MUUG Monthly Meetings for 2014-15
Please note our new meeting location:
1M28 Manitoba Hall,
University of Winnipeg,
entrance on Ellice Ave. between Spence and Balmoral St.
(Check out the UofW's maps for nearby parking locations.)
Sage is a free open-source program that allows
(in the style of Mathematica or Maple)
various types of symbolic manipulation.
As described on the
web page,
Sage is built out of nearly 100 open-source packages
and features a unified interface.
It can be used to study elementary and advanced,
pure and applied mathematics.
This includes a huge range of mathematics, including basic algebra,
calculus, elementary to very advanced number theory, cryptography,
numerical computation, commutative algebra, group theory,
combinatorics, graph theory, exact linear algebra and much more.
It combines various software packages and seamlessly integrates
their functionality into a common experience.
It is well-suited for education and research.
The user interface is a notebook in a web browser or the command line.
Using the notebook, Sage connects either locally to your
own Sage installation or to a Sage server on the network.
Inside the Sage notebook you can create embedded graphics,
beautifully typeset mathematical expressions, add and delete input,
and share your work across the network.
Michael Doob was our presenter for this topic.
Before the break, as this month's
RTFM topic,
Rob Keizer talked about the
tmux(1) command.
This month, Adam Thompson talked about setting up a
100% UNIX- and Linux-based network and hosting environment from scratch.
Adam gave a high-level overview of each major component,
including Routing with BGP, Firewalling, VM Hosting, DNS, Mail,
Monitoring with SNMP and more.
As this month's
RTFM topic,
Paul Sierks talked about the
pv(1) command.
This month, Brad Vokey gave a demonstration of
LiveCode:
an open source, cross-platform, rapid application development language.
LiveCode evolved from MetaCard (the original Unix HyperCard clone)
into becoming a true cross-platform IDE capable of running on iOS, Android,
OS X, Windows, and several variations of Unix including Linux, Solaris, and BSD.
It can be used to write mobile, desktop and server/CGI applications
and is the most widely used HyperCard/HyperTalk clone.
LiveCode uses a high level, English-like programming language that is
dynamically typed and tightly integrated to your program's interface.
The language and compile-free work flow generate code that is
self-documenting and very easy for casual programmers to comprehend.
As this month's
RTFM topic,
Wyatt Zacharias compared and contrasted the
curl(1) and
wget(1) commands.
Meet Your New Board
The MUUG Board for the 2014-2015 year was elected
by acclamation at the November general meeting.
Your board now consists of 10 members:
- Trevor Cordes
- Gilbert Detillieux
- Michael Doob
- Robert Keizer
- Kevin McGregor
- Katherine Scrupa
- Paul Sierks
- Adam Thompson
- Brad Vokey
- Wyatt Zacharias
A big thank you to all the nominees who let their
names stand for election, an extra-special welcome
to Paul Sierks, and a welcome-back to Katherine
Scrupa.
Board Positions
The new board held their first board meeting on
November 24th, and elected the following executive
officers for the current year:
- President: Wyatt Zacharias
- Vice-President: Trevor Cordes
- Secretary: Gilbert Detillieux
- Treasurer: Brad Vokey
Adam Thompson assumes the role of Past President.
The board also appointed a banking committee made
up of Brad Vokey, Gilbert Detillieux and Kevin
McGregor.
Mingling and Pot Luck
As 2014 drew to a close,
MUUG decided to continue our new tradition of
turning the December meeting into more of a social event.
This was a totally pot-luck event.
Cookies and pop were provided by MUUG,
but members were encouraged to bring their own food to sample and share.
Real-Time Mapping with *ouchDB
After the mingling and munching,
Robert Keizer presented how he set up a very simple
real-time map using an Android phone and some JavaScript.
The talk focused on separating the data layers
and some of the nice features in *ouchDB.
Winnipeg Harvest Food Drive
Also as in previous years,
we combined our pot luck with a food drive for Winnipeg Harvest.
Thanks the the MUUG members who generously contributed to the bin!
For the main presentation,
Wyatt Zacharias presented how to use the
Arduino networking shield
as either a client or server in your network,
and how it can be integrated with other Arduino peripherals.
The demonstration included integration of a
DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor into a web server or client.
This month's RTFM segment featured
reposync(1),
presented by Adam Thompson.
Reposync is used to synchronize a remote
yum(1)
repository to a local directory.
Theo Baschak presented how to use
SaltStack
to make your life easier,
whether you administer a few hobby servers
or an entire fleet of corporate systems.
Enforce good SysAdmin (planning/testing/backup) skills
by publishing templated configs!
Run security updates on all your systems at once.
Run pre-defined distributed Nagios host/service checks
via the new Nagios module!
For those that haven't heard of SaltStack before,
it is a configuration management system that enforces state.
It is usually compared with Puppet and Chef,
and has been gaining popularity over the last few years.
The main presentation this month was Les, of
Les.net
fame, talking about how to build a datacenter.
This month's RTFM segment featured
Brad Vokey, who explored the
fold(1),
fmt(1), and
pr(1) commands.
Paul Sierks presented an overview of the
Arch Linux
operating system,
from installing the base system and desktop environment,
to updating and managing it.
He covered some of the advantages in this distribution.
Arch focuses on simplicity, minimalism, and stability.
Users can create their own ideal environment,
installing only what is needed or wanted.
A rolling release model, Arch strives to be bleeding edge,
providing the latest stable software.
Paul performed a live demonstration of the Arch install process.
This month's RTFM segment was
ionice(1),
by Adam Thompson.
Similar to what
nice
does for CPU scheduling,
ionice
gets or sets the I/O scheduling class and priority for a program.
May 12, 2015: GoAccess and AD Integration with SSSD
This month was a double feature,
with Wyatt Zacharias presenting the tool
GoAccess
for real-time Apache log analyzing, and report generation.
Adam Thompson then presented how to integrate a RHEL-based system
with Windows Active Directory for login authentication using
SSSD.
This month's RTFM segment featured
units(1),
a versatile unit conversion tool, presented by Gilbert Detillieux.
June 9, 2015: Git Bisect Your Way to Fame and Fortune
Hit a bug that no one is fixing?
Don't know enough C to debug it yourself?
In this month's presentation, Trevor Cordes discussed using
git-bisect(1),
in a process from bug discovery through to kernel patch commit.
This wasn't some dry, isolated git rehash either:
we saw how to leverage distro resources and integrate them with "vanilla",
all from a non-kernel hacker perspective.
We also learned how to get the necessary attention
of the appropriate movers and shakers.
('cause it's often about who you know!)
Wrapped in a riveting story containing angry wives, Downton Abbey,
and a twist ending, this was one presentation you'll be sorry you missed!
Trevor has made his presentation slides available, in both
ODP and
PDF format.
This month's RTFM segment featured
fail2ban(1),
a versatile tool for blocking network abusers, presented by Gilbert Detillieux.
Gilbert gave an overview of the architecture, described the
fail2ban-client(1)
command (with a demo of certain sub-commands),
and walked us through the confusing (and sometimes elusive)
jail.conf(5) man page,
and the plethora of configuration files.
July 2015: No meeting this month
August 2015: No meeting this month
Please note our new meeting location:
1M28 Manitoba Hall,
University of Winnipeg,
entrance on Ellice Ave. between Spence and Balmoral St.
(Check out the UofW's maps for nearby parking locations.)
