Linux Journal August 2012

A quick overview of what's in this special Business issue:

* Manage Multiple Development Environments with Vagrant
* Using LZO Compression in Hadoop
* Create VFS Modules to Extend Samba's Functionality
* Tarsnap: High-Security, Command-Line-Friendly Automated Backups
* Raspberry Pi/N900 Hacks

Detailed overview: Water Coolers, Cubicles, Committee Meetings and a Penguin

One of these things doesn't belong in the workplace. If you ask most people in the business world, they'd say a penguin is a silly thing to keep at work. Those of us in the server room, however, just snicker at such foolishness. I'll take Linux over a committee meeting any day! This month, we get to see Linux at work.

You might have noticed the past few months we've chosen a product or program as "Editors' Choice" for the issue. It's a great way for us to highlight something we find particularly awesome. This month, I introduce Resara. Samba 4 has been in active development for years, but the folks at Resara package the current build into a very functional Microsoft Active Directory replacement. Their community version is full-featured and free-it's definitely worth checking out.

Reuven M. Lerner talks about a particularly serious issue this month, as he
discusses database integrity. Databases often are overlooked as boring, but
we rely on them constantly. Having viable, accurate data is something we
assume, but Reuven shows us how to make that assumption possible. Dave
Taylor follows up with a tutorial on how to use shell aliases and functions. We often take the simple tweaks in our .bashrc file for granted, but Dave not only opens it up, he also shows how to add tweaks of our own.

The Raspberry Pi device is something most people in our circles are familiar with, even if we haven't been able to get our hands on one! Kyle Rankin,
as usual, takes something awesome and makes it even more so. Combining his Nokia N900 and the Raspberry Pi, Kyle is able to interface directly with the fancy new device. Whether you're interested in creating a super-efficient media center or just like playing with embedded devices, Kyle makes it simple.

My Open-Source Classroom column this month is all about smoke and mirrors-without the smoke. Although certainly not practical for everyone, sometimes having a local repository mirror is useful. I explain how to mirror CentOS and Ubuntu. Be sure to bring lots of storage space!

When we think about compression, it usually means archiving or resource conservation. Arun Viswanathan discusses LZO compression in Hadoop this
month, which uses saved space to decrease disk read times. Since LZO can be decompressed very quickly, the advantages in data transfer times are
significant. Arun has code samples and usage examples that really show off
the benefits.

Jay Palat found a Vagrant he really likes. If you've ever deployed an application only to have it work on some systems but not others, you'll likely agree with him. Vagrant is a tool for providing a virtualized development environment so you can test applications on multiple systems without actually creating the entire test environment. It's certainly possible to virtualize different types of installation environments, but Vagrant allows you to test those environments with a single tool.

Linux has a great virtual filesystem layer that allows the seamless use of underlying filesystems. Most people don't know that Samba does the same thing for its fileshares. Richard Sharpe shows how to set up Samba VFS
Modules, giving us the advantages of different filesystem features via Samba shares. Richard guides us through an example that really shows how to leverage this little known feature of Samba.

Whether you're interested in new products, coding examples, tech tips or cool projects, this issue aims to please.
--Shawn Powers