Issue #151 / Jun 2013

Blogs have evolved from private diary to professional tool, and if you manage more than one WordPress installation, administration support would be useful. Three tools can help.

Klaus Knopper is the creator of Knoppix and co-founder of LinuxTag expo. He works as a teacher, programmer, and consultant. If you have a configuration problem, or if you just want to learn more about how Linux works, send your questions to: klaus@linux-magazine.com

Thanks to I-Nex, users can see an overview of all their important hardware inventory information, such as graphics cards, processors, and hard drives.

What do you do if the Munin system monitoring tool does not have a native Munin client for a device? Sys admin Charly has a solution.

Great tools and resources are available to help you write secure Ruby on Rails code. Kurt examines some tools and offers some tips.

When something goes wrong on a system, the logfile is the first place to look for troubleshooting clues. Logstash, a log server with built-in analysis tools, consolidates logs from many servers and even makes the data searchable.

The Vagrant package provides easy management of virtual machines with VirtualBox as the hypervisor on the command line. Provisioning tools like Puppet let customers try out products in pre-installed environments.

Most people starting a blog will almost automatically turn to WordPress, which calls for PHP, a database, and regular security updates … and thus a lot of attention. With the small Jekyll template engine, you can avoid all that.

Few fractal algorithms create as beautiful and ethereal structures as Flam3. The Fr0st GUI helps you master the complex software.

Sometimes full-blown photo sharing solutions are more than you need. We look at some lightweight alternatives that still get the job done.