The computer pages are mostly about Linux. There are some things there for the MCSE, including an unofficial mcse mailing list faq that was pretty much ignored, at least by the mcse mailing list owners. However Daniel Petri, who has a fairly well known MCSE page liked some of it and asked to make use of it.

There's a few other things that I'm a bit proud of here. I've gotten many emails of thanks for my subnet page--primarily aimed towards passing the now retired NT4.0 TCP/IP exam, where I tried to write something that answered the questions I had after reading many different tutorials. There's still subnetting necessary for Cisco exams, and the Win2K exams. My dual os article is part of the welcome message for the respected Nihongo computing list and my Linux faq for newbies is, as mentioned above given as reference in the welcome messages for the linux and RedHat yahoogroups mailing lists, both of which have over 1500 members (though many of the 1500 belong to both groups) In late April of 2002, this page was added to the Gentoo Linux Forum's commonly used links page, which is a nice compliment.

I also have gotten compliments on my Linux pages. The Linux man pages have a bad habit of telling people all the things that the beginner doesn't need to know. I remember seeing the geek howto somewhere on the web, which was a riot. Its premise was that to be a geek, you have to say heh a lot, hang out on irc and never help anyone. Sometimes one thinks that some of the man page authors believe it. For example, the bunzip2 man page--it goes through various and sundry things, sends one to the bunzip2 mini howto which covers all sorts of exotic uses of the command--for the simple untarring of a file, the howto writer tells the reader to check the man pages. Yet, 95 percent of the people simply need to know the syntax of tar -jxvf filename.tar.bz2 (or, if you get the response that -j is an unknown option, tar -yxvf filename.tar.bz2--the first works with RH, the second with Slack, or if neither work, bunzip2 filename.tar.bz2 && tar -xvf filename.tar). It seems that they could put that at the beginning of the man page and then let the interested reader delve further if they wished.

Possibly the trouble is with those who send the total beginner to man pages and offer little more help. That sometimes seems to be the equivalent of answering a child's queries on reproduction by handing them a Ph.D's thesis on DNA.

Keep in mind too, that just because you see something written on these pages, it doesn't mean that it's true. No doubt, there are countless others that remain undetected. I'm no Unix guru--I am fortunate in having several who have kindly helped me, pointing out errors, teaching me, being generous with their time in countless ways.

Sometimes I'm asked how I learned this stuff, which is what I often ask others who know far more than I do. One picks it up along the way. If you enjoy, or are obsessed by computers, you'll find that you'll pick up little bits of knowledge along the way, and eventually, they will result in you telling the next person how to do it.

In many cases, these pages are a bit of the blind leading the blind--however, that may be a strength. When experts write a page, they often forget the path they took to get there, leaving the beginner a bit bewildered. Some were first put up as I tried to clarify a procedure to myself, and later organized, when I realized that they might benefit some other people. I still do that. Realizing that many of them get turned into pages, however, now I try to make them a little more presentable from the beginning

If you want to link to anything here, that's fine, however, I would appreciate a note, letting me know that you're doing so.

Also, since I know a lot of people only through email, some of course, are curious about what I look like--so, here's a shot from the Fall of 2004, I think. (I'm the one in the sweater.)

So, without further ado....

Linux Articles (and a bit of BSD)

Faq for Newbies
This is the faq mentioned above. It covers the questions that I see most frequently asked on the Linux_Newbies mailing list--at least the ones that I know how to answer. It is also the unofficial faq for the linux@yahoogroups, BeginningWithLinux@yahoogroups and redhat@yahoogroups mailing lists

The Newbie Survival Guide
An effort to explain to the newcomer why he might have been flamed, told to RTFM, etc. Read it, and you may be able to post to any list with confidence. (Hrrm, that's a bit of false advertising--but anyway, you should read it.)

Aliases
Written more as a reminder to myself than anything else, a little page about making aliases--fairly RedHat specific, actually. (In Slackware, you have to go to /etc/profile, IIRC, which isn't covered here.)

Scripting, sort of.
This is the stuff, such as where to keep scripts, doing chmod etc that you should learn before doing serious bash scripting. The little scripts here--though they're all one and two line commands, are actually a little useful

Useful shellscripting links
Some shellscripting links that I've found useful.

A few bash tips.
Extremely elementary, mostly notes to myself that a few other folks found useful

A chmod tutorial
This tutorial, written by John O'Donnell, is used with his permission.

RPMS, tar.gz and tar.bz2 files
Don't you hate it when you ask how to use bz2 and someone tells you go see the man page and all you need is a one line answer?

OpenLDAP
An introduction to using OpenLDAP for authorization and as an address book.

the Pine email client
This describes setting up Pine to be used on a box for a single user. A lot simpler than the man pages make it sound. However, it's somewhat dated, because like many, I moved to mutt.

Setting up Mutt
Some people feel Mutt is a better email client than Pine (including me but..) The big pain in the neck is that it doesn't include anything that allows you to send mail--so, this includes configuring other programs to work with it. (Getmail, ssmtp and maildrop.) A modified version of this article, specific to Gentoo Linux has been selected to appear on the Gentoo Forums Documentation site. That link just takes you to the Forums site, if you really want to see my artcle, go to the Documentation section

Using getmail
Setting up the getmail program for version 4.x

Using getmail 3.x
Debian and some others are still using version 3.x of getmail

Using procmail
Although I use maildrop, many people like procmail--this is more or less an abbreviated rehash of the procmail quickstart guide

Using nbsmtp
Some people use nbsmtp with mutt. I haven't used it in awhile, so this page is no longer maintained

Using XBuffy
XBuffy is a nice little utility that does a good job of handling multiple mailboxes

Ipchains and Iptables
This is a VERY simplified guide to using ipchains or tables. The firewall that we make here, although probably as good as RH's default firewall, isn't really meant to be used. However, if you can get through this article, you'll find the ipchains and iptables howtos much easier to understand. This was written back when I usually used RH, and they had ipchains as their default. With the advent of the 2.4 kernel, most people now use iptables, so you can imagine how old this article really is.

Compiling the kernel
This is also meant as an introduction to the kernel howto--just sort of a quick review.

Compiling the RedHat kernel
Well, not really. It's more of an explanation of how to use to source code from kernel.org to compile a kernel on RedHat--RH has a few gotchas of its own

Using SSH
This is pretty RedHat specific--however, as security becomes more important, it's becoming more and more of a bad idea to use telnet. RedHat disables telnet by default in its newer versions. It's actually easier to set up SSH than telnet, and you really should. This explains how to do it

Using Blackbox
Blackbox is a nice little window manager--This was, again written more as a reminder to myself, especially the part about using bbkeys, an add on which enables you to use the keyboard to move between windows, close them, etc. The developer of bbkeys was kind enough to take a look at the article and compliment it

Using Fluxbox
Fluxbox is very similar to Blackbox, but has a few nice features of its own

Lilo
This is about dual and triple booting, using Lilo. It tells you how to, among other things, use NT's boot loader to boot Linux, and the much easier way of using Lilo to boot NT (or 2K and XP)

Grub
Supposedly Grub is going to replace Lilo--it has a few nice features and once you get used to it, is probably a bit easier to use.

Starting with Samba
Using Samba on the home network--a simplified guide.

Connecting Samba to Active Directory
Using Samba in an Active Directory domain

ArchLinux
Arch Linux is a very nice i686 optimized distro, and should be more popular

Debian
Debian isn't the easiest distro in the world, but once installed, its package management system makes everything easy.

Japanese in Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD
This covers several distros of Linux as well as FreeBSD. The Tokyo Linux User Group includes a link to this on their web site.

Fdisk
Linux's fdisk is a far more sophisticated tool than the fdisk that comes with DOS. However, it's not that hard to use--there are times when the various gui or simpler partitioning tools don't work and fdisk will. Like many things in Linux, once you get used to it, you might grow to prefer it to the graphic disk partitioning tools

Some Xterm settings
This is one that I put up so I wouldn't have to look it up each time. It deals with setting the TERM variable, and concentrates on the rxvt terminal

Some quick fixes for CUPS
When CUPS works right it makes printing easy. These are a few simple gotchas and fixes that I've collected--some from me, some from various forums and mailing lists

Using the citicards.com site
Recent "improvements" in Citibank's citicards.com site have made it difficult to use in Linux and BSD. I tried to keep my rant to a minimum and just detail the problem and solution.

Using vpnc
A short guide to the vpnc program.

Copying and Burning DVDs
Various command line tools for dealing with DVD and multimedia.

The QND guides

Installing Software on various Linux and BSD systems
Installing from source tarballs
Using diff and patch
Backing up DVDs from the command line
Fetchmail
Getmail
Maildrop
Mutt
Using mutt with a gmail account
Using Fdisk
Running programs at boot on various systems
Samba
Using ssh keypairs
Ssmtp
Installing Gentoo Linux
Checklist for installing Gentoo
Chrooted Gentoo
Inputting Japanese
Screen
NTPD
Shell prompts
Pure-ftpd
Ftpproxy
MRTG
FreeBSD jails
Ezjail
Mlterm
Convert AC3 audio to OGG Vorbis

RedHat based Distribution Section

Fedora Sound Problems
Lately, many people have been having sound problems. This page was thrown up to try to collect some links about it, and then other folks started mailing me their solutions. If you're one of the many having Fedora sound problems in Fedora 8, perhaps one of the solutions will help.

Fedora and wpa_supplicant
There are a few wireless issues in Fedora 8. This covers some issues with the fact that network starts before wpa_supplicant and using MadWifi with the Atheros 5007EG card.

Finding the model of your wireless card
A lot of people post on Fedora forums asking for help with wireless, but neglecting to give the model of the card. This page is primarily to save me typing, over and over again, the steps for someone to find out which card they have.

Simple wireless troubleshooting
Many times, wireless troubles are due to NetworkManager or another GUI configuration tool. This article gives some tips on troubleshooting wireless with the command line.

Recovering another distribution's grub
Many people have, for example, Ubuntu installed, then install Fedora. Although they make sure that Fedora didn't overwrite the Ubuntu partition, they don't see Ubuntu as an option in Fedora's grub. This short article explains how to fix that.

The "command not found" problem in Fedora
This question frquently arises on Fedora forums, so this is a quick explanation of the PATH variable. (For those not used to Fedora, normal users don't have /sbin or /usr/sbin in their PATH.)

Using sudo with Fedora
People coming from Ubuntu, or newcomers following tutorials that recommend sudo are often confused by the fact that unless they edit the /etc/sudoers file, sudo won't work. This short article explains the basics of using sudo with RH based distributions.

A brief comparison of VMware Server, VirtualBox and KVM
A casual comparison of three popular virtualization methods.

A quick guide to bridged networking on VirtualBox with a Linux host
VirtualBox's bridged networking (prior to version 2.1.0) confused some people--this is an effort to give a very quick introduction to it. This is in the Fedora section because their old manual's instructions on bridging in Fedora weren't always clear to the newcomer. Although this article is no longer necessary for VirtualBox it might still be useful for anyone who wants to set up bridged networking.

VMWare-server
Installing VMWare-server-1.04 on Fedora 8

KVM Virtualization on CentOS-5.1.
Using KVM on CentOS.

Using Linux-VServer with CentOS
Linux-VServer is a method of chrooting guest operating systems. It is similar to a FreeBSD jail, and quite useful.

Using NX server and client on Linux
A very quick guide to setting up either the nomachines or Freenx NX server and client.

Common samba problems and fixes
Quick fixes to some common samba problems.

The Acer Aspire 4720z
A brief page about what did and didn't work for me with the Acer Aspire 4720z. (With Fedora and Ubuntu.)

The Acer Aspire One (8 GB SSD Linux version)
My experiences with the popular Aspire One netbook.

The Acer Aspire One (160 GB HD version)
Although the 160 HD version comes with Windows XP, I removed XP and installed various Linux distributions on it. So far, all of them work quite well.

Flashing the Bios on the Aspire One
Many users have experienced the Aspire's "Black Screen of Death." This can often be fixed by flashing the BIOS. This is an elaboration of the excellent macles blogspot article about it, with a bit more detail for the newcomer.

The New Upstart Init System
Rather than using /etc/inittab, Fedora now uses Upstart. This very brief page explains how to change from the default runlevel 5 to runlevel 3 under the new system.

FreeBSD for Fedora users
Many folks ask about FreeBSD on Fedora forums. This isn't an exhaustive treatment of FreeBSD, simply an overview of what Fedora users might expect if they try it.

Installing 64 bit Flash
At present, 64 bit Flash is still considered alpha by Adobe. However, it's working well and this simple article tells you how to use it.

BSD section

Updating FreeBSD
A quick rundown on the steps necessary to update FreeBSD, including running cvsup, buildworld, and using mergemaster

FreeBSD
An attempt to update some of the information in the cvsup page, as well as cover some other things. It also has a small section on differences between FreeBSD and Linux commands.

A quick explanation of FreeBSD's naming system
This was actually written by Freddie Cash and used with his kind permission. It explains the difference between CURRENT, STABLE and RELEASE, a subject which seems to cause much confusion on mailing lists and forums.

Setting up a vacation response
Sometimes, the simple vacation program doesn't work. Also, one can do a few more things using maildrop to create various rules. This article covers setting up a vacation response with postfix, getmail and maildrop.

Using the pf packet filter
This is a real beginner's guide to using pf, which is becoming the most popular packet filtering software in the BSDs. It is only an introduction.

Copying audio CDs in FreeBSD
My lame script for making (legitimate backups of course) copies of audio CDs in FreeBSD, using the builtin dd and burncd commands

Stupid Korn Shell Tricks
Another fairly lame page, but it has a few basic things that might help the convert to ksh from bash get their ksh working the way they want it to work.

NetBSD for the FreeBSD User
A page covering a few differences between the two operating systems, put up in the hope that it makes it easier for the FreeBSD user to configure NetBSD

Postfix, procmail and spamassassin.
Most howtos that I see go for more complex setups, but this should help the newcomer configure postfix to use procmail to use spamassassin.

Microsoft Topics

Humor, et al
Written while in the midst of my studies, this was an attempt to lighten my own mood. Demian's drawing is pretty good, so take a second to look at it.

Subnetting
It really isn't that hard--this one has gotten me several emails, thanking me for its clarity, so I'm kind of proud of it.

Japanese on MS Operating Systems
This one is a bit dated, as 2K and XP do very well at handling Asian language, but it is still included in the welcome message to the Nihongo-computing mailing list

General Computer Silliness

This section has a few things that I found pretty funny. You may too.

Computer Haiku
If, rather than those rude and unhelpful error messages, MS put in haiku--such as
Yesterday it worked
Today it is not working
Windows is like that

For newbies to the Internet
To quote the first line, "Most of us who have dealt with computers and the internet for awhile have all had this experience--our friend calls, and says, 'Guess what? I'm finally hooked up to the internet and got 500 free hours with AOL. What's your email address?'" Send this one to your newbie friends before you give them your address

Some rules
For example, "When you don't know what to do, walk fast and looked worried." Hey, it works for me

In the Beginning
An unknown author's idea of what might have happened if God was using a computer during the Creation. If you're offended by religious humor, then just skip this--personally, I think God has a good sense of humor, so...

The Buffy The Vampire Slayer Quote Generator
Exactly what it says--yeah, I know, I need to get a life.

Martial Arts Related Japanese

Japanese 101
Written by Ben Cole, who used to write about his training in Japan and has translated a recent book for Hatsumi sensei. Used with permission

Japanese Phonetics
Originally made to go with an online dictionary (that was never made) I wrote this as an explanation of Japanese pronunciation, alphabetical order, etc.

Translating Bujinkan Writings.

I've forgotten if this was first put up as a web page and then Liz asked to use it in Ura and Omote or if it was written for Ura and Omote and then put up as a web page. Either way, several people have said nice things about it.

Martial Arts kanji

This is an older page--nowadays with the more advanced East Asian Language capabilities of many O/S's, most people can make their own kanji--a few years ago, however, I used to get many requests from people to make kanji for their web pages. The majority of these are Bujinkan specific, but there's a few others there.