RedHat Mobile phone App

If you are looking to improve your RedHat Linux knowledge in order to ease your migration from AIX or just to integrate it into your current environment search for "Red Hat Kiosk" in your Google Play, or Apple App store, or download it directly using the links in the RedHat forum: http://www.redhat-forum.com/en/kiosk . I suggest that you first connect to wireless as some of the content can involve a lot of data transfer.

The app includes access to all recorded videos and PodCasts as well as a wealth of training and technical content.

Checking an RPM's Dependecies without installing

AIX still has no YUM environment which makes installing and maintaining RPMs much more difficult and time consuming. Every RPM has a complex list of prereqs which can make installation a long and drawn-out game of trial and error. Fortunately you can query an RPM file without actually trying to install it.

This example shows the packages, executables, and libraries that Kerberos Workstation requires:

# rpm -qpR ./krb5-workstation-1.9.4-1.aix5.1.ppc.rpm
krb5-libs = 1.9.4-1
/sbin/install-info
info
/bin/sh
/bin/sh
libc.a(shr.o)
libcom_err.so
libgssapi_krb5.so
libgssrpc.so
libk5crypto.so
libkadm5clnt_mit.so
libkadm5srv_mit.so
libkdb5.so
libkrb5.so
libkrb5support.so
libpthreads.a(shr_comm.o)
libpthreads.a(shr_xpg5.o)
librtl.a(shr.o)

Managing Keys with AIX

AIX provides the ikeyman tool with many products including Java. The problem is that there are several versions and each ahas different capabilities for instance the version bundled with Java cannot create or access CMS type keystores whereas the version that comes with DB2 can?







Whichever version you run requires an X-terminal, or X-Client in order to display the menus. I also recommend setting you $LANG=C in order to reduce the number of font problems and generaly improve the tool's performance.

Problems with international settings (locale)

I had a problem just recently where an awk script returned an error when doing simple maths e.g. 13 / 4. After some experimentation I found the culprit was the customer has their locale set to "EL_GR" (Greek) and this converted the 3.25 to 3,25, and this prevented made my script abend with an error, inspite of the fact that both variables were cast as floats.

The cure was was to "export LANG=C" or "En_US".

Add a signature to your emails

These days we are constanly battling against identity theft and spam and we need every bit of help we can get. This is a very handy resource where we can get free email signing certificates for our browsers and popular desktop emailers such as MS Outlook.

To obtain a free certificate visit: http://www.comodo.com/home/email-security/free-email-certificate.php

Complete the the simple form and wait until you receive an email asking you to confirm your email address, and then one containing a link to your certificate. The certificate wil be installed in your browser's cache and needs to be imported to your local system before you can install it in your eamil client.

In this example I am using Firefox and Outlook:

Tools->Options->Certificates->View Certificates->Your Certificates:





Select the relevant certificate, vuew the details to confirm it is correct and then select "Backup"
. Give it a meaningful name and save it to your PC. Outlook accepts certificates in PKCS12 format however this may differ for your client so I advise saving it in both formats. You will be prompted protect your Private Key with a password:





You can now import the certificate into your email client. If you are using Outlook select the "File->Options->Trust Center" menu Click "Trust Center Settings" and then "Email Security":



You can now select the "Import/Export"  button and upload your certificate. You will be prompted for the filename and password.








Once the cerificate has been installed select "Add digital signatures to outgoing messages".

All your new emails should now include your digital signature.