinuxCentral.Com or LinuxPorts.com and comes with two CD's.

The second addition of the Network Administrator has been out for some time. The second edition is also on the LDP website and can be found here.

There is also a great book on security and optimization (which the NAG doesn't cover). It is called Securing and Optimizing Linux: RedHat Edition. It can also be found on the LDP Website. It can also be purchased from LinuxCentral.Com or LinuxPorts.com and comes with two CD's.

nobody really tells you how to partition hard disks - that's why most newbies end up with a single partition.

nobody really tells you how to partition hard disks - that's why most newbies end up with a single partition.

First we have Miguel proclaiming that Unix Sucks and has been built incorrectly from the ground up, after that came the latest KDE vs. GNOME war, and now we have ESR (does *anyone* remember the last time he even bothered to take part in a discussion around here?) claiming that the Mac is doomed?

Excuse me for picking nits here, but ever time someone says Mozilla is "too little too late" they're creamed with the ClueHammer(tm). What about OS X? I've never bought a Mac in my life, but everything that Apple seems to have accomplished looks really exciting to me. Even if I wasn't impressed by their merging of a slick GUI on top of a BSD base, I wouldn't go around shitting on their heads. Can somebody point ot me where it says that Apple's chief purpose is to attack Microsoft? I thought they were about creating great computer systems. Hell, I used to think that Linux was about the same thing. What happened?

I won't attempt to guess at anyone's motives in all this, but it seems that too much pride is beginning to overtake the "heads" of our little community. Enough of the pot-shots at Windows (it's too easy), enough attacking Unix (we still have a lot of ground to cover before we're on the same level as all of the other 'nixes), and let the Apple guys do their own thing.

This article is nothing but verbal wanking.

--Cycon

--Ryv

"There will be cases where Linux is not the answer. Be the first to recognize this and offer another solution." - Linux Advocacy HOWTO

No matter what side it comes from, FUD is still FUD.

--

Two of the many projects can be found here and here.
However things have been moving more slowly with the new chips on the 5mx (see the mailing list).

You can of course connect your psion 3 or 5 to your Linux desktop, without supplanting your PDA's OS.
Derwen

However, you have to look no further than the PostgreSQL HOWTO (the author calls it Database-SQL-RDBMS HOW-TO, take that as you will) to find religious fanaticism..

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO /PostgreSQL-HOWTO-4.html

I won't even talk about the "What is PostgreSQL" section. =)

Also check out the Linux Administrator's Security Guide and Sec uring and Optimizing Linux: Red Hat Edition

Also check out the Linux Administrator's Security Guide and Sec uring and Optimizing Linux: Red Hat Edition

ipchains --insert input --destination-port 1030:1040 --jump DENY

Of course, there is a lot more you can do with ipchains than that. I recommend you block all ports below 1024, except for the ones you need, block 6000-6010, and go ahead and block any GNOME ports if you don't know what they're for.

A more radical policy which many people use, is to block *all* incoming TCP connections, and UDP packets, *except* for ones explicitly allowed. You can do that too, but it may cause some problems (it won't cause any problems that wouldn't also be caused by using IP MASQ. In fact, this would be pretty much the functional equivalent of IP MASQ, but with only one computer.)

More info: ipchains(8), IPCHAINS-HOWTO.

Kernel 2.4 will change the entire way networking is adminstered, btw, so if you're using 2.4 those docs will be worthless. But everything you can do in 2.2 you can do in 2.4, so the same basic strategy applies.

See sections 7 and eight of the Firewall and Proxy Server HOWTO for ipfwadm and ipchains, respectively; and the Linu x 2.4 Packet Filtering HOWTO for netfilter.

(Of course, everything-off should be the default setting in the first place, but that's another story altogether.)

Read the ipchains HOWTO

Perhaps my firewall scripts may be a good starter:

For masq boxes, see
http://duckie.neep.net/firewall

For standallone boxes, see
http://duckie.neep.net/firewall1

For unprivileged ports, use ! -y to accept packets which aren't SYN packets. Be aware you might run into trouble with ftp. The client will get connections on unpriv'd ports in port mode, the server will get 'em in passive mode.

My masq box is a 486/66 with 32 MB as well and woopsie:
1:58am up 195 days, 23:58, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 0.06, 0.01

It's fast enough to do whatever masquerading you want. It'll even handle mail/ftp/http just fine. Though I'm not sure if it'll survive /. load ;-)

Just set up a quick ipchains ruleset to filter those ports IPCHAINS-HOWTO Thanks for bringing it to our attention though.

PostgreSQL is the perfect book for you if you use PostgreSQL at work and on your Web sites wherever you expose data on the Web using Linux and Apache. It covers the new features of PostgreSQL as well as the PostgreSQL processor, which defines all necessary objects in a database, to get acquainted with SQL and to test ideas and verify joins and queries. Database developers for corporate and Web applications will find this book useful. It is geared toward intermediate to advanced developers who have designed and administered databases, but not PostgreSQL. The accompanying CD includes PostgreSQL, plus sample databases and modules.

If you just want to use it (and not admin it), O'Reilly's Programming the Perl DBI has some info on accessing a PostgreSQL DB (hint: it's not that different from any other DB when seen through DBI). Oh yeah, MySQL & mSQL, also from O'Reilly has a little bit about it (but not very much at all). I guess readmes, man pages and HOW-TOs are your friends for the next couple months.

If you're really curious, throw it on a test machine and (if possible) "port" some apps to use Postgres instead of MySQL or whatever. You probably won't reach any real conclusion (or do nearly enough work to justify moving to another DB for a production environment), but the effort will very likely get you very familiar with how it works, how to set it up, how to admin it, its performance, its quirks, etc. That's both a good and a bad thing, BTW... :-)

-B

The Advocacy HOWTO has a lot of these kinds of things covered, including some tips on how to get suits, etc., to take you seriously. (Unfortunately, the community can resort to mudslinging and "Betamax"-style arguments all too often -- this document tries to put that in perspective.)


~wog

Although the original poster probably knows about it, for those reading this discussion out of the same interest, try the Linux Advocacy mini-HOWTO. The information here is not so organized as the poster proposes but some very good hints can be found.
My personal opinion about the question is that sharing your own experience is a key convincing tool.

. . . Linux powerd Coffe Maker . . .

Click here.

------

That's a different beast, though. All of the firewalling code relies on routing. A packet exists on one subnet (on one interface), and if certain conditions are met, it will be passed through to another subnet (on the other interface). This is great, but I think it would be better if this could be done with a bridge instead of a router. A company with a class A/B/C network has to split their net into multiple subnets for a router-based firewall to work, but not for a bridge-based firewall.

For some info on this technique, check out This link.

Since a bridge looks like a wire to the outside world (it has no effect on the topology of the network), a potential intruder won't know whether their packet has hit a firewall or not. A bridge that rejects a packet looks like the target machine (behind the firewall) is physically disconnected from the network. A traceroute won't identify the firewall (since the packets don't have to go through an IP "interface"), so that makes it harder for someone to figure out what machine to target for an attack.

I think that some of this functionality is available in the new 2.4x kernels, since they have disconnected the ethernet interfaces from the IP addresses (for other reasons). (This HOWTO has info on bridge/firewalling)

The next thing to do is to actually give a bridge an IP address - the same address for either NIC. You'd still have to know which "side" a packet comes from, for the firewalling to work. Once you have this setup, you can contact the machine (if you know its' address), but it doesn't show up if you try to contact something beyond it. Additionally, you can do things like have remote users (whose IP addresses change each time they dial in) use your SMTP/FTP/whatever boxes by authenticating to the brigde/firewall, and having the authentication script add a temporary IPChains-like entry for the dynamic address. That fixes a lot of the problems with spammers using relay hosts. (yes, this sounds a lot like a slightly modified proxy server)

Maybe this is a good separate topic for discussion on /.

Notice that whether the phones use spread spectrum at the hardware level or not, they can still be theoretically monitored. And any collection of phones will be hard to monitor, as they'll be using their usual methods of avoiding interference with each other -- whether they use TDM, multiple frequencies, whatever. Or use several different types of phones with different types of networks...