MUUG Monthly Meetings for 2022-23
Please note our current meeting location:
In light of the current concerns over COVID-19 and the risk of infection,
and current directives from the
University of Winnipeg,
MUUG meetings will take place online (typically using BigBlueButton)
until further notice.
Meeting link will be provided on the home page,
prior to meeting start time.
This month, we had a couple short RTFM-style presentations:
First, Brad Vokey presented on bpytop/btop++.
Next, Trevor Cordes (who normally prefers working quietly behind the scenes
on coding or newsletter editing) presented on configuring rsyslog
to suppress annoying log messages.
Bpytop - a Python port and continuation of bashtop(1)
This month Brad Vokey gave us a quick demonstration of
byptop,
as well as its new sibling,
btop++.
Bpytop is a colorful, efficient, responsive, terminal resource monitor
that shows usage and stats for your processor, memory, disks, network
and processes.
Written in Python by the original author of
bashtop,
the author claims it is faster and much better supported.
(Btop++ is essentially a rewrite in C++.)
Add some bling to your original old
top(1) command!
Fighting the PHPower with rsyslog
Help! The new PHP8 has made normal, everyday scripting practices an
error on screen or in the logfiles.
Fight the power and reclaim your PHP sanity using
rsyslog
and its filtering options.
But beware, rsyslog itself is a minefield of inexplicableness.
Trevor Cordes led us on a quick and easy path to victory over PHP,
and any other daemon you may disagree with!
Trevor has made his presentation slides, as text files in a
.tar.bz2 archive,
available online.
Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B,
is a modern aircraft safety system that broadcasts an aircraft's identification
and position data to other aircraft and ground stations.
Using an off-the-shelf
RTL-SDR receiver and a RaspberryPi,
we can decode these messages to track aircraft in our vicinity.
Wyatt showed how to install the dump1090 software used to decode
the messages, and the different third-party aggregation sites that collect
ADS-B information to provide real-time flight tracking around the world,
notably FlightAware.com
(with its PiAware software)
and ADSBexchance.com.
Kevin McGregor presented one possible way to back up and restore a
MediaWiki
site using common Unix and Linux tools for local use or disaster recovery.
RTFM: micro(1)
Brad Vokey gave us a quick demo of
micro.
Micro is a terminal-based text editor that aims to be easy to use and intuitive,
while also taking advantage of the full capabilities of modern terminals.
As the name indicates,
micro aims to be somewhat of a successor to the nano editor
by being easy to install and use,
but also aims to be enjoyable to use right from the start,
with modern universal keyboard shortcuts
(Ctrl-S, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-Z etc.).
AGM
Plus, this month's meeting was the MUUG annual general meeting,
which included the election of the MUUG board of directors for the 2022-2023
year (by acclamation, again this year).
December 13, 2022: Round-Table, Lightning Talk, and Pot Luck
MUUG was happy to announce an in-person pot-luck event!
We continued (or resumed) the tradition of making the
December meeting more of an informal, social gathering.
The meeting was hosted by Skullspace, which allowed for some mingling between
members of MUUG and Skullspace, as well as a chance for MUUG members to
get a tour of Skullspace and their various maker-space tools.
We were serenaded with holiday music on button accordion,
thanks to Mark Jenkins, as we mingled.
We also simulcast the live round-table and lightning talk
on YouTube for those that couldn't attend in person for any reason,
whether snow, or sleet, or illness.
Lightning Talk: MUUG Online Lore & History
This month, our server committee also showed off some quick LibreNMS stats
and history of our latest MUUG Online 8.0 server,
which is western Canada's largest and fastest open source software mirror.
January 10, 2023: The Taming of journald Continues
In his last presentation,
Trevor Cordes showed us how to use syslog with journald,
and filter out unwanted log lines.
However, those bazillion unwanted lines being filtered out
are still being written to disk,
causing major wear and tear on your precious, limited-life SSD!
In this follow-up presentation,
Trevor discussed minimizing SSD writes and wasted space
by using the journald RAMdisk and size-limiting options.
RTFM: nmap(1)
Wyatt Zacharias gave a quick overview of some of the basic features of nmap.
Alberto Abrao presented
CheckMK,
a great platform for monitoring various IT infrastructure components.
It has powerful tools to monitor all different kinds of devices
that comprises a regular Enterprise IT environment.
Agents are available for Linux, *nix (AIX, Solaris), *BSD, Windows, VMware,
AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, Docker, among others.
These can be easily enhanced with plug-ins for custom functionality.
It also allows for the monitoring of devices that support SNMP.
Easy to get started with, but packed with features and infinitely customizable,
CheckMK is an excellent choice for the monitoring of any IT environment.
Please note the change in meeting date for this month,
and for the rest of the current year (at least until the July/August break).
We are now meeting on the first Tuesday of each month.
July 11, 2023: No meeting this month (BBQ TBA)
August 2022: No meeting this month
Please note our current meeting location:
In light of the current concerns over COVID-19 and the risk of infection,
and current directives from the
University of Winnipeg,
MUUG meetings will take place online (typically using BigBlueButton)
until further notice.
Meeting link will be provided on the home page,
prior to meeting start time.
