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Presented at the LUG 
The following links are provided to point LUG members to materials, documentaion, and reference material related to presentations done at LUG meetings.

See the meetings page for information about the upcoming meeting.


2001

April- Install Fest
This time the Install Fest was held on campus in room BE-140 . We began with announcements and just a little bit of LUG business including some decisions that need to be made regarding our new "Kelder" box.

We had giveaways from Linux Central such as RedHat C D's, Mandrake CD's, and Debian CD's. We also gave away some Corel T-Shirts. Linux Systems Labs provided us with some books to give away in the raffles.

We were disappointed that the shipment of credit-card sized rescue CD's from LinuxCare didn't arrive in time. They did finally arrive and we should be able to pass those out at a later meeting...

March- Domain Name Service (DNS)

Kevin Darcy of DaimlerChrysler showed us how Domain Name Service (DNS) works. Kevin showed us what DNS does for us and its importance to the Internet. He showed us in great depth the internal workings of DNS. He covered such things as authoritative servers, zone transfers, delegation, security, error mesages, etc.

This presentation started at 9:20 pm and didn't finally wind down until just before midnight. Roughly half of the Peanut Gallery said they were very interested in DNS, and I guess they really were because those same people were still hanging in 'till the end! 

February- Linux Security
In the last couple weeks there have been a number of security holes exposed. And some members of the LUG have had first hand experience with them :-( So this month we discussed SECURITY.

A handfull of LUG members will be talked about such subjects as 802.11 wep, SSH-1, Ramon (.poop), and BIND 8 TSIG. All of which have been in the news lately (BUGTRAQ). This discussion was somewhat informal and everyone was invited to contribute.

January- ESR Speaks Again

Eric S. Raymond was be in town again this year. Thanks to the UMLUG folks and The Linux Box, ESR spoke about the Open Source Revolution at the Pendleton Room in the Michigan Union.



2000

December- GAMING
We met on December 14th to better avoid the Holiday.

In the spirit of having a good time, this months meeting was for the gamers. Folks brought in their favorite Linux game and/or game machines and showed them off to the group. Some games were shared between members. Several members talked about new games, updated versions, tips, and tricks.

Keith Elder showed us PHP-Nuke, an automated system for maintaining your website (similar format to SlashDot) in the bi-monthly PHP Mini-Session.

November- INSTALL FEST

We had an INSTALLATION FEST. However, it was located at the WCC campus and not at Affordable Computers as it has been in the past. We provided Net access via ethernet for those that needed it. Some CD's were available to use for installations.

Lane Hoy taught us about 'Flow Control' in his bi-monthly Perl Mini-Session.

October-


September- Programming in Perl

Lane Hoy showed us the following topics in regard to programming in PERL:

  • perl variable types and quoting
  • perl references
  • perl operators and precedence
  • perl logic constructs and flow control
  • perl function conventions and subroutines
  • perl regular expressions

August- Connecting Linux to Microsoft Databases
Brian Bruns showed us how to connect Linux to Microsoft Database s.

He gave an overview of two of the projects he works on.

The first FreeTDS (www.freetds.org) connects *nix systems to Sybase and Microsoft SQL Servers (although I'll be focusing on primarily MS SQL). He showed how to install it, configuring it, and using sqsh (a command line tool), Perl DBI modules, and PHP 3/4 with it (code examples!). He also gave some basics about running FreeTDS/JDBC (a related project that he hasn't had a lot of involvement in) in Java.

The second topic was MDB Tools (mdbtools.sourceforge.net) which is a library and set of command line tools for reading MS Access .mdb files. He covered building and using the tools and some future directions (The Gnome guys want to use it for the Access 'provider' in Gnome-DB)


July-
Linux & AX.25 Packet Radio

Steve Gladden - N8LBV showed us how he uses Linux in his Amateur Radio hobby.

Steve demonstrated the following areas where Linux is used in Ham Radio:

  • AX25 kernel networking support and explanation of install
  • Ax25 net-tools explanation & install
  • Discussion of packet radio interfaces: KISS-tnc, PI card, Baycom, etc.
  • Soundcard modem discussion (and live demo)
  • Kiss TNC demo

June- INSTALL FEST
Washtenaw Linux User Group and Affordable Computers Inc., proudly put on another successfull Linux Installation Festival 2000. ACI again hosted the Linux Installfest in June for the Washtenaw Linux Users Group (WLUG). The Installfest gave a chance for all of those interested in seeing Linux, installing Linux, or configuring Linux a chance to gather and see what the hype is all about. ACI welcomed anyone and everyone to the Installfest. Everyone was invited to bring their desktops or laptops to the Installfest and let the "Linux Guru's" offer tips and pointers to the basics of Linux. Door prizes were given away during the course of the evening such as retailed boxed copies of the latest distributions, T-Shirts, bumper stickers, Books, etc.


See www.affordablecomputers.com/linux_in stallfest.php3 for additional information, directions to Affordable Computers, Inc, etc.

Keith Elder
zorka@zorka.com
734-764-0497

May- PHP and MySQL - The Killer Combo
Our fearless leader (Jay) was out of town for this meeting and he asked Keith Elder to announce and run the meeting.

Paul Barton presented us with PHP and MySQL - The Killer Combo

Unless you have been confined to a remote location in the African jungle for the past couple of years chances are good that you have heard of PHP and Mysql. The PHP and Mysql combo are currently driving a lot of sites on the Internet and the numbers just keep rising. Linux.com and Freshmeat.net are just a few of the major Linux sites that are using this combination. If you wanted to learn how to start designing dynamic web sites then this was the meeting to attend.

Paul covered "the recommended" way to install and configure PHP, Apache, and Mysql. He also demonstrated several sites using this combination that he has been involved with to show some of it's advanced features even to the point of building an online store with the combination. Even if you aren't a programmer, you walked away a smarter person.

April- Several 20-minute mini-presentations

  • BeOS - Keith Elder will show us the latest version of the BeOS ope rating system. BeOS is well known for its multimedia capabilities and Unix-like underlying operating system.
  • TV Card under Linux - Dave will show us how to implement the popul ar TV Card into a Linux system. He plans to show live video within an X window.
  • DejaFilter - Perl Script that filters ads, graphics, and junk from Deja.com queries, by Paul Wehr
  • Linux Pirates - Tales from the ongoing saga of plugging a rogue Linux machine into an NT-is-our-corporate-standard network, by Paul Wehr

March-

February- Netmasq - A firewall/masquerading tool By: Carl Miller

Carl Miller talked to us about Netmasq, a package under development which will simplify IP masquerading and firewall setup. It is a front end to ipchains and ipmasqadm, and it has a a set of intuitive configuration files. Netmasq can automatically detect changes to the network, such as DHCP renewals. It allows different types of logging and includes several programs to easily look at logged connection attempts.

The talk included a demo of the software and an explanation of each of the scripts and their options.

Netmasq can be found at http://pulse.cantonpl.org/carl/netmasq.html 

January- A Talk on Open Source by Eric S. Raymond

Eric is an advocate of the Open Source revolution, and is the author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". He was a visiting guest presenter at ConFusion, the Detroit area Sci-Fi/Fantasy show, and had requested area Linux (and other computer groups) be alerted to set up a joint meeting.

Eric's talk attracted an audiance of approximatly 280-300 folks from LUG's all around the lower half of the lower peninsula, as well as Northern Ohio. ESR was on the UofM campus last year for a lunch hour seminar, and packed a 200-seat classroom SRO, with overflow of several dozen in the hallways. And this was during a major local snowstorm! ESR is the author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", the seminal paper that convinced Netscape to open-source their browser technology. O'Reilly has recently published a book of the same title, with several of ESR's collected writings on the open source movement.

An audio recording of ESR's presentation is available online courtesy of Linux System Labs.



1999


 December- Home Networking with IP Masquerading By: Kevin Brady partially@mad.scientist.com

Kevin showed us the basics of setting up IP networking for Linux, and talked a bit about addressing and subnets, and covered the private IP ranges.

Then he talked about IP masquerading. Primarily covering the use of IPChains to do masquerading, but also Mentioned ipfwadm so people running 2.0 kernels aren't left hanging.

After Kevins presentation the group discussed last minute preperations before we hit the highly touted topic of Y2K. Noone seemed very concerned that Y2K was going to have much impact on our systems.


 November- INSTALL FEST hosted by Affordable Computers, Inc.

ACI once again hosted a fine Linux Installfest in November for the Washtenaw Linux Users Group (WLUG).

The Installfest gave all of those interested in seeing Linux, installing Linux, or configuring Linux a chance to gather and see what the hype is all about. ACI welcomed approximatly 85 visitors to the Installfest, and raffled off several books and bundled software packages as well as handed out free CD's (courtesy of Linux Systems Labs) . Folks brought their desktops and laptops to the Installfest and let the "Linux Guru's" offer tips and pointers to the basics of Linux.

Pictures of the InstallFest are available at www.acinc.com/linux 

 October- Postgress & MySQL - By: John Gotts  

 September- Free Software / Open Source - By: Hugo Gayosso


Hugo Gayosso talked to us about the Open Source and Free Software movements.

Here is a brief outline of some of what Hugo covered:

1) Free Software / Open Source Software
- Definitions
- Differences
- Importance of each one.

2) Software Licenses
Comments regarding different software licenses being used today.

 August- 

July-

June Bash Shell Programming - By: Lane Hoy
The June 17th meeting was a presentation by Lane Hoy on bash shell programming. Lane presentated an introduction to getting the most out of the Bourne Again Shell as an interactive environment and as a programming language. His presentation focused on the 2.x versions of bash, and introduced concepts that are valid for many of the other Unix shells. His discussion showed a number of real-world problems and how to solve them.

A couple of Lane's sample bash scripts:


May-  Writing CGI Scripts - By: Valerie Mates
The May 20th meeting of the WLUG was be a presentation by Valerie Matesabout Writing CGI Scripts.

When you type information into a web page, where does it go? It goes to a CGI program. At the May 20 LUG meeting, Valerie Mates gave a talk about how to write CGI programs. The talk will cover the basics of how to:

  • write a CGI program
  • pass data between web pages
  • handle program errors, and
  • avoid common security pitfalls.

Valerie is a free-lance programmer and web developer, specializing in writing CGI programs that connect to databases. She maintains the web pages for the Ann Arbor Observer (arborweb.com) and has written database systems for EE-Link (eelink.net), Michigan Bizserve, and the University of Michigan Business School's Tauber Manufacturing Institute, and Top Hosts (tophosts.com).

You can see examples of some of the systems she's written at www.valeriemates.com/web_pages.html 

 April- InstallFest at Affordable Computers, Inc.
The April 15th meeting of the WLUG was an Installfest hosted by Affordable Computers, Inc. in Ann Arbor.


Keith Elder was our host for the meeting and supplied us with plenty of power, ethernet connections, and phone lines. ACInc even supplied folks with the hardware they'd been needing to complete their systems. They have even added a Linux related webpage (www.acinc.com/linux) to assist the Linux community.

Refreshments were served to the over 60 people who turned out for the Install Fest. Even Dan Irvin showed up from Linux Systems Labs , who had donated several copies of RedHat 5.2, SuSE 6.0, Mandrake 5.3, as well as Linux Installation & Getting Started - Version 3.2 books for everyone. Several copies of Linux - The Complete Reference were raffled off as door prizes. These were also courtesy of LSL.

SuSE provided a large number of their latest CD's as well.

Things finally wrapped up a little after midnight at which point the latenight crowd headed off to Denny's for chow (Alpha Coney Island was being remodled).

March- Dean talked about.... I still need to finish updating this article...sorry...

 February- Majordomo - By Rick Green
I still need to finish updating this article...sorry... 

January- Samba - By Steve Gladden
Steve showed us the benefits of using Samba to share resources between our Linux and Win95/8 machines such as files and printers. He also showed us file sharing between Linux boxes both on the same ethernet as well as across the Internet. Steve had multiple machines linked together to demonstrate what can be accomplished and how you can accomplish it!

Film at Eleven:

11 of us proceded to the Alpha Coney Island for the After-Meeting-Meeting. Some of us didn't go home until 7:30 am :-)



ANNOUNCEMENT: On Wednesday, January 6th, the LUG's mailing list was converted from linux-users@umich.edu to a Majordomo based mailing list operating off the LUG's lugwash.org machine on the Washtenaw Community College campus. Thanks to Rick Green for implementing a smooth cutover.

1998


December- We had another fine Install Fest.
As we try to do several times per year, we once again held an Installation Fest. This is where everyone is invited to bring their machines (or Har d Disks) to have Linux installed or upgraded.
Roughly 30 people attended this time, we even had to bring in chairs from a neighboring classroom. Several machines were onhand for install and upgrades. One member even brought in his machine to get his PPP dialup scripts fine tuned :-)
Some of us didn't leave until nearly 1 a.m. (suprised the guards didn't throw us out) and then continued the fun over at the local Alpha Coney Island restaurant until 4:30 a.m. Some of us just can't get enough!!! 

 November- A talk by Henning Wackernagel, from Germany
Henning discussed Linux as it is used in Europe. He went on to describe his interests in Linux and how his university setup Linux servers on campus. Henning also enlightened us about the Linux Users Group he belongs to in Germany. His presentation proved to be of 'International' interest.

October- This month we learned about Linux Firewalls using IPFWADM presented by Jay Nugent. This presentation was an extension on our theme on Security (last month Henry Hardy spoke on System Security). 

 September- This meeting was held at Dominic's Restaurant and had a fine presentation by Henry Hardy on Security Issues with Linux.

Perhaps Henry has some web-based material on his server at ocean.whs.verio.net regarding security that we could link to...

 August- We learned about the RedHat Package Manager - RPM
Neil McNeight showed us the in's and out's of using the Red Hat Package manager know n as RPM. Neil showed us some of the more usefull functions of RPM and some of the less obvious features that make RPM such a powerfull package manager for installing and updating Linux software packages. Neil also showed us how to create your own RPM's. If you've ever wondered about RPM, then this is a meeting you didn't want to miss!!!


 July- We had a fine presentation by Tim Wright on The Anatomy of a Perl Script.

Tim presented us with a script he had written for work and proceded to go through it line-by-line explaining how it all worked. This was an eye-opener and educational for those that have never coded in Perl before, and exposed the regular Perl programmers to some new techniques and approaches.

Film at Eleven:


 June-  We had another of our informative Installation meetings.

We, as a group, cleaned up the club's computer and upgraded it from RedHat 4.2 to RedHat 5.1. We also found that the cooling fan had failed, so that is being replaced. Jeff brought in his RedHat 4.1 system and we upgraded it to RedHat 5.1 and Rick brought in his laptop and did a number of upgrade and configuration improvements.

We had a very good turnout and had alot of participation and everyone seemed to pitch in with suggestions and usefull information.

May- This was a presentation by Jay Nugent on the History of the Internet.

Jay has been involved in networking and the Internet for over 14 years. He has worked for Northern Telecom's NTelPac, GTE-Telenet, Merit/ANS, and AOLnet. He has seen the Internet grow from only a couple hundred thousand hosts to many millions of hosts and its ultimate commercialization.

The presentation covered the early beginnings of the formation of ARPA shortly after the Sputnik scare, through the creation of the early 56k ARPAnet, on through the growth into the T1 NSFnet, and the T3 NSFnets, to the commercialization of the Internet, and the more recent proliferation of multiple first tier backbone networks. One of many of the original IBM RT computers that made up the T1 NSFnet was onhand from Jay's collection for everyone to see. Amazing how things have changed...

April- The meeting was a presentation by Steve Gladden where he showed us how Linux is being used in Amateur Radio. Covered were how Linux supports the AX.25 protocol and hardware devices such as the Ottawa PI-2 card, both being compiled right into the kernel. A glitch prevented Steve from actually having a working Packet Radio station on the air but the presentation was informative none the less.
March- The presentation was.....????


February-  This meeting had a presentation by Jay Nugent on Domain Name Service - DNS. He discussed the importance of DNS in the operation of the Net, how the DNS's around the world act as a giant distributed database, how DNS performs resolutions, tools used to test and maintain DNS, and how to configure DNS on your machine. Though the presentation was long (1 hour 45 minutes) it was thourough...


January-  This meeting was our first run by our new leader, Tim Wright. Tim collected a list of subjects that the membership would like to see presented at our meetings. This list included the names of persons willing/capable of doing these presentations.
The usual Q&A session followed with much help being offered by the membership on a wide range of subjects.

December- We had another fine Linux Installation session. We had machines available for folks to see how to perform an installation. As a bonus we had an off-the-cuff presenation on how DNS works and how it relates to routing.

November-  We Finallyhad a meeting!

This meeting was a Peanut-Gallery gathering of about 13 people. We discussed various problems we were having with our systems, got answers to our questions, and lots of moral support. There appeared to be a number of folks who would like another Installation meeting so we have that on the agenda for next month.

October-  There was no October meeting :-(

September-  There was no September meeting :-(

August-  We were still unable to get a presenter that could make the date :-( However, we had an excellent Peanut-Gallery discussion on various subjects that the the crowd was interested in.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Tim Wright has agreed to lead the group but will not be available until he has moved into his new house in January. In the meantime members will try to put some programs together to keep the group meeting as regularly as possible.

July-  We were supposed to have a presentation by Mike List who writes the "Clueless at the Prompt" in the Linux Gazette published by SSC. Sadly, Mike was unable to attend so we had another of our fine Peanut Gallery discussions and Q&A sessions.

We gave away a developers version of Applixware 4.3, compliments of Red Hat Software (http://www.redhat.com/ ).

May & June-  There were no May or June meetings due to Summer vacations :-(

April-  This month we had a Download Day.
For those folks that don't have access to anything but slow dialup links to the Internet were able to take advantage of the college T1 link to grab software from their favorite FTP sites.


March-  This month Troy Wollenslegel did a demonstration of Applixware.
Applixware is a bundle of applications such as wordprocessor, spreadsheet, database, presentation package (similar to PowerPoint), drawing program, etc. Troy ran the presentation directly from the Applixware CD, eliminating the need to load the software onto the hard disk. Nice feature :-) He used the presentation package to display slides listing the pros, cons, and his impressions of how well, and how not so well, the software worked.
Applixware was ported to Linux by RedHat.


February-  Jared Mauch of CICnet did a presentation on Network Configuration.
He covered such subjects as IP Masquerading, use of diald, and using a Web Cache to speed up webpage access and avoid further congesting the network.

A raffle was held after the meeting for a copy of the RedHat Applixware software package. The winner gets to do a presentation about Applixware at next months meeting!


Jannuary-  This month we had a free for all and opened the floor for questions from anyone about anything (well, Linux related anyway). Many questions and problems were answered. Just about everyone participated and I'm sure nearly everyone went home a bit more enlightened :-)


1996

December- There was no December meeting due to the holiday break......


November- It was demonstrated how to upgrade to Red Hat 4.0 (performed on the LugWash PC) as well as assisting a couple other members in installing or upgrading their systems.


October- Ed Zimmer edzimmer@bizserve.com presented us with a 16-page document describing how he uses Unix in the operation of his businesses. His handout even included the scripts that he has developed over the years!
Ed is a local businessman who has used Unix in business for many years. He currently does most of his accounting using awk and his point of sale system is based on vi.
Ed likes to follow the KISS principle by keeping his toolbox simple. Why use the big fancy packages when the simple vi, sed, and awk tools can get the job done. There's often less to have to learn and remember, too!


September- Dan Irvin of Linux Systems Lab in Chesterfield Michigan joined us. LSL is well known for their publishing of Linux books and CD's. They have published books like the Linux Man Pages and the RedHat Installation Guide. Their latest product is LINUX-FT, the only Linux distribution certified after official standards and tested with industrial quality test suites.
Some of the subjects that were covered:
--- Publishing of Linux books
--- Publishing of Linux CD's
(apparently he uses only Linux for everything in the publishing process)

August- Jennifer Mansfield-Jones showed us about PGP. She told us what it is, how it is used, where to aquire the code, and how to compile and configure it. She had an excellent handout covering step-by-step how to get PGP running on your system.


July- Davis Marshall did a fine presentation about PERL and using CGI scripts. Here you will find a sample Web page that passes data to a CGI-BIN script, processes it, and then sends back a Web page containing the submitted data. Please use the view followed by source option of your browser to see how the Submit page and the Results page were built. And here is the CGI-BIN script that processed the data and generated the output results.

June- Tony Robertson from Pioneer Technologies (517)546-2855 in Brighton demonstrated the Caldera Network Desktop and the new port of WordPerfect for Linux. Both products are available from Caldera.

May- The topic this month was Watch out for the Killer Penguin!!! -or- Preparing for Linux 2.0.0. What tools you need along with the latest kernel distribution to make sure everything works correctly. This includes the latest C compiler, C libraries, PPP daemon, process utilities (like ps and top), and more.
April-  Neil McNeight tried his darndest to get out of being our Fearless Leader but we thwarted his attempts to scurry off into oblivion. Instead we found him the manpower and support to make the job easier, and we doubled his PAY!!!
He agreed to stay on :-) Read his Letter of Resignation.


March- Uhhhh???? Does anyone remember what happened at the March meeting? Did we have one of those cool off-the-cuff rap sessions where folks tossed out their Linux problems and questions to the peanut gallery in hopes that someone might know the answer?


February-  Jon Cortmaior showed us various ways to optimize our Linux systems. His presentation showed us how to recompile our X-server to save on memory, how to compile multiple kernels tailored to our specific needs, how to use Full Optimization instead of just -O, and how to adjust various init files to speed things up.


January- No specific topic

A general discussion about Linux. A Linux machine and an Internet connection were available.


1995

 December- Tex/LaTex3e Installation and use under Linux
Guest speaker Gottfried Hogh
A brief description of employing Donald Knuth's mathmatically oriented page markup language for a variety of documentation tasks, on several platforms, concentrating on LaTex3e using Linux system under X11R6. Both installation, startup, and finding "groove" in LaTex was discussed.


 November- XFree86 Configuration

Guest speaker Jared Mauch
He discussed how to set up XFree86 as an X server and ways to increase performance. He also discussed ways of customizing your X environment.

There were freebies handed out to the attendees:

  • SSC - Product Catalogs
  • InfoMagic - Linux Developers Resource (Dec 94)
  • Walnut Creek - Catalogs and a *few* copies of their Slackware 3.0 CD
  • Yggdrasil - Linux Internet Archive (May 1995), the Linux Bible, and Plug & Play Linux (Fall 95)


October- ELF Binaries

Guest speaker Mike McCabe
Mike discussed the recent development of ELF binaries for Linux, what they are and what is so special about them.

There were freebies handed out to the attendees:

  • SSC - Copies of Linux Journal and Product Catalogs
  • InfoMagic - Linux Developers Resource (Dec 94 & Mar 95)
  • Walnut Creek - *** A Suprise Donation ***
  • Morse Communications - Slackware Pro 2.1 & tsx-11
  • Caldera - Network Desktop v1.0
  • Yggdrasil - Linux Internet Archive (May 1995) & The Linux Bible

September- The Internet

Guest speaker Ivars Upatnieks, founder and owner of ICNet.
He discussed the various methods of how to connect to the Internet (shell access, SLIP, CSLIP, PPP, ISDN, and dedicated lines) as well as what you can do once you are on the Internet.

There were freebies handed out to the attendees:

  • SSC - Copies of Linux Journal and Product Catalogs
  • InfoMagic - Linux Developers Resource
  • Walnut Creek - Sampler CD's that include Linux
  • Morse Communications - Slackware Pro 2.1 & tsx-11


August-  Installation

We demonstrated different installations of Linux from SSC, InfoMagic, Morse Telecommunications, and Yggdrasil.

There were freebies handed out to the attendees:

  • SSC - Copies of Linux Journal and Product Catalogs
  • InfoMagic - Linux Developers Resource
  • Walnut Creek - Sampler CD's that include Linux
  • Morse Communications - Slackware Pro 2.1 & tsx-11
  • Yggdrasil - Plug & Play Linux and the Linux Internet Archives

July- The very FIRST meeting!!! July 20th
There was no official topic other than planning future meetings of the users group.

There were freebies handed out to the attendees:

  • SSC - August 1995 issue of Linux Journal and SSC Product Catalogs
  • Walnut Creek - Linux Sampler CD's

April- The beginings of the LUG
The linux.users.group@umich.edu mailing list was created by Neil McNeight mcneight@umich.edu.




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