TL;DR: Sonic is now hosting NBLUG at their campus at 7 PM on the 2nd Tuesday of every month in 2019 — stay tuned for an announcement for January.
As we initially announced in November and discussed at the December general meeting, O’Reilly sold their building and we were unable to work out terms to allow us to continue meeting there. The NBLUG board received a generous offer from Crypo Rights (which leases office space in the same building) to host us under their umbrella but after further discussion with our O’Reilly contact it became clear that the landlord explicitly requires each group to carry insurance which is the same reason O’Reilly themselves can’t host us themselves under their umbrella. It appears either option would require NBLUG to be merged in and/or have a representative in the room at all times which was prohibitive given the other options we received.
In a public vote during the NBLUG December general meeting it was unanimously agreed that we would accept an offer from Sonic if they made one. We have now received an official written offer from Sonic covering 2019 and the NBLUG board has voted to accept their offer. We have additionally adjusted our official start time to be 7 PMPST to better accommodate everyone but per our bylaws we will continue to meet on the 2nd Tuesday of every month.
We will be meeting in a large room that serves as their break room. NBLUG will need to obtain a portable projection screen but the space appears to be adequate in all other ways including fantastic Sonic internet access. We will need to work out details regarding the gate and parking. The current intent is to hold a welcome to Sonic “meet the space” get-together with low commitment for the first meeting as we work out the details. I will unfortunately miss any January 8th meeting that is held as I am out of town (showing games in Linux using libTAS at the GamesDoneQuick.com charity speedrunning marathon this week, but I digress). Because I will be unavailable our Vice President, Robert Thille, will be picking up a keycard for Sonic and will be organizing the details of the first meeting assuming one can be held. Please stay tuned for an official announcement from him for the January meeting.
I’d like to again thank Sonic for their generous support and I’d like to thank everyone in NBLUG for the patience as we worked through the long process of researching our options and finalizing details. I know it was at times frustrating waiting with so few details available while we obtained final permission from Sonic and I appreciate everyone’s understanding.
Thanks to everyone who assisted us in the search for a new location and here’s to a year of growth in 2019,
NBLUG’s first meeting was on June 9, 1998. For the last 20 years we’ve been hosted for free at O’Reilly Media in Sebastopol, CA. An era is coming to a close as the O’Reilly media building has been sold and the new owners are requiring all groups to provide commercial insurance to continue meeting in 2019. NBLUG is not a legal entity and thus as a group we do not have any legally recognized status to acquire such insurance, our meager cashbox balance notwithstanding. Therefore, the purpose of this meeting is to discuss meeting location options and any possible costs for 2019 and beyond.
This is not a normal NBLUG talk; this is a time for all members new and old to gather possibly for the last time at O’Reilly and discuss the future. The NBLUG board has already met and agreed that any proposals should be put up for a general vote from all attending members in accordance with NBLUG’s bylaws. If we are unable to find a solution going forward with O’Reilly this meeting can also be used as a time to convey our thanks to the staff of O’Reilly Media for all of their support over the years in whatever forms the group finds appropriate.
All are welcome to attend this open meeting and contribute to the discussion. This talk will not be streamed due to the nature of the discussion and will start promptly at 7:30.
Linux Journal Magazine was founded in 1994 and coincided with the release
of Linux 1.0. It has been around for most of the history of Linux and has
seen the FOSS community grow and change from that point up to now. The
Linux and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community is not the same as
it was in 1994 and this change contributed to Linux Journal’s death in
December 2017 and the overall loss of momentum in the Free Software
movement. This talk will tell the story of Linux Journal’s death and
resurrection and what it says about the changes in the FOSS community and
what those changes mean for the future of Free Software.
Please stick around after the talk for the yearly NBLUG elections.
Nominations are now open and can be made on the talk list.
Most of us are familiar with interactive image editors like Paint and Photoshop. Fewer people are familiar with the batch tools that can be used from the command line.
These non-interactive tools allow images to be processed in bulk from scripts, or converted automatically in a server. In classic Unix tradition, many can be chained together to create complex workflows.
This talk will include a high-level introduction to the ImageMagick and GraphicsMagick tool suites, and a brief overview of several tools with complimentary functionality.
Lightning Talks: Have something you would like to present, but don’t have enough material for a full talk? Here’s your chance. Talk about anything Linux related.
Hackfest: Bring your hardware or software project to get help with it or just to show it off. A mix of free tech support, show-and-tell, and idle chat.
The systemd system manager has been adopted by most popular Linux distributions, but it can be a difficult system to understand without any background. This talk will provide a practical introduction aimed at users and system administrators. We will discuss how systemd models the world, teach it how to run a service, and take a look at everyday tasks like customizing existing services and inspecting logs.
The community is rallying around Kubernetes — it is quickly becoming the de-facto standard of container orchestration.
But what is Kubernetes and why has it gained so much traction?
In this talk Hunter Fernandes will deep-dive running Kubernetes on the cloud: the problems which lead to choosing Kubernetes, Kubernetes primitives, and Kubernetes in practice.
Linux (and Unix generally) is known for being far more secure than Windows. But is this true? Is there such a thing as Linux Malware? There is, and in this talk I’ll present a brief overview of the history of Linux/Unix malware, worms, trojans and viruses. I’ll cover how they spread, what the current outbreak landscape looks like today, where it’s likely to head in the future and what you can do to keep yourself safe.
Don’t assume that just because you’re not running Windows that you’ve done everything you need to do! If you’ve got a machine on the net, you could be contributing CPU cycles and bandwidth to a botnet. Get informed, take some simple precautions and ensure that you’re not part of the problem.
Hackfest: Bring your hardware or software project to get help with it or just to show it off.
A mix of free tech support, show-and-tell, and idle chat.
Lightning Talks:
Have something you would like to present, but don’t have enough material for a full talk?
Here’s your chance.
Talk about anything Linux related.
Having a trustworthy boot process is the foundation of the rest of your
system’s security. If your BIOS, kernel, or initrd have been tampered with,
an attacker can hide their backdoor from the rest of the system. This talk
will discuss the security threats against the boot process and briefly
cover some other approaches to protect against boot-time attacks but the
talk will primarily focus on Heads, an open source project that provides
tamper-evident boot. I will discuss how Heads works, how it differs from
other secure boot approaches, and demonstrate how it protects against tampering.
Unless there are security concerns Allan Cecil will stream the
talk at https://twitch.tv/dwangoAC — see you there either in person or virtually!
Are you frustrated with the model/router/switch your ISP provides? Curious what your options are to improve performance or regain control? NBLUG will be holding a panel discussion about home networking, focusing on the humble router. We have representatives of several options:
Improving existing hardware by flashing OpenWRT or similar
Building your own router from an old PC or single-board computer
Commercial products aimed at IT professionals
We expect a wide-ranging discussion of the pros and cons of each of these approaches, touching on the effort required, security implications, and flexibility of each option. Questions from the audience are welcome.
It’s time for another GPG key signing. We had one in May 2003 & August 2014.
The point of this is to create a web of trust. By signing someone’s
public key, you state that you have checked that the person that uses a
certain keypair, is who he says he is and really is in control of the
private key. This way a complete network of people who trust each other
can be created. This network is called the strongly connected set.
Information about it can be found at http://pgp.cs.uu.nl/
Before the meeting:
Generate a public/private keypair with the gpg --gen-key
command (accept the defaults), see man gpg for more info.
Upload your key to a keyserver:
gpg--send-keys--keyserverkeyserver.ubuntu.com
Print out the key fingerprint with gpg --fingerprint
Also include your full name, email address, and Key ID#.
Bring this to the meeting,
and optionally make extra copies to hand out.
Email me at frank@nblug.org with the fingerprint, email address, full
name, and Key ID. I’ll have a list of everyone’s info to hand out.
During the meeting:
Verify your GPG key fingerprint on the list I hand out and
verify your identity (with photo ID).
After the meeting:
Download the all of the keys for the fingerprints verified at the meeting
