Official Publication of the STL!/unix/usr/group

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Online version: http://www.sluug.org/cronicle/

Table of Contents

• Next Meeting Details
• Tutorial:Rebooting By Robert Citek
• Guru Gathering:Spontaneous Subjects with Rich Seibel
• Presentation: Domain Name Registration and Use by Craig Bucheck, Ed Wehner and Mike King
• Next Linux SIG Meeting is 15 June
• Book Special(s):
• Upcoming Events
• Meeting Directions
• Article(s)
  • Volunteers Carry the load!
  • Thanks to Matthew Feldt
  • Future of Linux SIG
  • Quotations
  • Short Subjects Wanted
  • Call for Comparison Panelists
  • Personal Commentary
• Special Interest Groups (SIGS)
  • Linux SIG (SLUUG-LS)
  • Digital Alpha SIG
• Steering Committee
• Sponsors
• SLUUG on the World Wide Web
• SLUUG Administration is volunteer based.
• /usr/groups/other
• Contacts
• Submitting Articles to the SLUUG CRONicle
• SLUUG PO Box

Wednesday, June 14, 2000 at 6:30 PM
Sunnen Products, 7910 Manchester

Abstract:

"Rebooting is for adding new hardware: shutting down your Unix machine." Robert will explain a few different ways to bring down a Unix machine, from the graceful to the foolhardy, and the consequences of each.

Biography:
Robert Citek works for the Office of Technology Alliances at the University of California, Irvine, see http://www.ota.uci.edu where he gets to read and track all the cool inventions coming from the University. Purely for fun, he also remotely administers a cluster of Linux and Windows machines in Irvine from St. Louis.

Ideas about this discussion are welcome; please send mailto:rwcitek@uci.edu

This Gathering of Gurus (GoG) is an informal discussion group of people with similar degrees of experience and common interests for open discussion. They would rather talk with peers than sit quietly and listen to the tutorial. Anyone may attend, and discussion is encouraged.

Ideas for future discussions are welcomed; please send mailto:rich@mail.sluug.org

Abstract:

From shadow passwords to encryption to malicious code, an indepth guide to both Linux innate mechanisms and the tools available to security professionals (and hackers) will be detailed. Furthermore, the presentation will briefly cover some of the most notable security holes and the means to protect one's systems against them.

Ideas about this discussion are welcome; please send mailto:matthew@porter.opendesk.com

We must point out that the LINUX SIG meeting is THIS WEEK (i.e. the 15th) and not the following week. There was some confusion because the 1st of this month fell on Thursday.

On a positive note Matthew Porter has volunteered to be at the Library the following Thursday as well because we accidentally published the wrong date in some ITEC handouts. If anyone wants to join him there in case some new attendees do show up, he will appreciate the company.

Title of the Month This month only, a special 40% off on a selection of more than 150 books left over from our ITEC inventory which includes many recently released titles.

All regularly priced titles are 10% off retail cost at the general meeting. (Excludes featured, or specially priced or promotional items)

The O'Reilly and Associates line of books is available at each monthly general meeting as a convenience to our members.

Each month features a book related to that month's presentation or tutorial topic.

The STL!/unix/usr/group meets the 2nd Wednesday of every month at Sunnen Products, 7910 Manchester Blvd, just east of Hanley on Manchester.

Directions From Downtown

1. Take 40 West to the Hanley exit.
2. Turn left (south) onto Hanley.
3. Turn left (east) onto Manchester, then turn right ASAP into the Sunnen Products driveway.

See map at http://www.sluug.org/info/sunnen.html

(NOTE: A security guard from Sunnen is scheduled to be at the door from 6:20 PM to 7:20 PM to allow entry. After 7:20, the door will be unattended and attendees may not be able to enter.)

The SLUUG Steering Committee meets the Tuesday following the general meeting at 6:00 PM in the 2nd floor training room of Daugherty Systems, One City Place in Creve Coeur.

The SLUUG Linux SIG (SLUUG-LS) meets the 3rd Thursday of every month at the Indian Trails Public Library.

See map at http://www.stllinux.org/linux/directions/

We are still cleaning up the details from our participation in this year's ITEC (Information Technology Expositions and Conferences) Expo 2000. It is always heartening and amazing how so many of our members volunteer their time and efforts to get our Users' Group the needed exposure at this event.

An immediate "thank you" to all the volunteers. More on this next month.

The ITEC Committee looks forward to hearing from you.

Members can send mailto:itec@mail.sluug.org for details.

Matthew Feldt is moving to Cleveland and is leaving the SLUUG Linux SIG Chair.

Although we would greatly appreciate his continued participation his absence means he must step out of his duties as Chairperson.

In July 1995, the 1st meeting of the Linux Special Interest Group (SIG) was held. Matthew was the 1st presenter and has been the guiding influence of the St. Louis Unix User's Group (SLUUG) Linux SIG since its inception. Matthew did so much of the work on his own... doing presentations, organizing other presenters, soliciting give-aways...he was really wearing multiple hats and we too seldom thanked him.

Before starting the SLUUG Linux SIG, Matthew had been active in the leadership of the overall Users' Group and a presenter at the Wednesday nite meetings.

So I'm sure everyone in the Users' Group offers Matthew a "BIG THANK YOU" for his years of outstanding contributions. If Matthew makes it to this month's meetings, please express your appreciation in person.

Matthew will still be working for his current employer, First Star, and hopefully he will attend our meetings and other events when they have him come to St. Louis. Until then, we hope he stays in touch online.

THANKS Matthew!!!

We have had at least 4 people volunteering to take over some/all of Matthew's duties and then some. The steering committee is talking to all of them and will shortly be announcing the new organization of the SLUUG Linux SIG.

We thank everyone who has expressed interest and concern for the future of our Linux SIG. We remind everyone that many hands make lite work and we do need more people to volunteer for various and different roles to continue to improve the organization.

We need some short subjects!

Have you had an idea that you might speak on a topic but thought that there wasn't enuff material or that it would take too long to prepare a quality presentation?

Nonsense!!

We have frequently noted that we too often push into longer meetings. Short topics are what we need! The group is eager to get a little starting material and then flesh out the discussion with questions and comments from the entire group.

The word "seminar" comes from a greek root meaning "drinking session". The concept was that people would make comments in a social atmosphere not as an "expert" in the field but as a peer presenting his view and soliciting the views of others.

You don't need to be an expert. Just get us started on a topic with a few points, insites, or questions.

If you you think your topic is VERY short...we can do 2 presentations on different topics that nite.

We have an idea for 3 months of presentations. We need some volunteer panelists to take part.

1. We want to compare different UNIX releases. Since almost none of us is well versed in every version, we are looking for panelists who can at least reflect on their experiences with 2 different versions. EX. Solaris and AIX. or, HP-UX and SCO. If you have experience on more than 2, great!

   The idea would be for each panelist to present what most impressed him about the differences (similarities) between the 2 or 3 or... that he/she is familiar with. For example; management tools such as SMIT vs SAM, file systems (journalization, NFS,...), or installation options and scripts.

   After a Panelist gives his views, other panelist may take the opportunity to comment on the same points referring to versions they are familiar with (i.e. the 1st presenter speaks about file system auto-mounts in Solaris and HP-UX and someone else follows up by adding how AIX handles the same issues).

   We suspect each panelist would need to do little preparation. We would try to share each panelists points in advance so other panelist can reflect in advance.

2. We want to do the same thing but tighten the focus to "Free UNIXes". I.E. Linux, SCO, Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD,... We'll define "free" as being anything that allows for non-commercial or private users to use without a fee.

3. The same as above but a tighter focus yet to Linux variants only. Ex. Mandrake vs RedHat vs SuSe vs Debian vs ...

Please say you can be a panelist for any of these events!

We also would love for 3 people to volunteer to be the co-ordinator of these 3 projects. The co-ordinator would keep track of the volunteers and circulate the potential topic points between them and suggest a date for their presentation.

For more information members can send mailto:gary@mail.sluug.org for details.

The following PERSONAL COMMENTARY expresses personal opinions and SLUUG exerts no more editorial control over such content than does a public library, bookstore, or newsstand. Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers, or other information or Content expressed herein are those of the respective author and not necessarily supported by SLUUG. SLUUG does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any content, nor its merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose.

UCITA: Does it impact you?

A new wind may sweep the software industry. More important than any Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit, the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) may rewrite the way vendor software is sold and supported. This is being propagated in legislatures across all 50 states, one at a time. When opponents include Consumers Union, the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Library Association, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, it may be worth looking into.

What does the UCITA do?

- Allows license terms to be be hidden until after software is purchased.
- Allows license terms to be changed by simply posting them on a web site.
- Reduces warranty protection and the right to sue vendors that produce code that is unusable.
- Allows licenses to bar you from publishing your complaints.
- Allows vendors to monitor use of their products and remotely disable software.
- Allows vendors to prohibit selling or giving away used software.
- Gives software developers the power to prohibit reverse engineering of file formats and protocols.
- May make individual and amateur programmers more liable than large companies.

ANY OPPOSING COMMENTS MAY BE MADE BY SENDING mailto:editor@mail.sluug.org for consideration for future publication.)

As our membership grows, we have had some inquiries about the possibility of having Special Interest Groups in several areas. If you are interested in starting or participating in a SIG for System Administration, Networking, C, Object Oriented Programming, a specific vendor, etc., please call Dave Mills at 230-5151, extension 103, or contact any officer of the group.

Visit the Linux SIG home page ( http://www.stllinux.org/linux/ ) for the latest meeting details.

Indian Trails Public Library
8400 Delport Drive
(at Midland)
(314)-428-5424

For more information on SLUUG-LS refer to the WWW home page for the group at http://www.stllinlux.org or contact Matthew Feldt by mailto:linux@www.feldt.com

The Digital Alpha SIG is for those interested in Digital UNIX and the DEC Alpha architecture. Visit the Digital Alpha SIG's home at http://www.sluug.org/~newton/asighome.html for more information.

The SLUUG Steering Committee meets the Tuesday following the general 2nd Wednesday meeting at 6:00 PM in the 2nd floor training room of Daugherty Systems, One City Place in Creve Coeur. The guard can direct you to the meeting location. Anyone is welcome to attend. If you would like to become more involved in the planning of SLUUG, feel free to join us at the next Steering Committee meeting. Meetings usually last 1.5 to 2 hours.

    St. Louis UNIX Users Group
    P.O. Box 411302
    Creve Coeur Post Office
    St. Louis, MO  63141-9998