| 6:30pm - 9:00pm | Presentations & Discussion |
| 9:00pm - ??? | Beer Bash at Market Street Pub |
Christmas Party -- Time for the Nth Annual (I've lost track) FLU Christmas Party! This year the venue will be The Shamrock. We'll begin gathering at 7:00pm to celebrate the holidays and the past year's Linux achievements. There will be no presentation at the SFCC Downtown Center this month.
Basic Linux Administration -- We will go over some basic Linux configuration and administration topics as a supplement to last month's installfest in order to help our new users up to speed. We'll also discuss some of the new features to expect in the next version of the Linux kernel as the development kernel is close to a feature freeze.
InstallFest -- With the Fall Linux distro release season comes the perfect time for an InstallFest. This is your chance to join the Linux revolution with your screaming new machine or breathe life back into that old clunker that you thought was now useless. Bring your hardware, whether mundane or exotic, and install Linux on it with the aid of your patient, caring (yeah, right) fellow Linux enthusiast. One way or another, we'll get you past that hurdle of the initial install and configuration of your distro of choice. By this time, the latest and greatest should all be available including Red Hat 8.0, Slackware 8.1, Debian 3.0, Mandrake 9.0, and SuSE 8.1. Even the latest *BSD is welcome without (much) ridicule.
Basic Linux Security Practices -- This month will just be a very basic and simple overview of how to protect that Internet-connected Linux box from all the script kiddies and worms out there looking for an easy target. If you think we've been doing too much security lately, just have a look at all the damage the new Slapper Worm is doing that could have been easily prevented with some basic maintenance. Also, a look at the upcoming crop of distro releases in preparation for next month's InstallFest.
CANCELED -- The SFCC Downtown Center is closed this week. Since most people are out of town anyway, this month's meeting is CANCELED.
Linux Security Exploits -- There has been a recent round of hyped security vulnerabilities discovered in many widley used programs that popular on the Linux platform. We'll take a look at how some of them work, how you can detect their use, and protect your systems. NOTE: A NEW PERMANENT LOCATION FOR FLU MEETINGS BEGINS THIS MONTH.
Beer Bash Only -- Due to difficulties in scheduling a meeting room, there will be no presentation this month. However, please join us for the usual Beer Bash at Market Street Pub at 9:00pm.
OpenOffice -- Learn all about the new features and improvements in the recently released version 1.0 of Sun's OpenOffice, the premier office suite for Linux. NOTE: This meeting is on the THIRD THURSDAY instead of the usual thrid Wednsday.
Oracle on Linux -- Dwayne Cox will give an in-depth presentation on
the intricacies of installing and using the Oracle RDBMS on Linux. His talk
will be based on Oracle 8i and include tips on migrating from other platforms.
NOTE: THIS MONTH'S MEETING IS ON THE THIRD THURSDAY INSTEAD OF WEDNSDAY
There are a couple of documents that are related to this talk that you may want to read or download ahead of time.
Installation instructions for installing Oracle 8i release 3 on Red Hat 7.2
Installation instructions for installing Oracle 8i on Suse 7.2
Recent and Upcoming Linux Developments -- Many Linux-related projects are seeing heavy development and new major releases are due out soon. Javier will present an overview of what's new with projects such as KDE 3.0, GNOME 2.0, Star Office 6.0, and the latest kernel developments as well. NOTE: THIS MONTH'S MEETING IS ON THE THIRD THURSDAY INSTEAD OF WEDNSDAY
Running Snort with a Database Backend -- Snort is a popular Intrusion Detection System (IDS). Ray will present how to tie Snort to an SQL database in order to store its data and then generate reports to make analysis easier. NOTE: THIS MONTH'S MEETING IS ON THE THIRD THURSDAY INSTEAD OF WEDNSDAY
Remote Backups Using SSH -- Ray will present a simple scheme for backing up multiple machines to tape on a central backup server using SSH with RSA authentication and tar.
Christmas Party -- Join us at Market Street Pub at 6:00pm for our annual Christmas Party. Happy Holidays!
No Meeting -- No meeting this month since it falls on the day before Thanksgiving. Next month is our annual Christmas Party.
Layman/Advanced -- No presentation this month due to location difficulties. Therefore, we'll just meet at Market Street Pub at 7:00pm and start the usual beer bash early.
Layman -- RPM Package Management
The basics of installing software using the Red Hat Package Manager as
well as some tricks you might not have noticed yet.
Advanced -- RPM Package Creation
Creating RPM packages is not really that hard if you're already
comfortable with compiling software from source. We'll demonstrate with some
simple examples.
Layman & Advanced -- A Brief History of Linux (well
-- about an hour's worth anyway)
A look at the development cycle of linux from it's start as
a terminal emulator(!) to it's current use as a full fledged OS!
Afterwards we will head over to the Market Street Pub for the
Birthday Celebration!
Layman & Advanced -- GPG Keysigning Party at the
Market St. Pub at 7pm in downtown Gainesville, NOT at the
Library!
What is a keysigning party you ask, (and I'm glad you asked), this
allows people that use private encyption keys to verify each other in
person. This is very important in creating a "web-of-trust", a
way of checking that a person is really who they say they are on the
internet, especially in encrypted communications. Read the description
of the party at:
http://www.cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/gpg-party.html
Layman -- Install-fest Bring your PC's and Mac's and
-- iPaq's and we'll get Linux on them (maybe).
Advanced -- Linux Terminal Server Project Demo
(LTSP). How to setup and use Linux as a
terminal Server. A very effective way to get life out of old PC's.
Layman&Advanced -- Ozette Brown will present a set of scripts that mine data from Portsentry, a hostbased intrusion detection system, for insertion into a MySQL database. Reports such as scan type, port, country and OS can be created and displayed via a web browser.
Layman/Advanced - Red Carpet & Nautilus/PostgreSQL ORDBMS
Red Carpet & Nautilus -- This month's meeting will cover the
new Red-Carpet Updater and the Nautilus Network User Environment. Both of these
topics will be of interest to new Linux users. Red-Carpet is a package
management tool for any rpm based Linux distribution. Nautilus is a file
manager & browser application designed by founding members of Apple
Computer(tm) with emphasis on ease-of-use for the end user.
PostgreSQL ORDBMS -- Donald will be discussing the features of
PostgreSQL for our Advanced Users, after the new user portion. With demo's of
the command line, gui and php interfaces to the system. For those who don't
know Postgresql is an Object Relational DataBase Management System. It was
developed at Berkley (Univ. of CA) and is the basis of the Informix Database
System.
Layman/Advanced - InstallFest/Encrypted Filesystem
InstallFest -- Bring your box and install Linux on it! We have a
selection of distributions to install! If you have a distribution you really
like bring it along and show it off! We will definately have Redhat 6.2 and 7.0
with Slackware 7.1 on CD. If you have network card even better with nfs and ftp
based installs.
Encrypted Filesystems -- A group project that emerged from the
discussion at the last meeting. We will have box that we will try to install
and get running an encrypted filesystem on. We haven't tried it before so it
should be fun and entertaining.
Layman/Advanced - Basic System Security/GnuPG
Basic System Security -- This month we focus on security. Ray takes
a box with a fresh install and goes over the basics of what to turn off and
what patches to apply. Good info for any Linux Newbie with an "always-on"
Internet connection.
GPG -- Gnu Privacy Guard, How to protect your Internet
communications. Many people can get to the data you send across the Internet
without you knowing it. Here is a way to encrypt that information so that only
people you want will be able to read it.
GPG -- Keysigning party!! After this meeting we will meet over at
the Market Street Pub. to verify the keys of local individuals who registered.
This ties in directly to GPG so read the
LINUX-L archives to
find out all about it.