Replacing tabs/spaces with expand/unexpand

To replace tabs with spaces in a text file use expand.
To replace spaces with tabs in a text file use unexpand. 

Fun with pam

With this article I want you to show how to use several more or less useful pam modules. This is not an explanation to pam in general. This article is also based on the the prior released LDAP articles for Slackware and Solaris. I didn't test all modules under Solaris or else but with some brain you should be able use them under any Unix too.
The following modules are currently described here:

pam_nologin: Deny user log in
pam_securetty: Deny root log in
pam_tally2.so: Deny log in after X failed log in attempts
pam_cracklib: Strengthen passwords

Available, used and free memory in AIX

Use lsattr to get the size of your memory:

# lsattr -E -l sys0 | grep realmem
realmem         32636928           Amount of usable physical memory in Kbytes        False

Joining text files

Sometimes I get a couple of text files with various data about the capacity of disks, memory etc. Here are two examples:

SMS emulator with original pads

I have always liked the SEGA consoles (and games) more than the Nintendo stuff. So I decided to install an emulator for my old SEGA Master System games and build an adapter to play the SMS games with the original gamepad on my old 650MHz Notebook. The reason that I play the games on my old notebook is simple: I have no new workstation or notebook with a parallel port anymore. Before you start make sure that your parallel port supports EPP:

Creating an LDAP based address book

Imagine you have a small company with one manager, his secretary and a couple of workers. Each of these guys needs their own space to store some contacts, eg. the manager needs to store some manager contacts, the secretary needs to store some secretary contacts and workers need to store some contact about sales guys. At this point you need to create an organizational unit for your address book with more organizational units in it for all workers etc:

LDAP for Solaris 10

With this article I want you to show how to set up OpenLDAP for Solaris 10. I have here a small Sun Fire V100 with 2GB running - perfect for playing around. Using Solaris as a LDAP client is a little bit strange first, but with the time you will enjoy it. Solaris comes with a tool called ldapclient to initiate a Solaris host as a LDAP client. There is a daemon called ldap_cachemgr which will be started when you initialize Solaris as a LDAP client and it runs all the time.

SNES emulator with original pads

If you are a retro gamer like me then you know emulators. With emulators you can play variuos games of old consoles. Less known is the ability to connect the original gamepads to your computer. In most cases you need to build or buy an adapter. With this article I want you to show how to connect the original SNES gamepads to your parallel port on your PC and play games with them. I have build an adapter out of my old SNES console to keep the original gamepads intact. Before youthink about building an adapter for yourself make sure that your parallel port supports EPP: 

Streaming audio server with Icecast (OGG/MP3)

Creating your own internet radio station isn't very hard. There is a nice software called Icecast which can do it for you. Icecast was designed to stream any audio file if a appropiate streaming client is available. For OGG/Vorbis you can use ices and for MP3 icegenerator. Here is a small tutorial how to setup Icecast for streaming OGG/Vorbis and MP3. I am using Slackware Linux again.
This article contains the following topics:

Slackware package management

Introduction

The Slackware package management is one of the easiest to understand and to use. All packages are just ordinary compressed (gzip) tar files, since Slackware 13.37 the tar files are compressed with xz. All files in the package are already at their places except for the leading slash. Symbolic links will be created during package instalation. To look into a package you can use tar. First make sure you have access to the packages, eg. mount the CD/DVD iso image: