Reset a Lost root Password
What happens when that server that was always humming along nicely all of a sudden needs you to log in as root to check something or install something new. What was the root password? Didn’t it just get changed? All of a sudden, the cold sweat starts - the root password is unknown.
What do you do?
Reset it! Thankfully there are a few ways to do this.
Install Debian Etch on an older G3 iMac
One thing that stops many people from trying Linux is that either they don’t want to go through the hassle of dual-booting their machine and possibly loosing everything in the process, or that the ease of use with virtualization technology such as VMware and VirtualBox make non-commitment to an OS trivial. If one is serious about using an alternative OS, I think it’s better to use it on a machine all by itself.
What better way to do that than to get a cheap computer, in this case an old iMac, and load Linux on it. While the process isn’t exactly the same as doing this on an x86 PC, once the OS is loaded one gets a feel for how everything works. You’ll also get the advantage of a real, multitasking OS instead of MacOS 9 or earlier.
Managing your bandwidth - iftop
Coming off a series of articles on installing and configuring IPCop (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), my attention now turns to actually monitoring and managing the network. One of the issues that will come up is ‘Where did all my bandwidth go?’ IPCop, as well as other *nix distros, include a program called iftop, which displays the bandwidth being used on an interface. While on individual machines this can be useful, it really shines on a router or gateway machine.