News Bytes #20

#### "Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

| ### Contents: News in General Software Announcements

### News in General

### SAL--Scientific Applications on Linux

If you are looking for a great collection of software information relating to science and engineering be sure to take a look at SAL -- the Scientific applications on Linux page. The page contains broad converage of different advancements adn points of interest in the Linux community. There are currently 1250 software entries at the SAL page! Luckily if you are looking for something specific, you may choose to search the Linux Applications. There are also sections which will help you find what you need. There are sections from Mathematics to Office Software and Numerical Analysis to Computer Graphics. Not only can you roam around the page looking at all of the applications, but you have a chance to make contributions of your own to the page. Don't miss the new and improved SAL at http://SAL.KachinaTech.COM. You'll be happy you visited.

### Readers' Choice Awards

Vote in Linux Journal's 1997 Readers' Choice Awards!

Linux Journal, the Premier Linux Magazine, is conducting its annual poll of Linux users. Vote for your favorites in twenty different categories including: Most desired upgrade, favorite shell and most indispensible Linux book.

The voting will take place on the Linux Journal web site from July 11th through August 26th. To place your vote simply go to http://www.ssc.com/lj/readchoice.html and follow the directions there. Please do not submit more than one form because all duplicate entries will be deleted.

Results will be published in the December issue of Linux Journal (on newsstands early November).

Subscriptions to Linux Journal are available by calling our toll free number (in the US/Canada) 888 66 LINUX or over our web page at http://www.ssc.com/lj/.

### Check Out This Site!

Take a look at http://www.m-tech.ab.ca/linux-biz. This page contains a list of commercial sites that use Linux for business. Check out all of the Linux users at work!

### Software Announcements

### Evolution Scheduler

Check out Evolution Scheduler. The Evolution Scheduler is based on Genetic Algorithms and Evolutionary Programming. This scheduler can live with original Linux priority scheduler. This means you don't have to reboot to change the scheduling policy. You may switch between them at any time just by a simple command, say,

    esep -cp 3

.

A manager program esep(Evolution Scheduling and Evolving Processes), with which you can do scheduling administration job is provided.

If you are interested, see http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/kernel looking for "esep-1.2.tgz" and "esep-1.2.lsm" or visit Jinlong Lin's homepage at http://www.iit.edu/~linjinl/esep.html

### Alien

Make sure you get a peek atAlien, a new program that convert between the rpm, dpkg adn slackware tgz file formats. In order to use Alien you need Perl 5 or greater and the Getopt::Long perl module installed in your system. Take a look!

### Apache-SSL

Take a look at Apache-SSL. It is a secure web server based on Apache and SSLeay. It is free for use with copyright notices and you can get it at The Oxford University FTP site.

### GNU Midnight Commander

The GNU Midnight Commander is a Unix file manager and shell, useful to novice and guru alikes. Version 4.0 has many enhancements. See http://mc.blackdown.org/mc4 for the list of seventy download sites

GNU Midnight Commander is also included on most CD-ROMs containing GNU software and we expect the publishers of these CD-ROMs to include MC version 4.0 when they publish a next version of their CD-ROM.

See also the GNU Midnight Commander website at http://mc.blackdown.org/mc/

### Watchdog

Watchdog is a daemon that checks if your system is still working. If programs in user space are not longer executed it will reboot the system.

A few new features in 3.0 include:

- Test the system load average and reboot if it is too high.
- Added network mode: soft reboot is initiated if a given network/host does not answer.
- Use user provided test binary.
- Halt the system if temperature is too high, but send mail to the sysadmin prior doing that.

Watchdog is available from: tsx-11.mit.edu /pub/linux/sources/sbin sunsite.unc.edu /pub/linux/system/daemons ftp.debian.org /pub/debian/development/source/misc

As of the end of July, O'Reilly and Associates have the domain http://www.oreilly.com. The company figured it would be easier to remember than their previous domain. Check out their site!

Published in Linux Gazette Issue 20, August 1997

##### This page written and maintained by the Editor of Linux Gazette, gazette@ssc.com
Copyright © 1997 Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.