Alphatek - Steven’s Tech Blog

This weekend I had time to finish the reading of CompTIA Linux+ Cetification Study Guide. I don’t want to pass this exam, but the content of the book looked exciting to “refresh” basic Linux concepts.

Now that I’ve read the 1040 pages, I can say that it’s really a good book; The author, Robb Tracy, is excellent at explaining key concepts in an understandable way. It’s not “yet another man-page-like book”, it tells you what you’ll encounter 90% of the time during your job as a sysadmin with real world examples.

It won’t make a Linux expert out of you by reading it, but that’s not the point anyway. Be aware that all the examples in the book rely on SuSE and Fedora Linux distributions.

In many companies, they use Windows PPTP VPN servers because they are easy to set up. However, there isn’t a native support for this protocol in NetworkManager. Ever wondered how to create a PPTP VPN with Fedora 9? It’s actually not that complicate once you know how to do it.

First of all, switch to user root and install the pptp package, which provides all the tools needed to create a PPTP VPN connection:

su -
yum install pptp

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The Mac Mini is really a cute little machine, it’s completely silent and consumes practically no power. The ideal Linux home server if you ask me. There is only one drawback if you use the BootCamp BIOS emulation + Linux: the Mac Mini doesn’t boot when there is no screen attached to the VGA output.

This is Apple’s BIOS emulation’s fault, it’s trying to detect a screen and has no timeout...fortunately, there is a workaround for this!

• Find a 75 Ohm resistor, any power rating is ok.
• Connect the resistor between pins 2 and 7 of the DVI to VGA adapter (any adapter will work)
• Done

The 75 Ohm resistor lets the BIOS think that there is a screen and voilà, you can boot without a monitor now