Linux Power Tools - Great Tools To Make System Administration
By Amarjyoti Krishnan, Mon Dec 26th
It is very important for system administrators to have the righttools to to work smart. Linux is a great desktop OS fordevelopers as well as system administrators. Let us take a lookat some of the utilities which makes this a great environmentfor system administrators and developers. Most of the contentbelow is taken from the home pages of these apps and the I makeno claims on the originality. My aim is to introduce the readerto the wonderful tools that are available in a Linux/BSD desktopenvironment.
Konsole
Let's start from what most people think Linux is all about - atext based shell. Konsole is what is known as an X terminalemulator, often referred to as a terminal or a shell. It givesyou the equivalent of an old-fashioned text screen on yourdesktop, but one which can easily share the screen with yourgraphical applications. What makes Konsole special? Konsole'sadvanced features include simple configuration and the abilityto use multiple terminal shells in a single window, making for aless cluttered desktop. Konsole is also available as kpart andcan thus be easily embedded in other applications, likepracticed by Kate and Konqueror.
As most system administrators need log into servers on a regularbasis the konsole gives them a benefit over the Windoze commandprompt. In windows one needs to use a program like putty to login using SSH. Also as linux is the desktop OS the techs can usethe man pages on the local system.
One can also try out the various commands locally. Consider asimple example.
Is it
$ ln sourcefile destinationfile
or is it
$ ln destinationfile sourcefile
Such things can be easily found out locally without carrying outexperiments on the server. Many techs believe that servers areplaces where they can experiment. However, such experiments canlead to major losses to the customers due to one small error. Asystem administrator must understand that people have immensefaith in them when they give their entire data to them and theycannot risk carrying out simple experiments on servers.
Some screenshots of the konsole can be seen at the konsole site
Personal Information Manager / Groupware
There are two popular choices here. Evolution from Novel and theKontact from KDE. Both these an email client, calendaring,meeting scheduling, a task list, contact management and syncingfunctionality. Kontact is essentially the regular KDE PIMcomponents which have been put in together i.e. kmail,korganizer, knotes etc.. It is very a very neat package and isstable and light. Both these are very functional and can connectto many groupware servers.
Klipper
Klipper is the KDE clipboard utility. It stores clipboardhistory, and allows you to link clipboard contents toapplication actions. Klipper can perform actions on the contentsof the clipboard, based on whether they match a particularregular expression. For example, any clipboard contents startingwith "http://" can be passed to the web-browser as URLs to open.
Copying text is as simple as highlighting the text. And to pastethe text all one needs to do is click on the center mousebutton. This can be particularly useful for sys-admins as theyuse a sequence of commands from time to time. Having these inthe clipboard and using them often can make the work a loteasier.
Gaim / Kopete
Communicating via an instant messenger is an essential thesedays. Linux has a very clean solution for this. Both Kopete(http://kopete.kde.org) and Gaim (http://gaim.sourceforge.net/)are capable of handling multiple IM protocols such as supportingAIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger,Lotus SameTime. Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM)client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatiblewith AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC,Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise Messenger, and Zephyrnetworks.
Kjots
KJots is a small program that helps you to write down some shortnotes and organizes them for you. It has two basic items used toorganize your notes - "Books" and "Pages". This is a good lighttool to write in all the templated responses and other importantnotes for quick references.
Kwallet
A lovely password manager which can store passwords for all thelogins including those of kopete and websites.
Tea Cooker
KTeaTime
