I have implemented a new passwd policy and am forcing users to change their password. The problem I’m facing is I don’t they dont’ know what the password requirements are. How can I communicate this to them before they change their password using passwd?

That’s a great question, and it’s actually really simple. What we have to do is create our own custom script that displays the password requirements and then calls the passwd program. And we have to call the script whenever  a user types passwd command at the prompt.

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For those people who have made the switch to a laptop as their primary system, Linux has presented a bit of a problem. Some integrated devices have less than stellar support and even the proprietary binary graphics drivers have left something to be desired. Worse, modern laptops that contain the ‘Optimus’ technology (multiple GPU configurations – NVidia and Intel) either had to be used in one mode or the other (one or the other X Server, but not both). Enter the ‘bumblebee’ project. This project allows you to compile support onto your system to allow you to designate certain applications to use the discrete driver (NVidia) for better video/game performance but did not address the ability to use both video cards for desktop display of multiple monitors. Today, we will address that shortcoming.

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In March of this year, CentOS gathered all of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux upstream packages released and created the latest version of CentOS for distribution. We are going to talk about some of the changes and additions to this version so you can decide when is the right time for you or your organization to upgrade.

If you want to try it out now without upgrading your own systems, you can head on over to Linux Academy and check out their Linux training tracks. You get a personal server to use during all the online lessons and CentOS 6.4 is one of the distributions available right now.

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The network tool ‘ping’ has been used by almost everyone who regularly uses a PC at one point or another. The tool is so ubiquitous that it is installed by default on every modern networkable operating system and has been for some time. It is both simple to use and can be a powerful means of exploring your network locally and the internet at large. We are going to go over some use cases and explain exactly what it is and how it works.

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The Linux Academy brought to you by Pinehead.tv is happy to announce two new premium courses to take our total number of lessons to 114 as of today!

The first of the two courses is Enterprise Amazon Web Services. This course focuses on advanced Amazon Web Service concepts such as:

• Running large scale web applications
• Load balancing
• Auto scaling
• Amazon RDS
• Automatic code deployment

Our second course was highly requested and brought to you by our new Instructor. He has 20 years of technical expertise managing and leading Linux teams. That course is Linux Security Essentials and focuses on:

• Hardening your server for public access
• Testing your system and correcting common security issues

Visit Linux Academy by Pinehead.tv and begin your journey towards Linux Certification today!

One of the most common complaints about Ubuntu since the launch of version 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) is the inclusion of Unity as the default user desktop. Although version 12.10/13.04 has come a long way since then in terms of stability and useability, many people miss some of the ‘eye candy’ that was so easy to set up in previous versions. Today we are going to talk about how to set up Compiz for composite desktop effects like the 3D Desktop Cube, Window Wobble and many others.

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As I get more and more involved in evangelizing open source and the options and freedom it provides, I have found that I need to be able to take detailed video of my desktop as I go through various topics. That used to mean running your Linux flavor in a virtual machine and using Windows and any number of (expensive) solutions for recording your desktop (and then hoping it had the options and codecs you needed to succeed). Not anymore, there are a number of high quality screencasting solutions that work perfectly fine in Linux – from VLC Media Player (stream and encode option), Istanbul and RecordMyDesktop to a relatively new (at least in terms of stability) entry and today’s candidate – Kazam!

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With the recent release of VMWare ESXi 5.1 and the associated fully featured web client management (which we may cover in a later article), Linux in general is getting closer and closer to the ‘do anything’ desktop operating system we have all wanted it to be for some time. Maturity breeds integration and although we have always had any number of tools to manage our command line servers, our Windows desktops and Mac OSX or other Linux graphical environments separately, we were lacking in a tool that put all the pieces together and managed our connections for us. There are several tools that are attempting to integrate system management, today we are going to talk about one, the “Remmina Remote Desktop Client”.

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Today’s topic is going to cover the Samba client setup and your ability to mount your Windows shares (Windows 8 included) on your Ubuntu desktop. Although you will get the basic information you need to install and configure your Ubuntu system for accessing Windows shares, if you want to see it in action (including those pieces on the Windows side) in more detail, please visit our sister site Linux Academy. There you can see not only how to configure your Ubuntu system for accessing Windows shares, but how to set up you Ubuntu server as a file server. Linux Academy offers a large number of certification level courses across a wide range of Linux topics. In addition to the demonstration videos, you have access to your very own dedicated Amazon Web Services Linux Server to follow along with each class!

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