Michigan!/usr/group

First Topic: Backup PC

Flavio DaCosta will tell us about BackupPC. From their website “BackupPC is a high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up Linux and WinXX PCs and laptops to a server’s disk. BackupPC is highly configurable and easy to install and maintain.”

The current version is 2.1.2 released on September 5th, 2005 and updated to 2.1.2pl2 (patch level 2) released on June 18th, 2006

Second Topic: MONO

Jay Wren will tell us about mono. From the Mono website: Mono, the open source development platform based on the .NET framework, allows developers to build Linux and cross-platform applications with improved developer productivity. Mono’s .NET implementation is based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Infrastructure.

Sponsored by Novell, the Mono project has an active and enthusiastic contributing community. Mono includes both developer tools and the infrastructure needed to run .NET client and server applications. It is positioned to become the leading choice for development of Linux applications.

Mono includes compilers, an ECMA-compatible runtime engine (the Common Language Runtime, or CLR), and many libraries. The libraries include Microsoft .NET compatibility libraries (including ADO.NET, System.Windows.Forms and ASP.NET), Mono’s own and third party class libraries. Gtk#, a set of .NET bindings for the gtk+ toolkit and assorted GNOME libraries can be found in the latter. This library allows you to build fully native Gnome application using Mono and includes support for user interfaces built with the Glade interface builder. Furthermore, Mono’s runtime can be embedded into applications for simplified packaging and shipping. In addition, the Mono project offers an IDE, Debugging, and a documentation browser.

Aaron Thul will be following up on our presentation from May on clustering addressing clustering with MySQL and PostgreSQL. He’ll cover one and then we’ll take a short break and continue with the other.

Main Topic: Red Hat Cluster Suite and the Global File System

RHCS and GFS are systems for managing clusters of machines. RHCS is a supporting infrastructure to deploy highly available applications that require failover or load balancing while GFS is a filesystem that allows block level access to multiple nodes simultaneously. RHCS and GFS are very important in bringing Linux to the large business.

Andrew Forgue, a Systems Administrator at Oakland University, will talk about RHCS and GFS, what the components are, what they do, and how they fit together. He will also do a short demo about a cluster that is set up at Oakland University.

Secondary Topic: Report from Jim McQuillan on the road

Jim McQuillan will be in Germany for Linux Tag and the OSDL DAM-2 meeting.

One of the especially interesting topics at Linux Tag is the meeting that Mark Shuttleworth has called, between the KDE developers and the Kubuntu team, to help to make Kubuntu the best KDE based distribution on the planet.

Jim’s pdf from Linux Day and Open Source Development Lab

Jim has offered to connect up via IRC and/or Phone, to give a report from the meetings.

Main Topic: Postgres for Programmers

Based on the recent discussions about Postgres development on the MUG discuss mailing list, we’ve been thinking that a MUG meeting devoted to discussing
Postgres for Programmers might be really interesting.

Here’s what we’d like to do:

1. Show the following Database administration tasks:
* Create a user that is allowed to access Postgres
* Create a database
* Create a table

1. Database Programming
* Show how to do the following:
* Connect to a Postgres database
* Construct and execute a SELECT query that retrieves one row
* Construct and execute a SELECT query that retrieves multiple rows
* Construct and execute an INSERT query and insert some rows into the table
* Construct and execute an UPDATE query that updates existing data
* Error handling
* Using the following languages:
* Perl
* Python
* PHP

1. Discuss and demonstrate the following topics
* Views
* Triggers
* Stored Procedures

If you have some other language that you think we need to show, please
speak up. But, keep in mind that we really only have about 2 hours to
spend on this, and we can’t cover EVERY language out there.

Now, the hard part…. We need some volunteers to help out with this
presentation. I’ve done enough Postgres programming that I *could*
handle the database admin stuff, and I *could* also show some Perl and
PHP examples. BUT, I’d really rather get some participation from other
people on this. We definitely need some volunteers to handle the Python
part, and the Views/Triggers/Stored Procedures part.

So, can we get some volunteers?

Main Topic: Security – Panel Discussion

Running a server? Is it Secure? Do you even know?

With all the high speed internet connections available to us, it’s quite common to build a Linux server and drop it on the network. But, too often, not enough attention is paid to securing that shiny new server. This month, we’re having several invited guests, who each have been around the block once or twice to share some of their wisdom and to help us make the internet a safer place.

Invited panel members:

Flavio !DaCosta		confirmed
Jim Small		confirmed
Tom Zerucha		confirmed
Mike O’Connor		Invited

Server Intrusions:

* Detection – How to know if you’ve been hacked
* Forensics – Determining how they got in
* Recovery – Cleaning up after a break-in
* Prevention – Offering services in a secure way
* login
* Secure file transfer
* Webserver security
* Mail server security

Election for the MUG Board of Directors

It’s election time again. Make sure you are here to vote for the next board of directors for the Michigan Unix Users Group.

Main Topic: Code Rush – The movie

Our very own Wolf is prominently featured in this 60-minute NOVA documentary called *Code Rush*:

“Life on the edge in Silicon Valley – home of high tech, high anxiety, and high stakes. Take a revealing look at Netscape Communications engineers as they set out boldly and brazenly to save their company. A virtual panorama of human drama and techno-thrills, Code Rush puts you at the center of the high-intensity clash of science, engineering, and commerce.”

Secondary Topic: Ubuntu-Detroit Youth Project

Tiger Whitehead, from [[http://www.ChannelNet.com][ChannelNet]], has an idea for a project for Detroit’s inner city youth that will give them access to computers and technology, and Linux is right in the middle of this project. It’s a great chance to participate in a way that helps the local community and helps put Detroit on the map of technology centers. Tiger is going to give us a brief overview of the project, and we’ll have a chance to discuss the ideas and hopefully talk about how we, as an organization, can help out.

We know the meeting happens to be on Valentines day, so, why not kill 2 birds with 1 stone? You can take your significant other out AND attend the meeting, by just bringing them to the meeting :)

Main Topic: Python and Turbo-Gears

TurboGears is a rapid web development megaframework toolkit for complete front-to-back web development.

We have 2 presenters:

First, Mark Ramm will do a brief (15-20 min) introduction to Python programming. His intro will cover the why python question, as well as the basic syntax of Python (so we’ll have a running start!). [[http://compoundthinking.com/blog][Mark’s Blog]].

Then, Kevin Dangoor, the creator of the Turbo-Gears framework will educate us with a brief tutorial on Turbo-Gears. I think his plan is to walk through the creation of a real-live wiki with auto-cammel-case linking, and some AJAX goodness. [[http://www.blueskyonmars.com/][Kevin’s Blog]].

TurboGears [[http://turbogears.com/download/nix.html][Easy Installation]] on Linux, Mac OS X and other *nix-Like Systems or visit the [[http://www.turbogears.org][TurboGears]] website to get the fragments of the web development megaframework consisting of,
[[http://www.cherrypy.org][CherryPy]],
[[http://kid.lesscode.org][Kid]],
[[http://www.sqlobject.org][SQLObject]] and
[[http://www.mochikit.com][MochiKit]]

—+++ Secondary Topic: An open discussion about security

We will have an open discussion, and create a wiki on the mug web site, about security. Possible wiki topics, I don’t know, intrusion prevention and detection system tools, rootkit scanner(s), vulnerability scanner, virus scanners, good, better, bestest passwords.

Main Topic: Stocking Stuffers

This month we’ve got several smaller topics to cover. There’s sure to be something of interest for you.

KDE 3.5
Aaron Thul will be on hand to show us the cool new features of KDE-3.5.

OSDL Desktop Architecture Meeting
Mug president Jim !McQuillan attended the first day of the OSDL Desktop Architecture meeting that took place in Portland, Oregon on December 1st and 2nd. He’ll give a glimps of what went on, and what the desired outcome of that meeting is.

Discussion about Podcasting the meetings
Mug member Duane Brown has some awesome information about Podcasting, and how we can use it to make our meetings available to more people.

Novell’s iFolder
Mug member Jorge Castro is just itching to show off iFolder. This is great stuff, so don’t miss it.

Main Topic: Intellectual Property and how it relates to us

We’ve all heard of IP issues. Whether it’s music sharing, patents, TIVO/MythTV, Open Source projects, etc. like it or not, this affects us all. We have 2 speakers who will address some of these issues.

Assistant Professor of Law Vanessa B. Pierce is from the Ave Maria School of Law. A quick glance at her bio on the school’s web site revealed that Professor Pierce began her law career as an associate in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she focused on patent and trademark prosecution. She later was an associate with another firm in Salt Lake City, where she concentrated her practice in the areas of patent litigation, trademark oppositions, and domain name disputes. Her course offerings include Intellectual Property, Trademark Law, Patent Law, and Copyright Law.

To co-host the lecture Vanessa has invited Dan Kelly, a patent attorney at Young & Basile, P.C. based in Ann Arbor.
Dan’s bio revealed his areas of practice include Patent, Trademark, and Copyright Prosecution and Licensing. He is also professionally involved with the Michigan Intellectual Property Law Association. As an interesting side note Dan was a continuation engineer at Seagate Technology,

If you have ideas for topics for Vanessa or Dan please email the discuss list and we will forward them.

—+++ Secondary Topic: The second topic has not yet been decided, but, there probably won’t be time.

If we have time and there is interest

Want to know how to make a unencrypted remote camera sniffer for war driving? Get the video. Duane has downloaded Audio/Video casts from [[http://revision3.com/systm][systm]] if your interested in a brief presentation on the how, what, where (anywhere), when (anytime) and why (I’m a geek).

Main Topic: Asterisk and VOIP in the Real World

You can’t pick up a tech magazine these days without reading something about VOIP and IP Telephony. In fact, even the latest Linux Journal magazine has an article about building a call center using Asterisk, Kphone and LTSP. It turns out that all the pieces you need to play with VOIP at home, or at your office are freely available. Not only that, those pieces are incredibly robust.

We’ll have several people at the meeting who are regularly using Asterisk and other VOIP products, and they’ll show all kinds of tricks, and be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Michael George, the author of the article in the latest Linux Journal magazine about setting up a call center will be with us at the meeting.

Secondary Topic: There probably won’t be time for a secondary topic this month :(