RHEL / CentOS repository setup for Debian / Ubuntu weenies

So chances are, you might be someone familiar with a Debian-based system (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc.) with access to a huge repository of prepackaged software that you're adept at navigating via aptitude or apt-get.

And then you get a job in the commercial sector somewhere, and you have to work with enterprise Redhat-based systems (RHEL, CentOS, Scientific Linux, etc.) and a lot of the tools and utilities you're accustomed to just aren't readily available.

Here's a list of yum repositories you probably would like to add to your configuration, so you can have the cornucopia you're accustomed to!

IUS

"Inline with Upstream Stable" repository. Mostly LAMP stack servers and language environments, many that are already included with the base RHEL/CentOS distribution, but this repository allows you to run with more recent versions if you need the features or security updates. The packages are designed to peacefully coexist with the older versions provided by your core distribution.

EPEL

"Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux" repository. Lots of development tools missing from the base distribution. I usually install this for "gkrellm" and "compiz-fusion" alone.

RPMFusion

"RPMFusion" repository is a merger of a few other repositories that provided packages of patent-encumbered software, mostly multimedia codecs such as ffmpeg and libdvdcss and the like.

RepoForge

"RepoForge" is the new "RPMForge" (it still uses the old name in the config files). This is a merge of a lot of the other big repos, such as Dag Wieer's Apt Repository (DAR) that should pretty much cover lots of other software, such as mplayer, netpipe, and most other things a bit too obscure for base + EPEL.

On the downside, not everything is as well tested with each RHEL/CentOS release, so you can occasionally run into broken packages and dependencies. But if it works, that's less time you need to spend getting some utility you're already accustomed to having and more time to spend compiling or developing utilities you need.

All of the above have some sort of table where you can choose your version (RHEL/CentOS 6 / 5 / 4 etc.) and architecture (x86 or x86_64) and download a repository installer rpm that sets up everything in /etc/yum.repos.d/ for you.

Then just run something like "yum list > yumlist.txt" occasionally and browse through yumlist.txt to find the exact name of the thing you want in the list of all the software installed and available. You could also try using the "gpk-application" GUI (also accessed through the "System | Administration | Add / Remove Software" menu). Not as powerful or useful as browsing/exploring through aptitude, but if you're using RHEL/CentOS you're probably already expected to know the name of the tool you want.

Best games for children

Here's a listing of nice games appropriate for kids that I've tested on my own offspring.  Some of them are even mildly educational.


Web / Flash:

• Starfall
• LightBot
• Fantastic Contraption
• Sushi Cat

Free:

• GCompris
• Childsplay
• Frozen Bubble
• Tuxracer / Planet Penguin Racer
• Tuxkart
• Trigger 3D Rally
• Neverball
• Future Pinball
• Armagetron Advanced
• Pingus
• Scorched 3D
• Celestia
• Orbiter
• FlightGear
• GL-117
• Alien Swarm
• Tremulous
• SecondLife (take some monitoring, but you can let them loose on NASA Island and maybe some other museum-style islands.)
• Rigs of Rods

Commercial:

• Minecraft
• Spore
• Simcity 4
• Civilization IV / V
• World of Goo
• Trainz
• X-Plane 9
• Live for Speed
• Sims 3

Android:

• Angry Birds
• Math Challenge
• Head 2 head racing
• X Construction

Playstation 2:

• Katamari Damacy
• Kingdom Hearts 2
• Burnout 3

Nintendo DS:

• Super Scribblenauts

Linux diagnostic utilities

Here's a list of commands and utilities you might find useful to provide various interesting diagnostic information about your Linux system. This is just a starting point, look at the man page on each utility for the full story.
Not all utilities are included by default with most distributions, you may need to install them using your package manager first. For RHEL / CentOS, this often also means adding the EPEL, RPMFusion, and/or RepoForge repositories.
A lot of this is also provided by the gkrellm GUI utility, which is a great real-time monitor for system performance. You might want to enhance gkrellm by configuring it to launch some of the commands below to provide additional detail.

System Resources

uname -a

# The currently running Linux kernel version, architecture, build date

free -mto

# Memory usage in megabytes, free, disk cache, buffers

cat /proc/meminfo

# more memory usage details

echo "2" > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

# clear the disk cache (useful before benchmarking your disk read performance)

dstat -a --top-io --top-bio

# Also displays disk and network utilization, along with the name of the most memory and disk-I/O intensive process.

Process Info

top

# Table of processes, bring up the help ("?") and spend some time playing with the setup... particularly "1", "M/P". Also try making it super colorful with: "A", "Z", "aaa", "Enter", "B". Use at your own peril, but once you have it set up the way you like, use "W" to save that configuration as default.

atop

# Advanced table of processes with historical logging by enabling the atopd service. Access historical logs using `atop -r`, then jump forwards/backwards in time with t/T . Very useful for debugging system and process issues after the fact, and it's very good at highlighting which system resources are constrained (even relatively obscure ones like context switches per sec).

iftop

# Identify processes using network I/O

iotop

# Identify processes using disk / block device I/O

w

# What processes are being run by each user

lsof

# List of open files by process # Particularly useful for figuring out which process is preventing you from unmounting your USB disk so you can terminate it

pmap -x <PID>

# Show the memory map of a process, including which shared libraries it's using

strace -f <command>

# Run a command and display all system function calls... useful for finding out what a process is doing or trying to do when it isn't responding, what files it's using (filter for the "open" call), etc. Also note you can use it to connect to an existing process with "-p <pid>. Also beware that strace will make the process run slower and perhaps unstable.

ltrace -f <command>

# Like strace, but shows all library function calls.

Hardware Info

dmesg

# View kernel ring buffer of debug messages, which is mostly about hardware and driver initialization activity. Usually also logged to /var/log/messages

dmidecode

# motherboard / BIOS version information

lspci

# PCI bus devices, add "-v" for more detail

lsusb

# USB devices, add "-v" for more detail

lsmod

# show device driver kernel modules loaded

cat /proc/interrupts

# show number of interrupts triggered by devices on each CPU

cat /proc/ioports

# show I/O ports reserved by devices

cat /proc/iomem

# show I/O memory ranges reserved by kernel

sensors

# environmental sensor data for temperatures, voltages, fan speeds. Might need to install lm-sensors package and perform initial setup using "sensors-detect" script.

Disk & Filesystem Info

sync

# flush all buffered / pending writes to disk

df

# Show disk free / utilization of each mounted partition

mount

# show which partitions are mounted

cat /proc/mounts

# show which partitions are mounted with options

sfdisk -l

# list all visible disk partitions

smartctl -a /dev/sda

# display hard disk SMART monitoring information, including runtime and number of detected bad blocks ("reallocated sector count")

sg_reassign

# list and mark bad blocks on a device. Part of RHEL/CentOS RPMForge sg3_utils package

hdparm -I /dev/sda

# display disk information, including model and serial number. Also check out "sdparm" for SCSI disks

hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

# perform sequential read throughput test

dumpe2fs /dev/sda1

# show ext2/3/4 filesystem information. Use "tune2fs" to change options and features, such as journal size, block size, used/unused block map

du | sort -n

# report disk usage of current directory tree. Also try the GUI utilities such as "filelight"

iostat

# How much read/write blocks to each disk device

mdadm --detail

# Software RAID configuration

cat /proc/mdstat

# Software RAID status

blktrace -d /dev/sda -o - | blkparse -i -

# record and display disk head movement (well, sector number) as it reads/writes from a block device. It's also possible to plot this over time using the included bno_parse.py script to give a pretty good idea of how many seeks your disk load is generating, as well as how you might optimize it using "readahead" techniques and the like.

fio

Block device benchmarking tool supporting more load patterns.

bonnie++

File system benchmarking tool

Network Info

ifconfig

# display all configured network interfaces

ethtool -i eth0

# show NIC driver and firmware version

ethtool -S eth0

# show NIC statistics

sar -n DEV

# display transmit/receive statistics over time

mii-tool eth0

# show NIC link status

netstat -ap

# state of open network ports, connections, sockets, and associated processes

route -n

# network routing table

iptables -L

# IP filtering tables

tcpdump -i eth0

# sniff network activity on a NIC. Better yet, use the "wireshark" GUI to get lots of useful filtering, reporting, and deep packet inspection

nmap <hostname>

# probe for open ports on a server (clear this with you rIT/security department first!)

ping <hostname>

# measure round trip time to another server over the network

traceroute / tracepath

# discover network path to another server on the network and ping times to all network devices in between

NPtcp # start listener server on remote host NPtcp -h <remotehost>

# netpipe performance benchmark. Adapt the "geplot" script to plot the "np.out" file to view network throughput vs. packet size.

Video Driver Info

less /var/log/Xorg.0.log

# Xorg log file. Also reference config file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

xdpyinfo

# X Window System configuration, extensions, and colorspaces

glxinfo

# X Window System OpenGL capabilities

glxgears

# quick OpenGL test / benchmark

nvidia-settings

# NVidia driver configuration GUI

xrandr

# X Rotation and Resolution settings

Audio Driver Info

aplay -l

# list audio hardware devices. It can also play .wav files.

alsamixer

# Volume control settings

Input Device Utilities

xev

# X input events received by a selected window

xwininfo

# X window client properties of a selected window

xvkbd

# virtual X keyboard, can be used to send keyboard events with mouse or touchscreen, or even scripts. Works much better than gok (GNOME Onscreen Keyboard)

xset

# various properties for mouse acceleration, keyboard LED control, sleep timeout, etc. May have to deconflict / disable gnome-screensaver-preferences first if you actually want to use some of these, though.