True and false are common concepts in all forms of computing. They’re critical to Boolean logic after all, but did you know that true and false are also commands on Linux? Do you know how to use them?The simplest explanation is that the true command generates an exit code of 0 and that the false command generates an exit code of 1. This explanation, however, doesn’t provide much detail on how these commands can best be used.In this post, we’ll look at how the true and false commands work and how you might put them to use on the command line or in your scripts.To read this article in full, please click here
In this Linux tip, learn how to use the csplit command. It's a command that lets you split a file into pieces based on its content. For example, you might separate a file based on chapter headings, dates or content separators of some kind. Think of "csplit" as meaning "context split."
Microsoft Exchange admins got a bit of a rude surprise as the new year rang in, with a “latent date issue” striking the on-premises versions of Exchange Server 2016 and 2019 that saw emails queued up instead of being distributed to inboxes.The problem lay with Exchange’s malware scanning engine, however, Microsoft took great pains to emphasize in a blog post from the Exchange team that the problem relates to a date-check failure with the new year and it not a failure of the antivirus scanning engine itself, nor is it a security issue.To read this article in full, please click here
As the enterprise edge expands to encompass everything from the factory floor and oil rigs to solar arrays and retail stores, overcoming the challenges of processing, managing, and securing data traffic close to the source has become a top priority for many organizations.Enter edge gateways. These devices process data from sensors, monitors, industrial controllers, and other devices at the edge, passing only actionable information over the WAN to cloud and enterprise data centers while weeding out bandwidth-hogging noise—for example, pressure sensors on an oil rig showing everything is fine.
Read more: How to choose an edge gatewayTo read this article in full, please click here
As the enterprise edge expands to encompass everything from the factory floor and oil rigs to solar arrays and retail stores, overcoming the challenges of processing, managing, and securing data traffic close to the source has become a top priority for many organizations.Enter edge gateways. These devices process data from sensors, monitors, industrial controllers, and other devices at the edge, passing only actionable information over the WAN to cloud and enterprise data centers while weeding out bandwidth-hogging noise—for example, pressure sensors on an oil rig showing everything is fine.
Read more: How to choose an edge gatewayTo read this article in full, please click here
There’s no point in having a quantum computer if it’s not smokin’ fast; otherwise it’s way too much trouble, what with all the subzero temperatures and instability and such. So it’s always newsworthy when somebody sets a new standard for quantum computing processing speeds, even if quantum computers are far from common commercial use.In this case that somebody is IBM, which recently announced its newly developed quantum computing processor, called Eagle, has broken the 100-qubit barrier. IBM[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
Fusion boldly (if clumsily) says it views Eagle “as a step in a technological revolution in the history of computation.” (It sounds like an algorithm wrote that sentence! Is this where you’re leading us, Big Blue? A quantum future of incoherent techspeak?)To read this article in full, please click here
The csplit command is unusual in that allows you to split text files into pieces based on their content. The command allows you to specify a contextual string and use it as a delimiter for identifying the chunks to be saved as separate files.As an example, if you wanted to separate diary entries into a series of files each with a single entry, you might do something like this.$ csplit -z diary '/^Dear/' '{*}'
153
123
136
In this example, "diary" is the name of the file to be split. The command is looking for lines that begin with the word "Dear" as in "Dear Diary" to determine where each chunk begins. The -z option tells csplit to not bother saving files that would be empty.To read this article in full, please click here
As the new year gets off to a start, it's always a good idea to commit to some changes that might improve your life or make your work more rewarding. So, here are some suggestions for Linux sysadmin resolutions for 2022.Learn some new commands
Even after using Linux for more than 30 years, I often find myself discovering some command that I didn't know about or didn't realize how much I could do with it. 2021 was the first year that I used the cheat command or used the --help option for commands more often that I read their man pages. I also started using the bpytop command fairly often. And, whenever I ran across a command I wasn't previously familiar with, I took the time to look it up, install it (if needed) on one or more of my Linux systems and play with it. Considering that I'm seeing nearly 2,000 files just in /usr/bin on my Fedora system, I'm not surprised that, even after 30+ years, I'm not familiar with all of them.To read this article in full, please click here
In this Linux tip, learn how to use the nethogs command. As the name implies, nethogs will display information on how much processes using or "hogging" your network bandwidth.
French IT giant Schneider Electric has published a five-part framework meant to serve as a guide to minimizing the environmental impact of data center operations.Schneider is billing the framework as an industry first, but the company does specialize in power systems management so it’s not all self-congratulations. The framework is designed to help operators make their sites more environmentally friendly regardless of how far along they are in sustainability efforts.Data center power consumption is on pretty much everyone’s radar to varying degrees. Researchers have estimated that data centers worldwide account for between 1% and 2% of all power consumption. For hyperscalers like Google and Facebook, as well as for enterprises, power savings is equal parts benefit to the bottom line and being good corporate stewards.To read this article in full, please click here
A partnership of seven organizations, including data center giant Equinix, announced plans to build fuel cells to power data centers. The group of mostly European companies is funded by a European Union clean energy initiative.Along with Equinix, the partners consist of infrastructure giant Vertiv, sustainable data center specialist InfraPrime, Italian utility Snam, German fuel cell manufacturer SOLIDpower, TEC4FUELS research center, and a research institute from Sweden called RISE.The project is called EcoEdge PrimePower (E2P2) and is funded by the Clean Hydrogen Partnership, a European Union initiative launched earlier this month with total funding of nearly $25 billion. E2P2 will get roughly $2.8 million of that.To read this article in full, please click here
Iron Mountain has been around for 60 years, and it's well known for providing storage and information management services that protect critical business assets and highly sensitive data. But it's probably is not the first name that comes to mind when you think of IT hardware. That’s not for lack of trying. Since 2017, Iron Mountain has invested more than $2 billion in building and buying data centers. It has a total of 18 around the world, and those data centers are powered by 100% renewable energy.Now it’s making inroads into the broader data-center supply chain with the acquisition of ITRenew, which specializes in IT asset disposal. With ITRenew, Iron Mountain sees opportunities to enhance the value of its environmental, social and governance offerings.To read this article in full, please click here
Windows Server 2022 was released this summer ready to take on production workloads with a host of new features. What’s hot in the latest edition of Windows Server? Let’s take a look.New network protocols
It’s no surprise that a major focus for Microsoft in Windows Server is performance. Most people using Windows Server are using it to host critical business services and applications that directly support either employees or customers. In either case time is money, and the platform your critical systems run on needs to be both stable and efficient.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
Microsoft has included some notable networking improvements to Windows Server 2022. For starters, the Quick UDP Internet Connection (QUIC) protocol developed by Google has been added and enhances UDP connections in a number of ways including encryption, reduced latency, connection reuse, version control, and extension frames. UDP also gets some love in the form of UDP Segmentation Offload (USO) and UDP Receive Side Coalescing (UDP RSC), each of which moves a lot of the work to assemble UDP packets off CPUs and onto network adapters that support the protocols.To read this article in full, please click here
Messaging services vendor Interop Technologies runs three data centers to provide services to customers and to run its own back-office systems. Interop also provides turnkey hardware/software solutions that run at customer sites. Pandemic-related hardware shortages, particularly those of servers and storage, have put a severe crimp in the way it does business."When you go to procurement, you get so much push-back," said Joshua Collazo, the company's director of infrastructure. "This is back ordered, that is back ordered."Before the pandemic, the company was able to jump on opportunities quickly. "That's gone away," he said. "Ad-hoc has gone the way of the dodo for us."To read this article in full, please click here
The timedatectl command allows you to both query and change the system clock and its settings on Linux systems.To display the current settings, use the command by itself—with no arguments. You should see something like this:[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
$ timedatectl
Local time: Thu 2021-12-16 11:12:31 EST
Universal time: Thu 2021-12-16 16:12:31 UTC
RTC time: Thu 2021-12-16 16:12:31 <; real time clock
Time zone: America/New_York (EST, -0500)
System clock synchronized: yes
NTP service: active
RTC in local TZ: no
The fields shown include the local time, universal time (the same around the globe), RTC (the real-time clock, usually an integrated circuit), and the time zone (America/New York” is the Eastern time zone). NTP is network time protocol for clock synchronization between computer systems over packet-switched, variable-latency data networks. In this case, the RTC it is not set to the local time zone.To read this article in full, please click here
The timedatectl command allows you to both query and change the system clock and its settings on Linux systems.To display the current settings, use the command by itself—with no arguments. You should see something like this:[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
$ timedatectl
Local time: Thu 2021-12-16 11:12:31 EST
Universal time: Thu 2021-12-16 16:12:31 UTC
RTC time: Thu 2021-12-16 16:12:31 <; real time clock
Time zone: America/New_York (EST, -0500)
System clock synchronized: yes
NTP service: active
RTC in local TZ: no
The fields shown include the local time, universal time (the same around the globe), RTC (the real-time clock, usually an integrated circuit), and the time zone (America/New York” is the Eastern US time zone). NTP is network time protocol for clock synchronization between computer systems over packet-switched, variable-latency data networks. In this case, the RTC it is not set to the local time zone.To read this article in full, please click here
In this Linux tip, learn how to use the whois command. It sends requests to what are called WHOIS servers. These servers maintain numerous details on domain registrations. So, when you ask about a particular domain, you get a pile of details.
Data-center giant Equinix has expanded its bare-metal services to offer CPU, GPU, and AI processors on its Equinix Metal service offering.The service now includes AMD’s Milan generation of Epyc processors, Ampere’s Arm-based Altra, and Intel’s Ice Lake generation of Xeon processors.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
In November, Nvidia and Equinix announced an expanded collaboration to bring Nvidia’s LaunchPad AI platform, which includes instant, short-term access to AI infrastructure, to nine Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers globally. Enterprise accounts can test AI apps on LaunchPad, then deploy and scale on Equinix Metal or Nvidia DGX Foundry, which are also running at Equinix. To read this article in full, please click here
The ncdu command provides a useful and convenient way to view disk usage. The name stands for "NCurses disk usage". This means that it's based on ncurses which, like curses, is a terminal control library used on Unix/Linux systems. The curses part of each name is a pun on "cursor" or "cursor optimization" and is unrelated to the use of foul language.You can think of ncdu as a disk usage analyzer with an ncurses interface. It can be especially useful when looking for disk-space hogs on a remote server for which you don't have access to a graphical interface.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
To use ncdu, you can just type "ncdu", but what you will see depends on where you have positioned yourself in the file system as it reports the space used by files and directories in that location.To read this article in full, please click here
Magnetic storage tape has’t been the recommended destination for the initial backup copy of data for quite some time, and the question is whether LTO-9, the latest tape open standard, and other market dynamics will changed that.Here's a look at modern tape drives, discussion of the degree to which ransomware changes the equation, and a closer look at LTO-9.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
Tape drives: Too fast for their own good?In the 80s and early 90s, there was almost a perfect match between the speed of tape drives and the speed of the backup infrastructure. The backup drives were capable of writing at roughly the same speed that the backup system could send.To read this article in full, please click here