Previous Meeting Topics

March 2007

cfengine

November 2006

Subversion

October 2006

Xen

William McVey gave an excellent presentation on Xen. The vmm (virtual machine monitor) is an open-source server virtualization project that is being developed in the computer laboratory of the University of Cambridge. William's slides from his presentation are at http://wamber.net/presentations/ctlug/xen-overview/.

August 2006 -

General Discussion

  • Questions concerning new topics
  • Discussions on the use of magnetic tape in backups.
  • Discussions of a book topic for a book group

These items were on the list to round table. We touched on some of them. 1. Log management. Retention, monitoring, reporting etc. Have you had to go back and research past logs to solve a problem and if so, what methods were useful, and why were you put in that position?

2. Choosing between installing a package (rpm) vs. build/make/install and why? We've also had the topic of build/make/install which might fit.

3. Backups. It was a recent topic on the linux forum. Do you think it has to go to tape, or is syncing one or a few images to another server adequate.

4. Do you use a network IDS? How beneficial is it, do you use it for other purposes such as diagnostics or monitoring traffic patterns? Used for reporting, or is it more a current status tool?

5. Using a groupware product to enhance email. We have some demand for MS Exchange, so I'm looking into an open xchange solution. Is there a need to go that far, or just compile an array of php/ruby/wiki etc calendar/collaborative solutions.

6. Remote monitoring. What do you monitor and is it for current status, or also used for benchmarking and developing trends? Do you just ping a protocol to see if its alive, or do a more thorough check (login, check for pages, attempt a download etc)?

1)building custom kernels - what do I really need here?

2)ekiga - okay. It worked yesterday!

3)managing linux installations - to lvm or not to lvm and other strategies or tragedies.

4)managing reinstallations - whoops...mixed repositories!...reinstall!!! configure apache, mysql, perl, etc. !@##***??@@!! waaaahhhhh!!!

5)build systems and subversion When is Wayne going to do part 2,3,4,and 5 of this discussion?

March 2006

NewIO (Chris Nystrom)

  • an interesting concept similar to X11, but different
  • www.newio.org

Feb 2006

SSH - (WAYNE WALKER(1 week)) Rick Richardson, Les Elliott, Chip Rosenthal

  • How does it work?
  • What can I do that makes it UNsecure?
  • What's this agent/public key thing?
  • What do you mean it improves productivity!!?? I thought the rule was "Productivity is inversely proportional to Security" and ssh is supposedly highly secure!
  • X11 forwarding, trust, tunneling; xhost + is evil, dangerous unsecure and doesn't work thru firewalls; ssh X11 forwarding is much more secure than xhost and works through the firewall (assuming that ssh is allowed thru)