Richard Petersen

IPv6 can be used to automatically connect a host to a network using stateless auto-configuration, doing away with the need for any IP addressing support like a DHCP server. In an IPv6 network, the IPv6 protocol includes information that can directly configure a host. With IPv4 you either have to manually configure each host or rely on a DHCP server to provide configuration information. With IPv6, configuration information is integrated into the Internet protocol directly. IPv6 autoconfiguration capabilities are known as stateless, meaning that it can directly configure a host without the recourse to an external server. Alternatively, DHCP is stateful, where the host relies on an external DHCP server to provide configuration information. Stateless autoconfiguration has ... (more)

Fedora Core 5 New Features

If one term could be applied to the new Fedora Core 5, it could well be streamlined. The focus of this release seems to be more on the desktop user because of the changes in software management, applications support, and security configuration. The changes make the distribution much easier to use, with a new and simpler install procedure. Greater software functionality has been added wit... (more)

Red Hat's Global File System on Fedora Core 4

With Fedora Core 4, Red Hat, for the first time, released its Global File System (GFS) as an open sourced, freely available distributed network file system. A distributed network file system builds on the basic concept of NFS as well as RAID techniques to create a file system implemented on multiple hosts across a large network, in effect, distributing the same file system among differen... (more)

Getting Started with Red Hat Linux

This article provides a glimpse into Red Hat: The Complete Reference Enterprise Linux and Fedora Edition (with DVD), published by McGraw-Hill/Osborne. It covers what you need to get started with Red Hat Linux - including the overall design of Linux, Linux distributions, and online resources. As an operating system, Linux performs many of the same functions as Unix, Macintosh, Windows, a... (more)

Linux.SYS-CON.com: Device Management with udev and HAL on Fedora Core 4

This article discusses the implementation details for the new device management methods udev and HAL, now used on all Fedora Core 3 and 4 systems for all devices. It's time to relearn how devices are managed! On Fedora Core 4, device files are no longer handled in a static way. Instead they're now dynamically generated as needed by udev and managed by HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer). Pre... (more)