In the latest installment of system administration tutorials at Linux Journal, the focus is on file sharing services. Welcome to the wonderful world of cross-platform network file trading via samba, coda, afs, and of course, NFS.

Reuters reports that super-huge media company AOL Time Warner has entered a licensing agreement with Nokia to provide an
Internet browser for wireless devices. AOL will develop and market a Netscape-branded version of Nokia’s existing browser,
known as WAP, for use in many mobile communications
devices.

From the humor site Segfault: “The current negotiations with the President at a peace summit in Washington, D.C. seem to be going nowhere, as the two warring factions in the PC-Mac war refuse to compromise. The most recent meeting got completely out of hand, with the two sides arguing endlessly and calling each other ‘lamers.’ “

LogError writes: “Help Net Security has organized a contest through net-security.org in which participants have to write an opinion on the “most secure OS”. The best five opinions will be published on the site and their authors will get a free copy of the The FreeBSD Corporate Networker’s Guide.”

CBS Marketwatch reports that IBM shares climbed Thursday “after the company reported that its fourth-quarter profit rose 28 percent,
beating Wall Street’s consensus estimate, as sales rose 6 percent.” Part of the reason: better-than-expected sales of IBM’s Unix servers.

The BBC follows up on the ramen virus hitting some Linux servers: “This week, many web servers running some versions of Linux have
been infected with a malicious program that uses the computers as a
springboard to spread itself around the internet.

Although not destructive, the virus program is inconveniencing
many webmasters as it hogs resources while searching for new
servers to infect.” Here’s more from ZD Net.

In an unprecedented race to GPL freedom, Loki Software, Inc. releases
the latest in their long line of open source projects: a complete set
of
end-user and developer tools for managing software releases.
Setup 1.5.8
http://www.lokigames.com/development/setup.php3
This update to the classic setup tool includes support for our
brand-new
XML product database. This new product database allows you to quickly
determine if your product is complete or corrupt, and doesn’t require
superuser permissions to install. If you install it, you can update
and
remove it with our new tools…
Loki Update Tool 1.0.6
http://www.lokigames.com/development/loki_update.php3
===========
This easy to use end-user tool allows anyone to quickly and easily
update any Loki software they install. It features easy-to-use mirror
support, the ability to resume broken connections, support for HTTP and
FTP proxies, and automatic update verification to make absolutely sure
that the download you want is the download you get. All this for the
quick and easy price of absolutely nothing! That’s right, just hop on
over to our open-source depot and grab the conveniently packaged binary
archive. And once you’ve updated your games and you’re looking for
space for the new ones, what better way to uninstall the old ones
than…
Loki Uninstall Tool 1.0.3
http://www.lokigames.com/development/loki_uninstall.php3
===========
This easy to use end-user tool allows anyone to quickly and easily
update any Loki software they install. In one step, you can easily
remove literally gigabytes of games, freeing yourself up for the latest
blockbuster titles from Loki Software, Inc.
Loki Patch Tools 1.0.1
http://www.lokigames.com/development/loki_patch.php3
===========
These tools are perfect for the developer in you. Whether you’re
working on a large binary-only project or just want the convenience of
the Loki Update Tool, these tools will allow you to build patches for
any project. Complete with pre-install scripts, post-install scripts,
and full diagnostics, these tools are a must for anyone looking for
easy
software updates.
The Loki Software Team

An article from the San Francisco Chronicle tracks the recent history of VA Linux’s stock. (VA Linux owns NewsForge.)

From BusinessWire: Linuxcare, Inc., a leader in providing comprehensive professional services and solutions for Linux and open-source technologies, today unveiled
the first comprehensive managed services for Linux.
These subscription-based services extend well beyond traditional monitoring and systems administration. Linuxcare Managed Services are
targeted at the Internet service provider (ISP) market, so that these growing organizations can build competitive advantage by quickly deploying
Linux-based, low-cost, value-added services to their end-customers.

Posted at LWN.net: “The php4 module shipped with Conectiva Linux 6.0 has two security
problems that were recently made public by the PHP development team
based on a report by James Moore:

1) It is possible to specify PHP directives on a per-directory basis
under apache. In the vulnerable versions of PHP, a remote attacker
could craft an HTTP request that would cause the next page to be
served with the wrong values for these directives.

2) Even though PHP is installed, it can be deactivated and activated
via a directive like “engine=off” or “engine=on”. This directive can
be used on a per-directory basis or even per virtual host. Vulnerable
versions of the php4 module could “leak” the “engine=off” setting to
other virtual hosts on the same machine, effectively disabling PHP
for those hosts and resulting in PHP source code being sent to the
client instead of being executed on the server.”