meetings

Topic:

Main presentation:

Top 10 Myths about Linux Distro Security

6:00pm	Doors open, registration
6:30pm	Mug business
6:45pm	Main presentation – Top 10 Myths about Linux distro Security Mike O’Connor is the head of product security for Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI). He will be talking about security in Linux distros, as he says “From the distro perspective”.
8:00pm	2nd presentation – Open Discussion This months Open discussion is about choosing a development environment in the world of Linux and !OpenSource. If you are a software developer, you probably have a bag of tricks that you use, when developing applications for yourself or your customers. Maybe it’s based on C, C++, Fortran, Cobol, some 4th generation language, Perl, Python or something else. With the tools that come with Linux for free, we’re going to talk about the choices you have, in picking the tools that are going to make you productive in the future.
8:45pm	Meeting adjourns
9:00pm	Dinner at a local establishment After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

Topic:

Main presentation:

KNOPPIX by Jim McQuillan

6:00pm	Doors open, registration
6:30pm	Mug business
6:45pm	Main presentation – KNOPPIX Jim McQuillan will give an overview of the KNOPPIX Live CD Linux Distribution. KNOPPIX contains an amazing amount of software on a single bootable CD-ROM. Because KNOPPIX is a Live CD, it will boot the computer without touching the hard drive. This means that it can be used as a recovery CD or as a way of demonstrating the power of Linux, without removing the existing operating system from the hard drive. KNOPPIX has very good hardware detection routines, and does an excellent job of detecting all of the devices in the system. KNOPPIX is based on the Debian distribution, and there is a simple procedure for copying it to the harddrive. This is a very simple way to install Debian on your system. We’ll have several CDs containing the latest release of KNOPPIX to give away, and if you have a laptop at the meeting, you can boot from the CD to see what it is like. Jim McQuillan is the president of the Michigan Unix User Group (MUG) and also the founder of the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP)
8:00pm	2nd presentation – Open Discussion It’s been a long time since we’ve had an open discussion, so we figured this would be a good time to poke the attendees for topics that interest them.
8:45pm	Meeting adjourns
9:00pm	Dinner at a local establishment After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

Topic:

Main presentation:

VMWare by Jim Small

6:00pm	Doors open, registration
6:30pm	Mug business
6:45pm	Main presentation – VMWare Jim Small will give an overview of VMWare Workstation, a powerful virtual machine that runs under both Linux and Windows. VMWare allows the user to run other Operating Systems on top of their base Operating System. For example, a user that needed to test a !NetWare server, could install VMWare under Linux. !NetWare could then be installed within the VMWare virtual machine essentially letting you use your computer as both a Linux workstation and a !NetWare server. Because VMWare is a virtual machine, there are many advanced features you can take advantage of such as point in time snapshots, multiple networks, and multiple Operating Systems. A complete tour of the product will be provided. Jim Small is a Security and Network Analyst at EDS. Jim also teaches at Global Information Technology (www.global-itech.com) and does occasional freelance consulting.
8:00pm	2nd presentation – NFSv4 and Kerberos by Ann Adams Ann Adams will give an overview of NFSv4 and Kerberos. NFS is a popular file sharing protocol. Kerberos is a single sign-on authentication system. Kerberos security has been integrated into NFSv4. Ann has been investigating NFSv4 while looking for a more secure file at Ford. While Sun came out with many enhancements for NFSv3, they were not picked up by other vendors. So, Sun sponsored NFSv4 as an open standardized file sharing protocol, including a full Linux implementation. The impressive features integrated into NFSv4 have it poised to be the remote file system of the future. Ann will discuss the following: Features of NFSv4. Comparison to NFSv3. Kerberos Security enhancements in Solaris 10 NFSv4 Beta. Potential Integration into a corporate environment. Ann Adams is a Computer Architect in Advanced Technology Research at Ford Motor Company. She has her Masters in Computer Science from the University of Michigan, Rackham School of Engineering. Ann has ten years at Ford Motor Company in Network Management, UNIX Server Development, and Infrastructure Architecture. Ann has also done work in Cellular Engineering Network Management as well as the development of a Kerberos infrastructure at Ford.
8:45pm	Meeting adjourns
9:00pm	Dinner at a local establishment After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

Topic:

Main presentation:

Gentoo by Brian Downey

6:00pm	Doors open, registration
6:30pm	Mug business
6:45pm	Main presentation – Gentoo Linux Brian Downey will give an overview of Gentoo Linux and its unique Portage package management system. Also, he’ll be covering some techniques using Gentoo servers from past experiences. Brian is involved in the Gentoo project, mostly contributing corrections and additions to Gentoo’s x86 Installation Guide. Also, he contributes to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter. He runs a small Linux-based consulting business out of Farmington Hills that uses Gentoo exclusively.
8:00pm	2nd presentation Several things to go over, including highlights of the Linux World Expo that was in New York City in January, and the elections for the 2004 MUG Board of Directors
8:45pm	Meeting adjourns
9:00pm	Dinner at a local establishment After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

Topic:

Main presentation:

Network Intrusion Detection by Jeff Nathan

6:00pm	Doors open, registration
6:30pm	Mug business
6:45pm	Main presentation – Network Intrusion Detection Jeff Nathan will give an overview of Network Intrusion Detection, and then proceed with an introduction to snort www.snort.org as a Network Intrusion Detection System. Network Intrusion Detection is currently one of the hottest IT security topics and snort is the most popular Open Source NIDS. Jeff is a developer for snort and several other Open Source Security tools.
8:00pm	2nd presentation – Network Characterization by Jim Small Jim Small will briefly discuss various Open Source tools which can be used to profile a network, ISP or isolate network performance bottlenecks.
8:45pm	Meeting adjourns
9:00pm	Dinner at a local establishment After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

Click here for more information about the location.

Biography info:

Jeff Nathan is a software engineer and security researcher working on Arbor Networks’ next-generation behavioral detection and policy enforcement system: Peakflow X. Specializing in network security and forensics, he is a core member of the Snort project (the world’s most widely deployed Network Intrusion Detection System). Jeff is also a member of the Honeynet project,
developing technologies for data capture and network isolation in honey pot networks (honeynets). Additionally, Jeff is the developer of Nemesis, a command-line network packet generation tool suite and an occasional contributor to a number of open source software projects.

Before working as for Arbor Networks, Jeff worked as a senior software engineer for Sygate, an Enterprise security architect for !McKesson, a security consultant for @stake, a security researcher developing new
Intrusion Detection technologies, a software developer and a system and network administrator.

Topic:

Main presentation:

Perl by Pandu Rao

6:00pm	Doors open, registration
6:30pm	Mug business
6:45pm	Main presentation – Perl by Pandu Rao Pandu will be presenting on using Perl. Arguably the most popular interpreted programming language, Perl is widely used for system administration and CGI programming among other things. Pandu will run through the basics of Perl for beginners. He will then talk about data manipulation and regular expressions, and possibly some advanced features as time permits.
8:00pm	2nd presentation – 2003, the year in review This is a chance to review all the exciting events that took place in the last year.
8:45pm	Meeting adjourns
9:00pm	Dinner at a local establishment After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

You can find a link to Pandu’s presentation here.

Topic:

Main presentation:

TCL – Tool Command Language

6:00pm	Doors open, registration
6:30pm	Mug business
6:45pm	Main presentation – TCL by Clif Flynt Clif is a renowned author and consultant specializing in TCL. Clif Flynt will be presenting on TCL–the Tool Command Language, pronounced tickle. TCL is a powerful scripting and programming language that is easy to learn. TCL has also been extended with Tk for graphics and expect which can automate interactive programs like telnet or ftp. In the first segment, Clif will do an introduction to TCL. Clif will draw on his extensive experience from touring, teaching, and writing about TCL. In the second segment, Clif will use TCL in a network scenario to demonstrate the language’s powerful networking capabilities. More details coming soon
8:15pm	Current events
8:45pm	Meeting adjourns
9:00pm	Dinner at a local establishment After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

Biography:

Clif Flynt has been writing computer programs since the late 60’s on machines ranging from IBM 360 “Big Iron” to a Monroe programmable calculator, using languages ranging from microcode to Prolog. Since the early 1990s, he’s been a TCL/Tk advocate.

Clif writes a monthly article about Tcl (The Tclsh Spot) for ;login: magazine, and has recently finished the second edition of his Tcl/Tk programming book.

Link to Clif’s article in the most recent edition of ;login:, Usenix and SAGE’s magazine:
article

Topic:

Main presentation:

LTSP – Linux Terminal Server Project

6:00pm	Doors open, registration
6:30pm	Mug business
6:45pm	Main presentation – LTSP by Jim !McQuillan Over 4 years ago, Jim !McQuillan and Ron Colcernian started the Linux Terminal Server Project www.LTSP.org, which has become the standard method of deploying Thin client computers in GNU/Linux environments. The LTSP has been deployed in business (both large and small), schools and government agencies all over the world This presentation will start with an Introduction of LTSP, including a brief history of the project. We will then cover installation and configuration of LTSP-4, the latest version.
8:15pm	Current events
8:45pm	Meeting adjourns
9:00pm	Dinner at a local establishment After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

Topic:

Main presentation:

IP Telephony

NEW MEETING LOCATION

This will be the 5th meeting in our new location, the Farmington Community Library.

6:00pm	Doors open, registration
6:30pm	Mug business
6:45pm	Main presentation – IP Telephony by John Lodden This presentation show us more about IP Telepony than we ever thought possible. John Lodden is very knowledgeable on the subject, and John is always fun to have as a speaker.
7:45pm	Current events
8:00pm	2nd presentation – SSH by Jim McQuillan SSH is popular as a replacement for Telnet, but it also is very powerful for other things like port forwarding, and running the X protocol thru an SSH encrypted/compressed tunnel. This isn’t a full presentation, but we will go into the basics of how to setup a tunnel, and why you would want to.
8:30pm	Coders corner / Curious Ron / QuickTip
8:45pm	Meeting adjourns
9:00pm	Dinner at a local establishment After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

Topic:

Main presentation:

Intellectual Property

NEW MEETING LOCATION

This will be the 4th meeting in our new location, the Farmington Community Library.

6:00pm	Doors open, registration
6:30pm	Mug business
6:45pm	Main presentation – Configuring a secure website using Apache and SSL by Ron Colcernian. This presentation will configuring the Apache web server with !OpenSSL to create a secure website. Included will be details on using htaccess, cgi-exec, virtual hosts, file exclusion, and allow/deny features.
7:45pm	Current events
8:00pm	2nd presentation – !SpamAssassin by Erick Tyack SpamAssassin is a spam blocking program that does a great job of blocking most of that annoying spam that is becoming an enormous problem for anyone with an email account.
8:30pm	Coders corner / Curious Ron / !QuickTip
8:45pm	Meeting adjourns
9:00pm	Dinner at a local establishment After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant