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steercom:2007-11

SLUUG Steering Committee Minutes - November 2007

NOTE: Minutes posted on the wiki are always unofficial. Schedules for upcoming presentations are always tentative. (Some more tentative than others!)

Location

Saint Louis Bread Company,
(at Old Olive and Olive),
10550 Old Olive Street Road,
Creve Coeur, MO 63141

Date and Time

  • Wednesday, 7 November 2007
  • 6:30 pm - 9:00 pm

Attendees

  • Craig Buchek
  • Carl Fitch
  • Lee Lammert
  • Stan Reichardt
  • Ken Christian
  • Gary Meyer

Secretary Report

  • Need to print out minutes for September.

Treasurer Report

  • No report. Needs to catch up on statements.
  • Carl needs to give money collected for memberships to the Treasurer.
  • Collected a $200 check from SyllogisTeks for sponsorship.
  • Open issues:
    • New IRS reporting requirement
      • We will (likely) have to file a form 990-EZ for the 2007 tax year.
      • No response from Rich McClennan.
      • Will try talking to Kathy Smith (Fred's wife).
    • Final bill from Wash U. - need to complete reply

Book Sales Report

  • Sold several books at $5 each at September meeting.

Attendance Report

  • Some numbers:
Meeting Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct
Steercom: 4 5 4 3 5 7 4 5 5 No
SLACC: 9 6 7 ?? ?? 8 6 10 7 5
1st LDAP: 7 xx 5 6 7 6 No No No No
SLUUG: 26 12 23 22 18 16 27 36 21 24
Solaris: 3 4 No 18 15 6 8 No 11 No
2nd LDAP: xx xx 6 5 5 6 No No (6) 7
STLLUG: 15 12 14 18 23 20 31 31 (32) 23 19
HZWLUG: 9 7 9 8 9 No 11 11 10 10
Security: 10 No No 7 9 No 6 No No No
STCLUG: 12 10 10 6 ?? 8 11 17 10 11
  • No - indicates no meeting.
  • () - Numbers in parentheses are head count.
  • ?? - Question marks indicate attendance not taken or sheet missing.
  • xx - attendance numbers not yet recorded.

Mailing List Report

  • We have migrated most lists from Majordomo on Michelob to MailMan on Bud.
    • USERS and non-SLUUG lists are only remaining lists to migrate.
  • Some current mailing list subscriber numbers (approximate):
List May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov
ANNOUNCE 917 925 900 915 885 877 877
DISCUSS 184 190 188 190 190 192 192
STEERCOM 32 32 33 32 32 32 32
SYSADMIN xx xx 18 18 18 17 17
  • Blocking of mailing list attachments not completely configured yet.
  • ANNOUNCE mailing list.
    • Still no volunteer editor to do a Quarterly or monthly newsletter.
    • No subscribers suspended due to excessive bounces this month.

Review and Comments

September 2007

HOLIDAY - September 3

  • Labor Day

SLACC - September 6

  • Linux Configuration Workshop - No presentation.

SLUUG - September 12

  • Note - Red Hat Seminar at Westport Plaza (8:45-12:30)
    • Red Hat troop had to be in Chicago next morning.
    • Red Hat staff attributed Monday surge of 25 registrations to ANNOUNCE list.
  • BASE: Introduction to bud.sluug.org (SLUUG's new mail server) by Those That Did
    • Good. Lots of comments about mail systems.
  • MAIN: Rsyncing System Files with Root Permissions by Carl Fitch
    • Good. Covered a "push" method, using rsnapshot.

SOLARIS - September 18

  • TOPIC: DTrace by Jeff Logullo
    • Looked good – slick tool.

STLLUG - September 20

  • TOPIC: ZoneMinder - Linux video camera security and surveillance by Simon Amies (via Carl)
    • Excellent presentation.
    • Craig was not able to attend; Carl was MC.
    • Much better Q&A session this month.
    • Carl modeled SLUUG stuff.
  • Two new folks - one from EPC booth info & one from Internet search.
  • Door prizes were left-overs from RH Tour.

HZWLUG - September 25

  • TOPIC: Partitioning Schemes
  • Plus other unstructured topics requested by Newbie questions
  • Split up into smaller groups after loss of control.

SECURITY - September 26

  • NO MEETING - UMSL Lab room not available due to Micro$oft Office Preview Night event.
  • No response on DISCUSS list query about meeting.

STCLUG - September 27

  • TOPIC: Rsyncing System Files with Root Permissions by Carl Fitch
    • Really good.

October 2007

St. Louis Small Business Expo - October 2

  • At St. Charles Convention Center - 11:00 AM - 6:00 PM
  • EPC provided 4 machines.

SLACC - October 4

  • Linux Configuration Workshop - No presentation.

SLUUG - October 10

  • Base: SmartMon Tools (Monitoring Hard Drive Health) by Carl Fitch
    • Good coverage.
    • Lots of questions – ran way over.
  • TOPIC: Intro to Distributed Source Control by Kyle Cordes (via Craig)
    • Excellent presenter.
    • Topic was very well received.
    • Would have liked more time to get into more detail.

SOLARIS - October 16

  • CANCELED at last minute

STLLUG - October 18

  • TOPIC: Lotus Notes (Client and Server) on Linux by Mike Wissinger of TeamCentric
    • Light turn-out.
    • Good presentation. Covered a lot – perhaps too much.
    • Needed to cover the "why" better – why would one choose it?

SECURITY - October 24

  • CANCELED - defunct?

STCLUG - October 25

  • TOPIC: Joomla! What? by Mike Ward
    • First presentation by the speaker. Enthusiastic about doing another.
    • Did a better job than he thought he did.
    • Medium well.

HZWLUG - October 30

  • NOTE: 5th Tuesday because of Library schedule conflict.
  • Was going to talk about network connections.
  • Split up into 3 groups (before losing control, this time).
    • Helped people with wireless issues.
    • Helped someone with YUM and package management.
    • Helped someone with a bad Ubuntu install (bad CD).

Presentation Schedule

November 2007

SLACC - November 1

  • Linux Configuration Workshop - No presentation.

HOLIDAY - November 12

  • Veterans Day (Observed).

SLUUG - November 14

  • TOPIC: Genetics, DNA, Viruses, Bioinfomatics, Epigenetics, etc. (part 1) by Robert Citek (via Craig).
  • NOTE: Back-to-back meeting dates.

STLLUG - November 15

  • TOPIC: Genetics, DNA, Viruses, Bioinfomatics, Epigenetics, etc. (part 2) by Robert Citek (via Craig).
  • NOTE: Back-to-back meeting dates.

STCLUG - November 19

  • CANCELED due to holidays.

SOLARIS - November 20

  • TOPIC: RBAC (Role-Based Access Control)

HOLIDAY - November 22

  • Thanksgiving Day

HZWLUG - November 27

  • TOPIC: TBD
  • Plus other unstructured topics requested by Newbie questions

SECURITY - November 28

  • TOPIC: TBD?

December 2007

SLACC - December 6

  • Linux Configuration Workshop - No presentation.

SLUUG - December 12

  • BASE: TBD.
  • MAIN: All About Google by Scott Granneman (CONFIRMED, via Stan R.)

Linux / Free Software Open House - December 13

  • 2:00 - 8:00 at Premier Knowledge (in South St. Louis)
  • Looking for topics and presenters
  • Anyone who is interested should contact Lee Lammert
  • Not an InstallFest – more of "what to do next"

SOLARIS - December 18

  • TOPIC: TBD

HZWLUG - December 18

  • TOPIC: TBD
  • Plus other unstructured topics requested by Newbie questions.
  • NOTE: On the 3rd Tuesday because Christmas Day is on 4th Tuesday.

STLLUG - December 20

  • TOPIC: PHP Best Practices by Craig Buchek (TENTATIVE)

HOLIDAY - December 25

  • Christmas Day

STCLUG - December 27

  • TOPIC: CakePHP and other PHP Apps by Scott Nesler (confirmed, via Carl).

SLUUG Server Project - December 29

  • Tentative work day for server builders.

January 2008

February 2008

STLLUG - February 21

  • TOPIC: High-Performance Clustering by Brian Henerey of Wash U (via Craig)

Potential Future Topics

  • APV (Advance POWER Virtualization) Overview by John Hodge
  • Demo/Using Scribus by Stan Reichardt.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL 5)- still looking for volunteer (via Craig).
  • Untangle Gateway Platform (instead of CentOS Linux) by Tim Dreste (via Stan R).
  • AIX 6 - due out later this year (about November, IBM via John Hodge)
  • Another presentation from Tom Bowman at TeamCentric Technologies (DB2?) (via Craig)
  • Building a modern kernel by Ed Howland.
  • Using git by Ed Howland.
  • Remotely presented (video conferencing) topics.
  • Qt/KDE (TrollTech sales rep, via Craig)
  • Linux(xBSD, etc) on Wireless. (Suggested by Ed Howland)
    • Part 1: Theory and operation of wireless networks.
      • The 802.11 stack (relevant protocols).
      • Descriptions of terms, expansion of alphabet soup.
      • Security (WEP, WPA, WPA2)
      • Network types (ad-hoc, infrastrucure).
      • Modes (ad-hoc, managed, master, monitor).
      • Packet Types (management, data frames, beacons, probes).
    • Part 2: Practical Linux Wireless configuration.
      • Cards, compatibility.
      • NDISWrapper and native (devicescape stack).
      • Drivers
      • Tools (using wpa_supplicant).
      • Network Monitor
      • Wireshark sniffing.

Sponsorships

  • New Sponsor - SyllogisTeks
    • They have been providing door prizes and paying room fee for STLLUG meetings.
    • We have received a sponsorship check for $200.
    • Working on logo for SLUUG website rotating front page display (Stan R.)
    • Attendees were in favor of adding logo to our site before receiving money.
    • They paid for dinner after the meeting last month.
  • Have the current paying sponsors been asked to renew (with payment)?
    • Ajilon (Stan to follow up)
    • S3 - Strategic Staffing Solutions (Craig to follow up)
  • Potential sponsors
    • Sun - Jeff Logullo
    • IBM - (John Hodge may have a contact)
    • Red Hat - Clark Smith (Craig to follow up)
    • Novell / SuSE - Matt Skipton
  • Some old information has:
    • Annual sponsorship as $200 for Businesses and
    • $300 for Large Enterprise Corporations. This amount show on sluuginfo.pdf (18 April 2007) handout.
    • The $300 amount not viable, so sponsorships are $200.
    • Stan will purge any $300 amount from web site and forms.
  • We should review them once or twice annually and establish an end date on recognition.
  • We in fact recognize multiple entities as sponsors due to community support or services in kind.
    • EPC - STLLUG Installfest, STL BusExpo hardware use & handout printing support, SLUUG discount.
    • Computers & Things - STLLUG Installfests, STCLUG projector & STL BusExpo printing support.
    • Graybar - SLUUG general meeting site.
    • Hostirian - New server hosting.
    • K&S Pritchard Enterprises - Hosted STLLUG web pages thru to Spring 2007.
    • O'Reilly - discount book arrangement (now moot - suggest removing).
    • Law Offices of Rich McLennen - legal services as needed.
    • UMSL-MicroLabs - The St. Louis Security Group meeting lab area.
    • Omnitec - has been providing services in kind commensurate with other sponsors.
  • Possible Sponsor - pcMemoryStore
    • Last meeting, we approved.
    • However, their deal turned out not to be of any advantage to us or our members.
  • Need sign about sponsoring our group for booth/table display at meetings and trade shows.
  • More effort should be directed to find new sponsors.
    • No effort means no more new sponsors.

Server Migration Project

  • Next work meeting: December 29.
  • Accomplished in the past 2 months:
    • Installed Budlight.
      • Carl is still trying to get QEMU or Xen to work.
      • Not ready for production use yet.
    • Installed 2 1U Sun servers in Hostirian data center.
      • Busch - OpenSolaris
      • Ultra - OpenSolaris
      • DNS entries have been added.
      • Root passwords follow the same standard as Bud and Budlight.
    • Ran through several LDAP configurations in lab environment.
    • Installed LDAP server on Bud (November 6)
    • Configured LDAP server on Bud (November 6)
      • Created root container.
      • Developed schemas for users and mail accounts.
        • Not being used as of yet.
    • Installed PHP LDAP Admin
      • Web based, but only runs locally – set up an SSH tunnel to make it work
  • Work left to do:
    • Make sure docs are up to date.
      • Add documentation telling users how to configure mail clients to use Bud.
      • Started documenting client email configurations, to help users migrate.
      • See users and mail_setup pages.
    • Start migrating individual users.
      • Make sure we have documentation on what we need to migrate.
    • Finish rebuilding Budlight.
      • Carl may rebuild using virtual machines.
    • Craig - Work on finishing server builds.
      • Document changes to PAM to correct MAIL variable. (Craig)
      • Get offsite backups working.
      • Publish SSH host keys on web page.
      • Work with Ed Wehner to migrate gateway-l and archrivals lists.
      • Migrate USERS mailing list.
  • Other work to do:
    • Jeff working on virus scanning
    • Craig working on Drupal

Website Library

  • Stan R. and Ted P.
  • Partial migration from Dark to Bud sufficient to start loading presentations.
  • Each website has skeleton presentation page listing topics given to date.
  • No routine presentation uploads yet.

SLACC as a SIG

  • Carl needs to follow up with Noel about transferring the domain to us.
    • The registration is paid up until 2009.
    • Noel asked that we allow current email users to keep their SLACC.com email addresses.

Membership (and Shell Accounts)

  • Membership drive
    • 2 members signed up in September.
      • Shell accounts have been created.
      • Lee has membership forms.
    • Need to print out name tags.
      • Omnitec will print them out and bring to SLUUG meeting.
  • Cafe Press merchandise
    • Sold 5 shirts.
    • Carl has the money – needs to turn into treasurer.
    • Stan to add CafePress link to SLUUG web site when we get info.
    • Stan to link new membership page into SLUUG web site.
  • It was suggested that we use Scott Nessler's logos.
    • We should ask Scott.
    • We should post the choices to STEERCOM for voting to make it official.

Other Old Business

  • Library reservations (October 6)
    • Reserved rooms for all our meetings.
      • A few holiday conflicts.
    • We have Thornhill as a backup to Indian Trails for STLLUG meetings.
      • Meeting room is better, but no projector.
    • Craig to follow up again.
    • EPC would like to hold the meetings.
      • Open 9-2 on weekends, close at 6 on weekdays.
      • Talk to Tony Lavasco and Frank Polston if we need to follow up.
  • O'Fallon Historical Society RFP
    • EPC suggested that SLUUG might want to help them.
    • Requires document scanning, OCR, database.
    • Nobody here seems to have sufficient experience with large-scale document/media management.

New Business

  • Security Group
    • Has not had a meeting in the past 3 months.
    • Clarence has had conflicts.
    • Other leaders have not been responsive.
    • Steering Committee has declared the group "in hiatus".
      • Stan will update web site with the new status.
    • Gary will start a thread on DISCUSS.
      • Asking for location and leadership.
  • Linux / Free Software Open House
    • December 13 (2:00 - 8:00)
    • at Premier Knowledge (in South St. Louis)
    • Looking for topics and presenters.
    • Anyone who is interested should contact Lee Lammert.
    • Not an InstallFest – more of "what to do next".
  • Lee suggested we create a Rails app on Bud to manage the group.
    • Member data - payments, expirations, etc.
    • Sponsors - expirations, etc.
    • Attendance
    • STL Ruby Group is writing a similar application.
      • RAMS - Rails Association Management System
      • We should leverage that, and guide it to our needs

Blue Sky

  • Stan suggested that we NOT have Lightning Talks this year.
    • Lack of organizing them ahead of time.
    • Lack of commitment from presenters.
    • Several people skip that meeting because they don't like the idea.
  • Ken wants to record our presentations (audio).
    • To do it right, a wireless microphone would be helpful.
    • He would then edit the audio and create an MP3.
    • Perhaps created podcasts of our presentations.
  • Stan suggested selecting a Man of the Year.
    • Someone not an officer.

Follow-up and Action Items

  • Carl - Cancel credit card processing.
  • Carl - Turn in cash drawer funds to treasurer.
  • Jeff - Seek assistance from AIX gurus (Barry, John, Mike, Gary) to see if we want to set up his box.
  • Barry, John - talk to Rich Seibel and Dave Mills about AIX hardware he has.
  • Lee - Follow up drafting reply to Wash U.
  • Craig - Email Clark Smith @ Red Hat about getting someone to present on RHEL5, and $200 sponsorship.
  • Craig - Email Jim Leingang @ S3 about $200 sponsorship.
  • Stan - Ask Ajilon about continuing $200 sponsorship.
  • Gary - Prepare Sun E250 for potential use.
  • Gary - Turn in receipt for domain registration.
  • Server Builders - Meet on December 29 for work day.
  • Everyone - Talk to someone about coming to meetings.
  • Everyone - Talk to someone about sponsorships.
  • Everyone - Talk to someone about giving a presentation.
steercom/2007-11.txt · Last modified: 2007/11/09 12:50 by 69.154.216.40