"Say BSD!" (Photo courtesy of John Donovan)
Please note our new 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 7:15 PM, so the meeting can start promptly at 7:30 PM. Don't be late, or you may not get in.
Limited parking is available for free on the street, or in a lot across Ellice from IBM, for $1.00 for the evening. Indoor parking is also available nearby, at Portage Place, for $2.00 for the evening.
Also, don't forget about our MUUG t-shirt promotion, being coordinated by Shawn Wallbridge. If you're interested in a shirt, or in submitting a design suggestion, now's the time to respond.
Shawn Wallbridge is the Systems Administrator at Frantic Films, one of Canada's leading Visual Effects studios. Shawn has covered network security topics under Linux at previous MUUG meetings, and returned for the September meeting with a visually interesting presentation. Several sequences were shown on videotape, showing the various filmed and computer-generated elements that were combined to create one of the most impressive 45 seconds of visual effects in any movie to date: the explosion sequence from Swordfish.
Terry Baydock, Technical Sales Specialist with the Storage Systems Group at IBM Canada Ltd., was our presenter for this session, which explained the concept of Consolidated Storage and its benefits, and explored a few of the technologies available and on the near horizon for implementing a centralized storage infrastructure. Terry's presentation was in two parts: an overview of storage networking, followed by a more in-depth look at IP storage concepts. Handouts provided were a white paper entitled Demystifying Storage Networking, and a technical overview of IBM's Enterprise Storage Server.
The meeting started with a very lively round-table discussion, which covered many topics. Those who were interested in the upcoming release of Red Hat 7.2 might be interested in this ZDnet review.
ntpd daemon
which provides both client and server support for this protocol.
Gilbert Detillieux talked about
xinetd (pronounced ZY-net-dee),
a powerful replacement for the
UNIX inetd daemon,
used for launching numerous TCP and UDP based network services.
A member suggested
tcpserver as another alternative
to inetd. It is written by Prof. Dan Bernstein at the
University of Illinois (also the author of qmail and daemontools).
Although it's limited to TCP-based services, it is designed to be efficient,
and handle very high connection rates.
The round-table discussion covered a wide variety of topics, from MTS service to Solaris kernel tuning. A handy web site, called Unofficial Sun Blade 100 FAQ and Information, was suggested as a good source for information on the latter topic. If that site is unavailable, a Google search will point you to other sources.
``Kickstart files can be kept on single server system, and read by individual computers during the installation. This installation method can support the use of a single kickstart file to install Red Hat Linux on multiple machines, making it ideal for network and system administrators.''
This month, John Schulz, from Pollard Banknote Ltd., presented a quick overview of Kickstart and a demo of the install process. Presentation notes are available online. John also provided online references to a HOWTO (now a little outdated but still useful), and documents on the Red Hat 7.2 Kickstart, and the Red Hat 7.2 Kickstart Configurator GUI.
This presentation focussed on IMP. IMP is the Internet Messaging Program (formerly, among other things, the IMAP webMail Program), a web mail system and a component of the Horde project. IMP offers most of the features users have come to expect from their conventional mail programs, including attachments, spell-check, address books, multiple folders, and multiple-language support. John Schulz, from Pollard Banknote Ltd., was back to present this month's topic.
Presentation notes are available online. A reasonable alternative web-based e-mail solution, SquirrelMail, was also suggested by a member in attendance.
This talk covered the problems associated with ensuring the security of e-mail, and the use of GnuPG to solve them. Sean Walberg was our presenter for this month's topic. He was joined by Apu, Barney, and Mr. Burns as the man in the middle. Presentation notes are available online at Sean's web site.
The round-table discussion included many topics, such as a mention of the Mid-Canada Information Security Conference 2002, to be held April 25 at the Winnipeg Convention Centre, and a Red Hat bootable rescue CD from Red Hat's German Support Site (also mirrored locally ), where you can also find a tarball which contains all the goodies and helper scripts that you need to roll your own ISO CD image. A user also later brought to our attention the Linux BBC (Bootable Business Card) page, which offers an alternative bootable CD image for emergency use. Another user pointed out a Linux Orbit article on floppy-based, mini Linux distributions, which mentions a crash recovery kit for Red Hat Linux.
Scott Balneaves, who's been working with the LTSP for a while, described and demonstrated an LTSP setup in action.
Shawn Wallbridge from Synack Hosting and Chris Lawson and Sean Cody from Tin Foil Hat were on hand to install OpenBSD 3.0 on a machine and explaining the process. They explained the ports system, how to use it and talked a bit about packages. The presentation included answers to a lot of questions from members in attendance.
pf,
the new firewall built into OpenBSD 3.0.
Unfortunately, due to some technical difficulties with the equipment
and a late start for the presentation (due to a very lively round-table
discussion), there wasn't enough time left to
also discuss VPNs (Virtual Private Networks)
and setting up an IPSEC VPN using OpenBSD's isakmpd.
Perhaps we'll invite them back in the fall to continue this topic.
"Say BSD!" (Photo courtesy of John Donovan)
Please note our new 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 7:15 PM, so the meeting can start promptly at 7:30 PM. Don't be late, or you may not get in.
Limited parking is available for free on the street, or in a lot across Ellice from IBM, for $1.00 for the evening. Indoor parking is also available nearby, at Portage Place, for $2.00 for the evening.
Go to the MUUG Home Page.