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

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

• Wednesday, December 3, 2008
• 6:30 PM - 8:17 PM

• Jeff Muse
• Craig Buchek
• Carl Fitch
• Lee Lammert
• Stan Reichardt
• Gary Meyer

• Secretary has been MIA for several months – needs to print out minutes.

• Balance: $1346.55 as of 10/31/08
• Receipts (pending submission):
  • Carl - Annual registration fee to State of Missouri
  • Craig - Submit receipt for voice recorder.
  • Gary - Turn in receipt for domain registration.
• Need suggestions for following up with and attracting potential sponsors.

Gary suggests we discuss why the #s on the general meeting and STLLUG are so low! What can be done to return them to more traditional values? Also relate to subscriptions to ANNOUNCE.

• Numbers, as of end of November 2008:

• No - indicates no meeting.
• NA - Not part of SLUUG
• () - Numbers in parentheses are head count.
• ? - Question mark indicates attendance not taken or sheet missing.
• xx - attendance numbers not yet recorded.
• Dropped reference to LDAP meetings.

• Gary suggests we talk about what can be done about the declining subscriptions to ANNOUNCE.
  • A ~20% drop in 18 months! (And it was over 1000…when?)

• Subscriber numbers (approximate) as of end of November 2008:

• Numbers will now be as end of each month.
• Blocking of mailing list attachments not completely configured yet.

• ANNOUNCE mailing list.
  • Still no volunteer editor to do a quarterly or monthly newsletter.

   November 2008    
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• Linux Configuration Workshop - No presentation.
• Library bumped us out of large room.

• BASE: What's a wajig (and why should your care) by Carl Fitch
  • One of Carl's best presentations – well-prepared.
• MAIN: Booting PC Style! by Rich Seibel
  • Phenomenal.

• TOPIC: Dedicated DNS Server in a Zone, by Jeff Muse and Carl Fitch.
  • Showed how to set up a dedicated DNS server in a zone (SUN virtual machine) during the meeting.
  • Good, ran the presentation on the fly.

• TOPIC: Discussion about new features from Novell.

• TOPIC: Nexradix™ Linux by Tony Lovasco
  • Showed new items in his custom distribution.
  • Not well attended or advertised.

• November meeting was canceled due to scheduling problems.

• Topics are usually determined by attendees. We sometimes cover more than one.
  • TOPIC: Partitioning and Making File Systems with MKFS

   December 2008    
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• Linux Configuration Workshop - No presentation.

• BASE: Installation from source - config, make, make install, etc. by Carl Fitch
• MAIN: Scott Granneman's new book "Google Apps Deciphered: Compute in the Cloud to Streamline Your Desktop" (confirmed, via Gary)

• TOPIC: Dedicated DNS Server in a Zone, Continued
  • Participation will be appreciated.

• Holiday schedule, one week early.
• Topics are usually determined by attendees. We sometimes cover more than one.
  • OPTION1: Continued exploration of /var directory.
  • OPTION2: Exploring the GNOME File Manager.
  • OPTION3: Partitions.
  • OPTION4: Anything else.

• TOPIC: Teaming and Conferencing (T&C) by Gary Hollingsworth

• TOPIC: TBD
• TOPIC: POSSIBLE: Rick Clark (Ubuntu topic) (via Craig – Craig to follow up)
• TOPIC: BACKUP: Everything You (N)Ever Wanted to Know About Hard Drives by Craig Buchek

• HOLIDAY Schedule - need to avoid conflict with Christmas Day
• TOPIC: Favorite Applications (sort of like keyboard karaoke). CLI or GUI.

• Christmas Day

    January 2009    
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• HIATUS - Holiday schedule. No Meeting.

• Back to back meeting dates with STLLUG.
• BASE: ps by TBD
• MAIN: TBD

• Back to back meeting dates with SLUUG.
• TOPIC: TBD

• TOPIC: TBD

• TOPIC: TBD

• TOPIC: Software RAID by Carl Fitch

• Topics are usually determined by attendees. We sometimes cover more than one.
  • OPTION1: Continued exploration of /var directory.
  • OPTION2: Exploring the GNOME File Manager
  • OPTION3: Partitions
  • OPTION4: Anything else.

These are some people who can present, and possible topics they can speak about.

• Don Hardaway and Craig Van Slyke (St. Louis University)
  • TOPIC: Open Source on the Desktop: Why Not?
  • Gary to contact them to request a presentation from them.
  • See first article here
• Wehrenberg Theaters (via Gary)
  • TOUR/DEMO: Digital cinema projectors
• Sanjiv Bhatia (or someone from UMSL, via Lee)
  • TOPIC: AIX 6
  • TOPIC: Open Grid Computing
  • December or January
• David Letscher (Prof of CS at SLU) (via Gary)
  • TOPIC: TBD
  • Still gone for summer. Awaiting details.
• Rick Clark (Ubuntu) (via Craig)
  • TOPIC: TBD
  • Might be able to talk to STCLUG and STLLUG
• Jeff Logullo (Sun)
  • TOPIC: MySQL - now a Sun product
  • TOPIC: Project Indiana, a new package management system a la apt/dpkg
  • TOPIC: Versioning filenames (snapshots?) in ZFS
  • TOPIC: New release of ZFS
  • TOPIC: Belenix & other live CD's based on Open Solaris
• Scott Nesler
  • TOPIC: GIMP (follow-up from previous presentation)
• Jeff Muse
  • TOPIC: various Solaris topics
• Ed Howland (via Gary)
  • TOPIC: Last.fm, Amarok, etc. - free music downloads
  • TOPIC: Building a modern kernel
• Stan Reichardt
  • TOPIC/DEMO: Google Calendar
  • TOPIC/DEMO: Using Scribus
• Tim Dreste (via Stan R)
  • TOPIC: Untangle Gateway Platform
  • TOPIC: CentOS Linux
• unknown (via Carl)
  • TOPIC: EnterpriseDB (packaged version of PostgreSQL)
  • Would be a video-conference, so requires solving logistics problems
• Craig Buchek
  • Mac OS X
  • Miro, Songbird

These are some topics that we've had requested, or brainstormed, but need to find speakers for.

• Drawing network diagrams using Dia or OpenOffice Draw
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL 5)
  • Still looking for volunteer; tried Clark Smith at Red Hat
• Fedora recent releases
• SuSE or OpenSUSE recent releases
  • Someone from Novell?
  • Gary Hollingsworth?
• HP-UX current release, features, future
  • Dave Mills?
  • HP corporate?
• iSCSI
• Using git
• CPUs
  • Features of modern Intel/AMD CPUs
  • x86-64
  • x86, x86-64, IA64, Sparc, PowerPC, ARM, POWER
• iPhone
  • Developing for (web, native)
• iPhone competitors
  • LG Dare
  • Samsung Instinct
  • Other Linux-based phones
  • LiMo versus Google Android
• Linux from scratch.
• SplashTop - a quick booting distro.

• Current paying sponsors have been asked to renew with nice letter in April.
  • Gary - Ask Ajilon about continuing $200 sponsorship.
  • Craig - Ask S3 - Strategic Staffing Solutions (follow up)
• Potential sponsors
  • Sun - Jeff Logullo
  • IBM - (John Hodge may have a contact)
  • Red Hat - Clark Smith (Craig to follow up)
  • Canonical/Ubuntu (Craig to follow up)
  • VMware - Matt Skipton
  • We should review them once or twice annually and establish an end date on recognition.
• 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.

• Wash U took our webdev box (128.252.19.27) off network Mon December 1.
  • They detected questionable IRC traffic with IP addresses in Finland & Norway.
  • We should analyze and respond.
• Jeff Muse added Ultra and Busch - Sun Netras running Solaris 10.
  • Expect to use one like Bud and one for backup storage.
• Carl and Jeff broke into the Sun machines again and reset passwords so they do not expire!
  • Carl connected serial port on Bud to serial console on Busch.
  • Carl connected serial port on Budlight to serial console on Ultra.
  • Can use minicom to connect via serial ports.
• Carl and Jeff set up a back-end network at Primary.Net, to run our backups.
• We have 2 Sun E250s, which are currently racked but not connected.
  • Carl proposed parting out those boxes.
  • Craig concurred.
  • One of the systems is reporting a bad/missing CPU.
  • The other seems to be OK, but needs power and an OS.
  • Jeff got 4 x 36 GB hard drives, to place in Sun E250s.
• We're planning to setup our own DNS on Ultra/Busch.
  • Make our own servers authoritative for our own domains.
  • Would allow us to publish reverse records.
    • Primary has said they can allow this.
  • Would allow us to publish SPF records.
  • We could offer dyanmic DNS services to our members.
    • On a subdomain, such as users.sluug.org
• Steve Smith (from Solaris SIG) offered a 36 GB drive to install in one of the Netras.

• Backups
• 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.
  • Craig - Work on finishing server builds.
    • Document changes to PAM to correct MAIL variable. (Craig)
    • More security, for SSH and otherwise.
    • Get offsite backups working. (Mike)
    • Publish SSH host keys on web page.
    • Standardize/regularize user accounts (IDs, password expirations). (Mike)
• Other work to do:
  • Better web site management tools
  • Document useradd process.
  • Develop standardized 'Membership List' & same UIDs on all production machines.

• Need to register SLACC.COM domain.
  • Carl - follow up with Noel about transferring the SLACC.COM domain to us.
• Noel asked that we allow current email users to keep their SLACC.COM email addresses.
• Check on SLACC.ORG - seems to be owned by a cybersquatter

• Membership drive
  • Need to print out name tags.
    • Omnitec will print them out and bring to SLUUG meeting.
• Cafe Press merchandise
  • Carl/SLUUG/Lee need to reconcile demo merchandise
• Lee has proposed to sell pizzas as fund-raiser if continued insufficient Memberships & Sponsors.

• 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
  • Scott Nesler has built an app for attendance
    • Stan has plugged data into it for the year
    • Not sure if the app fits any of our other needs
      • (app is developed on CakePHP MVC architecture).
      • Member Payment, expiration would be simple addition to existing table/screens.
      • CRUD functionality simplifies expanding the application with additional tables.
      • Compartmentalization of CSS and layout templates simplifies changes to the look and feel.

• Scott Nesler purchased and donated STCLUG.ORG domain.
• Domain expires mid December – need to renew it.
• Craig added to Apache configuration, so it now runs off our servers properly.

• None.

• Small Business Expo is in March.
  • Lee has signed up for a booth – same one as last time.
  • Project is to build a business desktop GNU/Linux PC to show off.
    • Need to get requirements/recommendations.

• Stan asked if Clarence might re-start the Security SIG.

• Figure out Board opening(s).
• Nominate warm bodies.
• Determine eligible voters.

• Gary - Renew STCLUG.ORG and SLACC.COM domains.
• Gary - Contact Don Hardaway and Craig Van Slyke (St. Louis University).
• Craig - Contact Rick Clark (Ubuntu) about presenting at October or November STLLUG.
• Lee - Need list to print out name tags for paying members.
• Carl - Get with Mike to set up accounts for new members. (Lee has the info.)
• Barry - Follow up w/ John Hodge about a presentation in the near future.
• Lee, Barry - Get someone from IBM to talk about POWER6, AIX 6.0, etc.
• Craig - Email Jim Leingang @ S3 about $200 sponsorship.

• Everyone - Talk to someone about coming to meetings.
• Everyone - Talk to someone about sponsorships.
• Everyone - Talk to someone about giving a presentation.