This month we have a really awesome and informative talk from Paul Stagnoli; who will be telling is about Drupal, an open source content management system.
I plan on covering Kismet and if I have time, I will also cover some bluetooth stuff.
So if you have ever wanted to map your local wireless networks to a vector map with street names, or you want to superimpose SSIDs on a photo of your state from space, feel free to join us.
Autofs is a kernel option that lets you automatically mount filesystems on your computer when you access them, and then automatically umount them when they are no longer used.
When I was trying to figure out the best way to set up my removable usb drive, I ended up stumbling upon autofs as an excellent solution. After realizing the potential of it, and how configurable it is, I started setting it up to manage other mountpoints on my system. In this talk, I will discuss everything I set up, and how, including dynamically mounted cdroms, usb drives (including cameras), smb, ftp, and ssh mountpoints.
We’ll cover: getting your pictures off the camera with gphoto2 and gtkam; checking them out with gqview; preparing them for the web with imagemagicks’ all-powerful ‘convert’ utility; and displaying them on the web with packages such as webmagick and Gallery. Taking decent pictures will NOT be covered.
There are problems with many mainstream Linux Distributions. One of these problems is the lack of support for users to install encrypted filesystem during the initial installation process.
Jake will offer us a review of what he has been able to create to help with this process.
With the current changes that Red Hat has made to their licensing, and all of the hype and backlash as a result, many people are looking around for a new distribution. In this talk we will give an overview of a few contenders, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, Debian, and Mandrake, and discuss their respective strengths and weaknesses.
Tony Stubblebine (author of the O’Reilly Regular Expression Pocket Reference) is to give a talk on using regular expressions under Linux. The talk will likely cover things like some basic grep and vi/emacs regular expressions.
Unix Regex Toolbox: Tony Stubblebine is going to rummage through his Regex Toolbox. Every day, regular expressions save him time and sanity by diverting spam, controlling Apache, and searching, organizing, and formatting reams of data. Regular expressions aren’t just for programmers. They’ve moved from the shell to the editor to the database to nearly every major Linux application. Tony will pull out his favorite vim, shell, MySQL, Apache, and procmail tools, tips, and tricks.
And he’ll have some schwag: a shirt, a mug, and two copies of his book, Regular Expression Pocket Reference.
Scott Doty has been working with video encoding with Linux and MythTV to record Television and Video with Linux. He will offer us a review of what he has done and inform us on what he has found to work very well, and what to avoid. This should be an excellent resentation for beginners through advanced users. (ME: remember to bring in your DVD/VCR.)
Kyle Rankin and M.E. will provide a co-presentation to work with video encoding, and include some “neat tricks” with mplayer.
Please note that this InstallFest is NOT at O’Reilly and Associates. It will instead be at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park. Please see below for information on the exact location and directions.
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. People 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 to help?
If you’re interested in helping out, please contact installfest@nblug.org; if you’ve successfully installed 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:
8:00AM - Breakfast (optional) at an undisclosed (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 in December or January or consider taking over as President; contact speakers@nblug.org about speaking or president@nblug.org about taking over as President)
— Location and Directions —
The InstallFest will take place on Sonoma State’s campus. We will be using room Schulz 1121, which is in the Schulz Information Center (aka, the Library). Directions and information on parking follow.
Here are some maps and directions that SSU makes available on their site:
http://www.sonoma.edu/university/maps.html
— Master index of all interesting direction-related info.
— Nice map of the campus with the library (Info Center) highlighted
Parking tips from Mike & Dustin:
http://www.nblug.org/location.html
— Similar to the map above, but Mike has highlighted the parking areas, and also drawn a path to get to the right part of the library from Cotati Ave.
Parking on Saturday is free. You may park in either Lot D or Lot J. Note that any lot that is marked as residence parking is OFFLIMITS at all times unless you have a proper parking permit.
If you need to park close to the building to bring your equipment in, there is 30 minute parking on the West side of Schulz and on the East side of Schulz there are two 15 minute spots. Once you drop your equipment off, you should move your car to one of the other lots mentioned above.
Handicapped parking is available in the reserved lot areas, and on the West side of the library near the library loading zone. Handicapped parking is labeled.
Bill Kendrick will offer us a presentation on using the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). If you have never seen the GIMP, or want to know how to take advantage of some of the more powerful features of it, come and enjoy this presentation.
