Some, however, can. Case in point is the FUSE (File-system in UserSpacE) user-space driver for using the “unionfs” file-system layering technology.

First, you must add the proper repository to the yum configuration for the server.

The repository you will need is:
Dag Apt Repository, http://dag.wieers.com/apt/

The package you will need is called:
fuse-unionfs

The dependencies for this package are:
fuse-libs (from the CentOS repository)
fuse (from the CentOS repository)

Once you have the yum repositories set up, install the package by running (as root):
#yum install fuse-unionfs

That should install the fuse-unionfs (or unionfs-fuse) package.

The utility should be installed as:
/usr/bin/unionfs

Getting the unionfs-fuse mount points to work via /etc/fstab is one of the more bizarre and poorly-documented things in the Linux universe, but here is a line from /etc/fstab that seems to work:

unionfs#/path/to/your/writabledirectory=rw:/path/to/your/readonlydirectory=ro /path/to/your/finaldirectory fuse default_permissions,allow_other,use_ino,nonempty,suid,cow 0 0

In this fstab line, here is an explanation of each part:

• unionfs   — this is apparently the command that fuse runs to mount the file system
• The “#” after unionfs. This separates the unionfs command from the parameters
• /path/to/your/writabledirectory=rw — this is the path on the system to your writable directory

• /path/to/your/readonlydirectory=ro — this is the path on the system to your readonly directory
• The colon between the paths — this separates the two paths; More than two paths can be included, the leftmost will be the “topmost” layered path, going down the layers for each path to the right, separated by colons.
• fuse — this is the name of the filesystem to use. “fuse” is a meta-filesystem that can mount many other sub-types of file-system below it, in this case, “unionfs”
• default_permissions — this asks unionfs to use the default permissions
• allow_other — this asks unionfs to allow non-root users to talk to the mounted filesystem
• use_ino — let the filesystem set the inode numbers
• nonempty — allows unionfs to mount the unioned-filesystem into a non-empty directory on the system
• suid — allows suid on the unionfs filesystem
• cow — enables copy-on-write, which allows editing of files that are mounted from a readonly path, by placing a copied file into the read-writable path instead
• 0 0  — standard fstab entries for mount order and check order (I think)

Since this has been a fight several times for the Seagate SATA 7200.10 and SATA 7200.11 drive models, here are some numbers found to be helpful:

Seagate 7200.11 1500GB (ST31500341AS) ::
Try Entering:  ST315005N1A1AS-RK -or- 9JB1AS-571

Seagate 7200.11 1000GB (ST31000340AS) ::
Try Entering: ST31000340AS -or- 9BX158-303
-or- 9BX1A8-570

Seagate 7200.10 750GB (ST3750640AS) ::
Try Entering: ST3750640AS-RK -or- 9BJ848-550

pacat --record | sox -t raw -r 44100 -s -L -b 16 -c 2 - "output.wav"

Installation and usage instructions after the break…

The “pacat” command is the pulseaudio command-line audio recording/playback utility.  In this instance, it is being used to “–record” from the default source (this can be changed, if needed, using additional command-line parameters).

The “pacat” command defaults to exporting “raw” formatted data, which must then be converted to a valid wave file using the “sox” utility.

The “sox” utility is part of the “Sound eXchange” utility for linux, which is a “swiss-army-knife” multi-use application.  In this case, it is being used to convert the raw output from pacat to the more traditional 44K,16bit, Stereo WAV file that is ubiquitous in PC computing.

This can be further converted to an MP3, but how to do so is beyond the scope of this document at this time.

Installation:

To install the pacat utility (part of pulseaudio-utils):

#yum install pulseaudio-utils

To install the sox utility:

#yum install sox

This means that to install the nerolinux 64-bit rpm file, the –ignorearch option must be issued to the rpm command-line utility, as follows:

#rpm --ignorearch -ivh nerolinux-3.5.2.3-x86_64.rpm

That should allow this particular rpm to be installed successfully.

To simplify the process, here is a bookmarklet that takes the current URL and sends it to Google Translate directly.

To create a bookmarklet for Firefox 3 that translates the current web-page from another language to english, create a bookmark and set the bookmark properties to the following values:

Name:

Google Translate - Prompt

Location:

javascript:var%20language=prompt(%22Enter%20source%20language%20code:%20\n\n%20automatic%20-%20au\n%20arabic%20-%20ar\n%20chinese%20simplified%20-%20zh-CN\n%20chinese%20traditional%20-%20zh-TW\n%20french%20-%20fr\n%20german%20-%20de\n%20italian%20-%20it\n%20korean%20-%20ko\n%20portuguese%20-%20pt\n%20russian%20-%20ru\n%20spanish%20-%20es\n%20%22,%22au%22);%20%20if%20(language%20!=%20null)%20{%20location=%22http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=%22%20%2B%20encodeURIComponent(language)%20%2B%20%22&tl=en&u=%22%20%20%2B%20encodeURIComponent(location);%20}

Location (again, this time not encoded, although wordpress seems to maul the quotes and plusses this way):

javascript:var language=prompt("Enter source language code: \n\n automatic - au\n arabic - ar\n chinese simplified - zh-CN\n chinese traditional - zh-TW\n french - fr\n german - de\n italian - it\n korean - ko\n portuguese - pt\n russian - ru\n spanish - es\n","au"); if (language != null) { location="http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=" + encodeURIComponent(language) + "&tl=en&u=" + encodeURIComponent(location); }

Keyword:

bookmarklet,google,translate

Description:

Bookmarklet prompts for the source language of the currently-displayed web-page, and then sends it to google translate with the proper URL to tranlate it (to english). This bookmarklet is based on Google Translation bookmarklet from https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/misc.html

The notes below are the collected notes regarding how to get it to work.  The instructions appear to allow the sqlite ruby gem to be successfully installed.

Installing ruby and ruby gems on CentOS 5:

#yum install ruby

#yum install ruby-devel ruby-gems

[And the most important/non-obvious one: yum install sqlite-devel]

#yum install sqlite-devel

#gem install sqlite3-ruby

Note: after installing the sqlite3-ruby as a ruby gem, your ruby code will have to include the following in order to use the sqlite3 gem:

require ‘rubygems’

require ‘sqlite3′

For example:

#/sbin/tune2fs -l /dev/sda1

will return a page of data values concerning the formatting of the ext2/ext3 partition.

Two lines that are of special interest are:

“Block size:” and “Filesystem features:”

which show the block size (in bytes) and the various special features/options used when formatting the partition (such as if the fs has an ext3 journal).

However, as of linux kernel 2.6.19, the 32-bit ext3 maximum size appears to be 16TB.

The only kernel boot parameter that seems to help is:

radeon.blacklist=yes

which can be appended to the installer kernel line by pressing the Tab key at the DVD boot menu, then typing space and the parameter.

When updating the BIOS of an Intel “BoneTrail” ( DX48BT2 ) motherboard recently, I discovered that any BIOS update past v1782 would break the PXE boot functionality of the built-in network card.

The actual network functionality itself remained fine, but the ability to boot via PXE was lost.

The error message displayed at boot was:

PXE-E05: The LAN adapter’s configuration is corrupted or has not been initialized.  The Boot Agent cannot continue.

Reflashing the BIOS back to the last working version (v 1782 (2008/07/16)) made the agent work again, but left the system with no way to upgrade the BIOS.

Regular flashing wouldn’t fix anything, but it turns out that Intel has a “BIOS Recovery” boot mechanism.

It requires a CD-ROM be burned with the Recovery BIOS image on it (not as a bootable CD, just as a file in the root directory of the CD).  Then, the “BIOS Recovery” jumper must be removed from the motherboard, and the machine is booted, which causes it to read the CD, and initiate a 5 minute flash process.

This recovery mode flash worked well to restore the PXE Boot Agent and the latest version of the BIOS.

[By the way, thanks to Intel support person "Jose", whom I spoke with via Intel's online support chat applet.]