- Roundtable - muug.ca

MUUG Meeting, Jan 8, 7:30pm -- Network Monitoring with Zenoss
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 03 Jan '08

03 Jan '08

The Manitoba UNIX User Group (MUUG) will be holding its next monthly meeting on Tuesday, January 8. The meeting topic for this month is as follows: Network Monitoring with Zenoss How do you keep tabs on your equipment? Do you remember to check free disk space on a regular basis? Have you set up MRTG to monitor every single network interface on every single system? Have you set up Nagios to alert you whenever any service on any server goes down? Most people dont have satisfactory answers to these questions. MRTG and RRDTool are time-consuming and sometimes difficult to set up, and ongoing configuration is difficult. Getting Nagios going can be an exercise in frustration for the newcomer to network monitoring, and ongoing configuration is a task best left to experts. Monitoring the dozens (or hundreds) of parameters that tell you whether a system is working properly or not is, quite simply, a royal pain. The developers of Zenoss thought that, too. Rather than building another bolt-on front-end to an aging platform (nagios) or a limited-function tool (mrtg) they just started building a new system that worked the right way. Enter Zenoss. Zenoss isnt 100% feature-complete vis--vis expertly- installed Nagios and MRTG, but its enough of the way there to make it a lot easier to set up and get going. Zenoss automatically discovers devices on your network, then using SNMP, TCP probes, WMI or telnet discovers what services exist on those devices, and automatically sets up polling of several relevant pieces of information. Adam Thompson, who's with the Divisional IT Department of the St. James-Assiniboia School Division, will be our presenter for this month. Adam will attempt to cover the fundamentals of how Zenoss works, how to get Zenoss up and running on your network, and time permitting will demonstrate some of its features on a live network. The group holds its general meetings at 7:30pm on the second Tuesday of every month from September to June. (There are no meetings in July and August.) Meetings are open to the general public; you don't have to be a MUUG member to attend. ********************************************************************** Please note our meeting location: The IBM offices, at 400 Ellice Ave. (between Edmonton and Kennedy). When you arrive, you will have to sign in at the reception desk, and then wait for someone to take you (in groups) to the meeting room. Please try to arrive by about 7:15pm, so the meeting can start promptly at 7:30pm. Don't be late, or you may not get in. (But don't come too early either, since security may not be there to let you in before 7:15 or so.) Non-members may be required to show photo ID at the security desk. Limited parking is available for free on the street, either on Ellice Ave. or on some of the intersecting streets. Indoor parking is also available nearby, at Portage Place, for $3.00 for the evening. Bicycle parking is available in a bike rack under video surveillance located behind the building on Webb Place. ********************************************************************** For more information about MUUG, and its monthly meetings, check out their Web server: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ Help us promote this month's meeting, by putting this poster up on your workplace bulletin board or other suitable public message board: http://www.muug.mb.ca/meetings/MUUGmeeting.pdf -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.mb.ca> Manitoba UNIX User Group Web: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ PO Box 130 St-Boniface Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg MB CANADA R2H 3B4 Fax: (204)474-7609

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U of M Mainframe funeral
by John Lange 19 Dec '07

19 Dec '07

Just though some of you might be interested know that the U of M mainframe funeral made the front page of Slashdot today: http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/12/19/0115201.shtml John

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Mac VNC
by Kevin Scott 18 Dec '07

18 Dec '07

> However, System Preferences on my Mom's Mac helpfully reports that "Others > can > manage your computer using the address 10.64.x.y", which doesn't do me any > good. Is there a way to get an IP address that I can from Shaw's network? > > > ------------------------------ 10.64. indicates Private IP address, and a router being used? so Port Forwarding in that router should be what you need, but thats a Network answer, I do not know alot about how mac's operate. I imagine that there are much more Mac knowledgable people around then myself... Kevin

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TRLabs' Manitoba ICT Symposium, Feb 13, 2008
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 07 Dec '07

07 Dec '07

FYI... -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Request for Announcement Placement Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2007 09:36:40 -0600 From: Jeff Rohne <jrohne(a)win.trlabs.ca> ... TRLabs, a not-for-profit information and communications technology (ICT) research and development consortia, is holding its annual *Manitoba ICT Symposium* on *February 13, 2008, 7:30AM to 4:30PM *at the *Delta Winnipeg*, 12 speakers will share their experience in and vision for *Connected Media*. Mark you calendar and watch for further announcements here or at www.trlabs.ca <http://www.trlabs.ca/> Thank you, Jeff Jeffrey Rohne | Vice President, Administration & Director Manitoba Operations | TRLabs | 100-135 Innovation Drive, Winnipeg, MB, R3T 6A8| ( 204-488-5601| Ê 204-488-1564|* j <mailto:jrohne@trlabs.ca>rohne(a)trlabs.ca <mailto:jrohne@trlabs.ca> //CONFIDENTIALITY WARNING This email message is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the recipient(s) named above. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, or if after receipt you are advised that this message has been sent to you in error, you are hereby notified that any review, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify me immediately by telephone at the number set out above and delete the original message.//

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MUUG Meeting, Dec 11, 7:30pm -- Putting Linux on a Stick
by gedetil＠cs.umanitoba.ca 04 Dec '07

04 Dec '07

The Manitoba UNIX User Group (MUUG) will be holding its next monthly meeting on Tuesday, December 11. The meeting topic for this month is as follows: Putting Linux on a Stick This talk is motivated by a problem of the presenter, Michael Doob: when visiting universities in different countries, computer and internet access is invariably provided. These computers, however, come with a variety of operating systems, wildly varying hardware (for example keyboards) as well as totally differing software installations. Traveling with a laptop computer helps, but sometimes it turns out that local conditions make connecting to the internet something not be done easily. What all computers do seem to be equipped with is a USB port that can read vfat plus other file systems. One solution to this problem is to put Linux on a USB flash drive. In this presentation we'll look at some of the different approaches for doing this that will allow us to make bootable systems. We'll include a live demo of the construction of a rescue USB stick whose uses might include saving a crashed system or repartitioning a hard drive. This presentation is meant to be of intermediate level. No deep understanding of Linux internals is required, but enough information will be given to allow either personal or pre-built Linux systems to be implemented on a USB stick. The group holds its general meetings at 7:30pm on the second Tuesday of every month from September to June. (There are no meetings in July and August.) Meetings are open to the general public; you don't have to be a MUUG member to attend. ********************************************************************** Please note our meeting location: The IBM offices, at 400 Ellice Ave. (between Edmonton and Kennedy). When you arrive, you will have to sign in at the reception desk, and then wait for someone to take you (in groups) to the meeting room. Please try to arrive by about 7:15pm, so the meeting can start promptly at 7:30pm. Don't be late, or you may not get in. (But don't come too early either, since security may not be there to let you in before 7:15 or so.) Non-members may be required to show photo ID at the security desk. Limited parking is available for free on the street, either on Ellice Ave. or on some of the intersecting streets. Indoor parking is also available nearby, at Portage Place, for $3.00 for the evening. Bicycle parking is available in a bike rack under video surveillance located behind the building on Webb Place. ********************************************************************** For more information about MUUG, and its monthly meetings, check out their Web server: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ Help us promote this month's meeting, by putting this poster up on your workplace bulletin board or other suitable public message board: http://www.muug.mb.ca/meetings/MUUGmeeting.pdf -- Gilbert E. Detillieux E-mail: <gedetil(a)muug.mb.ca> Manitoba UNIX User Group Web: http://www.muug.mb.ca/ PO Box 130 St-Boniface Phone: (204)474-8161 Winnipeg MB CANADA R2H 3B4 Fax: (204)474-7609

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Fwd: USENIX '08 Call For Papers Submissions Deadline: January 7, 2008
by Gilbert E. Detillieux 03 Dec '07

03 Dec '07

FYI... -------- Original Message -------- Subject: USENIX '08 Call For Papers Submissions Deadline: January 7, 2008 Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2007 11:24:42 -0800 From: Lionel Garth Jones <lgj(a)usenix.org> --------------------------------------- Call for Papers 2008 USENIX Annual Technical Conference June 22-27, 2008, Boston, MA Paper Submissions Deadline: January 7, 2008, 11:59 p.m. PST http://www.usenix.org/usenix08/cfpb/ --------------------------------------- Dear Colleague, On behalf of the 2008 USENIX Annual Technical Conference program committee, we request your ideas, proposals, and papers for tutorials, refereed papers, and posters. Authors are invited to submit original and innovative papers to the Refereed Papers Track of the 2008 USENIX Annual Technical Conference. Papers can be either full papers of at most 14 pages or short papers of at most 6 pages. Authors are required to submit papers by 11:59 p.m. PST, Monday, January 7, 2008. In full papers, we seek high-quality submissions that further the knowledge and understanding of modern computing systems, with an emphasis on implementations and experimental results. Short papers should describe early ideas, advocate a controversial position, or present interesting results that do not require a full-length paper. We encourage papers that break new ground or present insightful results based on practical experience. The USENIX conference has a broad scope. Specific topics of interest include but are not limited to: * Architectural interaction * Deployment experience * Distributed and parallel systems * Embedded systems * Energy/power management * File and storage systems * Networking and network services * Operating systems * Reliability, availability, and scalability * Security, privacy, and trust * System and network management and troubleshooting * Usage studies and workload characterization * Virtualization * Web technology * Wireless, sensor, and mobile systems More information on these and other submission guidelines is available on our Web site: http://www.usenix.org/usenix08/cfpb/ IMPORTANT DATES: Paper submissions due: Monday, January 7, 2008, 11:59 p.m. PST Notification to authors: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 Final papers due: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 Poster submissions due: Tuesday, May 6, 2008 Please note that January 7 is a hard deadline; no extensions will be given. We look forward to your submissions. On behalf of the USENIX Annual Tech '08 Conference Organizers, Rebecca Isaacs, Microsoft Research Yuanyuan Zhou, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 2008 USENIX Annual Technical Conference Program Co-Chairs usenix08chairs(a)usenix.org ----------------------------------------------------------------------- About this mailing list: USENIX never shares, sells, rents, or exchanges email addresses of its members or conference attendees. We would like to continue sending you occasional email announcements like this one. However, if you do not wish to receive these announcements, please reply to this message and include the word REMOVE in the body. Please do not alter the subject line, as we need your ID number in order to process your request. Please use usenix08chairs(a)usenix.org to contact Rebecca Isaacs or Yuanyuan Zhou. Rebecca_Isaacs(a)usenix.org is for automated list management only. To change your contact information, please visit: http://www.usenix.org/membership/ If you have any questions about the mailing list, please send email to office(a)usenix.org. We may also be reached via postal mail at: USENIX Association 2560 9th Street, Suite 215 Berkeley CA 94710 (510) 528-8649

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The Day The Routers Died
by Bill Reid 28 Nov '07

28 Nov '07

This is a video of a song performed at the closing plenary of RIPE 55. About the slowness of migrating to IPv6 and running out of addresses in IPv4. http://www.flixxy.com/routers-song.htm Enjoy, Bill

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Used equipment from IBM.
by Steve Moffat 20 Nov '07

20 Nov '07

Sorry if this is viewed as spam, but I thought some might be interested. I actually bought one of these used systems for the family earlier this year. It looks like brand new, and has been working great (ymmv though). I figured the price was pretty good considering you get a M$ license. Shipping from Toronto was free. To take advantage of this you will need my employee number (020842). If you'd rather see the site for new equipment, which also has "family and friends" offers. Let me know. And no, I don't make any money or get any credit if you avail yourself of this offer. ;-) IBM Employees, Family & Friends! IBM Certified Used Desktops from $233! T23 Notebooks from $276! ..while supplies last.. 15% off web price for IBM Canada Employees, Family & Friends! - Warranties up to 6 months IBM Certified Used Equipment Is refurbished and tested to IBM standards English http://www.ibm.com/shop/ca/en/epp French http://www.ibm.com/shop/ca/fr/epp Steve Moffat IBM Global Services sjm(a)ca.ibm.com (204)792-3245

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NFS locking - solved
by Trevor Cordes 19 Nov '07

19 Nov '07

Finally, I have flock locking (oocalc & perl, et al.) working with NFS. I had to go to NFSv4. NFSv3 appears to not support flock locking even though the docs make it wound like it will work (but they must be assuming you're using v4). NFSv4 is quite the strange beast. You have to make a pseudo-fs and do wacky server-side binding and non-intuitive client-side mounting. For anyone who cares, here's the gist of it: SERVER /etc/fstab /data /nfs/data none bind 0 0 /etc/exports /nfs 192.168.100.1(ro,async,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash,insecure,fsid=0) /nfs/data 192.168.100.1(rw,async,no_subtree_check,no_root_squash,insecure,nohide) fsid=0 is critical for the root, and nohide critical for the /data must run services (on Fedora) nfs rpcidmapd CLIENT 192.168.100.2:/data /data nfs4 rw,bg,hard,intr,nosuid,proto=tcp,timeo=15,retrans=5,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 0 0 note you mount /data not /nfs/data as you would have in v3. must run services (on Fedora) rpcbind rpcidmapd It looks like you don't need to run nfslock (Fedora) service on either as it's part of the nfs core now. I'm open to correction on this. rpcgssd appears to be only required if you want encryption/auth/etc. I could be wrong on this too. portmap doesn't seem to be required? Seems to work without it. I'm still using my custom assigned ports in /etc/sysconfig/nfs and iptables rules and it seems to work. I'm still going to use the async option. Most examples show explicit sync, but in my simple setup I feel the performance gain is worth the risk as my server is RAID6 with good quality hardware and a beefy UPS. Its uptime is currently: ;-) 18:22:08 up 445 days, 18 min, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 My next task is to learn more about "crash recovery" for which many pages say statd is required, but I'm not sure if that's v3 or v4. Sounds useful but not really critical for my simple setup. I don't care if my locks get a bit wonky if my server crashes. If anyone has a comment, let me know.

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Re: [RndTbl] NFS again, please HELP!
by Trevor Cordes 19 Nov '07

19 Nov '07

On Sun, Nov 18, 2007 at 07:33:54PM -0600, Sean Walberg wrote: > Does nfsstat show any errors? I'm no NFS wizard.. It's always just worked > for me Thanks, I hadn't known about that command. Funny how NFS-relevant commands and files seem to be everywhere. The only hints the output gave me was: 1. I'm using v3. Is that ok? Does v3 support locking or are all the net references talkinga bout v4? I recall I'm using v3 because it has better recovery characteristics because it's UDP. 2. The v4 sections of nfsstat output show locking parameters, but v3 does not? Maybe time to try switching up to v4. Doesn't explain why my loopback tests worked (with locking), when they must have been v3! What version does everyone else use?

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