Stupid Unix Tricks: November 2010

Friday, November 12, 2010

LTO Barcodes, for free!

Seriously, $100 for *barcode labels*?

Instead, pick up some sheets of 8"x11" Avery label stock, and print your own.

This site generates an appropriate PDF to print right on label stock:
http://tapelabels.librelogiciel.com/

Big, Big List of Tools

AIX

topas -- Top for AIX systems. It's already there if you need it...you just have to know its name.
Tivoli Storage Manager for Backup and Recovery (formerly sysback) -- Simple, reliable backup and restore for your standalone AIX system
suma -- Downloads your updates for you automatically and notifies you via email. It doesn't install them automatically.

Making your life easier

Nagios -- Incredibly extensible monitoring system. Can monitor anything you can write a script to check, and page you if things go awry. Makes you look like you're very on top of things, and has a very pretty VRML page that's not useful really, but it looks sexy when you show it to the suits. (VRML plugin available here)
OCS Inventory -- never have to go to a user's desk with your screwdriver again to find out how many free RAM slots their computer has. Never wonder just how many of those old Pentium III's are still lurking in the shadows.
OTRS -- Helpdesk package. To install on Debian 'apt-get install otrs2'. Yes, that easy. And an IT department without a ticket system is like...well....it's just bad. BAD
Adeona -- Free Lojack-style laptop tracking software.
NTOP -- Detailed network traffic collecting and reporting tool, taking network sniffing to the next level. Great for finding weird traffic anomalies that are causing you headaches.
MRTG -- Graph any statistic you can get via SNMP. Great for tracking traffic through routers, room temperatures (with a device such as this, or for tracking disk usage on servers.

Instructional Technology

Wink -- for creating Flash-based computer tutorials. Tired of running through the same steps with all your users? Just make a Wink tutorial and plop it on your intranet or website, and email them the link! Or create a whole page of tutorials and point all your new users there!
Moodle -- open-source Course Management System. Featureful, and a dream to administer.

Windows tools

moveuser.exe -- change the ownership of a profile from one account to another. Does not move the files, only changes the ownership and makes that the new user's home.
Microsoft's User State Migration Tool (USMT) -- Actually copy and restore user profiles, files, settings, etc. from one computer to another or from one account to another.
Microsoft's Business Desktop Deployment Server 2007 (BDD 2007) -- Investigating this as a replacement for Ghost in deploying new systems and reimaging existing systems.

Stupid Unix Tricks

Friday, November 12, 2010

LTO Barcodes, for free!

Labels

Links

Blog Archive

Big, Big List of Tools