PLUG - Phoenix Linux User Group

East Side Meeting

Presentations This Month

The PLUG Development Meetings have moved to UAT and are meeting in room 203.

Join the plug-devel email list to participate in running the devel meetings or to ask devel questions.

Presentations this month

MPC is an open source tool to generate build tool specific files (like make and Visual Studio projects) from build tool generic files.

For more information see - http://new.ociweb.com/products/mpc/features.html

When: First Thursday of each month at 7:30PM
Where: UAT

Fall semester is almost upon us. Time to sign up for Free Software classes :).

The online OpenOffice.org class is running again this semester. Let's fill it up and keep showing the community colleges that there is a market for classes using Free Software applications. By being online residents in some other counties can take it for in county pricing. It doesn't get too expensive for out of county pricing, so that's also an option.

The shell scripting class needs more students and is a required part of the Associate of Applied Science in Linux Networking Administration degree. The electronics department over at MCC also has a couple of classes, ELE181 and ELE241, that use GNU/Linux for programming.

Check the Maricopa Community College schedule for GNU/Linux and other Free Software topics.

The University for Advancing Technology is starting a new Open Source Technologies degree program.

The new GI Bill just went into effect. Not only can those will military service use the GI Bill, but their spouses and children can take advantage of unused benefits.

Lots of opportunities, so get out there and learn :).

If you know of other classes, please list them in comments to this article.

If your Internet connection is working so you can read this remember to thank the sysadmins that keep things running. Today is the 10th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day.

Sysadmins keep the Internet running, keep cell phone networks running ( so be doubly thankful if you're reading this on a cell phone ) and generally keep anything else electric and networked up and running.

Don't forget to buy your sysadmins Time Management for System Administrators and pay for memberships to LOPSA. Maybe get them memberships to non-profits like the Free Software Foundation or Software Freedom Law Center or even buy them stock in geek companies.

Sapphire Technologies is seeking a junior-level Linux Programmer/Administrator for a contract role in central Phoenix.

The ideal candidate will have a blended background in Linux administration and programming (Perl), UNIX adminstration and programming, with the optimal candidate having experience in Windows.

The specific tasks of this position will cover systems administration, programming and some automation work. Candidates need to have excellent communication and presentation skills, be able to display a sound foundation in the aforementioned technologies, and display a eagerness and aptitude to learn-on-the-fly from senior team members.

Please contact TJ Doton at 602.635.1335 or tj.doton@sapphire.com

Topics:

• Unetbootin and Asus EEE Install howto
• The Mozilla Suite: Songbird and Chatzilla

Foothills Library
19055 N 57th Ave, Glendale, AZ
623 930 3830

Directions: from the 101, go South on 59th Ave. for a 1/2 mile, then East on Utopia for a 1/4 mile, then South on 57th Ave. to the first left. Warning: 57th Ave. North from Union Hills is closed.

We will be meeting in the large meeting room, the Eagle Room, which is reserved for the local ACM chapter. Thanks for ACM for helping us out on this. The library closes at 21:00.

We will be meeting at a temporary location for the June, July and August west side meetings as access to the school will be unreliable for us this summer. We will return to ACAA in September.

When: Fourth Wednesday of each month at 7:00PM

Where: temporary location, Foothills Library
19055 N 57th Ave, Glendale, AZ

Topic: Unetbootin and Asus EEE Install howto

Presenter: Ryan Rix

August's Phoenix Linux User Group Security Test Team Lab will center around Puppet.

We will have a one-ish hour of presentation, a puppet test lab
including a fully fleshed out securely setup puppet.

We will take some fest time to show how easy it is to pull strings,
maintain configurations and standards in any network comprising two or
more systems in order to improve systems security, change policies or protect
systems in a hurry, or ensure that new systems are provisioned meeting
standards.

Please see http://www.linuxgazette.com July "Layer 8 Linux Security"
Puppet article for the lab presentation materials.
http://linuxgazette.net/165/kachold.html

Bring your puppet recipes to wow us.
All PLUG events are full duplex,allowing for individual expansion
and enrichment as we follow our critical thought, rarely constrained by
anything other than setup time.

Dennis Kibbe, Adjunct Faculty at Mesa Community College, and regular
"iconic" figure at the PLUG InstallFests will be our Special Guest
FLAG, appearing with his exceedingly clean, carefully configured and
sticker decorated laptop (on it's own network), in immaculate geek shirt,
daring anyone to successfully encroach his linux. Dennis will give us a short
description of his linux system build at the end of the August lab.

Following PLUG Acceptable Security Test Team guidelines (to announce any and every
flag), you can social engineer, attempt to exploit services, and/or do
anything else you can get away with to take this FLAG during our 3 hour
"Puppet Theatre" session. Accolades and prizes will be available for
any success. http://www.linkedin.com/in/denniskibbe

We will have the disk burner setup (this time using local disk [rather
than USB - which was timing out and causing corrupted burns in July]) and
be able to make persistent pendrives on the spot in Knoppix, BackTrack4 or Ubuntu.
Bring your media.

A coalition of Arizona Free Software user groups are proud to announce the 1st annual Arizona Business and Liberty Experience Conference.

ABLE Conf is a Free Software conference organized by The League of Professional System Administrators Arizona Chapter, the Phoenix Linux Users' Group, the Ubuntu Arizona LoCo Team, the Phoenix BSD Users' Group, Teens for Linux, the Tucson Free Unix Group, the SMLUG, the Linux Users' Group of Yavapai, the Arizona State University Linux Users' Group, and DeVry Linux Users' Group.

The community event is planned for Saturday, September 20th at the University of Advancing Technology in Phoenix, Arizona.

We are soliciting presentations of 25 or 50 minutes in length in any area of the Free Software experience.

Specific areas of interest are:

* Community Building
* SMB / SME
* Education
* Multimedia
* Toys & Games
* Ecofriendly computing
* Local businesses using Free Software
* Multi-platform Free Software

Interested presenters can email their proposal to proposals@ABLEconf.com

Additional information: http://www.ableconf.com/

Presentations This Month

Two part PLUG Security Series content presentation

1. Defcon 16:
   Lisa Kachold will show a very short movie of Defcon 16 highlights - narrated.

   Which is the perfect segway into....

2. Content Presentation - PLUG Linux Security Series

   "Basic Linux System Lock Down"

We will focus on Ubuntu, Fedora Core (Redhat) and generic Linux raw build security system lock down. Content will scale to server lockdown (so if Administration is your focus this is a basic foundation/overview) ; we will cover safe Linux desktop system utilization in today's challenging security world and changing networks.

This PLUG presentation, like all PLUG events, will present the subject in terms salient for new users, saavy users, developers and administrators who will be working with Linux operating systems. Our format will include formal overview, open question and answer, wherein the more experienced aptly assist to qualify content questions or field additional queries, wherein audience contribution is encouraged.

3. Hans will also be continuing the Ubuntu Desktop Class series
   Ubuntu Desktop Class, https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Training

Bio: der.hans is a well-known Free Software advocate. He is currently teaching Free Software classes for Mesa Community College's Business and Industry Institute, http://www.LuftHans.com/Classes. He is chairman for PLUG, volunteer coordinator and education committee chair for LOPSA and past president for ASULUG. He has many years of experience as both a system administrator and software developer.

It would be good if at least a couple of people have read the materials prior to the meeting.

Most important item first: Grandma's Cheesecake will be served at this meeting! Now on to the topics...

Topic: Denny is bringing in his MythTV server to give a demo on how MythTV works. We will also use Live CDs to build client viewers.

Presenter: Denny Hipsher

Denny has been an avid computer user since the late 80's, when he used my Turbo XT computer to login to the Prodigy online service via a 2400 baud modem. Over the years, and the upgrades, he has always used no cost software in one form or another. Shareware, freeware, and open source all fit well with his nonexistent budget.

Denny also liked watching tv for as long as he can remember. But the network execs insisted on putting some of his favorite shows on at times that he would rather be doing other things, like sleeping. Programming the VCR to record these shows got old fast. Like way back in the 70's fast. And tape management got to the point where he didn't know what shows he had or how much blank space was left on a given tape. Or even which of the 50 tapes he was round robin recording on was up next. But for 30 years he had no better option.

Then Denny bought a HDTV tuner card for my computer and never looked back. Sure the software that came with the card sucked. But that was easily replaced with free software. Come see it in action at the next west side meeting.

Topic: HA Clustering on linux...

Why HA cluster? Benefits, Drawbacks, HCM not covered (not in 30 minutes). HA Clustering basics: Heartbeat, group broker, service mangler, services (layers). Specific technologies: Heartbeat (the project), brief cover of VCS and HACMP to show what's expected. Infrastructure techs: drdb, iscsi, regular SAN, GFS/NFS, NIC's, etc. Service examples: Apache/tomcat/whatever, NFS/GFS/whatever, DRBD, Databases (oracle, db2, mysql, postgres, they all really play the same at this level)