• On this day I began the start of my PogoPlug ARM Server
• This project will give me a better understanding of the “Small is beautiful” philosophy through maximizing my available computing resourses.
• This project will act as a segway for future projects
• One of the more challenging aspects of this project was the lack of normal I/O devices. (There is no way to monitor the PogoPlug outside of an SSH session)

Today I've opened up my router to accept remote ssh sessions to my PogoPlug server! This is monumental thing because now I have access to my own personal cloud I can tunnel into remotely via SFTP. I now don't have to depend on a third party for remote backup or online storage, it's accessible from anywhere and I know it's secure because I personally am administrating it.

• This is made possible through the use of port forwarding on my home router.
• SFTP allows me to access my server as if it were a directly connected database
• because I administrate this I am assured security.
• This also provides an external environment to field test the capabilities of UNIX as root (something not available through Lab46

On this date I began dabbling in basic scripting. This script is simple It asks for a secret word! Scripting is important for several reasons:

1. Sctipting gives power users and administrators the ability to preform complex system opperations through recording tasks in a “script”. A script is written in a text editor.
2. Syntax is extremely important; even one extra or missing character could cripple your script
3. If you understand scripting “sick and terrible things can be accomplished” - Haas (9/29/11)-reguarding ii
4. I still need to dabble more in scripting so I can one day take over the world (that would be so wizard!)

This Month I've started playing around and researching Different Unix, Linux and GNU licensed softwares. In particular GNUstep has struck my fancy for several reasons.

• GNUstep is the last “mainstream” surviving *branded* remnant of NeXTSTEP, NeXTSTEP and later OPENSTEP became a fundamental foundation of Mac OS X so understanding the legacy of this modern operating system to me is fascinating.
• GNUstep is a wonderful programing environment because it is “all object oriented” this is nothing new but the legacy of yesteryear still fascinates me.
• understanding different NIX style systems is important to grasp the full dexterity Unix can offer
• GNUstep (though at it's core archaic) supports a wide variety of different platforms including the POWER architecture, something I'm very partial toward.

a command for listing directories. The ls command has other attributes such as ls -a the “a” in this case will list hidden files or directories that begin with a period, for example “.file” would be hidden whereas ”file“ would not when listing a directory.

Even in the world of Nix one may ponder from time to time who they really are and find themselves asking whoami? The whoami command lists your sessions userid, this is helpful if you are working in a multi-user environment

Freaking out because your string needs some tender love and input? Well, get a grep! Grep is a powerful tool that snips information in files and standard input to be placed somewhere els, this is especially useful when scripting because you can create strings that solve equations or finish tidious tasks.

Have you ever wanted to know who's doing what and where? Well you can! because the who command does just that! (imagine that) Here's how it works: when the user enters the who command their greeted with some lovely text that supplies WHO is logged in, WHO is running what processes and Who are you? Who, who, who, who?

A virtual world means virtual desktops or in this case “screens”. When the user types the screen command they are greeted with a fresh new terminal, this gives the appearance of multiple sessions within a single terminal. The user can detach and reattach at their leisure. To detach hold '^a'release then promptly press the the 'd' key one time. If you would like to reattach simply type 'screen -r' in your terminal interface.

While taking tee time you may want to catch up on some reading, perhaps some standard input or output? eh? right? ha. tee is a powerful utility that reads standard input and place it into standard output in association with pipes.

The base of a tree is its root. The same can be said for a UNIX system, the root or superuser has an absolute permission over everything. This permission is temporarily granted to the superuser from the operating system and is promptly returned upon completion of the task.

To be sudo is like being a pseudo superuser. When a normal user temporarily requires superuser permissions the sudo command is typed in sequence with the action requiring root, sudo is placed at the beginning of the string. The user must mentioned in the sudoers file and supply the sudo password in order to obtain temporary superuser permissions.

Piping is a powerful tool that allows the user to tie command together to complete more complex actions by tying standard out into standard input. There is no limit (within reason) to the number of pipe lines you can tie with a single command.

gcc is GNU C compiler. What that means is gcc will compile fresh written C code into an executable program.

Regular Expressions allow for the inclusion and separation of information within files to accomplish specific and complex tasks. Regular expressions can be tied together with pipes within strings to manipulate variables.

Man… this has been a heck of a lot easier with this! ;)

Become more acquainted with scripting

My plan is to use some of the scripting examples laid out in class for tweaking so I further understand the syntax and structure of bash scripting

This seems cut and dry to me. If what it do works, then happy day! if not I obviously have work to do. However the more the script is tweaked while remaining functional would be a good sign!

Through reverse engineering some of the examples preformed in class I've been able manipulate the scripts to do different things such as:

1. create a custom MOTD on my PogoLab server that displays running processes, users logged in and the current date.

What is the question you'd like to pose for experimentation? State it here.

Collect information and resources (such as URLs of web resources), and comment on knowledge obtained that you think will provide useful background information to aid in performing the experiment.

Based on what you've read with respect to your original posed question, what do you think will be the result of your experiment (ie an educated guess based on the facts known). This is done before actually performing the experiment.

State your rationale.

How are you going to test your hypothesis? What is the structure of your experiment?

Perform your experiment, and collect/document the results here.

Based on the data collected:

• was your hypothesis correct?
• was your hypothesis not applicable?
• is there more going on than you originally thought? (shortcomings in hypothesis)
• what shortcomings might there be in your experiment?
• what shortcomings might there be in your data?

What can you ascertain based on the experiment performed and data collected? Document your findings here; make a statement as to any discoveries you've made.

What is the question you'd like to pose for experimentation? State it here.

Collect information and resources (such as URLs of web resources), and comment on knowledge obtained that you think will provide useful background information to aid in performing the experiment.

Based on what you've read with respect to your original posed question, what do you think will be the result of your experiment (ie an educated guess based on the facts known). This is done before actually performing the experiment.

State your rationale.

How are you going to test your hypothesis? What is the structure of your experiment?

Perform your experiment, and collect/document the results here.

Based on the data collected:

• was your hypothesis correct?
• was your hypothesis not applicable?
• is there more going on than you originally thought? (shortcomings in hypothesis)
• what shortcomings might there be in your experiment?
• what shortcomings might there be in your data?

What can you ascertain based on the experiment performed and data collected? Document your findings here; make a statement as to any discoveries you've made.

What is the question you'd like to pose for experimentation? State it here.

Collect information and resources (such as URLs of web resources), and comment on knowledge obtained that you think will provide useful background information to aid in performing the experiment.

Based on what you've read with respect to your original posed question, what do you think will be the result of your experiment (ie an educated guess based on the facts known). This is done before actually performing the experiment.

State your rationale.

How are you going to test your hypothesis? What is the structure of your experiment?

Perform your experiment, and collect/document the results here.

Based on the data collected:

• was your hypothesis correct?
• was your hypothesis not applicable?
• is there more going on than you originally thought? (shortcomings in hypothesis)
• what shortcomings might there be in your experiment?
• what shortcomings might there be in your data?

What can you ascertain based on the experiment performed and data collected? Document your findings here; make a statement as to any discoveries you've made.