To add a new spelling dictionary, hyphenation dictionary or thesaurus files for another language, at least for OpenOffice 2.x:

Close all OpenOffice applications
Obtain the file for your language from OpenOffice Dictionaries Wiki
Unpack the zip-file to the dictionaries directory, e.g.:

    cd /usr/lib/openoffice/share/dict/ooo
    unzip /path/where/downloaded/de_CH-20071211.zip 

Run install-dict:

    /usr/lib/openoffice/install-dict 

Now you should see the new language module with Tools / Options / Language Settings / Writing Aids under "Available language modules"

Paths may vary, on my gentoo machine, the OpenOffice files are under /usr/lib/openoffice/

Some simple shell scripts for synchronize your data using rsync.

You only have to adapt the variables at the beginning of the scripts according your needs.

rsync_home.sh

This one can be used if you have your remote system mounted onto the local file system, e.g. using NFS or SAMBA

Variables:

MOUNTPOINT: Path on local system where you have mounted the exported path of remote system
LOCALDIR: Path on local system from where you want to synchronize (by default your home directory)
EXCLUDEFILE: File where you can enter all path's (one on a line) that shouldn't be transferred
LOGFILE: File to log output of rsync into

rsync_home_ssh.sh

This one is an example if you want to access the remote system over SSH.

Variables:

REMOTEHOST: Full qualified host name of remote system
LOCALDIR: Path on local system from where you want to synchronize (by default your home directory)
REMOTEDIR: directory on remote host after the colon (":") (by default your home directory)
EXCLUDEFILE: File where you can enter all path's (one on a line) that shouldn't be transferred
LOGFILE: File to log output of rsync into

Remote Host can be either preset or passed as a command line parameter.

For not have to type your passphrase for your ssh key every time, you can store it within your SSH agent.

Follow those steps for automounting every user's homedir under a particular directory:

Make sure you have installed autofs

Add the following line to the automount.master file (mostly in /etc/autofs/):

    /home/net    /etc/autofs/auto.home 

Then Add this line to auto.home (mostly in /etc/autofs/):

    *	-rw,soft,intr	server:/& 

or for a SAMBA server:

    *	-rw,soft,intr,fstype=smbfs,uid=&,gid=100,credentials=/home/&/.smbpasswd             ://server/& 

But what does that mean?
The Asterisk (*) stands for any (pseudo)-directory under the given mountpoint. After the dash, there are the mount options, and with the Ampersand (&) we refer to the directory name that would be accessed by the user. So the appropriate NFS export or sharename will be automounted. For SAMBA, it is used also for setting the owner of the files in the mounted directory and for the credentials file in user's (local) home directory for authentication.

With this, users can just use their home directory on a server, e.g. by cd'ing to /home/net/<username>. After some time of inactivity, the directory will be unmounted without manual intervention.

Sometimes, you need some SSL certificates for providing SSL encrypted pages.

You can obtain a server certificate from Verisign or Entrust but they're quite expensive.

Or you can make them yourself. Here are some tools to get there. I won't provide information about cryptology at all, neither you will find a professional PKI solution here.

Creating your "own CA" makes only sense for sites where encryption should be in place, without providing official trusted credentials. Every user connecting to your secured site get a warning message every time he connects to your site, until he manually accept your CA Certificate.

First you need OpenSSL, the code which deals with digital certificates.
For information on the command options of the OpenSSL tools look at the OpenSSL Documentation (from openssl.org)
Then get the SSL CA-Tools 0.2 (SSL CA-Tools 0.2). This is a version slightly modified so you can also renew certificates easily.
If you do prefer to use the original version, you can find it here: SSL CA-Tools)

The SSL CA-Tools are easy to use scripts which query the necessary information in a dialog and execute the appropriate openssl commands. Untar it somewhere, e.g. under your openssl directory, look at the README, and create a self-signed CA certificate, user- and server certificates and finally sign them with your CA key.

It is possible that the hardware changes with new server models and you cannot boot any more from the RedHat Bootdisk. Then you need to inspect your new hardware and see what new devices are built in and get a driver for it.

For more convenience, I have written some simple scripts, which do the most annoying tasks.

The drivers need to be changed on different locations:

Network drivers must be put on the boot-disk, because all other packages, drivers, etc. are loaded from a network location

Ungzip bootnet.img.gz with:

        gunzip bootnet.img.gz 

Mount the Image as a loop filesystem on /mnt/bootimage:

        unpack_bootimage.sh bootnet.img 

Unpack and mount the inital ramdisk with the following script, give the initrd-file under /mnt/bootimage/ as argument. The inital ramdisk will be mounted under /mnt/initrd:

        unpack_initrd.sh initrd.img 

Unpack the modules with the following script:

       unpack_modules.sh /mnt/initrd/modules/modules.cgz 

Now copy the new driver module(s) to /var/tmp/modules/<kernel-version> directory
Change /mnt/initrd/modules/pcitable and add a new line with the vendor ID, product ID, driver name and description to the file (see example below):

        0x8086  0x1010  "e1000"         "Intel Corporation|PRO/1000"

Change the file /mnt/initrd/modules/module-info and add a line for each the driver name, type and description (see the following example):

        e1000
                eth
                "Intel EtherExpress Pro 1000"

Add a line for the new driver to the file /mnt/initrd/modules/modules.dep if the new driver module is dependent on othe kernel modules. Mostly not necessary for ethernet adapters.

Re-pack the modules to the archive, kernel-version-directory under /var/tmp/modules as 1st argument, cpio archive file as 2nd argument:

        pack_modules.sh 2.4.20-18.7BOOT /mnt/initrd/modules/modules.cgz 

"exit" from the initrd-mount, if you are there, /mnt/initrd or subdirectories of it musn't be your current dir!

If you also need to update the boot-kernel (when used some modules not for acutal kernel version), copy the new vmlinuz kernel image to /mnt/bootimage
Unmount and pack the initial ramdisk, give the initrd-file under /mnt/bootimage to be updated as argument:

        pack_initrd.sh initrd.img 

Now unmount the bootimage and write it to a boot floppy with this script:

        pack_bootimage.sh bootnet.img 

Most other drivers, like for SCSI-Controllers are in the stage2 Image
Mount the Stage 2 image (network-connected part of the installation):

        mount -o loop /install/cdrom/RedHat/base/stage2.img /mnt/image 

Unpack the modules with the following script:

        unpack_modules.sh /mnt/image/modules/modules.cgz 

Now copy the new driver module(s) to /var/tmp/<kernel-version> directory

Important: If the new modules are built for another kernel version as the one on the boodisk, the bootdisk image must be updated with the corresponding kernel image. Further, all modules need to be replaced by one's of the same kernel version as the kernel image!

Change /mnt/image/modules/pcitable and add a new line with the vendor ID, product ID, driver name and description to the file (see example below):

        0x9005  0x801f  "aic79xx"       "Adaptec|AIC7902 Ultra 320 SCSI Adapter" 

Change the file /mnt/initrd/modules/module-info and add a line for each the driver name, type and description (see the following example):

        aic79xx
                scsi
                "Adaptec AIC79xx Ultra 320 SCSI Host Adapter"

Add a line for the new driver to the file /mnt/image/modules/modules.dep if the new driver module is dependent on other kernel modules. Example:

        aic79xx: scsi_mod 

Re-pack the modules to the archive, kernel-version-directory under /var/tmp/ as 1st argument (see /var/tmp/modules), cpio archive file as 2nd argument:

        pack_modules.sh <kernel-version> /mnt/image/modules/modules.cgz 

Leave the mountpoint of the image (/mnt/image or subdirectories of it musn't be your current dir!)

Unmount the image:

        umount /mnt/image