Please note that this InstallFest is at O’Reilly. Please see below for information on the exact location and directions. This is not our usual installfest location. We’ve decided to start doing all of our InstallFests at O’Reilly.
WHEN: Saturday, May 14 - 10:30AM - 4:30PMPDT WHERE: O’Reilly in Sebastopol; https://nblug.org/genloc WHO: Anyone wanting help in installing Linux onto their computer WHATDO I DO: Go to http://www.nblug.org/installfest/ to sign up!!!!
What is an InstallFest and who can come?
Instead of putting all of the usual “what is an InstallFest” info in this and future announcements, we have a link up on our website as to what a NBLUG InstallFest entails and how to participate. If you point your browser of choice to http://www.nblug.org/installfest/ , you’ll be presented with all the info you ever wanted to know about what goes on at an InstallFest, and how you can get the most out of attending one.
Anyone is more than welcome to attend. If you need help or just want to hang out and talk, you are more than welcome to show up. They are always totally free; you might want to bring a few dollars for pizza, however.
How do I sign up?
We will again be taking signups for this InstallFest, so please be sure to visit that URL if you plan on attending. Those who signup and reserve a time slot, are first in line. We’ve found that by taking signups, we can help more people in a timely fashion. We can also make sure that enough helpers are available for those wanting help. If you need help at the last minute, you can still just show up and we’ll probably be able to help you, but it really helps us if you register first, preferably a week or more in advance so we have a chance to beg for more helpers if we need them.
What if I want to offer help?
If you’re interested in helping out, please contact installfest@nblug.org; if you’ve successfully
installed Fedora (or RedHat or Mandrake or SuSE or Debian or FreeBSD or OpenBSD or YellowDog or …) before, you can probably help out. We can even use a bit of help from somebody helping people bring their heavy equipment in. Besides, it’s fun to come hang out with all the geeks. ;)
For helpers, the schedule is a little different:
8:30AM - Breakfast (optional) at an undecided location.
10:00AM - Room open to helpers for setup
10:30AM - Installs begin (event start)
4:00PM - Installs should be done by now.
4:30PM - Installs must be done by now.
5:00PM - Room closed; alarms go off, doors lock, police show up.
We always need helpers, and we can usually use more helpers than we get. It’s a good way to “give back” to NBLUG and it’s a geeky good time. (If you’re interested in helping out but can’t do an InstallFest, please consider giving a presentation, contact speakers@nblug.org )
Chris will discuss GNOME Accessibility features, including screen reading and magnification, plus how to configure X and Gnopernicus to use a second monitor for magnification. One or two accessible live Linux distributions will also be demonstrated.
Accessibility is enabling people with disabilities to participate in substantial life activities that include work and the use of services, products, and information. Gnopernicus is designed to enable low vision or totally blind users to use the Gnome Desktop, through screen magnification, text to speech, text to Braille and other assistive features.
Update: Chris will have relevant materials up at http://www.waggie.net/accessibility/ shortly.
“Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine. For instance, it allows one to freely run Linux on Windows 2000/XP, without using a commercial PC virtualization software such as VMware, in a way which is much more optimal than using any general purpose PC virtualization software.”
Knoppix is a complete Linux distribution that runs directly from CD. One of its most popular uses is as a rescue and recovery CD since it includes a wide range of incredibly flexible tools to fix a computer that won’t boot.
In this talk Kyle will discuss a number of different system recovery scenarios and how to use Knoppix (or another live CD) to restore both Linux and Windows systems. Among the recovery scenarios, Kyle will cover:
Restoring the Linux boot loader
Recreating the partition table from scratch
Imaging hard drives, including drives with failures
Matt Hargett, Director of Security Product Development at LogicLibrary, will talk about common patterns that lead to exploitable vulnerabilities. He will also demonstrate how LogicLibrary’s tool, BugScan, can detect these vulnerabilities in application binaries, without any source code.
Please note that this InstallFest is at Sonoma State, not at O’Reilly. Please see below for information on the exact location and directions. This is our usual installfest location.
WHEN: Saturday, February 5 - 10:30AM - 4:30PMPDT WHERE: SSU Schulz 1121; https://nblug.org/ifloc WHO: Anyone wanting help in installing Linux onto their computer URL: https://nblug.org/installfest/ WHATDO I DO: Go to http://www.nblug.org/installfest/ to sign up!!!!
What is an InstallFest and who can come?
Instead of putting all of the usual “what is an InstallFest” info in this and future announcements, we have a link up on our website as to what a NBLUG InstallFest entails and how to participate. If you point your browser of choice to http://www.nblug.org/installfest/ , you’ll be presented with all the info you ever wanted to know about what goes on at an InstallFest, and how you can get the most out of attending one.
Anyone is more than welcome to attend. If you need help or just want to hang out and talk, you are more than welcome to show up. They are always totally free; you might want to bring a few dollars for pizza, however.
How do I sign up?
We will again be taking signups for this InstallFest, so please be sure to visit that URL if you plan on attending. Those who signup and reserve a time slot, are first in line. We’ve found that by taking signups, we can help more people in a timely fashion. We can also make sure that enough helpers are available for those wanting help. If you need help at the last minute, you can still just show up and we’ll probably be able to help you, but it really helps us if you register first, preferably a week or more in advance so we have a chance to beg for more helpers if we need them.
What if I want to offer help?
If you’re interested in helping out, please contact installfest@nblug.org; if you’ve successfully
installed Fedora (or RedHat or Mandrake or SuSE or Debian or FreeBSD or OpenBSD or YellowDog or …) before, you can probably help out. We can even use a bit of help from somebody helping people bring their heavy equipment in. Besides, it’s fun to come hang out with all the geeks. ;)
For helpers, the schedule is a little different:
8:30AM - Breakfast (optional) at an undecided location.
10:00AM - Room open to helpers for setup
10:30AM - Installs begin (event start)
4:00PM - Installs should be done by now.
4:30PM - Installs must be done by now.
5:00PM - Room closed; alarms go off, doors lock, police show up.
We always need helpers, and we can usually use more helpers than we get. It’s a good way to “give back” to NBLUG and it’s a geeky good time. (If you’re interested in helping out but can’t do an InstallFest, please consider giving a presentation, contact speakers@nblug.org )
A recap on the verified voting foundations EIRS system. An overview of what worked and did not work for the architecture and security of the EIRS system.
Discussion of different technology used to perform tasks, problems that were solved and events along the way.
Also note: elections for NBLUG board positions will be held at this meeting.
This month we’ll have a talk about how to get Linux installed on a Sun Microsystems box with a SPARCCPU in it. What’s different from a PC? Why on earth would you want to do this? Those questions and more. Oh - and we’ll possibly even have a box that you can get your hands on.
The Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS) is a web-based software application designed to help voter protection organizations identify and respond to situations preventing voters from voting or from having their votes recorded as intended. Taking back our democracy with grass root actions!
This talk will cover the issues at stake, identify the problems that needed to be solved, provide solutions and tips for these issues as well as a live demonstration of the EIRS system.
The technology up for discussion will focus on how we designed, created, and maintain the EIRS back end systems. Including (buzzwords abound!): Distributed Denial of Service/Denial Of Service protection, SSL session key load balancing/distribution, high availability database clustering/replication/load balancing/fail-over, round robin DNS, geographically distinct server locations, centralized monitoring/management, managed firewall policies, hardware RAID, revision controlled/synchronized configuration files, off-site backup systems, custom benchmarking tools, disaster planning, safe semi-automatic system updating, host integrity checking software and discussions of how to compartmentalize security. All of this is achieved with a standard common platform of Debian Gnu/Linux.
Key system elements included: Debian Gnu/Linux with the 2.6 Linux kernel series, Apache2, PHP, MySQL, perl, dist-cache, shorewall, stunnel, sshd, samhain, cvs, djbdns, hardware RAID and many others.
All of these technologies power our EIRS system. It’s built with custom modifications to existing GPL software. Our changes are released back to or by working with each community (of course).
Knoppix is a complete Linux distribution that runs directly from a bootable “live CD” allowing you to run Linux on any PC you happen to be in front of.
Kyle has recently finished a book for O’Reilly, Knoppix Hacks, and his talk will provide an introduction for people who are new to the Knoppix live CD distribution, as well as talk a bit about the features in the new Knoppix installer, and how to use Knoppix to repair other Linux systems.
Matt will be talking about using Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl/PHP/Python (LAMP) on Yellow Dog Linux, TerraSoft’s Fedora-like Linux distribution for the Mac architecture.
When the opportunity arose for me to borrow some old hardware from my office, I jumped at it in hopes of running my own webserver from home. I was allowed to use a Mac PowerPC. Naturally, I looked into Linux on the Mac architecture and, fearing Debian, decided to try out Terrasoft’s Yellow Dog Linux. I plan to speak on how it was I came to install YDL on decade-old machine and my experiences with running LAMP on it.
