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I manage several Linux servers from (among others) a Linux desktop. Running X apps on a remote server locally via SSH is cool, very cool.

If you\'ve every tried this with firefox, you\'ve likely noticed that the firefox launching script is too smart for this kind of malarkey. Execute the script $/usr/bin/firefox on a remote ssh session with X11 forwarding enabled and it will cause the local firefox install to launch... and they call this a "feature."

Well, one can disable this "feature" with the counter-intuitive flag -no-remote.

Want to install a load of free apps all at one? This is great for installing that default loadout of apps you always have on every computer...

http://ninite.com/

Here's a link to the RACC No Pain software bundle:
http://ninite.com/installer/61bf073599692792c5665ad2c1fad409e7862caf

I just stumbled across Zabbix (http://www.zabbix.com/index.php), an open source network/server monitoring/reporting server package. It is definitely worth researching; could be a replacement for the one-two punch of Nagios and Cacti that I am using currently.

As first introduced to me by Steve Gibson on Security Now on the Twit network, Heise Security has a cool DIY Howto posted about creating a CD/DVD packed full of Windows Updates. Could be great for Mike on the bench.

Over the past few years, I have wanted to find a nice easy way to install a Linux distro from a USB mass storage device. Google yielded many different snippets, and a few "complicated" ways to do so, but I wished for an easier way.

Well, the pieces fell together today...

It could be pretty cool to join the NTP pool. These scripts could be important to helping not get taken advantage of by doing so...

http://www.midwestcs.com/scripts/ntp/index.html

Windows has had a standards compliant NTP client since NT5 (possibly sooner, but I don't care about that). Don't use the tab built into the Date/Time window in XP/2003, it tries to protect you from yourself and that annoys me. Anyway, here are some resources on how to configure the NTP clients.

Mike Rubel has a wonderful dissertation on using Rsync to create local sudo-snapshots for backups.

http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/
http://www.freenaskb.info/kb/?View=entry&EntryID=185

Here's a pair of excellent informational sites about Linux 2.6 RAID and LVM.

http://www.gagme.com/greg/linux/raid-lvm.php
http://www.bobhoffman.com/wordpress/?page_id=44

Here's a nice article on how to have your Windows Server 2003 PDC serve as an NTP stratum 2 server for the network or "forest." Great for my Monday todo list.

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Configuring-Windows-...