Introduction

In my daily use of several Linux systems and computer systems in general, I keep referring to the same mans, infos, READMEs, HOWTOs and FAQs over and over again.

That's why I decided to write this set of pages: small extracts and notes from various sources, notes-to-self and recipes.

It seemed logical to share them over the Internet, and so here they are.

This pages aren't written in fire bolts on stone, I keep tinkering with them, and would appreciate corrections and additions. There are probably many spelling and grammar errors, as English is not my native language. I'd also like to have these pages in various languages... as much as Linux and Open Source documentation can (or should) be translated. Therefore, feel free to email me at lnb@binarios.com. Please don't send diffs, I'd rather have a complete corrected page and integrate it on the collection. Also, do not worry about formatting, I'll take care of it.

I almost always use a home-brewed GNU/Linux distribution, and compile the sources of most packages. So, sometimes the instructions here aren't applicable to other distributions or implementations. Again, if you find something that does not work on your case, do let me know, preferably with the solution.

The software used to elaborate the notebooks is listed below. I think that there is no version specific stuff:

• GNU emacs 20.6.1
• GNU grep 2.4.2
• perl v5.6.1
• tidy 4th August 2000 (recommended, grab it at http://tidy.sourceforge.net)
• GNU tar 1.12

The structure of this notebooks is very simple: they all reside in a single directory, and are re-indexed by a small Perl hack (included, it *is* a hack and it shows). I tried not to use browser specific constructs, but given that for professional reasons I (damn!) have to use IE, there are possibly some features that crept in. Please let me know if that is the case, but do suggest changes. At the time of writing, I do try to work with Mozilla (it being an all around much better browser than IE).

I'll keep the URL stable, as much as possible, so usually you just have to download

LNB-current.tgz (slides excluded)
or
LNB-current-big.tgz (slides included)

to keep up to date. The last version (linked to the above) is

LNB-2005.11.02.tgz (slides excluded, 327 kB)
or
LNB-big-2005.11.02.tgz (slides included, 1507 kB)

Extract it as-is to a suitable directory, and optionally run 00indexer.pl. Note that the pages are always time-stamped as from the last 00indexer.pl run, and so the date of the distribution file should give a clue to changes. Also, make sure that the directory you use is reserved for the notebooks... 00indexer.pl will destroy your files if you don't. BTW, the 00s on the name are intended to make it show first on directory listings, the name can be changed to whatever you like. Of course, the perl path for your system must appear on the first line of 00indexer.pl. The other above mentioned packages must also exist and be accessible by the $PATH. The intro.html file may require adjustments to the paths mentioned in [ ]... you'll spot it.

You can do whatever you like with this work, except sell printed versions for money. I haven't voluntarily breached any copyrights that I know of, but if you find it to be the case do let me know. I also waive any responsibility for the use of this work, caveat emptor.

Here are some email addresses related to these pages:

lnb@binarios.com suggestion, correction and collaboration mailbox

For any suggestions, corrections or contributions, email lnb@binarios.com

And that's it.

Enjoy.

Changelog

date	changes
2005-11-02	Corrected normal/greedy labels on Perl regular expressions (Thx Bob McLaren!)
2003-07-27	Added some notes on C initializers
2003-07-25	Corrected dangling link in bash section Reformated perl section, also added some more idioms
2003-07-22	Added a new section with notes for the GNU debugger
2003-07-20	Added Palletes to the HTML section, including Web Safe palletes, the W3C standard color names and the X11 standard color names
2003-07-18	Added to Usefull command sequences in the emacs section Added a .emacs topic to the emacs section Reorganized emacs section
2003-06-19	Added some syntax details to C section Removed stale ezmlm link Removed stale Awk link Reordered the Index Trivial corrections to Intro Small corrections to 00indexer.pl
2003-06-18	Added constructor information and more types of dereference to Perl references Added return information to Perl pattern matching operators Added some extended sequences and clarified Perl regular expressions
2003-06-02	Corrected fetchmail's home page URL Removed reference to the lnb-maillists, not enough subscribers Removed bad reference to computer peripherals snippet Removed reference to ispell, not being used at the moment Modified 00indexer.pl to clean the ChangeLog somewhat Corrected Rectangles entry in Emacs
2002-12-29	IC pinouts redrawn
2002-12-25	Added a Decimal, Hexadecimal, Octal, Binary conversion table Integrated peripherals section snippet
2002-12-24	Added a Computer peripherals snippet
2002-11-29	Added Selected ICs pinouts to the Hardware section Some typos corrected Added a Series resistor table for LEDs to the Hardware section
2002-11-24	Added a C operator precedence table
2002-11-10	Started a Math reference section
2002-11-09	Added Transistor pinout diagrams to Hardware section
2002-11-01	Introduced links to RFCs in many pages Removed stale link from Qmail section Format changes in various places Added Resistor color codes to the Hardware section
2002-08-23	Added Graphics for sockets and plugs to the Hardware section Slight change to the layout of the Null Modem Cable reference in the Hardware section Corrected the less home page link Integrated bash snippets: Usages, Keyboard shortcuts and Bash externals
2002-08-02	Added the start of a C section Corrected formatting in Base64 Content Transfer Encoding (Thx Nuno!) Added Null Modem Cable reference to the Hardware section
2002-07-22	Added Rectangle commands to the Emacs section Added some Base64 Content Transfer Encoding information
2002-06-30	Added to indexes sections for Tables, Topics and Images, processed by 00indexer.pl Corrected the link to IANA on the DNS parameters table
2002-06-29	Added file system rules to the System section Added a qmail note about the trigger pipe, and updated the links in this section
2002-03-23	Updated tidy link in the Introduction Various updates to perl section
2001-08-05	Added a table of protocols accepted by each program in the djbdns suite Added a list of DNS records created by each kind ot tinydns.data record
2001-08-04	Clarification in the Ethernet twisted pair connection rules
2001-07-05	Added a MySQL snippet
2001-06-06	More CSS
2001-06-04	changed 00indexer.pl to create the Changelog directly from a emacs maintained changelog Integrated perl snippets: converting IP addresses to hex and back; arrays and lists as stacks illustration; quote constructs Changed some stuff in the perl page, so as to show up in the Table index and achieve better screen space economy Changed more pages to use CSS Changed 00indexer.pl to add meta tags for all pages
2001-06-03	Integrated qmail snippets: qmail queue structure; qmail environment variables cross reference and description; qmail-remote report string table Changed some of the pages to use CSS, resulting in smaller sizes
2001-06-01	Added a series of slides (graphics intensive!) from some TCP/IP lessons I gave Changed 00indexer.pl a bit, to allow for the two different archive sizes. The basic Linux Notebook is now about 1.3 MB (211 kB gzipped), the extended version including slides is about 3.15 MB (1.6 MB gzipped) Added a new section to the intro, linking to the more recent changes
2001-04-23	Added a reference to wildcards in djbdns
2001-04-12	Fixed typo in Typical uses of the find command
2001-02-13	Added details relating to permission flags to the Shell File Permissions section
2001-02-12	Rewrote 00indexer.pl, removing framed version of pages and changing the Index of tables a bit, also some changes to the style sheet Added date-stamped version of the archive, to make it easier to detect changes Added references to snippets that will be integrated in future versions, but that are not "production" quality yet Small correction to Software Versions page More typos corrected
2001-01-05	Some corrections in the Perl section Added a list of Special variables to the Perl section
2000-12-27	Added a GSM 03.38 alphabet table Added a top level DNS domains table Added a HTML character entities table Added a MIME quoted printable encoding rules list Added a simple perl script to decode tinydns logs Added a note on djbdns version dependency Changed the 00indexer.pl to auto-find the versions of the software mentioned in the intro.html page Tweaked the HTML post-processing by tidy to make the HTML files smaller. We still generate fully indented, neat HTML (Netscape barfs at compact format), but it is possible to switch to compact by commenting the appropriate $format line in 00indexer.pl
2000-12-07	Added a qmail data flow graphic
2000-12-06	Too many changes and additions to list
2000-07-31	Added a section with some theory regarding network security and setup, to be expanded later
2000-07-27	Added information about djbdns log format Added information about DNS parameters, in the form of a table of value for DNS query types Added a description for a typical djbdns configuration
2000-07-09	Added information about control files for ezmlm Half hearted attempt at ispell, some minor typos corrected
2000-07-08	Started a changelog Added distribution and announce mail lists Added tcprules section Moved RFC information relevant to email to the email section

Snippets

These are snippets waiting for being integrated in the text, caveat emptor:

• Re: hardware
• Re: RADIUS
• Re: MySQL

Areas to be worked on

These are the areas that I intend to address in upcoming versions, any help appreciated:

• Sections to be enhanced
  • DHCP
  • Apache
  • awk
  • Bash (formatting and cross-referencing)
  • Emacs (formatting)
  • Perl
• More modes and key sequences on Emacs section
• More programs in Versions section
• Add various tricks to qmail section
• Add info about startup files to Bash section
• Add various pin-outs and network rules of thumb to Hardware section
• A real PHP3 section
• Generally include links to relevant sites
• Sections to be added:
  • tar
  • gzip and bzip2
  • grep
  • proc filesystem
• Whatever...