Meeting – September 13th, 2005

Main Topic: Ruby on Rails
Ruby is an object-oriented programming language developed for the purpose of making programming both enjoyable and fast. While it is a relative newcomer when compared with Perl and Python, it comes with several advantages in the clarity of the syntax, the completeness of it’s object oriented functionality, an now in it’s easy to use web development framework. Ruby has become a language that can be used in a broad range of fields: from text processing, GUI development, build automation, and CGI scripts to professional, large-scale programs.

This month, MUG member Mark Ramm will be giving us an introduction to Ruby and the web application development framework “Rails”, known collectively as _”Ruby on Rails”_. Rails has recently become one of the hottest web development technologies around, promising up to a 10x increase in developer productivity. We’ll talk a bit about all the hype surrounding rails, and how well it lives up to that hype in practice and in comparison to other popular web development frameworks.

The bulk of our time will be spent looking at how the Rails framework works. We’ll also spend a few min. developing a sample application.

Slides and Links

Secondary Topic: New MUG Web server
In August, while several of us were at Linux World, in San Francisco, the MUG web server was compromised. We’re pretty sure it was a vulnerability in the !PostNUKE content management system. It was several versions out of date, and the system was running a fairly old version of Redhat. So, when we got back into town, we took the machine down, and took advantage of the opportunity to upgrade the hardware, and load a newer version of Linux on the box.

At this months meeting, we’ll spend some time going over the new system, what hardware we installed, what software we loaded, and what more we can do, to make the new server useful for every member. This will be a chance for everyone to participate in the process, and we’ll have a better, more useful MUG server as a result.

Meeting – August 9th, 2005

To Be Announced
6:00pm Doors open, registration
6:30pm Mug business
6:45pm Main presentation – To Be announced (but hopefully Bash shell tips & Tricks)

8:15pm 2nd presentation – To Be Announced

8:45pm Meeting adjourns
9:00pm Dinner at a local establishment

After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

 

Meeting – July 12th, 2005

Topic:

Blogging – what’s all the fuss
6:00pm Doors open, registration
6:30pm Mug business
6:45pm Main presentation – Web Log (Blogging) by Kattni Rembor

Kattni will give us a look at what Blogging is all about, including how to set up a blogging site, and how to enter the text into your daily blog.

8:15pm 2nd presentation – To Be Announced

8:45pm Meeting adjourns
9:00pm Dinner at a local establishment

After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

Meeting – June 14th, 2005

SUDO – How to use it effectively
6:00pm Doors open, registration
6:30pm Mug business
6:45pm Main presentation – Using SUDO for system administration tasks by Flavio !DaCosta

Flavio will give us a tutorial on the use of the SUDO utility for system administration tasks. It’s a very powerful
tool allows you to give certain people the ability to do things that they would otherwise need to be root for.

8:15pm 2nd presentation – CD ripping, burning and players by Richard Staff and Duane Brown

Richard and Duane will give an overview of how to rip tracks from Audio CDRoms and show how to burn new CDRoms containing those tracks. Also, they’ll show some CDRom players for Linux.

8:30pm 3rd presentation (if there’s time) – Digital Cameras and Photo Software by Jim !McQuillan

Jim will give a VERY brief look at using a digital camera with Linux. Including grabbing the pictures from the camera
and viewing them on the computer screen. If we run out of time for this topic, it’ll hopefully be moved to the July meeting.

8:45pm Meeting adjourns
9:00pm Dinner at a local establishment

After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

 

Meeting – May 10th, 2005

Deploying !OpenLDAP and Kerberos
6:00pm Doors open, registration
6:30pm Mug business
6:45pm Main presentation – Deploying !OpenLDAP and Kerberos by Andrew Forgue

This month, we’re fortunate to have a presentation from someone who has been working
with all kinds of directory services including NT Domains, Active Directory, eDirectory, !OpenLDAP and Kerberos.

Andrew will give us an in-depth look at what LDAP and Kerberos are, and how it can be used to provide authentication
and directory services in a cross-platform world.

8:15pm 2nd presentation – A look at the Ubuntu Development Process

During the week of April 25th, Ubuntu had their Ubuntu Down Under developer meeting
in Sydney, Australia. MUG Members Jorge Castro and Jim !McQuillan were among the 70 developers
at the UDU, and they’ve got pictures to prove it.
They’ll cover the extraordinary process behind the design of the next version of Ubuntu Linux.

8:45pm Meeting adjourns
9:00pm Dinner at a local establishment

After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

 

Meeting – April 12th, 2005

Network Monitoring tools
6:00pm Doors open, registration
6:30pm Mug business
6:45pm Main presentation – Network Monitoring Tools by Mark Ramm

Mark has volunteered to do a presentation on System and Network monitoring tools. He
recently wrote an article for Linux Magazine about a tool called ZABBIX. He’ll be showing that
and other tools such as Nagios and MRTG. He’ll also cover the basics of SNMP.

8:15pm 2nd presentation – Beagle by Jorge Castro

[[http://www.gnome.org/projects/beagle/][Beagle]] is an experimental tool for indexing and
searching your data. With the use of the
Lucene.NET indexer, beagle can be queried fast for useful information.

Jorge has been playing with it, and he has offered to share what he’s learned about it.

8:45pm Meeting adjourns
9:00pm Dinner at a local establishment

After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

 

Meeting – March 8th, 2005

3 Presentations
6:00pm Doors open, registration
6:30pm Mug business
6:45pm
Multiple Presentations – Novell Linux Desktop-9 First impression, Ubuntu – What is it, Qt3 Introduction

This month, we’ll have 3 presentations.

  • Novell Linux Desktop – Duane Brown
    Duane will give us his first impression of Novell Linux Desktop 9 (NLD9)

  • Ubuntu – Jorge Castro
    Jorge will show us what all the excitement is about, and show us the differences
    between the current ‘Warty Warthog’ release, and the upcoming ‘Hoary Hedgehog’ release.

  • Qt3 Introduction – Richard Staff
    Richard has been working with the Qt3 tutorials and has offered to share his insights and experiences
    with it.

8:45pm Meeting adjourns
9:00pm Dinner at a local establishment

After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

 

Meeting – February 8th, 2005

PostgreSQL Database by Billy G. Allie
6:00pm Doors open, registration
6:30pm Mug business
6:45pm
Main presentation – The !PostgreSQL Database by Billy G. Allie

There are several Free/OpenSource database management packages available, including
!MySQL, Firebird, The Berkeley Database and !PostgreSQL.

Bill has given many MUG presentations over the years, and this month, we’re happy to
have him give us a review of the !PostgreSQL Database Management System.

8:00pm Election for the MUG Board of Directors

At our January MUG meeting, we opened the floor to nominations for the board of directors.
We have 6 board positions, and there were 6 people nominated. Those people are:

  1. Jim !McQuillan
  2. Jim Glutting
  3. Dick Williams
  4. Duane Brown
  5. Dave Satwicz
  6. Jorge Castro

At the February meeting, we’ll again open the floor to nominations, and then we’ll hold
the election.

8:15pm 2nd presentation – Mondo Archive by Jim !McQuillan

One area that gets ignored by many people is a System Level Backup. That is
a backup of the operating system, that can be used to rebuild the system, in the case
of a hard drive failure.

Mondo Archive is a wonderful tool for backing up entire hard drives, or parts of a drive, and
it also includes the ability to make a bootable CDRom or boot/root floppy set that can be used
to quickly rebuild a system after the hard drive has been replaced.
Jim will go through a quick overview of using Mondo, just to give you an idea of its features.

8:45pm Meeting adjourns
9:00pm Dinner at a local establishment

After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

 

What’s new with Qt – January 11th, 2005


What’s new with Qt, by Wolf
6:00pm Doors open, registration
6:30pm Mug business
6:45pm Main presentation –
What’s new with Qt (and other fun stuff) with Wolf

Wolf has an impressive list of credits to his name. Some of you may have heard him talking at one of our previous MUG meetings on his work at Mozilla (He’s the father of XUL).
Wolf has a new job at Troll Tech as Evangelist for Qt and Ambassador to the Open Source Community.

Wolf, in his usual style, will be both informative and entertaining, as he shows us what’s new with the Qt toolkit.

Even if you aren’t interested in Qt, you should be at this meeting to hear what Wolf has to say.

8:00pm Nominitions and Guru Session

After the main presentation, we need to open the floor for nominations to the MUG Board of Directors. If you are interested in being on the MUG Board, or know somebody who is, this will be your chance to nominate yourself or someone else to the board. Elections will be at the February 8th meeting.

After the nominations, we’ll open the meeting up to an information Q&A time, where people can bring up questions, and hopefully, someone will be on hand to help with the answers.

8:45pm Meeting adjourns
9:00pm Dinner at a local establishment

After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant

Meeting – December 14th, 2004


Open-PGP fundamentals
6:00pm Doors open, registration
6:30pm Mug business
6:45pm Main presentation –
Open-PGP fundamentals

!OpenPGP is a non-proprietary protocol for encrypting email using public key cryptography. It is based on PGP as orginally developed by Phil Zimmermann. The !OpenPGP protocol defines standard formats for encrypted messages, signatures, and certificates for exchanging public keys.

Dr. Robert J. Meier will be showing us the fundamentals of Open-PGP.

8:00pm 2nd presentation – TBA
8:45pm Meeting adjourns
9:00pm Dinner at a local establishment

After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant