Ottawa Valley SAGE

March 2026 Meeting

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 21:42:00 +0000

This was the final meeting on the sparc emulation series. We got to the point where we have the ability to install packages from a third party repository and installed some “modern” versions of community software.

The coordination challenges persisted, but everybody was involved and there were only a few issues to deal with. Success is measured one sudo at a time in this case, since that was the last thing we installed.

Site Inactivity

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 17:19:00 +0000

Despite the lack of posts here, we did have a pretty active 2025 with a few items of interest. I’m not planning on going back and adding entries for 2025 since it would be just references to the mailing list that is still getting updated.

As mentioned, the mailing list archive is now working again. It was converted to mlmmj from mailman2 back when I migrated to a static site, and it is not as tightly integrated as it was with the older mailman software.

February 2026 Meeting

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 23:09:00 +0000

In our ongoing sparc emulation series, we are pretty close to the end. There will probably be a final meeting on the topic now that everybody is caught up. As per usual, the number of challenges in getting everybody on the same page in virtual meetings with wildly different hardware and virtualization has been interesting.

That is another way of saying that standards and clear instructions matter when performing tasks.

Site migration 2026

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 17:19:00 +0000

After a lot of thought and the fact that VPS servers now have multiple cores and a useful amount of RAM, it was time to consolidate multiple websites. This is the second consolidation migration and so far it all seems to be OK.

As a side effect, the mailing list archive will start getting updated properly as well.

What else? No real changes since it is still generated the same way, but I have built it on a different platform this time. Time will tell if it was a good idea or not. One can always hope.

Using a Pi3B in 2024

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 21:15:00 +0000

This was the conclusion to a little practical exercise we held to get everyone to try somethingoutside of their comfort zone.

Back in September, we had a little workshop on building up an impractical project with an older generation raspberry pi to show a few things:

Older generation computers can be useful
x86 is not the only game in town
GUIs are not always needed
There are other Linux distributions
Building an appliance system is not hard
Serial consoles are useful
etc.

All said, this was a fun project, at least I had fun.

Kanboard via Podman

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 21:15:00 +0000

This was a virtual meeting to have a quick talk about rootless containers and do what should be a relatively simple exercise in using podman in a rootless setting and running a kanboard container.

Needless to say, it went sideways a bit, but it was a fun exercise in an environment where making mistakes are just that, mistakes. We made it most of the way through the exercise, but did not get to the point of having the user level systemd manage the container. Maybe next time.

The Return of Containers

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 21:15:00 +0000

After some delays, we finally had a technical meeting. It was a little shorter then usual, but it was an easing back into a more technical program.

What did we talk about? Containers (surprise).

Specifically using podman and containers.

There were even slides. It was a bit short, but it illustrated using podman and a asciidoctor container to process the presentation with asciidoctor-revealjs. I also mentioned that there is a container that is used to build the website.

Design Thoughts

Wed, 19 Apr 2023 18:15:00 +0000

This site needs some minor tweaking and possibly a new theme. I’m not too concerned with the general look, but I want it to be clean and not busy. You should not want to stab your eyes out when looking at it or reading it.

I am also considering going back through all of the content and retagging it so that it can be viewed by topic rather than the linear stream it currently is. This is probably a lot of work and will take a bit of time, but the early posts are mostly from a mailing list and not really interesting beyond providing a history. It would be nice to carve out any technical items and start adding presentations we do as well.

Interesting things that changed

Mon, 10 Apr 2023 18:00:00 +0000

As I review the site, I am seeing a few things that no longer work as they did in the past. I am not surprised though as the hugo engine has had a significant number of updates and the theme has been updated as well. Some configuration items are no longer valid, there are new ones to learn about, and the theme has had a number of revisions.

One thing in particular is that if you visit the main page, you get a page on a jupyter talk from 2016 instead of a list of posts. I do not know why yet, but will attempt to get it fixed. I love mysteries! I do not love things that change for what appear to be arbitrary reasons.

About

Sun, 02 Apr 2023 20:53:00 -0500

Welcome to Ottawa Valley SAGE!

History

ovSAGE was founded in 1998 in Ottawa, Ontario. Initially ovSAGE was a recognized local affiliate of the Usenix System Administrator’s Guild (SAGE) before SAGE was converted into a Usenix special interest group (SIG) and re-branded as LISA, as well as an affiliate of the League of Professional Systems Administrators (LOPSA) shortly after LOPSA was founded, until becoming a full LOPSA local chapter in 2013. (links in this paragraph may stop working)

Current Status

Sun, 02 Apr 2023 16:00:00 +0000

It has been quite a while since there has been a post here. The last one being in 2019, a few months before the pandemic shut it all down for a while (assuming 3+ years is a “while”).

We have been having virtual events for most of that time, but not publishing any information. I guess I was not in the mood to keep it updated, but I had to do some migration work this week, so it seems like a good time to get back to it.

More Docker

Sun, 18 Aug 2019 09:10:00 +0000

Continuing in the Docker vein, we built up a more complicated Docker configuration based on the previous meeting prep work. Success across the board and we completed earlier than expected. Time for other topics and future talk chat. We will continue with Docker for a bit, maybe even do a full day event.

A couple of us also attended a local Rancher OS event downtown. It was a good event, the examples were easy to do and the tech resource for the talk really knew what he was talking about. We may have to do a Rancher night to build on the container concepts. That will depend on who wants to do a deeper dive, as this will take the entire meeting time and may have to be continued on your own or at the following meeting.

Docker Night

Tue, 16 Jul 2019 07:40:28 +0000

So we had a Docker night to get back to the topic of containerization.

I have wanted to get back to containers as a working topic for a while, but had no good example to work with. Building demo environments are great for covering the basics, but it never gets beyond “Look what we can do” to a practical usage case for the group.

During my search for a useful project, I found a small tutorial on getting an environment up and running using a Docker container, Docker, Hugo, and Asciidoctor to create a website with Asciidoc based posts. Since this is effectively what I wanted to do back when I was using Pelican¹ for the site. It might help solve the lingering things I wanted to work out post conversion as well.

Recent happenings

Sun, 14 Jul 2019 07:40:28 +0000

There have been a dearth of posts on here for way too many reasons:

Renovations
No free time
Forget how to get the build environment running
The list goes on…

The entire list is rather long and boring really, and should not have been allowed to affect the site information. I’ll try doing better with it.

Meanwhile, back in ovSAGE land…

We have been having meetings every month, despite the lack of posts. There were a few retro-compute nights with a simulated Altair 8800 and a CP/M refresher (for those who used it before). All new to those who had not. We even played Zork.

Miracles Happen

Wed, 20 Mar 2019 07:40:28 +0000

UPDATE: Not so fast…

We did have the room, but we were cautioned that the hvac is not working, so in a fit of sanity, we will go to Tim’s again.

Now that I actually posted that the meeting would be at the local donut shop, I get an email yesterday informing me that we have the room for tomorrow night. The universe is out to prove me wrong :)

Still Waiting

Fri, 15 Mar 2019 20:48:28 -0500

Once again, we will not have our normal meeting place. Dymon is still putting the final touches on the boardrooms and we will probably be in a donut shop for the March meeting. On the plus side, I won’t run out of things to drink, but I am getting a little tired of the lack of ability to have a proper talk. I don’t mind the fact that they are not finished yet, but rather the “soon” I keep hearing. I’d prefer they had stated it won’t be ready for 6 months or something like that so I could have made proper plans for a meeting rather than this monthly waiting game.

Back to normal

Sat, 19 Jan 2019 23:01:28 -0500

It seems that my toolchain has survived a couple of weeks without getting broken, so I’m about as close to good as it will get at this time. Things still look good even though there is at least one broken link in the posts. I thought I had gone through them all, but it is difficult to police your own work at times.

No new commentary that I have noticed, so I can guess we get as much readership as always. I have no idea if anyone noticed the dearth of posts or that we are back online again. The bulk of the work is done and I’m leaving the search item as a future fix. I don’t like the couple of indexers I have tried, so I think I’ll leave it for now. It isn’t like there is that much to search.

Still working on it.

Sun, 06 Jan 2019 11:08:28 -0500

Still working on getting this thing off the ground again. I just need to get the right side completed and the search capability integrated. Once that is completed, I can publish and worry about the other integration later. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and it is not an oncoming train.

Items left to go

This is a kind of living list right now. Expect mods as I go on. A number of items will not work properly until I get it pushed live, so some things can’t be tested that easily.

Progress of a sort

Sun, 06 Jan 2019 01:43:28 -0500

After too much time playing with hugo_jupyter, I found a better tool. It is called nb_hugo_exporter and it does what I need. I might even do some adjustments for my own customization.

As it is, it does a good job, but if I tweak it a bit, I can get it to use the front matter tags I have entered into the notebook instead of updating/creating new ones.

My vagrant setup does seem to work as required and the installation of a slightly older python to handle the hugo_jupyter module was managed with Anaconda - well the Miniconda varient anyway.

Of course, it's not all easy

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 23:13:28 -0500

I discovered that I can’t get the hugo_jupyter module to install on my laptop for some unspecified reason due to a collision with the existing software. This is why I don’t typically upgrade but rather do a clean install.

Most things work, but between the system, homebrew, and conda, my python3 setup is not working properly. I guess a backup to bootable image and a fresh install will solve most of the issues, but in the interim, I need to get the generator fully functional.

The new generator works

Sun, 30 Dec 2018 10:11:28 -0500

Why did I wait so long to do this?

The initial testing cutover went well, I have to do some work to re-organize the photos, but it seems that hugo will work out for the site. I need to do some serious reading, as it is a lot different, but the theming system seems to be easier to use and the short codes look like they will be quite useful.

The previous article was premature!

Sat, 29 Dec 2018 15:31:52 -0500

It seems that the previous fix was not sufficient and after a lot of attempts, I gave up on it. The issues I was having were not too easy to solve, and after hitting many dead ends and not wanting to convert things again, I decided to let it sit for a while. Apparently I get rat-holed on problems occasionally and when I know that not that many people use the site, the priority level is not all that high to fix things.

After a long hiatus, we are live

Wed, 26 Apr 2017 19:00:00 -0500

Here we are, the first quarter of 2017 has flown by and not a new post to be seen. That is actually my fault for being defeatist. The pelican generator was upgraded to v3.7 from 3.6 and some portions of my theme started blowing chunks. As a result, it was rather difficult to publish anything without it breaking and I got a little stubborn and refused to back out the upgrade.

Side Effects of Web Server Changes

Wed, 21 Dec 2016 12:53:00 -0500

Back when I decided to convert over to Let’s Encrypt, I was having a few difficulties with the web server and redirects. After futzing with it for a while, I decided to convert over to NGINX, as I really didn’t need all of the features of Apache any more.

This worked out pretty well, until this week when I decided to have a look at my mailman interface from the web. Nothing. Well, not quite nothing…

LISA'16 Was Fun

Mon, 12 Dec 2016 11:29:00 -0500

Boston in December is chillier then in November, however that is not really an issue when you spend a week there and don’t even have to go outdoors. There were a lot of people who never left the venue all week. I would be one of them this time around. While I’d usually check out some of the local scenery, I had a few lingering items to take care of the first few nights I was there and then free time vanished.

July Meeting Notes

Thu, 21 Jul 2016 22:03:00 -0500

Recap

This evening we had a free-for-all night. No formal agenda, but rather open discussion and a lot of tidbits. Here is a list of things that were mentioned.

We also tried out a discount LED projector which was surprisingly good. I don’t remember the actual model, but it was roughly 4000 lumens and something similar is available from projectordudes.com if you are interested. I’m considering getting one as you never know when you might need one and the price is quite good.

Logo Issue

Mon, 20 Jun 2016 00:02:00 -0500

The site logo has gotten decidedly squished. I am aware and it probably has something to do with the fix I had to make for the downloads. Why it is an issue, I do not know, but I am aware of it and will be correcting it in the near future.

Of course it doesn’t happen on the test server, so it must be something specific to the server on the production site. Investigation in progress.

June Meeting Recap

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 11:34:00 -0500

Overview

Last night we had the June LOPSA/ovSAGE meeting. It was a good talk as far as feedback goes and interest level. The slides will be available in the usual location. I’ll also detail the extra bit I did at the end of the talk as well as provide some code and an example of what it would have ended up like if we had continued on.

Off Topic: A Bit Warm

But first, how does that tagging thing work? Oh yeah…

SSL Testing with Qualys Labs

Sat, 23 Apr 2016 20:17:00 -0500

Why?

There was some confusion after the April meeting on how one gets all of this working and obtaining a better security score. This is not an exhaustive treatment of the topic, it deals specifically with the gererically installed Apache on the 64bit ubuntu droplet from Digital Ocean. The lesson is transferrable to pretty much anything else, but you should decide what you need. This is a demonstration server that will vanish.

Post April Follow-Up

Thu, 21 Apr 2016 22:13:00 -0500

Not a lot of follow-up for the talk this evening. All the salient details are in the slides in the downloads area. I’m finding the use of browser based slides to be quite liberating and with a little luck I won’t be using an office suite for any presentations in the future.

As a result of this, next month there will be a short talk on generating browser based (HTML5) presentations. It will be a full interactive session, so you might want to have a computer handy that runs python and pip. It will be a lot more interesting if you participate.

March Followup

Fri, 18 Mar 2016 12:00:00 -0500

It’s time again for an update after the meeting. Somewhat better turnout than last month (by one person). The talk was short but somewhat interesting. Of course, finding a practical usage case is entirely based on what you do for a living.

Interestingly enough, after the meeting, while I was getting the slides into a format for the website, I ran across a github project that covered a number of usage cases for Jupyter Notebooks. As a matter of fact, it is a supplement to an O’Reilly book - Mining the Social Web which is available via the notebook viewer.

jupyter-talk

Thu, 17 Mar 2016 10:06:23 +0000

%matplotlib inline
import pandas as pd

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# Setting this here avoids the issue with the color_cycle error if the older method is used
plt.style.use('ggplot')

import numpy as np

#pd.set_option('display.mpl_style', 'default') # use plt.style.use instead
plt.rcParams['figure.figsize'] = (15, 3)
plt.rcParams['font.family'] = 'sans-serif'

Overview

This is a sample notebook to show how you can create a dynamic document that reworks itself if the data changes. Note that this is not a Microsoft Office. At the end of this talk, we are going to have a document with updated data, new charts and tables, as well as a saved dataset or two.

Post February Update

Tue, 23 Feb 2016 22:07:00 -0500

Not too much to say after the Thursday meeting. Small attendance, small topic.

We had a new person show up, so it wasn’t the best night for me to have lost my presentation. I’ve had ghost copies of presentations hang around for ages and not be able to get rid of them. In this case though I fat fingered a response and lost my talk. No recovery, no temp copies, nothing. I tried to recover but I had nothing going for me. I thought I had saved it at least once under the new name, but no such luck. Lost without a trace, so it was a bit of a ramble on the topic rather than an actual presentation. This woule be the one time Powerpoint behaved as it is supposed to do.

Access control headers

Tue, 19 Jan 2016 12:30:00 -0500

I visited the site yesterday and all of the social media icons had turned into hollow squares. I thought that was a little odd, given that it had been working before that so I checked to make sure the fonts were being served. The logs showed that the requests were most assurredly being getting served, so I was left with a new mystery. I really dislike surprises when I have made no changes to something. More investigation required.

OSX and the dd command

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 12:11:00 -0500

In prepartaion for building one of those Raspberry Pi clusters for a demo, I was dumping the raspbian image to a 8GB class 10 SD card on my macbook pro. The write speed was abysmal…

laptop:~ user$ sudo dd if=./2015-11-21-raspbian-jessie.img of=/dev/disk2 bs=1m
Password:
3752+0 records in
3752+0 records out
3934257152 bytes transferred in 4278.617339 secs (919516 bytes/sec)
laptop:~ user$ diskutil eject /dev/disk2
laptop:~ user$

For those who care, that is roughly 73.5 minutes, to dump just shy of 4 GB of data.

Simple Additions

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 22:46:00 -0500

I was browsing a few pictures a few minutes ago and decided I’d add some pictures for bsdcan 2015 and lisa'15. Literally as simple as tag the photos I want to use, export them to a folder, write an article stub, and then push to production. That has to be the simplest adding of images I’ve done on one of these blog engines yet.

New year, new site

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 09:00:00 -0500

Well, it is 2016 and ovSAGE has been around since the LISA conference of 1998, although the initial announcement was not until December of that year. That makes this group just over 17 years old and while it has never had a lot of members, it has managed to stay alive through a lot of local churn and many meeting places. I was thinking about the various platforms that have been used to manage the group communication over the years. As I remember it, we have used the following:

Oddities as I do the conversion

Tue, 29 Dec 2015 14:51:00 -0500

As I work my way through the content of the site to get it ready for the January launch of the new look and feel of the site, I am oticing that the tag cloud looks a little odd. It has some of the strangest emphais on some words and not on others. A brief look through the site shows the actual reason, a lack of tags.

Apparently I didn’t tag things very well - some posts have no tags as you can see below.

November Follow-up

Wed, 02 Dec 2015 20:51:00 -0500

Not too much of a follow-up really, as it wasn’t a technical talk night. The annual social is on Dec 14, 2015, click the calendar link in the widget to get more details.

As this was really a post-LISA'15 talk, not much new was discussed. We did create a list of future topics, so that will get fleshed out over the next little while. I’ve got until early January to get a talk together and an embarrassing richness of topics, so there will be a talk on a requested topic, I just need to pick one.

Ottawa Valley SAGE Event Calendar

Sat, 21 Nov 2015 09:05:00 -0500

The group calendar

Rather than have a calendar plugin, we are using a google calendar that will track events. You can subscribe to it from the links on the calendar itself.

If you have an event you would like added, fell free to send a request.

Photos from LISA'15

Wed, 18 Nov 2015 18:29:00 -0500

I think this may be the lowest number of photos I’ve taken during a LISA conference where I’ve had a camera yet. I should start organizing them when I take them.

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Post October Followup

Sat, 07 Nov 2015 20:27:00 -0500

I’m sitting in my hotel room after the initial get together at LISA15. Since I’m a little tired and the tutorials start tomorrow morning, I decided to take a quiet evening and catch up on a few things. One of those being the followup to last month’s meeting.

While we still had a smaller crowd, the topic was interesting, at least to me. I finally got around to doing a basic talk on docker. As I’m far from an expert, it was not terribly detailed, but it was a new topic for the people attending. The part that didn’t seem to be obvious until I pointed it out was that I was running software in a container that was using a different OS. It was so fast and seamless on the command line that nobody noticed it until I explicitly pointed it out. Something tells me that there will be a followup talk with some better examples in the new year.

Post September Follow-up

Thu, 17 Sep 2015 21:35:00 -0500

We had more people than I expected tonight, so that was a plus. While it was a very informal evening and not on topic all evening, we did manage to get a couple of people back on track with GPG. Don’t forget to exchange public keys and sign them and send them back. The more signatures, the more trusted the GPG key.

The site I mentioned for random password generation is: http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html

August Followup

Thu, 20 Aug 2015 22:50:00 -0500

It was a small turnout tonight, probably something to do with work schedules, deliverables, vacations and Brazilian style rain. The good news is that due to a laptop issue and a spate of excess work, I had not managed to get my docker talk together, so I recycled a talk I had done for OCLUG earlier this year.

The talk was on static site generation and it featured a demo that used digital ocean droplets (docker like instances) for the source machine representing a laptop or desktop and the target web server. The demo consisted of creating two linux environments, adding the necessary (minimal) packages and creating a website from some markdown text files and a little css and javascript magic. The object being to showcase the use of services like digital ocean to provide on demand environments for specific tasks. More information will be in the talk that I hope to have ready for September. The slides for the talk are also available.

July Follow-up

Thu, 23 Jul 2015 20:34:00 -0500

I guess immediately means about a week later.

The slides for the talk are up, but you will need to log in to get them. The default login URL has been altered on this site. It’s amazing how many spam registrations that has reduced. I’ll have to see about adding back a login box on the main page. I’ll probably get around to an SSL cert as well in the next couple of weeks. I could always just add a self-signed one, which would be sufficient for this site. I’m probably going to add copies of the scripts as well. It is the same info as in the slides and the php one has been fixed so it now works. There have been a few changes in the php wrapper since the article I got the example from was written. There was a lot of talk while the presentation was going on and half the time was demos to illustrate the points. This will not make you an expert by any stretch of the imagination, however it should get you into the basics.

June Follow-Up

Thu, 16 Jul 2015 21:48:00 -0500

I guess I’ve been a little remiss in posting the follow-up note. The notes are available in the download section, but you have to log in to get them. Unfortunately I had to alter the login URL due to the number of spam registrations I have been getting. Every time I post something that hits twitter, the spam registrations come rolling in. At some point in the near future, I’ll add a login box back on the front page.

Photos from BSDCan 2015

Thu, 18 Jun 2015 18:29:00 -0500

Here are a few photos from the conference this year. I’ll have to do better next year.

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May 2015 Followup

Fri, 22 May 2015 00:17:00 -0500

We had a lively discussion about OpenVPN and various use cases to have it available for access to a home system. A very quick walkthrough showing how simple it is to create and a few gotchas that you can run into.

You can get additional information on installing it from these resources:

You might also want to visit the OpenVPM website at openvpn.net There is also a discussion of clients there as well.

Post April Follow-up

Mon, 20 Apr 2015 23:53:00 -0500

The talk we had for April was on using asciinema to provide walk-throughs, training and demos that do not use something like a movie. As a short followup, you can view the embedded asciicast below to get a quick idea of what was we were talking about. This is nothing more than a quick and dirty demo to show that in addition to showing what you get, including things like a vi session, but you can also pause the player and cut and paste directly from the playing file. For anyone that has to show command-line configurations, this could be very valuable. Think about router and gateway configs as one usage case.

Pi Day 2015

Sat, 14 Mar 2015 18:29:00 -0500

Today is Pi Day, assuming we follow month-day dating. Better yet, if we happen to use American style dating, March 3, 2015 becomes 3-14-15. That is as close to 3.1415 as we get for another hundred years.

To celebrate all things geeky, Bruce, Andrea and I met up for a slice of pi(e). There should have been a few more, but the freezing rain may have put the others off. In order to be fair, we may have to celebrate tau day next.

Post February Meeting Notes

Sat, 21 Feb 2015 20:40:00 -0500

We had a rather small attendance this month, so rather than have the puppet talk, I decided to put it off until March and we had a free-form meeting instead. Some discussion of Wordpress, which linux distros are appropriate for what settings, etc.

We need to have another idea session, so part of the time at the next meeting will reserved to put together a topic list for the rest of the year and see if anyone has a pet project or new technology they wish to give a talk on.

I have migrated hosting providers again

Sun, 04 Jan 2015 23:22:00 -0500

This seems to happen every couple of years.

I keep trying to find a Canadian hosting provider that offers capabilities similar to the one I use in the US and at a similar price point. Every time I find one, it ends up getting bought out. The last one was adequate, but had a number of issues (no shell access for starters) that I had problems with. This time I’m using a VPS from a Montreal provider to see how well it works. The initial tests were quite good, so I have migrated over. As it is a full virtual server as opposed to a chrooted area, I have more control and I’m happy with that.

January Meeting 2015: Not a Puppet Talk

Fri, 19 Dec 2014 10:41:00 -0500

Due to some unexpected interruptions and the visiting season that has just passed, I didn’t get enough prep time to get this talk ready, so I’m punting it to February.

Instead, I’m going to go over building a lab environment on a server with the free version of VMWare ESXi 5.5 and the joy of getting things installed. This has a few challenges, which I will be covering in the talk, not the least of which is the method of managing the box, as the system has been “improved.”

SysAdmin Appreciation Day

Sat, 26 Jul 2014 00:08:00 -0500

Met up with a few sysadmins for SysAdmin Appreciation Day at Pasticceria Gelatteria Italiana in Ottawa’s Little Italy. Not everyone was in the picture, I only managed one due to conversation.

Good times… lots of stories, work talk, tech discussion, good natured insults, vocabulary expansion, coffee, paninnis, gelato, pastries, etc.

Looking forward to next year.

Post June Meeting Followup...

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 22:00:00 -0500

We had an informative talk by Kelly on online training options based on his recent experiences. As we discussed the information, we discovered the talk could be expanded to include all of the local and online resources to provide continuous self-improvement for sysadmins who either have free time outside of work, are working part-time, may be between contracts or are looking to take some time off for training.

Kelly is looking to update the talk to include the extra items we discussed and possibly do a followup talk in the new year. When he has done the updates to the current talk, we will make it available online for anyone who be interested in the resources we talked about.

The schedule for the rest of the year has been published.

Fri, 13 Jun 2014 13:36:00 -0500

After the April meeting, I have scheduled the rest of the year. topics are picked, people scheduled, descriptions added (subject to edit), and I still have a list for next year. I’ll be talking to people over the next couple of weeks to see who wants to cover some future topics.

April followup

Sat, 19 Apr 2014 10:30:00 -0500

After our discussion, we came up with a list of topics for future meetings.

I’m going to do a talk on the environmental monitor unit I brought with me based on the Raspberry Pi and a few add-ons for May

We have the following items listed, with a couple of volunteers so far:

Basic firewalls - re-purposing EOL gear for ongoing use (August)
OpenVPN
Security, an example would be the SANS Top 20
Zabbix (maybe June)
Coursera experiences talk and discussion (July)
Small NAS appliances such as Synology including:
- Package Creation
- encfs
- sshfs
- deduplication
- NFS
- ipkg
- Third party software packages
Crypto basics(using OpenSSL)
Pen Testing with Metasploit (tentatively in November)
Hardware simulation on different platforms
Using the XBMC API for message and video injection
Online learning experiences (panel type presentation)
Diskless Raspberry Pi
Network and Automated installs of almost everything
Configuration management with current tools
Screencasting/training
Good looking documentation with open source tools
Wordpress usage cases

For anyone interested, Bruce mentioned that Udemy has their top 1500 courses on for $10.00 each.

April Meeting: Topic discussions

Thu, 17 Apr 2014 17:29:00 -0500

This is going to be more of an interactive discussion meeting. The goal is to have a list of topics and get everyone involved in sharing some knowledge. I’ll post a followup with the topic list and we will try to schedule in the right people and topics over the rest of the year.

In addition, we have a couple of items:

A server room environmental monitor prototype
BSDCan is next month and we will be swapping the night of our meetings
On our regular meeting night in May, there will be a puppet meetup at the University of Ottawa. Feel free to attend. The location is on the BSDCan website.

New event system in use

Sat, 15 Mar 2014 13:10:00 -0500

I am trying out a different event manager and while I think it is better than the prior one, it doesn’t post an article on the site. I currently need to add an item manually and the RSS feed does not see the calendar events directly. I don’t think there are too many people who look at the RSS feed, but you never know. I’ll have to ask about it at the meeting.

February Meeting 2014

Sun, 09 Feb 2014 23:53:00 -0500

Git for sysadmins

Talking about git: what is it, what are the components, how do you make them go?

Also a look at gitk and its capabilities, looking at a large codebase (1/4 million lines of code, about 8 years of development, 9,000 revisions committed).

Speaker Bio

Talk by Brenda J. Butler, Maker member at CREDIL.

Brenda has been programming on unix/linux environments for ~20 years, doing application development, web sites, kernel programming and embedded programming, with a little system administration and teaching thrown in for good measure. Yep, Jill of all trades.

Building a Firewall Appliance with pfSense and ALIX2D3

Fri, 17 Jan 2014 12:22:00 +1200

Purpose

I am aware that this topic has been done before and probably more times than is worth counting, however this was originally written as a HOWTO for my brother to install a replacement for his old gateway box. I wanted to include all of the stuff that is usually left out, as I felt that would reduce the number of possible phone calls until he wanted to do something interesting with the unit.

January Meeting: Ringing in the GNU year

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 09:26:00 -0500

Title: January Meeting: Ringing in the GNU year
Location: CHANGE!!! Dymon Self Storage, 323 Coventry Rd.
Link out: Click here
Description: Another calendar year has rolled over, time to learn to write the date correctly again.

Not a whole lot to talk about this month:

I’m still working out my documentation management system and it is getting closer to something I think I can live with. AsciiDoc or AsciiDoctor are the closest to useful that I have managed to find so far.
Slightly more useful enhancements to your daily desktop for those not running a vanilla linux or bsd
- Cygwin
- MinGW
- homebrew
- macports
Slightly esoteric, but current and interesting: Hacking SD cards

Start Time: 18:45
Date: 2014-01-16
End Time: 20:45

December Meeting: Annual Social

Fri, 06 Dec 2013 15:56:00 -0500

Title: December Meeting: Annual Social
Location: Mill Street Brew Pub
Link out: Click here
Description: Annual social event. Just food/drinks/good times.

If you are attending, you need to let me know so I can make sure we have sufficient space. I need this info no later than Dec 12, 2013
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2013-12-19
End Time: 21:30

Photos from LISA'13

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 14:34:00 -0500

Here are a few photos from LISA'13

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November Meeting 2013

Thu, 24 Oct 2013 14:34:00 -0500

Title: November Meeting 2013
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description: It is the post LISA'13 meeting.

Come out and ask questions, perhaps get some small swag items and hear all about the conference

Topics:

LISA'13 Commentary and Q&A
Annual Social in December, need to get numbers for the venue
Puppet Configuration/Puppet Mastery
Git has raised its ugly head…
Assorted other topics…

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2013-11-21
End Time: 21:30

October Follow-Up

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 22:31:00 -0500

During the meeting, I mentioned a number of items that required links to be posted. Here are the items and links:

The presentation I did for OCLUG on using a Rapberry Pi as a PBX DropBox Link
I talked about VOIP.ms as a DID and service provider. Links are also in the presentation as well
Modern publishing - I ran across this on the O’Reilly website. I’m not sure if it is of interest to anyone here, however the implications are quite interesting for anyone who wants to publish in the future.

At O’Reilly Media, as we work on transitioning to an XHTML5-source workflow (which will be the cornerstone of the next release of our Atlas publishing platform), we have posted an open source project on GitHub called HTMLBook. The HTMLBook project contains an XML Schema that subsets the HTML5 content model to provide specifications for book-specific semantics, such as chapters, appendixes, and sidebars. Additionally, it contains a sample CSS stylesheet for styling HTML5 content for PDF output using CSS3 Paged Media, and XSL tools for autogenerating book navigation elements including tables of contents, indexes, and cross-references, as well as generating the necessary metadata and package files for EPUB 3 output. We look forward to continued collaboration around the development of HTML5 authoring tools for publishers.

October Meeting 2013

Sun, 06 Oct 2013 12:27:00 -0500

Title: October Meeting 2013
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description:

October: September revisit

Given we had such a small turnout at the last meeting, I’m going to reuse the topics.

As mentioned for last month, we are now a LOPSA local, so anyone showing up this month gets a few LOPSA stickers, compliments of LOPSA and Matt Simmons. I haven’t had a chance to get started on the re-branding of the site yet, but that will be completed before the November meeting, so I can start year 15 with a new look. In celebration, I’ll buy the coffee and snacks for the meeting.

Galleries are fixed.

Sun, 15 Sep 2013 22:34:00 -0500

Looks like it was a short code issue after an update that messed things up. Revisiting the posts and correcting the codes seems to have fixed everything. RSS feeds are still working, so I think we are all good.

September Meeting 2013

Fri, 13 Sep 2013 14:39:00 -0500

Title: September Meeting 2013
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description:

Welcome to September…

A couple of items for the group first:

LISA'13 will be in Washington D.C. from Nov 03-08, 2013
We are now a full Local for LOPSA and the only one outside the U.S. at this time.
I’m thinking of re-branding the site a little to show the affiliation and to remove the old SAGE branding as that is now ancient history. I will probably keep the ovsage name, but might add a second domain to redirect here
We were formed in November of 1998, so this November is our 15th year in operation. Maybe I can keep it running another 15 years :)
The annual social will be at the Mill St. Brew Pub again. I have asked for a better seating arrangement for this year. High bar stools at a small table are not quite what this time around. This is tentatively scheduled for Dec 19, 2013
Site photo galleries all fixed up as well as working RSS feed again

Items/Talking Points for the September Meeting:

Image galleries are currently unavailable.

Sat, 17 Aug 2013 15:57:00 -0500

Well, they are disabled at the moment due to a problem with the RSS feed. After having it brought to my attention a few days ago, I finally had a chance to have a look and it seems that the combination of plugins I have all work except the nextgen gallery, so I’ll be messing around with gallery plugins for a little bit and update the posts when I get it fixed. Lucking there are only a small number that reference galleries.

August Meeting Notes

Sat, 17 Aug 2013 08:28:00 -0500

We did not manage to get through all of the items I wanted to discuss, however I did manage to hit all of the bullet points that were posted for the meeting. That leaves me with a few topics for the next meeting, so all is good.

Asciidoctor: A Ruby tool for Documentation

I have mentioned AsciiDoc numerous times in the past and I still think it has great utility. I’m trying to keep documentation in that format, as it can be read as simple text as well as used to generate very nicely formatted output in formats suitable for printing, web pages, etc. It seems that this was also noted by some people in the Ruby arena and they created Asciidoctor. From the official website, we get the following description:

August Meeting 2013

Thu, 08 Aug 2013 16:27:00 -0500

Title: August Meeting 2013
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description:

The August meeting came around a little earlier than expected with the third Thursday being on the 15th. We have a few topics for discussion, including:

A tool for Ruby documentation
A couple of pictures from SysAdmin Day
Data logging with a RPi
Charting services for web enabled devices. The internet of things is being tracked
A couple of comments on the OCLUG meeting on SUSEstudio and BTRFS
The usual open call for more topics

For anyone interested, the full LISA'13 registration will be opening next month, so if you are going, you might want to sign up early. The current list of training is available as a PDF download from the usenix site.

SysAdmin Day 2013 Follow-Up

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 22:54:00 -0500

We had a successful SysAdmin Day get together. Unfortunately I didn’t take many pictures.

Sysadmin Appreciation Day

Sun, 21 Jul 2013 23:03:00 -0500

Title: Sysadmin Appreciation Day
Location: Big Rig Brew Pub
Link out: Click here
Description: Details on the what is it are available here:

http://sysadminday.com/

In our case, it’s an excuse for a small party. Come out and there will be no fixing of computers, networks or security audits.

Start Time: 17:30
Date: 2013-07-26

Post July Meeting Notes

Sun, 21 Jul 2013 22:59:00 -0500

Here are a few followup items from the meeting:

The Raspberry Pi as a FM transmitter: http://www.icrobotics.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Turning_the_Raspberry_Pi_Into_an_FM_Transmitter

Monitoring Tools - this turned into a segue on configuration management as well:

Zenoss - http://zenoss.org
Nagios - http://nagios.org
xymon - http://xymon.org
Ground Works Open Source (core) - http://gwos.com
Zabbix - http://zabbix.com
Spiceworks (there is a free edition) - http://spiceworks.com
Big Sister - http://bigsister.ch
MRTG - http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg
Cacti - http://cacti.net
Puppet - http://puppetlabs.com
cfengine - http://cfengine.com (community edition)
chef - http://www.opscode.com/chef/
ansible - http://ansibleworks.com
cdist - http://www.nico.schottelius.org/software/cdist

There was a short PXE discussion where I mentioned a very good writeup on using it with FreeBSD. The thing that made this a great resource is that it talks about the options and features that can be used as well as the actual booting portion. It also happens to be available as a HTML page or a PDF. According to the author, he used AsciiDoc to generate it and this is a great example of the type of documentation you can create with AsciiDoc

July Meeting 2013

Sun, 14 Jul 2013 23:22:00 -0500

Title: July Meeting 2013
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description: It is July already…

Not a lot of topic info for this month, given that it is typically a quiet month for our meetings.

I was considering the following items:

Fun things to do with a Raspberry Pi - FM Radio transmitter
Monitoring tools has come up as a side topic at OCLUG, so a list of basic ones comes to mind. Maybe we will have some discussion on experiences with them
Renato wanted some PXE boot info, so we can certainly add that to the pot, including all of those nice things we can do with a PXE environment and TFTPD and DHCPD
SysAdmin Appreciation Day is coming, so we should pick a venue for a short social evening
Any other topics

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2013-07-18
End Time: 21:30

June Meeting 2013

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 16:29:00 -0500

Title: June Meeting 2013
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description: Followup to the MythTV topic

Designing a useful presentation - discussion, not a presentation

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 20130620
End Time: 21:30

May Meeting 2013

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:22:00 -0500

Title: May Meeting 2013
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description: I’m a little late posting this.

I wasn’t sure we would have the meeting this week as BSDCan 2013 is on.

Topics:

Ubuntu network installs (also debian) and gotchas
MythTV
everything else

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 20130516
End Time: 21:30

April Meeting 2013

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 12:26:00 -0500

Title: April Meeting 2013
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description: It’s April and there is still snow on the ground.

Thanks Ottawa weather!

Topics this month:

NAS devices, specifically the synology units
smart watches… useful?
monitoring tools and agents
other oddities as usual

If there are new people, look for a gaggle of people that may have laptops or tablets out and there will likely be a set of crutches nearby.

March Meeting 2013

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 22:13:00 -0500

Title: March Meeting 2013
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description: Time to get together and celebrate the wheels in your head make that quarter-turn and move forward. We have lost an hour until fall and are possibly still suffering for it.

We have a number of oddball topics this month:

Compiling statically linked binaries to create “future-proof” support tools (sure they are)
Fun and games in document generation - take it away Bruce!
Generating reports with web pages and other miscellaneous items (tools for the document haters)
Using MarkDown as a documentation tool - easier than one would think
Multi-boot with a raspberry pi

Could be interesting. As always, there will be a variety of unrelated conversation, arcane references and conversations that will fill your trivia buffers to overflowing.

February Meeting 2013

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:58:00 -0500

Title: February Meeting 2013
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description: The location will be the Tim Horton’s on Eagleson.

The location we have been meeting at regularly for the last year or two. The Tim Horton’s in Bells Corners turned out to be a dissapointment due to a very small interior.

Topics:

How about what are people working on?
What seems to be the growing trends?
Will we still be employable in 5 years?

User Group Connect 2013 - Feb 09 at Shopify

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 16:50:00 -0500

For those who haven’t heard me talking about it, we are having an “unconference” at Shopify’s headquarters on February 9^th It is an open event any anybody is welcome to come out and see what user groups we have in the region. You can visit the site at ugconnect.ca

![UGC2013_triangle_whitebg](/img/2013/UGC2013_triangle_whitebg.png)

UGC 2013:

Drop in to our free relaxed one day unconference.
Meet some of the many technical User Groups in Ottawa.
Chat with fellow high tech workers, and students.
Meet with some of the most tech-friendly local companies.

Why would we do this?

Not everyone knows about all the user groups - the user groups are doing very interesting stuff and sometimes complementary things that would benefit from knowledge of the topics in other user groups. We want to get these doers in the same room together where they can collaborate with and learn from each other.

2013 January Meeting

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 21:30:00 -0500

Title: 2013 January Meeting
Location: Tim Horton’s, Fitzgerald Rd. @ Robertson Rd.
Link out: Click here
Description: First meeting of 2013.

Some discussion of LISA'12, LOPSA discussion, a little discussion on my documentation quest and anything else people want to bring up.

The location is a little small, but given our attendance in the past, this shouldn’t be a problem. The place is laid out like a small upscale coffee shop, possibly with less seating than the old Bells Corners location.

LISA 2012 Photos

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 01:05:00 -0500

Here are a selection of the photos I took at the conference. Once again, it was great. Unfortunately, I managed to catch a cold so I missed the conference reception cruise around San Diego harbour. Being dizzy and on a boat are not two things to mix on purpose.

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December Meeting: Annual Social

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:12:00 -0500

Title: December Meeting: Annual Social
Location: Mill St. Brew Pub
Link out: Click here
Description: Party Time.

As there are celebrations, gatherings and feasting at this time of year, it is only appropriate that we partake of the festive spirit and get together for a meal instead of our usual chit-chat.

Spouses welcome.

Of course, if there are technology related discussions, that would be normal for this crowd.

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2012-12-20

November Meeting: 2012

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 21:58:00 -0500

Title: November Meeting 2012
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description: This meeting Bruce would like to discuss MediaWiki

Specifically installing it with a specific functionality. I think it would be quite interesting to go over the requirements, what he has found to solve the problem and the intricacies of getting all the components to work in a RHEL and Debian environment using packages vs. installing from source and the issues that causes.

October Meeting: 2012

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 22:38:00 -0500

Title: October Meeting: 2012
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description: No selected topic this month.

However we will have a RaspberryPi unit to look at, an AndroidPC motherboard, a secondary USB monitor and discuss the annual social.

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2012-10-18
End Time: 21:30

September Meeting 2012

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 20:57:00 -0500

Title: September Meeting 2012
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description: Nothing special this month.

General discussion would be the theme. I just got back from vacation, so no real time to come up with a great topic.

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2012-09-20
End Time: 21:30

Somewhat Interesting Infographic

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 23:29:00 -0500

It seems that password theft is up. I’m not sure this is a surprise to anyone who reads this site, but it is so much easier than it used to be with all of the malware out there, better compute platforms, botnets, phishing, etc. It has gotten to the point where I have had to start using a password manager, simply due to the sheer number of passwords I need to track and the complexity rules I choose to use implementing passwords. This partial image is from an infographic mentioned on TechRepublic that hit my inbox today.

August Meeting: 2012-08-16

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 21:18:00 -0500

Title: August Meeting: 2012-08-16
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description:

Only 5 meetings left this year…

Topics:

ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity
Experiences with ASCIIDOC
Using BACULA for archiving
O’Reilly Books
SysAdmin Day 2012 followup
Other items - we always have a few

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2012-08-16
End Time: 21:30

O'Reilly eBook Offer

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 15:56:00 -0500

I suspect that some of you might be interested in this offering, so I’m posting it here.

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2012 SysAdmin Day

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 23:13:00 -0500

Image located via google image search. I have no idea who owns it, but it does sum it all up.

This Friday (tomorrow, July 27, 2012) is System Administrator Appreciation Day (SAAD acronym). While not a well recognized event outside of the community, it’s our day and we should celebrate. I sent a note to the mailing list for an informal get together after work on Friday and it looks like a few people will be there. The venue is not set in stone yet, so contribute if you plan on attending. The decision will be made by noon on Friday. Come on out and bring another sysadmin if you have one handy.

Mailing list restored

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 10:22:00 -0500

Not to make it seem like there is a lot to browse in there, but the mailing list archive has been restored. Other than not having ssh access to the server in order to be able to manage things a little more directly, I’m pretty satisfied with the new provider. The faster response time and better availability is not bothering me either :) Remember that the mailing list is located at this URL - http://ovsage.org/mailman/listinfo/regulars_ovsage.org

Ramblings before the July Meeting

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 23:24:00 -0500

This is a bit of an expanded rambling on the July event posting. As I stated in the event post and calendar entry, it’s July already and we are past halfway through the year. It’s time to be thinking of all the projects we wanted to start and realize it’s time to select the ones that we need to do vs. the ones it would be nice to do.

One of the topics I sent to the mailing list was the Cisco router item. Do you really want someone else to decide what you are allowed to visit? While the article shows that Cisco was a little less evil at the end, it does highlight the issues with closed source items (yes, I know I’m being a bit of a hippocrite using a MacBook). My little consumer router boxes don’t run factory firmware and neither do my production ones.

July Meeting 2012

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 23:15:00 -0500

Title: July Meeting 2012
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description:

Only 6 meetings left this year…

Topics:

The Cisco router item that went to the mailing list
The fall open source festival is looking good and will probably be called “User Group Connect”
Logo redesign
Website was moved - issues?
Other items - we always have a few

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2012-07-19
End Time: 21:00

Site Maintenance

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 00:04:00 -0500

In an effort to avoid more power outage issues and get the site a little faster and more reliable, I’ve migrated the site to a hosting provider. This of course comes with a few issues, so if something is broken, please let me know. This was an excuse to dispose of the rather ancient box that was hosting the site as well, so it was a plus for me on the power usage front.

June Meeting 2012

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 23:20:00 -0500

Title: June Meeting 2012
Location: The Second Cup, Bells Corners
Link out: Click here
Description: No special topics, just some followup from last month.

I might have a bit of documentation with me done in asciidoc and have the appropriate tools with me to go through the generation of the different output formats.

Other topics welcome - anyone have a Raspberry Pi yet? How about an APC (not a UPS)?

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2012-06-21
End Time: 21:00

Pictures from BSDCan 2012

Sat, 19 May 2012 13:31:00 -0500

Here are a selection of pictures. If you want to see more, check out the BSDCan page on facebook. There may be references back to these pictures, but there will be many others as well.

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Post May Meeting update

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:26:00 -0500

First thing, it was great to have a few more people at this meeting. Seven people is a step up our low numbers and hopefully we will attract a few more people. As we discussed, we will meet at The Second Cup in Bell’s Corners next month. They close at 21:00 now, so those who are in danger of pumpkin mode need not worry. I’ll drop the entry in the event calendar with a TBD for the topic.

May Meeting 2012

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:57:00 -0500

Title: May Meeting 2012
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description: It’s the week after BSDCan 2012 and a few of our regular attendees were at the conference as volunteers and attendees. Lots of interesting things, so perhaps a bit of a discussion of what went on at the conference is in order.

iX Systems left behind a stack of PC-BSD 9.0 64bit DVDs and some FreeNAS 8.0.4 p1 and 8.2 rc3 64 bit discs as well. I’ll bring along a handful of them. Feel free to take a bunch and pass them out to anyone who might want to play with an alternative OS. I think I installed PC-BSD 9 with no issues in a VM, which is a step above the RC versions we were playing with at the BSD install fest we did a while ago. (different user group)

BSDCan 2012 is next week (May 11,12)

Wed, 02 May 2012 10:32:00 -0500

Just a reminder that BSDCan 2012 starts May 11^th. On the evening of May 10^th, there will be an OCBUG meeting at the Royal Oak on Laurier near the University of Ottawa. This will be a very social meeting, as people from all over will be there as conference attendees, some of whom you may already know. Come out and meet old friends and make a few new ones. For anyone interested, registration for the conference and registration packages handouts will also be happening at the pub during this time.

Topic for April may be expanded.

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:51:00 -0500

Unfortunately, I didn’t see the comments that were pending until just recently and forgot to approve them. I think the talk on consulting is timely and we should have that talk. As I know we have at least one person looking for the ssh bits, we can have that discussion and if it peters out quickly, we can go on to talk about the issues Kent raised. If that doesn’t work out, we can always have the talk in May. Comments welcome.

April Meeting 2012

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 22:52:00 -0500

Title: April Meeting 2012
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description:

Location: 660 Eagleson Rd. in Kanata
Google Map: http://g.co/maps/kza6h (yes, that is a short link)

After a brief discussion with one of our members, I was considering a talk on OpenSSH. I’m not sure which specifics I’ll be getting into yet, but I’ll have a small talk prepared in my normal informal style. I’ll attempt to get a short set of slides in place as well, so you have a take-away for your efforts. One of the items that seems to confuse people is the proper use of keys, so that will be covered, as well as a short discussion on RSA vs. DSA keys, the use of passwords vs. no passwords and ssh-agent.

March Meeting

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 11:25:00 -0500

Title: March Meeting
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description:

Google Map: http://g.co/maps/kza6h (yes, that is a short link)

We will be having a short discussion on small PBX installations and software options for install. I’ll bring along a couple of VoIP phones with me this time, just as examples. If you are looking for some physical sets, I have extras from previous deployments that I can sell to recover my cost for them.

February Meeting - VOIP talk

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:18:00 -0500

Title: February Meeting - VOIP talk
Location: Tim Horton’s, 660 Eagleson Rd, Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description: I went and checked out the Tim Horton’s on Eagleson Rd. It certainly has the capacity and there are several tables that do not have fixed chairs, so we can “arrange” the seating a little to make things work.

Location: 660 Eagleson Rd. in Kanata
Google Map: http://g.co/maps/kza6h (yes, that is a short link)

Looks like we have to find another meeting spot

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:38:00 -0500

I went over to The Second Cup yesterday, just to make sure it was still open and while I was there, asked what had happened last month. I was quite surprised to discover nothing had happened. In a new move by management, they have changed their hours so that they are only open until 18:00. As you can see, this puts a damper on our meeting location. The alternate location we used last month is a bit small (Tim Horton’s across the street), and I don’t know of any other venues in the near vicinity that we could bother with.

Post January Meeting...

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 22:22:00 -0500

The first thing I’d like to do here is to apologize for those who arrived and discovered that the location was closed. I could have sent an email to the list or tweeted, but did not, thinking that anyone who came would think to try across the street at the Tim Horton’s located there. One person did and I believe two did not. I’ll have to specify alternate locations for future meetings. This was unexpected and I still do not know why they were closed. I will find out if they will be open before the next meeting of course and post an alternate location, just in case.

Photos from Lisa'11

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:43:00 -0500

Here are a few shots from the conference. As expected, the conference was a lot of fun.

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January Meeting

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:56:00 -0500

Title: January Meeting
Location: The Second Cup, Bells Corners
Link out: Click here
Description: First meeting of the new year.

LISA'11 would be a topic, along with any ideas for a proper meeting location. We’ve been stuck on that for a while and I don’t see any resolution in the near future.

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2012-01-19
End Time: 21:30

December Meeting: Annual Social

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 23:04:00 -0500

Title: December Meeting: Annual Social
Location: Wild Wing in Kanata
Link out: Click here
Description:

This year we will be at Wild Wing in Kanata, Eagleson @ Stonehaven in the mall with the Harvey’s and Starbucks. 19:00 as per usual. The reservation is under my name.

If you could respond and let me know you are coming and if you are bringing an additional person, I can adjust the numbers. Don’t forget that significant others are invited.

November Meeting

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:25:00 -0500

Title: November Meeting
Location: The Second Cup, Bells Corners
Link out: Click here
Description: We just have a couple of topics for November:

Effective documentation systems
LISA XXV - Boston
December social

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2011-11-17
End Time: 21:30

O'Reilly: Data Science Starter Kit

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:28:00 -0500

O’Reilly just just put up an offer for a pretty complete getting started in data analysis library. It doesn’t say when the offer ends, but if you are looking for some books on data manipulation, this might have everything you are looking for. ( Link)

Data Science Starter Kit
The Tools You Need to Get Started with Data

This kit includes everything you need from analysis, visualization, to management.

“The success of companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Netflix, not to mention Wall Street firms and industries from manufacturing and retail to healthcare, is increasingly driven by better tools for extracting meaning from very large quantities of data. ‘Data Scientist’ is now the hottest job title in Silicon Valley.” – Tim O’Reilly

Post October Followup

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 23:23:00 -0500

I’ve been a little slow posting, not sure it’s laziness or just wasn’t feeling up to it. The main topic starting out was the certification item Jim had mentioned. There was a discussion about a year ago on the SAGE mailing list about such a thing and both Kelwin and I had both posted responses.

I won’t post Kelwin’s response, but I will duplicate mine below:

Not wanting to sound like I’m in the extreme end of either for vs. against certifications, I am a full time consultant and I live in a government town. In order to even qualify to bid on government and a large number of private sector contracts, I have to meet their certification requirements. As all of the local agencies also have large government contracts, they ask for them as well in order to contact me with possible gigs. I happen to have a couple, mostly taken at theurging of employers to meet some odd requirement.

October Meeting is Oct 20, not Oct 13!

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:30:00 -0500

Thanks to Jim, I’ve corrected the calendar entry. The meeting is next week, not tonight (Oct 13). If you are looking for a meeting to atend tonight, the ocbug (ocbug.ca) meeting is tonight.

October Meeting

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:38:00 -0500

Title: October Meeting
Location: The Second Cup, Bells Corners
Link out: Click here
Description: We have a couple of topics for October:

Documentation systems
- basically what systems do you use, what could we do better?
- Do you use a Wiki? a CMS? a spreadsheet? Google docs? etc.
- self-contained or db based?
- What works and what does not?
Certifications - do they have any value?
- Who has certifications?
- Why do you have them?
- Have they helped?
- Should “I” get any/more?
- Do certifications help with my job?

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2011-10-13
End Time: 21:30

September Meeting - 2011-09-29

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 22:03:00 -0500

Title: September Meeting (Note that this is the LAST Thursday in the month)
Location: The Second Cup, Bells Corners
Link out: Click here
Description: As we had a very small turnout for the last meeting, I’ll bring along some photos of the new firewall appliance I assembled with components from pc engines. I’m quite impressed so far.

Hopefully we can stand another of my “doc” talks as well. If I’m successful, I’ll provide the whole thing as an epub file.

August Meeting

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:57:00 -0500

Title: August Meeting
Location: The Second Cup, Bells Corners
Link out: Click here
Description: Time for the monthly meeting.

Topics:

Firewall appliances (DIY and commercial)
Diagramming tools
Documentation tools
Other “stuff”, ask questions, bring topics

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2011-08-18
End Time: 21:30

Switch upgrade (sort of)

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 23:06:00 -0500

I recently decided to upgrade the unmanaged 24 port gig switch I have been using to a managed switch - make that 2 managed switches. I saw a deal on ebay for a couple of Dell 2724 switches that can be placed in managed mode. The price was quite good and I wanted to be able to create a couple of VLANs, but I didn’t want the howl of the fans from the Cisco switch I have.

Obligatory Post-Meeting Post for July

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:10:00 -0500

It was a smallish crowd (four) who met for the July meeting on what may have been the hottest day of this summer. The initial discussion list was waived in favour of talking about tablets and smart phones. The tablet we were discussing was an acer refurb tablet running Android and attempting to:

Connect to a public WiFi access point
Tether it to a recently purchased Android phone. Via WiFi hotspot and USB.

Connecting to the wireless network seemed to work, but free wireless was not found. Rather than continue on, the real objective was to use the 3G service on the phone for places where WiFi is unavailable. Initial attempts appeared to succeed, but actual connectivity was not present. I offered my phone (iPhone) as a hotspot and everything worked flawlessly. I used both the local WiFi and 3G as services and it worked on both. Bruce had his Android phone and we tried with that and it worked properly as a hotspot and USB tethered. It seems the phone has a firmware bug.

July Meeting

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 21:20:00 -0500

Title: July Meeting
Location: The Second Cup, Bells Corners
Link out: Click here
Description: Given the venue, nothing terribly formal.

PXE -> gPXE -> iPXE
Generators and UPS units
Cobbler

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2011-07-21
End Time: 21:30

Another successful upgrade

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 20:02:00 -0500

I could get used to this, given how simple it has been. Still working properly after another upgrade. The past few systems (Geeklog, Drupal) have all had serious issues and this one (Wordpress), not a peep.

As a matter of fact, in the time between initiating the post and getting back to it, there was yet another update. It also installed without issue.

It's the July really long weekend

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 22:40:00 -0500

Friday was Canada Day, Monday is Independence Day. That makes it a very long weekend when you take stat holidays in Canada and report into a group in the US ($DAYJOB). As a result, I get to spend the Monday collecting any items that cropped up on the Friday and taking care of them before my compatriots south of the border have a look at them. This doesn’t really happen all that often, but it’s nice when it does.

Wordpress has this export/import feature

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 22:21:00 -0500

I was just thinking about all of my past comments to the “Usual Suspects” about adding data from times long gone to the site. That reminded me that I once had a blog on Vox which closed last November (2010) and they provided a mechanism to convert the blog over to wordpress.com.

As it was going to vanish and I had actually bothered to post some items over there, I decided to do the migration and save the data. The actual process was much smoother then I expected it to be - the posts translated properly and looked good. As this was effectively a Q&D backup, I left it as a private blog, deciding that I’d move it here eventaully.

BSDCan 2011 audio is available

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 22:01:00 -0500

For those interested, Dan has posted the audio for the talks at BSDCan 2011:

The audio recordings for BSDCan 2011 are now available.

You can find them all listed here:

http://www.bsdcan.org/2011/audio/

Each talk in the schedule has a link to its audio (if available).
That is, find the talk in the schedule, and there will be a link to
the corresponding audio.

For example, at http://www.bsdcan.org/2011/schedule/events/256.en.html
you will see a section titled ‘Links’ and a link labeled ‘audio’.

Drobo Contest... 100 drobo units

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 21:33:00 -0500

Update: The contest has been close for new participants since May 31, 2011, so no value here *sigh* Voting also ends June 17 at midnight Pacific, so no chance of wining. On the other hand, the rest of the information is still of some value.

I was just looking up the model number for a drobo and I ended up hitting a hyperlink to a drobo contest. I have no information beyond the title of the page and the context of that page which seems to indicate that the entry with the most votes wins 100 drobo units. I’m guessing it’s a basic 4 bay model from the picture I saw briefly.

June Meeting

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 23:17:00 -0500

Title: June Meeting
Location: The Second Cup, Bells Corners
Description: We still don’t have a proper venue. I’m hoping to have that corrected by the end of the summer, so we have to suffer at a coffee shop for the moment.

No formal agenda, just whatever we come up with. I’m thinking it’s time to start messing with firewalls again, especially as I have two ISP connections now. Time to have a bake-off for M0n0wall vs. Smoothwall. I may try out a cisco ASA unit and if I can convince Bruce to help out, a small Fortigate unit.

Acanac Cable Connection is live

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 23:09:00 -0500

In a desire to get better internet speed, I decided to try out the Acanac Cable offering. I’m happy with the DSL service, so I decided to give the cable service a try. I went for the 15/1 service 15 down, 1 up and the whole install and online is supposed to take 7 to 10 business days. Roughly 5 business days after the request, I received the cable modem I ordered from Acanac, a Motorola SB5101N basic unit. Just plug it in and you should be online, once the cable connection is installed.

May Meeting - no presentation

Thu, 19 May 2011 15:52:00 -0500

Just a quick update in case you didn’t look at the calendar.

We will be having the meeting at The Second Cup in Bells Corners.

Topics:

BSDCan2011
FreeNAS and a couple of FreeNAS install media to give out
PCBSD 8.2 media i386 and x86_64 available
Discussion of future venues
BSD Magazine needs writers

Also, pgcon is on this week http://pgcon.org

Trying out the iOS client

Sat, 07 May 2011 17:20:00 -0500

Sitting down and trying a blog entry via iPad. The intent is to see if the app is useful or not, rather than the content of the entry. So far it seems to be of limited utility, as it has no useful formatting capability, just plain text.

I’ll have to see what the posts look like after this is published. It would be nice if I could inline an image from the camera or photo album.

April Meeting Follow-up (updated)

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:57:00 -0500

First off, I’d like to thank Yanick for the great presentation. It’s been a while since I looked at new features in perl and I’m inspired to install 5.12 and start utilizing all of the stuff that’s now available. Who knows, might be some good thinks for the $DAYJOB hiding in there. I did ask for a copy of the slides and as soon as I get them, I’ll post them to the download section.

April Meeting

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:45:00 -0500

Title: April Meeting
Location: Pythian
Link out: Click here
Description: Perl talk from Yanick Champoux, one of the Pythian ~~SysAdmins~~ Perl Hackers.

Synopsis:
One of Perls’ original raisons d’ętre was to be a sysadmin’s
best friend. Come and find out how to to leverage Perl for everyday
administrative tasks. We’ll cover

Perl’s command-line arguments
Well-known idioms for common situations
Perl as ‘sed’
Perl as ‘awk’
Perl as ‘find’
From one-liner to small script and back
Leveraging TAP as a system monitoring tool
Must-have modules
And much more.

Who should be attending?

Mentoring - second post

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 09:23:00 -0500

Well, it’s been off to a slow start, mostly my fault, due to tax filings, getting up to speed and that stupid cold that has been affecting people in the $DAYJOB arena. It feels like someone is randonly stuffing cotton balls into my head and then pulling them out. Foggy… Clear… (repeat). Did I ever mention that I hate colds? You are not ill enough to be unable to work, just slow and stupid - and they linger!

Post March Meeting Followup

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 19:03:00 -0500

Just so we have some notes fro the meeting, I have to provide the following presentations before our next meeting:

The finished Secure FTP Server presentation
The SSL Certificate and useful commands presentation
A short piece on care and feeding of an Apache based Secure file downloading service

I mentioned BSDCan 2011 again. http://www.bsdcan.org - the site appears to be working now, so it must have been an anomaly. I meant to pass out DVDs for PCBSD to everyone, but only managed to give out a few after the meeting. I’ll bring some more to the next meeting.

LOPSA mentoring

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 18:59:00 -0500

Back in November or December I told the group about the LOPSA mentoring project and the call for volunteers at the community meeting at LISA. I believe that I had also stated that I had volunteered to be a mentor and I’m happy to announce that a project came up and that I have been matched up with someone who requires assistance with a backup system.

While we haven’t really started yet (this only just happened) I’m hoping that it will be a pleasant experience for both of us. Once the project is completed, I’ll post a note about the project and the solution used, as well as a link to software and the type of environment. I’m hoping it may make a useful talk for a meeting or at the very least an outline as to how we solved a technical problem. As it is a short term project, I’m hoping we will have it completed before the April meeting so I can at least report the success of the project.

BSDCan 2011 is coming...

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:54:00 -0500

BSDCan, a BSD conference held in Ottawa, Canada, has quickly established itself as the technical conference for people working on and with 4.4BSD based operating systems and related projects. The organizers have found a fantastic formula that appeals to a wide range of people from extreme novices to advanced developers.

BSDCan 2011 will be held on 13-14 May 2011 at University of Ottawa, and will be preceded by two days of Tutorials on 11-12 May 2011.

Password Cracking Spreadsheet

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 11:23:00 -0500

I mentioned the password cracking spreadsheet at Sans.org in our last meeting, here is the relevant link:
Password cracking spreadsheet

On the same site there is a discussion on the issue of passwords vs. passphrases and the spreadsheet is mentioned again:
How long to crack a password

Contract job

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 11:18:00 -0500

Got this job ad from one of the agencies I’m in contact with:
Linux admin - contract

February Meeting

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:08:00 -0500

Title: February Meeting
Location: Pythian
Link out: Click here
Description: Based on some recent work I have done for a client, I’m going to give a little overview on how to set up a secured file distribution for multiple clients so that you can get away from FTP and you can manage in a simple fashion.

A Brief Review of Beautiful Security by Andy Oram and John Viega

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 21:07:00 -0500

no description

Beautiful Security is a collection of essays on security thought from a variety of industry leaders. The sixteen chapters of the book cover a surprisingly wide base of security domains making it worth reading just for the exposure to the wealth of ideas. The fact that the essays are intellectually entertaining is a bonus.

The best sections of this book are the places where some of my long held beliefs get challenged by the chapter author, particularly the issues involved with security in cloud computing. I still have a healthy skepticism for the claims of cloud service providers, but the concept that we will not get any better at securing abstracted compute environments until we start using them is correct. You do not become an expert at something until you invest a significant amount of time and practice into it, so how can we expect to secure these environments unless we use them?

January Meeting

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:25:00 -0500

Title: January Meeting
Location: Pythian
Link out: Click here
Description: First meeting of the new year. Nothing formal scheduled, but I do have an interesting video to show if there is interest.
Topics:

Automation
Documentation
Tools for the above

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2011-01-20
End Time: 21:30

O'Reilly has a new program out for bloggers...

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 23:17:00 -0500

The following is copied from the announcement web page at O’Reilly Blogger Review Program

Join the O’Reilly Blogger Review Program. We’ll send you ebooks and videos in exchange for your honest reviews.

Login, provide a link to your review, then request another ebook or video.

What is it?

A new way for you to get early access to great books and videos about leading-edge software, technology and social media trends–and have your expert opinions heard as a reviewer.

Annual Social

Sat, 04 Dec 2010 18:25:00 -0500

Title: Annual Social
Location: The Lieutenant’s Pump
Link out: Click here
Description: Social event - food, talk, drink, etc.

Bring SO’s, all welcome.

I’ll see if I can arrange some extra goodies from LOPSA and/or Usenix.

We have a reservation under ovsage.

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2010-12-16
End Time: 21:30

Some info for the CLI savvy

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 23:14:00 -0500

I saw a reference to a site on one of my emails or feeds earlier that gave this URL: http://www.quora.com/Linux/What-are-some-time-saving-tips-that-every-Linux-user-should-know

In a fit of “might be something out there”, I had a look and discovered a bash built-in that I had never run across before, disown. Take a look at the bash manpage for this little gem, but the nutshell version is that it will take a command that you either forgot to run nohup on or screen before you ran it and with some optional parameters, you can take a long running process, background it, run disown -h <jobid> and all of a sudden, you can disassociate the job with your terminal, allowing it to ignore SIGHUP and continue on even if you log out. While I am aware that there are other mechanisms, exiting a remote session and having ssh wait for exit is annoying. I know you can type ~& to background, but which level of ssh are you backgrounding?

Post November Meeting Info

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 00:41:00 -0500

We had a small turnout tonight, but that made it somewhat more casual (if that’s possible). Most of the discussion was about the LISA 2010 conference which two of us attended. As I have previously mentioned, it was a great conference and a lot of interesting things were presented. I think the most interesting item was the pervasive social media. Twiter, IRC, facebook, etc. were all in constant use. While this isn’t really a new phenomenon, this is the most blatant use I’ve seen.I suspect that this is a pretty common thing in schools and universities now, but it wasn’t when I went.

November Meeting: 2010-11-25

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 00:08:00 -0500

LISA'10 is over and there are stories to tell. There is a new program started up with LOPSA and the training sessions were great. The hallway track was quite good although this year it suffered a bit from the incessant tweeting that was going on. It’s hard to make progress on something when the pop-up indicator on your screen is (almost) constantly lighting up with a new comment.

There are two additional conferences happening in 2011. PICC in New Jersey and the Cascadia IT Conference in Seattle. These are sponsored by sysadmin groups, like the LOPSA-NJ chapter and the Seattle Area System Administrators Guild there is obviously an audience for these conferences, so if you have the time and inclination, check it out and possibly attend. I have also been informed that BSDCan will be going ahead this year, with the older format of two days of tutorials and two days of presentations, the second being on a Saturday. I’m the volunteer coordinator again, so if you want to assist in the setup, let me know.

November Meeting

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:21:00 -0500

Title - November Meeting
Location - The Pythian Group
Link out - Click here
Description - Post LISA'10 meeting.

Note that this is NOT the Third Thursday of November!

I’ll be talking about the conference and some of the more oddball things I have been up to recently. Monitoring will be part of the topic and automated reports that have funky graphs.
Start Time - 19:00
Date - 2010-11-25
End Time - 21:30

eBooks, LISA countdown, LOPSA

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 22:24:00 -0500

I’m going to add a few eBooks (PDF at the moment) to the downloads section. These are GFDL or marketing papers, so I don’t see an issue. They may have some value to you, so feel free to download and have a look.

LISA ‘10 starts next Sunday. That should be a lot of fun and a lot of late nights and early mornings. It’s certainly a busy conference and there is so much to do/see/attend. I’m hoping to at least make a few tweets during the day and maybe even a few blog entries in the evenings between sessions. I’m not sure how well I’ll do, but if I don’t actually post it here, I’ll probably not bother. This way I feel some obligation to pass on info.

October Followup

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:43:00 -0500

We had a few things to discuss at the last meeting, but no serious technical talk. I promised to post a couple of links so here we go…

First item on the table was anyone who has tried to get the email server running and failed AND still wants to get it working, send me an email off-list and I’ll get together with you to get it done. Serious requests only :)

LinkedIn group created

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 23:21:00 -0500

We now have a group on LinkedIn, so if you are a LinkedIn member, sign up!

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3592991

This may help promote the group at a professional level. Thanks for the idea Jim!

October Meeting

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 22:55:00 -0500

Title: October Meeting
Location: The Pythian Group
Link out: Click here
Description: This will be an open topic meeting, so bring a few questions. I want to talk about some tools I’ve seen recently and some of the happenings in the community.
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2010-10-21
End Time: 21:30

September followup...

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:59:00 -0500

We had a great presentation by Jeff Green on his ethical hacking site group51. He provided the slides that were presented and I’ve placed them in the download section of the site.

Jeff also encouraged the members to sign up and contribute. He needs assistance on the site management and daily maintenance as it is becoming more than a single person job. If you have the bandwidth and the inclination, help out.

September Presentation

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 10:30:00 -0500

Title: September Presentation
Location: The Pythian Group
Link out: Click here
Description: We are having a short presentation on ethical hacking concentrating on Linux by Jeff Green, founder of group51.org.

One of the key objectives of the website is a proof of concept. We take systems we find in peoples garbage and insert them into a cloud computing environment connected through an open source intranet. We want to be the most powerful garbage pile in the world. At the same time we have a number of other projects all linked where we create a “playground” for people to learn on real equipment and for students to polish their resume with real world experience. People can administer various applications and services that are found in the enterprise environment. 95% of what we do is Linux based.

OGLF Canceled

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:04:00 -0500

For those who didn’t know, the Ontario GNU/Linux Fest in Toronto has been canceled. You can read more about it on the official site, but the short answer is it’s a lot of work to get one going and to organize it.

When I found out about it (Thanks Jim), I made a comment about possibly trying to get a similar event off the ground here. It’s certainly not impossible, but it will take work. We already have BSDCan, pgcon, The Ottawa Linux Symposium, so is there room for an additional conference here in the capital? This is currently a single day event and held on a weekend, so it’s not a long event commitment and it certainly is not Ohio Linux Fest!

LISA 2010 - Uncovering the Secrets of System Administration

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:00:00 -0500

For those who are unaware, the LISA 2010 conference registration has been opened.

![LISA 2010 Banner Ad](/img/2010/Lisa10_button.jpg)

Visit the Usenix event page for detailed information and to register.

For the unknowing or uninformed, LISA is the big annual System Administration conference sponsored by Usenix. LOPSA has a hand in there as well.

If you are really going to make this a career and not just a job, you should attend one of these conferences. Words do not really describe the experience, ask Kelly some time.

Post August Meeting Info

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:40:00 -0500

I have uploaded the config files I talked about during the meeting. These files make reference to some extra items such as greylisting and spamassassin, as well as the use of self-signed SSL certificates. You will notice a new menu item on the site under About called ovSAGE Downloads. Go there for the tarball which contains the default and production files as well as diff files for each pair.

The main documents for all of this are located on the CentOS website. The following items describe the docs and their locations:

Free O'Reilly Course

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:35:00 -0500

Free Online Course

[ Processing with Arduino]( http://the.link.is.gone)

Create your own drawing and animation software-and learn basic programming and electronics skills at the same time. This engaging 5-week online course introduces you to two simple tools: Processing, a programming language for visual thinkers, and Arduino, a hardware platform for working with electronics. You’ll learn how to use these tools together to build something useful right away. You’ll learn to:

Use Processing to create basic software applications
Make your own drawing and animation tools
Create a GUI (Graphical User Interface) to control your software
Use an Arduino to provide physical controls for your drawing and animation tools

Learn more Processing and Arduino in Tandem.

Permalinks fixed...

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:35:00 -0500

It’s amazing what you can fix by looking at a problem again after leaving it alone. After the server change, OS upgrade, new install, etc., one would think that everything would be simple. Well, it actually is. One of those odd little things that you need to do if you are using “pretty permalinks” is to fix the default apache configuration to allow overrides on file info. That was the whole issue. It made sense later when I remembered I had been running the old webserver and configuration for better than 10 years (with lots of changes).

Post July Meeting

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:59:00 -0500

I’m a little slack in my “normal” follow-up to a meeting. We had a presentation from Rove IT on managing systems with a smartphone. All said it was a good presentation and shows a lot of promise for administering a GUI environment.

As for *nix, well, not much beyond what you can do with a standard ssh client. This isn’t a criticism, it’s just the reality of *nix. If you can’t admin from a command line, well you probably shouldn’t be on call with a network enabled smartphone attempting to do something intelligent during a meltdown.

July Meeting

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 01:49:00 -0500

Title: July Meeting
Location: The Pythian Group
Link out: Click here
Description: Time to complete the virtual server.

Configuring Dovecot for secure access and configuring TLS and authenticated SMTP. At least that’s the hope. I ran through the requirements when I migrated the website and set up all of this for my own servers so we should be able to get through it in one session. All of the hard work has already been completed.

That's a first...

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 23:04:00 -0500

I’ve been delaying doing an upgrade to the latest-greatest until I had a few free hours. I made all the necessary backups, made a database backup and clicked on the upgrade button (This is a major revision upgrade). less than 2 minutes later, the whole upgrade is complete, the database has been upgraded and it looks like all the plugins are happy as well.

Another ringing endorsement for Wordpress.

Outage...

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 14:24:00 -0500

It looks like my remaining hard drive on the old web server is finally giving up the ghost. I will be migrating everything over to the new server this weekend, so there may be additional outages when I decide to make the cut-over, but this should be a flash cut via a firewall rule change.

I was a bit surprised when I checked the site earlier and nothing happened, attempts to log onto the server were also met with no response. A quick check on the hardware and I saw the message: Disk0: Fail, Disk1: Fail on the RAID enclosure. It’s really too bad the box doesn’t support drives larger than 80GB, but it was made many years ago. It’s also too bad I couldn’t find an additional 20GB disk in my collection with sufficiently close drive parameters to fix the mirror. Oh well, I’ve been putting it off for months now, so this is the best time to do it.

Interesting meeting tonight.

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 22:02:00 -0500

The presentation we had on a cloud-based virtual environment was quite interesting. We ended up going for just under two hours on the topic. Lots of technical discussion on how it works, the software choices and issues such as scalability, security, privacy, etc. all came up.

I may just have to sign up for a trial account just to see how it behaves. I’ve seen a number of environments that had this idea over the past 10 years, but this one may be “the one.” The concept is good, the timing is good and the implementation appears to be solid. It has pretty much anything you could want for a small virtual office and it offloads having a desktop support person on site. This is not to say there isn’t room for improvement and extra features, but the foundations appear to be solid and all of the basics are covered.

Live again...

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 08:27:00 -0500

It seems to have propagated rather quickly. I suspect some web-caching devices may take longer, but the three different external sites I have tried all show it as up and visible. That’s rather encouraging really.

For those looking for a web host, I have managed to find a couple of Canadian ones that have reasonable rates. I’ll post some info later, as I’d like to pull a couple of sites I have in the US back to Canada. One looks really good, but doesn’t offer secure connectivity. That I can’t really deal with. Another offers SFTP, so that’s a step in the right direction. Ideally ssh is my connectivity of choice, as it makes editing go so much faster.

Website may be down in the near future...

Mon, 31 May 2010 21:33:00 -0500

I’m, changing ISPs and as a result, the site may end up down while I get everything fixed up. Hopefully the changes will occur overnight and it will be quick and dirty, but I am not sure how long it will take for the changes to propagate. The short answer is that I’m expecting it all to be transparent, but you never know.

Ottawa Spring Career Fair this week

Mon, 17 May 2010 13:44:00 -0500

For those on the job lookout, there is a career fair happening on Thursday and Friday (May 20-21). Free registration and more info in the URL below:

http://www.itoottawa.com/events/index.html

Good luck!

Andrea

June Meeting

Sun, 16 May 2010 00:05:00 -0500

Title: June Meeting
Location: Pythian
Link out: Click here
Description:

This month we will be having a presentation from Eseri on virtual environments. Their description follows:

Cloud Computing technology is progressing at several layers - OS virtualization, data-center virtualization, browser based application delivery, and desktop virtualization. Eseri is a local company that has integrated a full organization IT solution from the best of the world’s open source, from hosted Intranet to desktops to applications, and host it in the cloud for access on virtual desktops. Eseri CTO and VP Engineering will demonstrate their solution, describe the architecture, and discuss the security advantages of the virtual desktop approach to the cloud.

Course Notes in Forums

Tue, 04 May 2010 19:42:00 -0500

I’ve been writing up detailed notes for the course and placing them in the Forums under Initial Configuration ( http://no.such.link/forums/?vasthtmlaction=viewforum&f=1.0). I have just finished adding a complete list of all packages installed along with a brief description for each. Next I’ll be performing a detailed descriptions of all the services installed along with instructions for turning specific services on or off based on Scott’s list.

This site once had a forum, but it no longer exists.

May Meeting

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:37:00 -0500

Title: May Meeting
Location: Pythian
Link out: Click here
Description: May Meeting for Ottawa Valley SAGE
This month we have two main topics:

a presentation by Rove-IT on mobile administration (canceled for now)
We will continue the configuration of the mail server system. This month we will be configuring the Dovecot portion and securing the connections.

As always, there will be some opening discussions and possibly an ignite video.
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2010-05-20
End Time: 21:30

HTRA Training available...

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:09:00 -0500

Comprehensive Risk Management, Education and Awareness Through “The Harmonized Threat Risk Assessment Methodology”

Join the High Tech Crime and Investigation Association (HTCIA) Ottawa Chapter, Thursday, May 27, 2010, for a one day training event on the subject of the Harmonized Threat Risk Assessment (HTRA) Methodology. This session is geared towards those who are interested in understanding the methodology used by today’s Security Experts when conducting Threat Risk Assessments. Following the organization of the Harmonized TRA Methodology:

Opportunity for a Linux Systems Administrator

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 09:52:00 -0500

Contact Derek directly:

I have an opportunity for a Linux Systems Administrator.

It’s a 2 year contract, $450 per day.

Qualifications include:

Two years experience as a System Administrator on a project where Oracle 10g or higher was implemented as part of the solution.

Experience as a System Administrator on two projects where HP UNIX or Linux was implemented as part of the solution.

Two years experience as a System Administrator on a project where:

HP UNIX or Linux; and

VMware or Integrity Virtual Machine technology, were implemented as part of the solution.

Other assets would include experience with the following:

Email Hell - Why the current standards need to be radically overhauled

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 10:58:00 -0500

For an interesting presentation on the complexity of e-mail check out the following presentation:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7054401183589794595#

Until I saw this, I was unaware of how badly designed the current e-mail structure is, and how badly/incomplete the RFCs for e-mail are. Unfortunately the slides are blurry so you cannot see the examples very well but the talk alone is very informative.

ovSAGE April Meeting

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 16:06:00 -0500

Title: ovSAGE April Meeting
Location: The Pythian Group (St. Laurent Mall)
Link out: Click here
Description: The next step in our mock SMB server.

email and email web services will be enabled during this session. Feel free to do this in advance and bring any questions to the meeting.

In addition, we will look at which direction we wish to go next. What services should be added, what else would be useful?

Forums are now live

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:07:00 -0500

Before anyone points it out to me: Yes, I am aware the font size is a little small in the forums. I’ll fix it up sometime on Saturday when I feel up with wrestling with CSS and fixing the lines where the designer decided that 85% of any font size is appropriate. I ran across this before, but I have to go searching several sets of CSS files before I find the right one.

March Post Meeting Commentary

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:56:00 -0500

This was the first evening where we started the virtual server configuration for our mythical SMB type environment. We went over the text based install of CentOS 5.4 and initial package selection, as well as running services on the box.

After a few technical difficulties while looking up some packages (trousers and fipscheck) that were installed that had not been selected, the rest of the install was reviewed. During the ‘firstboot’ process, we went through the list of services, which was rather enlightening for all involved. It appears that a number of things that you do not normally think about are enabled by default, even when unnecessary.

OCUUG meeting on Wedneday

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:49:00 -0500

We had an average turnout at the OCUUG meeting on Wednesday night. It was a good time and for those who do not know, it’s more of a social group than a technology group. Having said that, tech topics do come up. For those who were, Dru just launched her latest book: The Definitive Guide to PC-BSD. This one is published under the Apress banner.

There were copies for all at the meeting and DVDs to go with it.Of course, it’s not completely free, We are supposed to blog about it (notice I’m doing so now) and write a book review. I’m considering writing my BSDA at BSDCan 2010, so hopefully this will fill n the blanks for me. Either way, it’s an excuse to read a book, work through a new flavor of OS and take a certification exam.

Old data being added slowly...

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:41:00 -0500

Very slowly.

I finally got around to importing the userids from the old system tonight (last night?), but the old passwords will not work, as the storage methods are different. It would be interesting if I had spent time trying to crack them and then install them, but it’s not worth the effort.

You can get a password if you had a prior ID by clicking on the forgot password link. The system will send you an email with a link and you have to click the link, at which time it will send you a password.

ovSAGE Meeting

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:14:00 -0500

Title: ovSAGE Meeting
Location: The Pythian Group, St. Laurent Mall, Ottawa
Link out: Click here
Description: This is the March meeting for Ottawa Valley SAGE.

This month we will be continuing the setup and install of a virtualized system to act as a mail, web, pop, imap, webmail server.
We will also be looking at kickstart, PXE boot for installation and once we have finished all of this, puppet and nagios for configuration management and monitoring
There will be some time at the beginning for any new items and we will be showing another ignite video at the end.
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2010-03-18
End Time: 21:30

And the fun continues...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:52:00 -0500

Something I had noticed a couple of posts ago was bothering me today and I decided to search out the problem and see if there was a fix for it.

The problem being the tags for a post were no longer working. I had used them for the first post, but when I decided to use them a couple of posts ago, no luck. I ignored it as something to look at later and when I posted my HDD woes, the tags were still broken. I tried again today and still broken…

Ottawa Area Security Klatch

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:30:00 -0500

Title: Ottawa Area Security Klatch
Location: Microsoft Canada, 100-152 Queen St., Ottawa, ON, Canada
Link out: Click here
Description: Talk #1: DNS Security: The Seven Deadliest Sins

Speaker: Derrick Webber

A vulnerable DNS allows attackers to compromise everything else in the organization: your web sites, servers, SSL, VPNs, even desktops. This short presentation covers the very worst mistakes in the design and operation of the Domain Name Service and how to fix them.
Talk #2: Log-based Intrusion Detection (LIDS) using OSSEC+Splunk

Fun with Technology...

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:13:00 -0500

Well, not so much fun…

Tuesday last week, I guess there was a power bump or some such event and my main drive on my mac decided to take a nose dive. I should have expected this, as the power is not exactly the most stable in this neck of the woods. I do have backups, but I was lazy the past 2 months and didn’t do a backup. Time machine isn’t quite suitable (no real control) and I haven’t bothered anything beyond a full dump at intervals and that takes time.

Roles...

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:26:00 -0500

Well, registration for the site doesn’t automatically give you the ability to create articles, just to comment. As I didn’t have to register, I didn’t notice. I have upgraded access for the current members and if it doesn’t work, leave a comment for me.

Opportunity...

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:26:00 -0500

I have a friend who has decided to get a new computer. The old one just doesn’t seem to be able to handle the load on it.

This is rather amusing, as the “load” is the use of a web browser. I asked and that is pretty much the sum of the computer use. I guess there may be a game of solitaire in there somewhere, but that is supposedly the entire sum of the computer’s existence.

Highly amusing... and so true!

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:57:00 -0500

Matt Simmons sent a tweet this morning regarding today’s xkcd comic. His observation was that it would make a large number of sysadmin blogs and I’d have to agree. The rest of his commentary from his blog is also quite apt. I remember having this discussion at the LISA conference multiple times, specifically the hero complex and how dangerous it is to stability and reliability for all the reasons listed.

In our profession (yes, it is one), invisibility is the name of the game. This unfortunately has the side effect of no one really understanding what you do or why they employ you. If you are good, there are no problems, so why do they need you? On the other hand, you get the person who isn’t as experienced yet and who runs around fixing the symptoms rather than the problem and, due to the visible results, gets praised. This leads into the hero complex and it’s a difficult thing to turn around, as everyone likes to know they are doing a good job.

Once more, a new system

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:25:00 -0500

As I have been promising, I have finally pushed the new site live.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to migrate data and users from the old site, so I will be bringing over the users from the old site. If you are impatient, register again and I’ll avoid duplicating you. Due to a difference in the password encoding mechanisms used, you will have to use the lost password feature to get a new one.

Rules to live by

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:15:00 -0500

Well, advice anyway.

During the weekly meeting while the usual suspects were discussing things that do not affect the site here, I was getting some information for a project and ran across an odd link that brought me to a page that had an interesting looking link on the sidebar. Clicking on it, I was looking at a personal observation page reflecting on the 5 things the author had gotten from his father:

Sometimes it's a good day.

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:56:00 -0500

Today did not start our so well, my client ran out of home directory space. Not that this was unexpected.

Yesterday I noticed we were down to 20GB of shared space. Sounds like a lot, given that there are less than 100 people and this is unix home directory stuff. I went out a warning that we were running out of space and it was time to do some clean up. I guess it fell on deaf ears. This morning, it was down to 781MB. Someone had chewed up 19+ GB overnight.

Since I'm considering changing the site engine...

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:08:00 -0500

I may as well look at changing the whole colour scheme and logo. The current one was something I put together in a hurry one night and while servicable, it could use an improvement. If anyone wants to try their hand at a logo, feel free. We can even vote on it. I may even be able to provide an O’Reilly book as an incentive.

I’m partial to the soft Blue tones, but looking at some themes on other sites, there are many other things that can be done. I’ll have a number of alternative layouts for the site and we can pick from that and go logo mad after the colour scheme and layout are selected.

Changing site engines seems to be a good idea...

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:01:00 -0500

I’ve found enough information on converting from Drupal to Wordpress to make it worth the effort. Once done, the directory structure and the setup seem to be much more intuitive that the Drupal interface. Who knows? Maybe I’m just lazy.

Seriously though, the site has gone through 3 revisions over the years and a couple of mailing lists. Interestingly enough, I still have all of the data, even from the first days (written in MS Front Page) and a yahoo group for the mailing list. We then went to a package called Geeklog which sufficied for a while and no mailing list. Geeklog eventually got hacked and filled with more comment spam than I ever wanted to play with again. That inspired going to Drupal and after a comment by an unnamed person, adding mailman, which has done well, but as I commented in a prior post, failed utterly on the upgrade to the newer version. It may be incompatible plugins, who knows. The bottom line if the upgrade blew technicolour chunks. I backed out and continued on the old system.

July Meeting

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:26:00 -0500

As most of you know by now, we are pushing the July meeting out a week so it will not conflict with Blues Fest.

July’s Topics:

Kelly will be doing one on VMware and NetApp storage
Scott will be showing an “ignite talk”
There may be a third presentation time permitting

19:00 at Pythian

It's the Uncle Bloggy Show...

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:58:00 -0500

It seems I’m a bit verbose this week.

First, my ISP is still having problems letting me send email from my servers. I am of the opinion that rebooting a cisco router multiple times a day in the vain hope that I will get the port unstuck is a bit much to expect. So far, no response to my question as to how much longer I will have to put up with this. Stay tuned for another exciting episode of “Help Desk Opera.”

And sometimes you forget to hit submit.

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:18:00 -0500

At least that is what happened in my previous post, which is why it only showed up today. Of course, even if I had hit Submit, you probably wouldn’t have gotten a notification…

ISP issues… My outbound email was blocked at least most of last week if not longer. I really have no idea how long, but my mail server does show successes up to at least June 17, so it had to be working until then. It appears that the NCF (read as techsavvy) is blocking outbound SMTP. This is supposed to only affect dynamic IP address customers, but it apparently got applied across the board. An email with appropriate information showing the blocked port got me the full response rather than a “What are you talking about?” response.

Mass password changes...

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:17:00 -0500

Every now and then you have to do one of those fun tasks like change the passwords on everything at a site or data center or whatever. Bloody frustrating is what it is when you have to do this for a couple of hundred unix boxes AND you have to use different passwords depending on what the box is classified as.

Back in the day (early 1990’s), Don Libes had put together a tcl tool kit called expect, which could automate all manner of things. I have used it over the years and always liked it. Included in the kit are sample scripts, one of which is called passmass

Microsoft's new search engine...

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 20:08:00 -0500

You know, sometimes the right thing gets the right name…

Microsoft recently released their new search site/engin/whatever called “bing.”

I’ve seen it pop up on several sites, references to it in google ads in gmail, etc. The next thing that showed up in my inbox was a commentary on this. I thought I’d share.

You really have to appreciate the irony though. Pay attention to the URL below.

http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_561501581/bing.html

bing  
[bing](http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/Pronounce.aspx?search=bing)  
*plural* bings  

noun

Definition:

Scotland: **heap**  
a heap or pile of something, especially a slag heap 

Early 16th century. Old Norse *bingr*  
"heap, bolster"

There are times when I hate Open Source :)

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:31:00 -0500

I decided to do a much delayed upgrade to the website yesterday. It involved:

Putting the site into maintanance mode
Backing up the current site
Backing up the database
Disabling all the installed modules
Removing any non-default content in the webserver directory
Extracting the latest minor revision of the software and testing that
Extracting the next major version at the latest minor revision and doing the same (if this had been multiple major revisions, this process would repeat until up to the latest major/minor)
Copying back the couple of directories that had old settings
Running a database upgrade script (as the database changes every so often)
Looking for current versions of all the installed modules and installing them again
Firing it up and hoping nothing changed

Well, things went great until I discovered that the calendar module doesn’t exist in the current major revision (only 12 minor revisions have come out since it was released and the next major is in beta).

June Meeting

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:08:00 -0500

Meeting this Thursday at Pythian.

Bruce got interested in the qmail mail system as a result of mentioning the rocks project and has hit a snag during install. Assuming there is no other topic, we can go over the installation og Qmail as per the rocks project documentation during the meeting.

There was no commentary on the previous talk, so I’m going to ignore doing a practical install of djbDNS in favor of the qmail install, possibly more attractive to attendees.

Qmail Rock Project Attempt

Fri, 29 May 2009 08:14:00 -0500

POsted by Bruce:

I’m working on trying to get the qmailrocks project going on a vmware instance of Ubuntu 9.04.

I’ve come across a road block. When I get the part where the command to enter is:

./config-fast your\_fqdn\_hostname**

I entered:

./config-fast post.cyberserfdom.com

This came back with a response of:

-bash: ./config-fast: No such file or directory

I tried:

sh config-fast.sh post.cyberserfdom.com

This came back with a response of:
Your fully qualified host name is post.cyberserfdom.com

Putting post.cyberserfdom.com into control/me

Config-fast.sh: 5: cannot create QMAIL/control/me directory nonexistent

Chmod: cannot access 'Qmail/control/me' no such file or directory

Putting post.cyberserfdom.com into control/defaultdomain

Config-fast.sh: 13: cannot create QMAIL/control/ defaultdomain directory
nonexistent

Chmod: cannot access 'Qmail/control/ defaultdomain' no such file or
directory

Putting post.cyberserfdom.com into control/plusdomain

Config-fast.sh: 20: cannot create QMAIL/control/ plusdomain directory
nonexistent

Chmod: cannot access 'Qmail/control/ plusdomain' no such file or
directory

Putting post.cyberserfdom.com into control/locals

Config-fast.sh: 23: cannot create QMAIL/control/ locals directory
nonexistent

Chmod: cannot access 'Qmail/control/ locals' no such file or directory

Putting post.cyberserfdom.com into control/rcpthosts

Config-fast.sh: 27: cannot create QMAIL/control/ rcpthosts directory
nonexistent

Chmod: cannot access 'Qmail/control/ rcpthosts' no such file or
directory
Now qmail will refuse to accept smtp messages except to post.cyberserfdom.com

Post May Meeting Notes...

Fri, 22 May 2009 23:09:00 -0500

I gave a presentation of a DNS rollout I had participated in (well, basically rolled the whole show), but that’s getting picky.

I’m hoping it was somewhat entertaining and that it had some value for those who attended. I’m considering doing a followup where we actually go over the rollout by doing it and testing. I’m not 100% sure how I’ll present it, as some will be slides, some will be practical.

Post BSDCan 2009

Sun, 17 May 2009 16:43:00 -0500

The conference is over, and it’s time to return to the mundane. It was a good time - formal talks, social activity and lots of idea exchanges. Actually a very good time. If I was independently wealthy, I’d probably spend most of my time attending conferences. I hear BSDCan 2010 will be on for next year, so at the very least I have that to look forward to.

I did not attend any of the highly technical presentations, as I’m effectively a BSD newbie (well, I used it for years in the 80’s), but I don’t really have much experience with the modern versions. That is a task for this year. I have the iso images, vmware, enough physical machines to brown out the neighborhood and time to learn.

May Meeting - Thursday, May 21, 2009

Sun, 17 May 2009 16:35:00 -0500

We will be having the May meeting at the offices of the Pythian group. Location info is available in the “Meetings” link at the top right corner of the page.

This month, we have a talk on implementing production DNS. It might even prove mildly entertaining.

Suggestions for future talks are acceptable during the more social portion of the meeting. If you have a topic you wish to present on or have a topic you would like to have presented, please bring it up at the meeting.

Oracle to buy Sun

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:24:00 -0500

Managing to outmaneuver IBM:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h-3DLt9Q_Yyl0h-XzDc7C8RJ9DNAD97M63805

The big question is: what will happen to MySQL and other open source Sun products?

April Meeting

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:39:00 -0500

Looks like we have a new home. The Pythian Group has offered us use of their space and it may be more convenient for some of us, as it is now downtown.

I was originally going to go over the repurposing of old watchguard units as firewalls or possibly talk about asterisk but that didn’t pan out. Due to an excessive amount of work over the past couple of weeks, all I have had time to look at was replacing my DSL modem and watchguard unit (running monowall) with a cisco 2621 router and a WIC-1ADSL card. It is a work in progress, as I haven’t quite figured out where to apply the access lists (for a DMZ) or how to determine the netmask for my static address.

February Meeting

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:59:00 -0500

This Thursday, 19:00 at Fidus.

We have a proposed topic of “Cloud Computing” and it is an interesting topic. I’m not sure that everyone has thought about the long term implications of on-demand computing or how it would affect the way we work. I’m sure it will be an interesting discussion.

Other things of note would be that I will be (if not by the time we get the meeting going) setting up an Asterisk server for my home use. I keep wanting to do it and never get to it. I do have an Asterisk based PBX in the office that I maintain and it’s not fun to be locked out. This is probably the real reason I’m going to get to it now. Once it’s up, I have to decide what I am going to do about my real PBX. Should be lots of fun. Setting up clusters will also be an interesting exercise. Once it’s complete, I’ll do a talk on the setup and how well it worked, as well as firewalls, protocols and strange things one has to do with enterprise gear.

Legacy software, modern hardware, Solaris 10 and interesting behavior...

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 14:51:00 -0500

I got back home from Toronto somewhere around 02:30.

Warning: Never do this alone!

Well, good thing I didn’t… Some of that gear can be heavy, so a second set of hands is useful. Loading it into a personal vechicle is also easier with two people - good thing I don’t have a tiny compact car. I can just see this happening in a SMART car or an Innocenti (yes, shudder).

KACE systems management - commercial alternative to cfengine and puppet

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:11:00 -0500

Just learned about this line of commercial systems management appliances (company is named KACE) in a LOPSA forum:

http://www.kace.com/products/systems-management-appliance/computer-management-software-alternative/index.php

Has anyone heard about or worked with/tested these products?

Lack of backup shuts company down

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:16:00 -0500

For those who haven’t heard about Journalspace.com going the way of the dodo:

hothardware.com/News/Sabotage-and-Lack-of-Data-Backup-Sink-Company/

Lessons from this incident abound:

Choosing a sysadmin (what kind of sysadmin thinks that RAID = backup???)
Managing IT
Dealing with fired employees that have the keys to the kingdom

Vacations that are not

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 22:28:00 -0500

Today I was mostly left alone. Gotta love vacation. No progress on the rework of my computers, but I guess that’s what happens when you get caught up in the last throes of a dying year.

Now I have to figure out how to take a day off the first week back :)

On the plus side, I should be left alone for the rest of this day and tomorrow at least. If I’m really lucky, I can rework my firewall tomorrow and maybe get a few machines racked and rebuilt. I’m going to have to take pictures of the racks. I suppose I should get a bigger UPS power supply installed as well. I need to find (or build) a rack-mount DSL modem as well. That could be an interesting project.

December Meeting

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 21:07:00 -0500

I know, the meeting is long past. I did want to say that we did in fact have a meeting and that we were having a social meeting.

Dinner at Ceylonta 19:00 to 21:00 bring a guest.

IT is not a place to cut your budget.

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 17:09:00 -0500

It’s amusing in a way. For years I’ve been sounding off on how any well run IT shop is not a profit center for a company. It doesn’t have to be a major drain on the resources, but IT is not a place to make money unless you sell IT services, but then your own IT is still a cost center.

A good IT shop will reduce your cost of doing business, but it does take investment in the function. You can only get by for so long on ancient equipment and used parts. The infrastructure has to be refreshed occasionally or you run the risk of having something critical fail and not only is it no longer made, the parts do not even exist any more. If you have a critical service or provide one to an external customer, you should be providing some level of high availability. The ten year old server in the corner that has been serving email without complaint is eventually going to blow a disk if not something else. It happens.

Vacation!!!!

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 12:37:00 -0500

Wow, I’m on vacation. No exotic destination this time, unless you consider the flights of fancy from reading lots of sci-fi, fantasy and more tech books and journals than I’d care to think about.

Time to get my house in order as they say. I have about 3 years worth of neglected projects sitting around and I’m overwhelmed with the possibilities - where to start? I have 15 issues of Make: to inspire me, 2 microcontroller prototyping systems, VoIP servers, web servers, specialized computers, steampunk, etc. The list goes on and on (and on…) so I can’t even identify a beginning. I may be forced to admit defeat and start with a less lofty goal and maybe just gut the techcollection (yes, new word) I have and start with gear that’s newer than five years old.

Items from the December Meeting

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 23:31:00 -0500

Well, I don’t know about everybody else, but I had a good time, at least after I made it inside.

We had a good meal, several amusing conversations, notable example keywords and phrases would be: Palindrome, Penny Lane and “dislocated my leg”.

For Bruce: I do hope he’s OK and that was some manner of overreaction to something equally odd but less disasterous.

On to my little offering for the interested who followed my sporadic phone calls and emails:

It seems IBM has decided to make Lotus Notes available for all OS major platforms and free

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:05:00 -0500

The Internet Journal has an article on this at:

http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200811/ij_11_24_08a.html

It would appear to want Microsoft to lose it’s position at the top of the Office Suite chart. I’m not sure about it yet, but I have decided to download it and try it out. After all, if it performs as advertised, then it’s usable on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. To make it even more interesting, it uses Open Document Format by default and while it can’t handle the Office 2007 extensions yet, that will be a plugin at some point.

Items from the November 2008 Meeting

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 16:42:00 -0500

We had a number of odd discussions, one of which referred to password policies. I promised to provide a list of links that contain general password policy guidelines. Here are several:

I suspect that if you look through these, you will find that there is a common core of items that make the most sense.

I was to also provide a link to that video I showed. The location is: http://www.toolsfortheclassroom.com/

It has been a while

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:56:00 -0500

It looks like I have not bothered with a blog entry since March.

A lot can happen in 6 months…

Data center closure
Legacy migrations to a new datacenter
Server consolidation
Learning more than I wanted to about VMware
NetApp configuration and testing
Taking on a management role
Having input in setting portions of corporate direction
Hiring staff (all one so far)
Vacation
Family crisis (yeah, the fun never ends)
and lots more…

It’s been a roller coaster.

October Meeting - 2008-10-16

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:18:00 -0500

That’s election week for those who can’t count, as well as Thanksgiving week.

Topics:

RT and interfacing to exchange and procmail
Ontario Linux Fest
HTCIA case study
What to do with old computers
Maybe some switches avaialable for those who show up?
Other groups in the region

July Meeting - Thursday, July 31, 2008

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:16:00 -0500

The meeting for this month was punted out to the 31, due to scheduling conflicts and OLS. No special topics, but I did run across another distribution that is supposed to work with the firebox II units I gave away a while ago. I’m going to try to set up one of the “alternate” models with that and if it works, do another session on it.

Another hot topic which has reared it’s ugly head last week is the DNS vulnerability to cache poisoning. More info is at Dan Kaminsky’s blog and securosis.com if you want to read up on it.

Followup notes for the June 2008 meeting

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 01:07:00 -0500

We had an odd meeting, one might even say eclectic tonight. There was no formal agenda, other than a request to chat about the Canadian copyright Bill that has been tabled. More on that later.

There was a short discussion on ISPs and the methods they appear to use to encourage legacy clients from acquisitions to find greener pastures. There is a consensus that the NCF as an ISP is the right way to go. For people looking for an alternative, techsavvy is also available. These are useful to the more technically inclined. for those who don’t care or don’t want to know the difference, rogers or sympatico will probably suit you just fine. For those who want to know, I have located a Canadian hosting provider, Canadian Webhosting Canada who’s data center is located in Vancouver. The prices are reasonable, slightly higher than the American ones. There is also Blacksun out of Saskatoon.

June Meeting

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:59:00 -0500

This Thursday, the June monthly meeting will be held at Fidus. Directions are in the top right corner of the site.

April Meeting: 2008-04-24

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:24:00 -0500

Just in case you don’t look at the calendar, we will be having the meeting a week late. I’ll have stories of data center dismantling and other goodness as well as the surprising tale of getting a renewed passport.

Other topics are welcome, as well as any technical conundrums to be solved.

March Meeting

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:56:00 -0500

Looks like I was asleep at the switch in March, forgot to post the BSD meeting, forgot to post the ovSAGE meeting. Perhaps I’ll do better this month. Stay tuned.

BSDcan 2008

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 21:52:00 -0500

BSDCan, a BSD conference held in Ottawa, Canada, has quickly established itself as the technical conference for people working on and with 4.4BSD based operating systems and related projects. The organizers have found a fantastic formula that appeals to a wide range of people from extreme novices to advanced developers. BSDCan 2008 will be held on 16-17 May 2008 at University of Ottawa, and will be preceeded by two days of Tutorials on 14-15 May 2008.

For the trusting types...

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:10:00 -0500

I was just catching up on my reading when I stumbled across this gem of a link:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/bb927794.aspx

Now, as it doesn’t identify itself via the URL, it is a windows service pack blocking tool.

The blurb from the Microsoft web page is as follows:

A blocking tool is available for organizations that would like to temporarily prevent installation of Windows Service Pack updates through Windows Update. This tool can be used with:

Chroot facility added to OpenSSH

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:20:00 -0500

It seems that chroot has been incorporated into OpenSSH in the latest release, making it much easier to enable sftp-only accounts that are confined to their homedir:

http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20080220110039

Previously, you had to implement cumbersome patches and hacks to achieve this functionality, which is easily enabled in vsftpd and some other FTP servers.

February Meeting

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:06:00 -0500

This Thursday is the monthly meeting. I do remember saying that we could do something techie this time around, so I’m bringing a handful of Watchguard Firebox IIs to turn into monowall security appliances. The process is remarkably simple and they will run embedded BSD internally when we are completed.

All materials will be provided (as you only get to keep the completed box). Points for good questions. As this won’t take all night (at least it shouldn’t), think up some good topics for post mods.

Looks like it's that time again...

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:26:00 -0500

Well, it’s always time for stupidity. I was looking through updates on facebook and there it was… A National Post Article on copyright. As I have an interest in the existing provisions of the copyright act as we currently know it, I thought it would be a good read.

Reading through it, it appears that our Industry minister is in the middle of fast tracking a DMCA like ammendment or law, contrary to the wishes of the public, the retailers, broadcasters, telcos and ISPs. It would only be to please the branch offices of the companies behind all the nuisance lawsuits south of the border.

Changes

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 23:25:00 -0500

No, not the David Bowie song.

For those in the know, my contract at ST ended January 4^th and I had the joy of being unemployed (underemployed?) for a whole 5 days, my choice.

I have accepted the role of Security Officer with “Unnamed Company” and that starts January 14^th so this should be a fun week as I get started in my new position (no comments from Bruce please).

January Meeting

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 23:19:00 -0500

As it says in the calendar, this week is meeting week.

I was thinking that we should set a couple of goals for the year, so we have something to work towards, as well as try for a few training sessions.

Topics welcome.

Some things that will come up are:

firewalls
possible amateur radio presentation
stuff to do
training?

A lawyer's viewpoint

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:54:00 -0500

Others may or may not have come across this website before, but if not I figured that it would be a good source of information, from a legal point of view on some of the issues facing our industry. If nothing else it could be the catalyst for some interesting arguements.

Michael Geist is a lawyer who appears to take a relatively rational approach to some of the “improvements” the politicians are trying to inflict upon a world that they do not understand.

This has got to be the best disclaimer I have read yet...

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 23:27:00 -0500

I have been reviewing Solaris hardening guides to try to get a couple of better ideas for my customized hardening scripts. While reading, I ran across a link to softpanorama.org. I was glancing at the article which almost looks as if it was sponsored by Microsoft :)

Anyway, to cut to the chase…

“Standard disclaimer: The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the author, present and former employers, SDNP or any other organization the author may be associated with. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose.”

Post December Meeting (aka: stuffed)

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 01:11:00 -0500

Well, that was quite the meal:

Good food
Good company
Good wine
Good conversation

Pretty much sums it up. I’m sitting in front of my computer wondering how long it will be until I feel like a normal person again. I have to order a smaller meal next time I am down there.

For those who were wondering where that post I mentioned regarding the Apple Leopard Server OS, the link is “I’m not a mac zealot. Really!” Of course, there are those who doubt, especially after the mac promo info I gave out at the meeting.

I'm not a mac zealot. Really.

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 14:01:00 -0500

It’s been a busy couple of weeks… Work, outside activities, visitors, etc.

First thing. I have posted the poll for the social meeting. Visit the site and log in to vote. Voting closes in 2 weeks. Just enough time to make a decision and send it vis the mailing list.

Next thing. I need a new job. My contract ends in just over a month and I don’t have anything lined up yet. On the plus side, I should have no difficulty getting to a few training events I want to go to, but thats just a small benefit. I still need gainful employment. A few things have cropped up, but nothing has come of it so far.

Where shall we have the December meeting?

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 23:38:00 -0500

Open to suggestions.

LinuxFest 2007

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:45:00 -0500

I was sure I had posted about this, but I guess I never finished or I dreamed about it. Pretty much the same thing I would guess.

The event was October 13 in Toronto and had a pre-conference part the night before as well as a post conference party. I skipped the pre-conference party as I was visiting my brother and it would have been pretty rude to drop in and say “Here’s my junk, I’ll see you later.”

Site errors - possibly nailed

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:45:00 -0500

It seems that there is a caching module that causes issues when coupled with the database, anonymous users and certain pages. That may be the reason there have been problems logging in, logging out and posting. I have disabled the site cache (and we’ll see if it works).

New stuff for home system

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:54:00 -0500

Another post where I have no idea who wrote it.

Today I went and bought a new monitor (LG L245W 24", 1920x1200, picture-in-picture capable) and a 500 GB external USB drive.

The monitor is great - it worked after a dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg on my Debian Sid system.

The hard disk came pre-formatted for NTFS. I’m contemplating the number and sizes of partitions, once I’ve decided that then it will be reformatted to use ext3. I’m going to use it for backups. It’s not an ideal backup device, but it’s better than no backup device which is where I was before.

Ontario Linux Fest Press Release

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:25:00 -0500

FYI…

PRESS RELEASE

Toronto, Ontario - 09 October 2007: Ontario Linux Fest holds its inaugural conference in Toronto, Ontario at the Toronto Congress Centre at 650 Dixon Road on Saturday, October 13, 2007.

Free Software leaders including Jon ‘maddog’ Hall of Linux International, Theodore Ts’o of IBM and Louis Suarez-Potts of OpenOffice.org and many others are presenting topics of interest to Linux and Open Source enthusiasts and the general public alike. Learn about the latest innovations in computer software, flexible telephony, software freedom and your rights, and meet the luminaries who are revolutionizing our digital world.

It was Sunday night...

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 00:49:00 -0500

Like it says, it was Sunday night when I started doing maintenance for all the websites I make the attempt to look after. I have to find out why the webalizer software insists on messing with one of my sites. I may just have to turn it off, as it isn’t really useful for these sites.

Looks like a busy week coming up, interview call tomorrow (yeah, I know it’s Thanksgiving), and I have a bunch of stuff to do for my current employer before the end of the month. That should keep me busy for the next 4 (or so) weeks. Friday will be a day off, as I’m going to spend the weekend with my brother, well part of it, as I’m attending linuxfest on Saturday and that should be a full day. That makes for a 3 day week. That will be kind of nice for a change.

Post September Meeting Followup

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:16:00 -0500

Looks like I didn’t post a September Meeting page, although it was listed in the events.

Too bad for those who didn’t show up for the meeting. We did a hardware hacking project, specifically reflashing a Linksys WRT54GL to use a firmware from the OpenWRT project (well, this was really a software portion), but it was hardware we repurposed and proved that it worked after the fact. We also had a working web interface to the unit and the ability to adjust all manner of items that the folks at linksys don’t want us playing with.

Recent Events

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 10:58:00 -0500

This is nothing bad, just a commentary on recent events (as in Open Source, HTCIA, etc).

Last Saturday was Software Freedom Day 2007. The local event was held at Carleton University in the Tory Building (3rd floor, not 4th as was advertised). To say the turnout was underwhelming would be an understatement. I think there may have been 5 people who showed up. This just shows we didn’t have enough advertising for the event. On the plus side, there was time to chat with the other Open Source folks and that was entertaining for the 5 hours or so that we were there. Another bonus is that parking on campus is free on weekends.

Software Freedom Day

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 11:10:00 -0500

Software Freedom Day is coming up on Saturday, September 15th. Software Freedom Day is a global celebration and education of why transparent and sustainable technologies are now more important than ever.

There will be displays at Carleton University, location to be added later, from 10:00am until 3:00pm. Some of the items to be displayed are:

The OpenCD
OSBR
BSD Certification
PC-BSD
Carleton’s TIM Program

Come out in support of OpenSource!

Vacation? What's that?

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 10:03:00 -0500

I just got back from attending a friend’s wedding back in my hometown. Well, she’s more of my wife’s friend, but that’s not significant enough to matter.

In the interest of saving a few dollars (just over $300) and a few days dog kennel money, I adjusted my stay down a few days and the price dropped dramatically. If I had stayed an additional week, I could have gotten the same deal, but it would have cost me 7 days consulting rates and the extra 7 days kennel fees (as well as taxing my relationship with the person taking care of my cats). I just don’t get it - how can it cost $300 more to go out on the same flight on a different day? It’s not like I hadn’t stayed over a weekend; oh yeah, they don’t do that any more. I booked a return trip; right, that doesn’t matter anymore either. Well, then there is no real way to predict prices. Fees and taxes are another good one. Better than half the cost of the trip was the various surcharges, taxes, airport fees, security fees, etc. Don’t forget, they still offer complimentary drinks (water, juice, soft drinks, milk, coffee, and tea), but don’t ask for a refill if they are busy. food is available - you have to purchase it now. Not even the salty fried carbohydrates are available any more. Stock up on bottled water and a visit to the Tim Horton’s or Second Cup inside the security area before you board the aircraft. To add insult to injury, the flight had mechanical difficulties and we sat on the tarmac for an extra half hour (the plane was filled to capacity - and smelled like it). I did make my connecting flight in Halifax, but it was getting close - the hour I had between flights had dropped to 10 minutes.

new project: mini-home-ecg

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 08:52:00 -0500

Note: I have no idea who posted this. I’d have to rebuild the old site to get the author information. The joy of fixing up the conversions from the many systems I have used over the years..

So, I’ve been having pulse irregularities and heart palpitations (well, not sure of the technical meanings of these terms - but my pulse rate isn’t regular and I feel funny things in my chest). I’ve been in for an ECG and they told me that the heart was fairly normal, with a few arrythmias thrown in. I wanted to see that for myself, and I decided to use my blackfin processor to make a teensy, two- or few-lead ECG for myself. How hard can it be : - )

Way too busy (and loving it!)

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 09:55:00 -0500

Life gets interesting when you are juggling a bunch of things and events just happen around you in a random fashion.

Writing training material for the LPI 101 exam preparation and presenting it on Monday nights.
There are at least 5 local usergroups that I am a member of which I go to meetings during the month and a few international ones that I try to attend the IRC chats for
There is the day job which keeps me busy writing papers and documentation as well as trying to squeeze in new methodologies and testing
Rebuild of my home environment (which always take a back burner), although I managed to upgrade my two macs last week, so I can get some videos finished and the audio sessions from BSDCan finished. The web server is being replaced next with a machine that is no faster, but it has the benefit of HotSwap SCSI disks.
Six technical magazines/month to read, as well as the one or two O’Reilly books I manage to get every month.
Reading for pleasure, latest was Kim Stanley Robinson’s “50 Degrees Below” - part 2 of a climate change trilogy - there are five or six novels/month
A wedding to attend this month
Just got my deck completed, now it needs treatment/stain and furniture (10 years in the making) and worth every penny paid to get it done. (I’m a hopeless carpenter)
Filling out proposals (read government grids) for contract work
Locating and reading documentation of performing TRAs and SOSs in an approved manner for the RCMP/Federal Government (that’s where the money is right now)
Arguing with Adobe about my invalid serial number (8 days and counting)
Contemplating volunteering for a few things with the local computer charity (have to consider my time)
Quality time with my family (has to take priority)
Plan, design and mock up the plan for my home office and my wife’s project room (lots of room in the basement, just need to get a few walls and a nice floor in place and lots of power) also need to figure out where the computer racks will reside.
Gut basement again (get rid of 50% of what is down there). I figure a 15 cubic meter dumpster will do it (better that the 25 cubic meters last time).

Now I need to look at September…

August Meeting - Thursday July 16, 19:00 @ Fidus

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 09:35:00 -0500

Topics:

We will be (hopefully) following up with Bruce on his postfix install (you blogging that yet Bruce?)
There will be an LPI Exam seating in October (details Thursday night)
CMS Systems (specifically this website)
- Features
- Spam
- User Registration
ISP Providers and static addresses
SpamAssassin Configuration

Lots of topics, not a lot of details yet. The SpamAssassin will be have some real info, the others are discussion topics.

July Post Meeting Commentary

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 22:26:00 -0500

Well, last night was our July meeting - average turnout I would guess, all of 5 people. I suspect this may start changing if I ever get around to promoting on a somewhat larger scale.

We had a bit of a mixed bag tonight:

Photo show of Scotland
Announcement of an upcoming seminar series from the HTCIA (Ottawa Chapter)
Discussion of the postfix session from two meetings ago
LPI exams for October
A slide show of some “motivational posters”

There was also a minor challenge issued to the attendees by Brenda to blog something even if it’s just a “Hi, this is my first blog, be kind” type of thing.

Note to Self... (and others)

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 22:00:00 -0500

Hey Self!

Next time you upgrade the modules on the website, try a few things out. The unresponsive FCKeditor should have been a signal that something was wrong.

OK, I know this seems a little schizo, but sometimes it takes a 2x4 (or larger) to get me to see the light. I need to remember that just because the system can tell me about updates to modules AND can install them for me automagically, it doesn’t mean they get configured properly.

July Meeting - July 19, 2007 @ Fidus

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:33:00 -0500

Well, that’s what we hope. There wasn’t much to follow up with from the last meeting, so this time I’m announcing an event targeted for September of 2007. It should be very interesting and hopefully will be of use for any or all of you in your professional capacity.

See you there.

Gibson Research Password Generator

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:28:00 -0500

If you need something to generate long WPA keys, look no further.

GRC WPA PAssword Generator

June Meeting followup

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 01:06:00 -0500

We had a small group tonight. When I say small I mean really small. All of three people.

We had the normal trivia exchange and then got to a more serious topic - what kind of skill set do you need to be a sysadmin? This could be a topic for a future meeting. Perhaps some kind of skills assessment from everyone? I think I’ll wait and see who comments/brings it up again.

BSDCan Keynote

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 04:05:00 -0500

It’s been a little hectic around here lately, new organizations to join, conferences to attend, lawns to mow and course material to prepare. That’s in addition to my day job. As a result (and due to running out of disc space), it’s taken some time to get at the audio from the conference.

This is the first one I have converted - the keynote address. Others will follow this week. I’m also working on the videos, but that takes a lot longer.

Podcasting - easier than I thought

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:16:00 -0500

Well, it can be. Everyone knows the love affair I’ve been having with my macbook, so it’s no surprise that I used it to create a podcast of the keynote from BSDCan 2007. If anyone wants to listen, it’s at my other blog site. Since it’s a streamable/downloadable item, the bandwidth usage may get high and since they provide free bandwidth, why not use theirs?

I have a lot more to produce, so I think I’ll be automating the production a bit and see what happens. At worst, I have to do it manually but if it works, they could conceivably all be created over night. That’s a task for a different day though.

June Meeting, June 21 @ 19:00

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 23:23:00 -0500

We have a change of venue this month. Brenda is off to Scotland for a vacation, so we don’t have a sponsor at Fidus. I’ll see what I can come up with, but we can always go to a Tim Horton location - there will be coffee :)

Topics:

Bruce may want to talk about his Postfix adventures.
I’ll have a podcast or two from BSDCan 2007 available.
I’ll probably want to talk about the LPI course Andrea and I are giving at the OTI.
I’ve joined the Ottawa chapter of the Disaster Recovery Information Exchange and that’s given me some serious food for thought. I’ll see if I can dig up some of the info from the annual conference that was held May 31.
We can talk about a group education effort - we’ll start borrowing the format from other groups and give a short talk and discussion. Everyone should pick a topic that they want to learn about or want to present on. I know we have a lot of expertise in may areas in the group and we should start using it.

LPI Preparation Review

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 22:09:00 -0500

This may be the first time any of you see of this topic. If it is successful, we’ll be offering it again in the future.

First some background. With a little urging from Tim Inkpen (who has gotten involved with the OTI), Andrea Vieira and I will be presenting a rapid get up to speed course for people who wish to get their LPIC-Level 1 certification. The initial offering starts June 18^th and yesterday (I was over there to attend a session on how to bid on government contracts) there was 1 seat available in a class of 25. If anyone is interested, you should try to sign up right away.

May ovsage meeting notes

Sun, 27 May 2007 20:30:00 -0500

At the last ovsage meeting, two of us installed Linux into virtual machines, then installed postfix into those virtual machines. One of us managed to get his postfix working, so that someone else present could send him an email.

In my case, I had already installed DSL (Damn Small Linux) into VirtualBox. During the meeting, I upgraded DSL to Debian and installed postfix. But, I was using NAT for networking, and that did not allow for external machines to talk to my mail server.

I (finally) joined new ovSAGE website

Sun, 27 May 2007 19:29:00 -0500

From Alan Fields:

Hi,

Yes I’ve finally joined ovSAGE. I attended meeting at Fidus this month. It was good but we need to work on recruiting members. Thanks to all those who keep these user groups going.

afields

BSDcan 2007 Photos

Tue, 22 May 2007 03:21:00 -0500

This post contains a lot of photos from bsdcan 2007.

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BSDCan 2007 - Day 4

Sat, 19 May 2007 12:10:00 -0500

Wow! It took me long enough to get back to this. I started to write this on May 19^th and just got it finished. I’ll blame being involved in too much :)

Day 4 - started later, 10:00 - much easier to get to. As it’s a long weekend and a Saturday, the traffic was light getting down here and there was parking on the street instead of the parking structure.

BSDCan 2007 - Day 3

Fri, 18 May 2007 17:03:00 -0500

Day 3 - New toys, short(er) presentations

Opening keynote/opening session

Dan has gotten quite informal with this and it goes pretty fast. The keynote started late (people still registering), so it was brief and just welcomed everyone, mentioned some evening activities (including the BSDcert beta tonight), what to after the conference on Sunday, and the fact that pgcon is on next week.

First session - Coverity

Code audit and testing software. Davis Maxwell gave this talk. While the coverity product is commercial, the company thinks that open source software would benefit from their tool as well, especially as they use open source software as well and ran across some interesting things in some libraries they use. David goes around to conferences talking about the tool and engaging open source software developers in trying the tool, hopefully using the tool. More info can be found in teh proceedings (I hope), and there was also an interesting story from Wietse Vename regarding the tool finding unexecuted code in postfix. If I was a programmer, I’d be looking at the tool. It looks like it will save you some serious runtime bugs.

BSDCan 2007 - Day 2

Fri, 18 May 2007 12:21:00 -0500

Day 2 - much quieter. No interruptions from work, just my own distractions from filming the talks.

Morning: Bacula - network aware backups

It’s amazing that I have never seen Dan’s talk before, given how long I’ve known him. I always skipped it as “I know this stuff,” so it was interesting to go over it from a fresh point of view. I’m now going to implement it internally on my home network. Who knows, it might even lead to some other contracts. Don’t forget, it has data encryption and runs over TLS.

All about ovSAGE (well, the old about)

Thu, 17 May 2007 00:34:00 -0500

This was originally the About page for the site. A few things have changed over time, as I have adapted to meet the changes. You should see the original from the first web page.

What is ovSAGE?

ovSAGE is a recognized local affiliate of the System Administrator’s Guild (SAGE) and the League of Professional Systems Administrators (LOPSA), founded in 1998 in Ottawa, Ontario. We are primarily a group of system administrators from around the National Capital region that meet once a month to be social, get a heads up on new ideas, technology, and to have a little fun. Ideally, we will be inviting vendors in to demo technologies that we could use in our daily employment, have training sessions, and bring in some of those nasty problems that we all run into, and try to find an answer.

BSDcan 2007 - day 1 (tutorials)

Thu, 17 May 2007 00:03:00 -0500

Day 1 is completed - so far so good. Other than some difficulties with the room wiring, causing me to miss most of the morning session on VOIP, things went well. Maybe I can get a copy of the slides to go over. On the plus side, the wireless networking was flawless after I took a shortcut to solve the room jack issue.

I did manage to take a photo of the presenter and a shot of the room on my PDA, so that will get posted eventually.

BSDcan 2007 starting Wednesday...

Wed, 16 May 2007 23:42:00 -0500

It appears that I’ve managed to get myself volunteered for the wireless networking for BSDcan. That’s interesting, especially when I haven’t set up a network for a conference before. Luckily, I’ve been able to get some assistance from the previous wireless maintainer.

In the past, the conference used NetBSD for the gateway machine and standard NAT and dhcp to provide the networking, so I went with the old standard. This is interesting simply because I haven’t used NetBSD before. It was a quick download and install, although it doesn’t install bash by default. Now BSD uses a ports collection - probably where Gentoo got the idea for a source repository. It wasn’t intuitively obvious how to add software, but a quick net search showed that all I had to do was install the package list (example given) and go to the correct directory and type ‘make install’. It actually worked first try - much easier than gentoo was :)

BSDcan coming up next week.

Tue, 08 May 2007 23:01:00 -0500

Well, the BDcan 2007 conference starts in a week. I’m looking forward to it, as I actually plan on attending a few of sessions this time. In the past it’s been a little randon if I attend a session as it’s usually a last minute decision.

The first year I was taping the sessions, so I never actually managed to listen to the session. I missed the next year due to work commitments, and the year after that I was doing security (checking to see if people actually were supposed to be there), so I ended up sitting in on whatever I was closest to.

May Meeting - email configuration in postfix

Mon, 07 May 2007 11:35:00 -0500

The May meeting will be pushed out a week, due to the BSD Canada conference. It would be too difficult to race from the conference to the meeting, so I’m bumping the meeting a week.

Don’t forget the topic for this month, configuring email. I believe we were going to look at postfix (which should be new to most of us). If you have a laptop, feel free to bring it along.

MacBook exploit (actually java exploit)

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:08:00 -0500

I just saw this in my email and decided to pass it on. The original article is posted on ZDnet. It’s interesting and hopefully it will be addressed quickly.

Rumors are flying that Dino Dai Zovi’s MacBook Pro exploit has been swiped and is making the rounds online.

An anonymous blogger claims he/she was able to monitor the network at CanSecWest security conference and snag a full packet capture of the contest, which pitted hackers against two new MacBook Pro machines:

LPI Course Project - Alive and Well

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 10:47:00 -0500

Contributed by: Tim Inkpen

The LPI Course Project is Alive and well. This is project is will put free on-line courses for the LPI Levels 1 & 2 exams for ovSAGE members at http://www.businessincubator.ca/education/.

After several false starts, I have decided review the entire LPI exam requirements in depth before building the course.

Anyone interested in assisting with this project is welcome to contact me at tinkpen at sympatico.ca, Phone: (613) 241-7394 or Skype (ID: tinkpen).

Looks like we may have a basic meeting tonight

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:52:00 -0500

The original speaker has fallen through, not a large enough audience, and we don’t have the capacity for a very large one, so I guess it’s all good.

There is a possibility for a speaker from Novell to show up tonight, but I don’t have confirmation on that either.

I am going to bring along a short video I saw years ago that may be new to most people. Hopefully the VGA adapter I picked up for my mac works with the projector.

Great little comment I heard last night

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 22:28:00 -0500

There I was at the local HTCIA meeting and the presenter was nattering about HCI and passed this comment:

There are only two industries where the customer base is calles users:

Computer science, support and design
Drug Trafficking

It struck me as worth repeating.

For the acronymically challenged…

HTCIA - High Tech Crime Investigation Association

HCI - Human Computer Interaction

Module installation can be a real pain.

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 23:13:00 -0500

I was so happy with a recent book purchase that I decided to install the book review module. It installed with no issues, and appeared as a content option as expected. Then the trouble started…

It appears that there is some incompatability with the module. It says it is installed, I can fill out the forms, but when I save it, nothing. After wasting a day on changes, attempted fixes, and browsing the database (of course I had opened the wrong one so nothing appeared to be working properly), I decided to uninstall it.

Barcamp 3 - impressions

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 16:54:00 -0500

I was dragged to Barcamp 3 yesterday. It seems Carleton U has been granted some provincial money to “foster open source” so one of their contributions was to host Barcamp.

Barcamp seems to be a once-in-a-while (every month-and-a half? every two months?) event. I think the Ottawa event was started by some vulture/venture capitalists who wanted to meet techies to slave, I mean work in their startups. But, this time they seem to have attracted some actual techies.

Coffee Shop Computing - Not just for Novelists.

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 11:53:00 -0500

I have to admit, I’ve never sat in a coffee shop and worked on anything with a laptop before today. It’s a pretty great thing. Fresh coffee, semi-fresh food, good access (not the cheapest), etc.

I’ve been working on a side contract and this was a convenient spot to meet with the other person working on the project, have some face time and get started on the project tasks list and timelines. It’s interesting acting as project manager for something you know portions of and have to depend on others to provide the missing expertise.

Cable Management Tip

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:06:00 -0500

A friend of mine sent this around.

From: Arnold XXXXXXXXX arnold.xxxxxxx@xxx
To: Engineering Staff engineeringstaff@xxx
Subject: cable management
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 08:55:11 -0400

Hi All,
Thought I would share a tip I just thought of…
In pursuing the contract here at yyy, I got a mitt full of fibre yesterday..lots of pretty single and multi-mode 6’-10’ cables. Annoyingly, I realised these would end up a tangled mess as there are no twisties to be had (the metal wires in the “garbagebag” variety are not something you want around exposed circuit boards, obviously!) and tie-wraps are too permanent to use on delicate fibre in a lab environment. Sooo, in typical “Band-aid engineering” fashion, I walked out to the garden shed at home last night and snagged the roll of green “tomato tape” that LeeValley sells (basically a low-grade velcro in tape form). I have already discovered it is the cat’s meow for cable management; cut to length, easy to (re)open/close. Not nearly as strong as velcro in the perpendicular/peel direction(very low peel cohesion), but at least half the strength as typical velcro in the lateral loading direction. Wrapped around itself twice, it even holds the 100’ lawnmower extension cord bundled to keep it tidy while hanging on a hook (note: not hung by the tape itself though).
More than strong enough for wire bundling and perfect for fibre cable management! Keeps the stuff in nice tidy coils on the bench and more importantly is non-conductive and reusable and bright green! : - )

Advertising: Why do we do it?

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 08:58:00 -0500

Well, I guess the better question is what’s in it for me? In my case, I get a book from O’Reilly for each of their banners. Most of their conferences and their magazines have this deal. So, having a banner for an event of magazine on the web page for a couple of months in return for one of their books is very nice.

The other items I may place on the site from time to time are local events or conferences. I get nothing for that, except satisfaction that I am promoting local events and proving that there is a real high-tech environment in Ottawa, no matter how underground it has gotten in the past few years.

New storage media should be on the market

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:59:00 -0500

Bruce sent me a reference just after the last meeting to a new Holographic Storage media developed by Maxell. It looks promising, and it says that it will be available in late 2006. Given that it’s the end of the first quarter of 2007, I have to wonder. I haven’t seen it advertised anywhere, but then again, it may be quite expensive.

The capacity of the first generation media (it looks a lot like standard magneto-optical) will hold approximately 300GB, a nice hard drive of today’s capacities. The data transfer rate is also pretty zippy - 160Mbps. That’s hope inducing, as this may be the media of choice for backups. Expected life is ~50 years.

March Meeting (2007) Followup

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 02:00:00 -0500

Highlights

We had 6 attendees which is pretty good given our recent dry run.
We have photos (candid shots, need to do better)
After the usual social session, we got around to talking about the LPI certification and the training course we are going to be doing for those who need it.
Some discussion of directory services ( this would make a good item for a future meeting)
Announced our affiliation with LOPSA

Other

Tim has offered us the use of the training site at Kuzink to provide the training platform and to create content. I’ll be creating content as well as Andrea. Others are welcome to assist, as it can’t hurt to have at least seen some of this while entering it. We will be using moodle as the framework, so that should be interesting at the very least. Exposure to multiple web based systems isn’t gong to hurt and who knows, we may even have talent for this.

This will solve 99% of your problems

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 01:18:00 -0500

Well, it should help with a lot of them at least. I don’t remember where I saw this, but here we go:

echo '16i[q]sa[ln0=aln100%Pln100/snlbx]sbA0D4D465452snlbxq' | dc

It’s trite, but then again, so am I. I just thought I’d share.

Attendees

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 01:00:00 -0500

This is a list for the people who actually show up for meetings.

We are now affiliated with LOPSA

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 17:59:00 -0500

I’m not sure if it was late yesterday or early this mornong, but we are now a recognized LOPSA affiliate (the first in North America). We have been asked if we wish to be a local chapter, but that requires 12 members who are members of LOPSA and at my last count, there were only 4 LOPSA members and we don’t have 12 regular attendees. Perhaps this will change over the next few months, especially as we get started on the new education project. More info at tonight’s meeting.

Don't ask employees to be passionate about the company!

Wed, 14 Mar 2007 02:49:00 -0500

I guess I have to learn how to sleep. It’s 02:44 and I have no desire to go to sleep. I despise DST and the circadian rythm it upsets.

I was browsing some items at the LOPSA site the other day and ran across a reference to the 4-question test and a blog article. I hadn’t heard of the 4-question test before, so I had to go and read about it. Here is the result, which probably has a few other formats, but the version I’m using is this one.

New meeting location approved!!

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:38:00 -0500

We have a new home.

Thanks to Brenda, we have the use of the board room at Fidus to hold our meetings. I’m not going to change the location item until after the first successful meeting. (March 15, 2007)

I’ll have to put together a sponsor page and acknowledge Fidus for the use of their facility. It’s only fair.

The details that I have been given.

Location:

Fidus
900 Morrison Drive, Suite 203
Ottawa, ON

Usenix

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500

usenix, the advanced computer systems association. Visit the link for more information.

It's Sunday night again

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 23:45:00 -0500

Yep, Sunday night. Tomorrow starts another week of the standard stuff… or does it?

I have spent some time adding new modules and things to the site, but not all of it is configured yet. I cleaned up the non-logged in main page to add info about the meetings, as it didn’t make sense to not have that on there. I also discovered that once you disable anonymous access from a number of items, everything vanishes when you are not logged in. The obvious fix would be to allow anonymous access to nodes, which makes a whole bunch of stuff visible, as everything is a node, but now nothing is hidden. Back to the drawing board and that is what resulted in fixing up the main page.

Vista Review

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 01:04:00 -0500

For any of those who are interested, there is a write-up on yahoo about Vista. I saw this just after Vista was available in the stores and promptly forgot to post it.

For those who care: news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070220/tc_pcworld/129126;_ylt=ArUL.0rIZ1sp2JhxpDrz3yEDW7oF

New scam: phone calls regarding new lower interest rates on credit cards

Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:23:00 -0500

It looks like there is a new scam on the go. You get a phone call offering you a low interest rate on your card. Just press 0 (or some number) to speak to a representative. After a moment you get a person on the other end who offers a very sweet deal on a credit card or some such and then asks some verification info from you to prove who you really are. They even try to get your credit card number so they can send you a new one with a lower rate.

Testing blogging - Jumpstart oddity on Solaris 9

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 16:21:00 -0500

We had fun recently at a local company when setting up a Solaris 9 Jumpstart server. When installing a new client, it kept asking if we wanted to disable Power Management. Problem is, it was asking this question AT THE BEGINNING of the installation, and not at the end as usual. Everything was configured properly, we had the finish script to disable this question, but it still kept popping up.
Digging through all documentation that you never knew it existed, I found an interesting bit of information: Solaris Webstart (the new ways of installing programs introduced with Solaris 8 ) does indeed ask this question at the beginning, whereas the old and proven suninstall is the one that asks this question at the end. When you configure the Jumpstart server using the DVD it automatically downloads everything, including Webstart. And, by default you’ll run Webstart (if it was setup in the Jumpstart server) when executing the ‘boot net - install’ command from your client.

issue/bug/feature tracking

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 14:50:00 -0500

We’re looking at bug tracking software at work, so I am trying out

bugzilla
trac

Both are bug trackers (or issue trackers or feature trackers) which serve up content from databases to browsers. Here are some notes:

Bugzilla

integrates with apache, MySql (or postgresql if you prefer), cvs, lxr
can browse source code repository (cvs by default, using lxr or linux cross reference)

trac

integrates with apache (or it can run its own standalone server tracd, or it can run from inetd), sqlite3, svn
incorporates a wiki
can browse source code repository (svn by default)

I’m trying to make a separate trac instance for each project, so I can run the server process as a separate user and have all the related files owned by that user. It was a fair bit of work (but possible) to make apache do that.

Consumer broadband routers at risk

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 12:33:00 -0500

Lots of people use them, most don’t protect them. I just saw a story on a new (well recent) attack vector on those ubiquitous routers that we all use to connect to the internet. The full story is located on ZDnet and basically shows that some carefully crafted javascript and an improperly configured router can result in all kinds of nastiness.

The full implications are pretty staggering. Basically if the admin page is left at the manufacturers defaults, the router can be configured to use an attackers DNS server, effectively forcing you to go where they want you to. Think about that for a moment. If the DNS is hijacked, then requests to go to your bank, online shopping, direct bill payments, etc could be redirected invisibly to a mock site and your personal info could be collected. Better yet, after they get the info, the mock site could redirect you to the real site and you may not even notice it happened.

Testing out the basics of the FCKeditor for the site

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 04:43:00 -0500

Bold

Italic

Underline

subscript~~subscript~~

superscript^superscript^

numbered list 1
numbered list 2
numbered list 3

unordered list 1
unordered list 2
unordered list 3

left justified test Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi. Nam liber tempor cum soluta nobis eleifend option congue nihil imperdiet doming id quod mazim placerat facer possim assum. Typi non habent claritatem insitam; est usus legentis in iis qui facit eorum claritatem. Investigationes demonstraverunt lectores legere me lius quod ii legunt saepius. Claritas est etiam processus dynamicus, qui sequitur mutationem consuetudium lectorum. Mirum est notare quam littera gothica, quam nunc putamus parum claram, anteposuerit litterarum formas humanitatis per seacula quarta decima et quinta decima. Eodem modo typi, qui nunc nobis videntur parum clari, fiant sollemnes in futurum.

Blogging for the sheer joy of it.

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 01:13:00 -0500

Well, I don’t think joy is the correct word, but you get the meaning. Since anyone can self-publish, maybe they should. Storage is cheap, anything posted on the internet appears to remain around forever, and there are internet archeology sites that keep information long past it’s expiry date.

Maybe that’s what we need, an expiration date for content. After that it goes into the Public Domain bit bucket. Oh, wait a sec, we already have that, it’s called a copyright and some fool keeps changing the best before date. I don’t know about you but UHT treatment for content doesn’t seem to work. Why should copyright be extended way beyond the death of the creator?

Calendar appears to be a little in the future

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 22:59:00 -0500

Oddly enough, looking at the calendar to the right as I write this, it shows that today is the 13th of February. I appear to have a time travelling calendar, as the system time shows correctly and the time settings for the site match the system time.

It’s a mystery for another day though, as I have no desire to pour over the calendar module to see if it is set to GMT by default.

Meeting Info

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 10:33:00 -0500

Where:

Once again, we have a new home. The Pythian Group has graciously allowed us to use their facility.

The Pythian Group
Ste. 10000 (10th floor)
116 Albert Street
(At the corner of Albert & Metcalfe –in the same building as the Grand and Toy)
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada

Details

From the Queensway, take the Metcalfe exit and proceed north. When you hit Albert, you are effectively there. You can try for street level parking or use the World Exchange Plaza garage.

Next Meeting

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:57:00 -0500

First Public Post!

It looks like we will be having a meeting next Thursday, February 15, 2007, at 19:00, location to be determined. We no longer have access to the boardroom, so I am working on an alternative. The fallback location will be Tim Horton’s on Carling Avenue, next to the Lone Star.

Time for a Facelift

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:39:00 -0500

I guess everybody has noticed the new site by now. See how clean and shiny and new (and empty) it is? After several attempts to resurrect the old site, I decided to forge ahead with a Drupal based site. Setup is easier in version 5 than it was in version 4, and the features are a little more along the lines of what I wanted in a semi-technical site. At this point, the sky is the limit.

July Meeting

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 11:20:00 -0500

Last minute notification:

No special topics tonight, just being social. Anyone wants to talk about HP e3000 boxes running MPE/iX, I’m all ears.

June Meeting

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:55:00 -0500

Meeting this Thursday.

Stuff I’m interested in talking about:
Solaris 10 zones
disk storage
vmware
opensolaris and opensparc

Good. Fast. Cheap. O'Reilly Launches PDF Guides

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 10:49:00 -0500

As part of O’Reilly Media’s commitment to delivering vital technology information to people who need it, when they need it, O’Reilly is launching an ongoing series of PDF publications to address cutting edge technologies. O’Reilly’s PDF guides are in-depth, immediate, timely, and authoritative. Readers can purchase and download the PDFs through the O’Reilly online store, with no restrictions on the ability to save, copy, or print them.

The advantages to readers are numerous. O’Reilly authors can disseminate crucial information as the need arises, without having to wait for enough material to fill an entire book. Production time is reduced dramatically, giving IT professionals and others immediate access to the knowledge they want. Plus, readers can easily search the text, copy and paste handy bits of code into their applications, and take the PDF with them even when they’re offline. But most importantly, readers won’t have to compromise in their pursuit of timely information–these PDFs provide the high-quality content for which O’Reilly has come to be known.This month’s PDF offerings are available now:

LOPSA Membership Drive

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 09:34:00 -0500

For anyone who is interested, LOPSA is almost at their recruiting target. We have three LOPSA members that I am aware of, so if we could manage 2 more, ovsage would have a whopping 1% of the target membership :)

The following is a letter sent to the existing community.

Dear LOPSA members,

May has 41 days this year!

Response to May Membership Month has been active. Signing up our 500th member is well within our grasp (less than 40 to go!)

Followup to May Meeting

Tue, 30 May 2006 12:29:00 -0500

I had promised to post the link to cisco’s free training.

You can find it at: http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le31/le46/learning_customer_e-learning_connection_tool_launch.html

This is a complement to the official training

May Meeting

Thu, 18 May 2006 15:32:00 -0500

May Meeting, Tim hortons on Carling and March next to the Lone Star

Topics:
BSD Canada 2006
OSW (Open Source Weekend)

Sorry for the late posting, I forgot I hadn’t taken care of it before the conference last week.

OSW: Free Culture Carleton

Mon, 08 May 2006 22:11:00 -0500

This is posted from the OSW mailing list, with a few edits for readability.

Yes, I’m confirming that Free Culture Carleton will be involved in the May 14th [OSW event. I’ll give details about our presentation(s) on the wiki. I’m interested in doing a talk about Creative Commons, self-publishing media, and the iCommons summit.

Someone I know may do a presentation on Linux audio software. Please pass the wiki password to me and I will put the details up there.

April Meeting

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 17:46:00 -0500

Time for another meeting. This will probably be our last meeting at Altera, as Kelly will be finishing up there in mid May. I’ll have to look for a new location, so it may be a Tim Hortons for a while and then possibly a community center or some such ilk.

As for topics, how about data center practices? I’ve been attempting to trace cabling on and off for the past couple of weeks and it drove home how much better BNR had managed their data centers.

LPI Certification is on for the Open Source Weekend

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 21:37:00 -0500

We only have LPI 101 and 102 avaliable at this time. It appears that 201 and 202 are under revision. It also appears that I had a typo in the email address. The actual email address is lpi_exams@ovsage.org. Click on the link below to prefill the message

Date and Time

Location: University of Ottawa, SITE Building May 14, 2006

Seating 1
10:00 to 11:30

Seating 2
13:00 to 14:30

Room: To Be Determined

Solaris 10 zones and Dtrace

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 10:43:00 -0500

I find the following URLs are useful for those tinkering with the new features shipped with Solaris 10 (zones - their virtualization scheme - and Dtrace - a better ’truss’ and optimization/troubleshooting tool). They provide a very good introduction and usable examples you can test right away, instead of plowing your way through Sun’s documentation:

Zones

Dtrace examples

March Meeting

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 22:53:00 -0500

We have a meeting this Thursday night at Altera. Once again, it’s time to meet and discuss. See calendar date and time.

I’ll have some commentary regarding the CISSP exam I’m writing this weekend.

Open Source Weekend.

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 00:13:00 -0500

This year Open Source Weekend (OSW) is planning an open source fun day on May 14, following BSDcan. We will have a full weekend event in the fall, in conjunction with a national event.

The May 14th OSW event will be in the form of a small number of 1-hour talks, and ongoing 20-minute workshops/demos throughout the day.

If you have a neat open source hack, and would like to show and tell others about it we’d like to hear from you.

Free Servers?

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 23:30:00 -0500

I ran across this on Newsforge yesterday and I thought I’d pass it along.

Sun is offering 60 day trials of their new T2000 opeteron servers. According to the article, if you write a comprehensive technical review of the box, you may be invited to keep the machine. The specs are pretty impressive, and the power requirements appear to be quite low given what we have under the hood.

I have not determined if an individual qualifies for the deal, but I think I’ll check it out. Just the thing to host a bunch of my websites on.

LPI Exam

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 23:26:00 -0500

It appears there will be an LPI exam in May. The OSW people are interested in sponsoring this one and would like to hold it at the University of Ottawa. The tentative date is Sunday, May 14, 2006.No details are available yet, but some informal discussion would indicate that level 1 and level 2 exams will be available. Sign up information will be available soon.

Technical Services Specialist

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 00:42:00 -0500

The architect at Layer 7 Tech sent me a nicely formatted message which I pasted here - any formatting abnormalities are my fault. –bjb

Technical Services Specialist
Overall Purpose

Layer 7 Technologies is seeking to fill a position of Technical Services Specialist. The purpose of this position is to provide pre and post sales technical support for Layer 7 Technologies’ SecureSpan suite of products. In addition to assisting the sales team and Layer 7’s clients, the Technical Services Specialist works closely with the sales and product development teams to provide a conduit of communication between them.

Dru's blog

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 11:53:00 -0500

From bjb:

Dru Lavigne, author of BSD Hacks published by O’Reilly and OCUUG member, has a blog at: http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/unix/bsd/index.xml where she comments on BSD developments and interviews BSD personalities. She also wrote up her recent trip to shmoocon. Check it out!

February Meeting

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 00:28:00 -0500

Once again, it’s time to meet and discuss. See calendar date and time.

New things this time around:

certifications - do we need them
user groups
job searches
resumes
standards

Anything else? Feel free to commment

Followup Notes for the January Meeting.

Thu, 19 Jan 2006 23:44:00 -0500

Food for thought:
Twelve Habits of Successful IT Professionals

January 2006 - Do you know where your meeting is?

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 23:52:00 -0500

January meeting - new year, new ideas. See the event notification for location information.

The topic is: ideas on documentation, procedures, and standards.

Acronym soup for the Sysadmin Soul:
ITIL
COBIT
SAS70
S-OX

Snippet on sys admin power and authority

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 21:36:00 -0500

This is an excerpt from a discussion on enforcing policy and the policy makers not wanting to be included in their own policy. It seemed appropriate to quote, because we sometimes lose sight of the enabled position we hold when we see the disconnect between policy and practice.

We do have the ability to adjust attitudes and to convince the user community - which includes upper management, that following a sensible policy or practice is actually better for all concerned.

December Meeting, Thursday December 15

Tue, 06 Dec 2005 23:46:00 -0500

We are having a change of venue for this meeting. We are making it a social event, and as such will be having it at the Cheshire Cat in/near Carp. I can provide rides for a few people, as I’m going past March Rd. on my way out there. Feel free to ask. Keep reading for more information.

The Cheshire Cat is located at:
2193 Richardson Side Rd
Carp
phone: 613-831-2183

Post Meeting info

Sat, 19 Nov 2005 13:32:00 -0500

We had a few links mentioned at the meeting and I thought I’d post them here before I forgot about them:

http://www.i18nguy.com/humor/privacy.html - a sample privacy statement
http://www.lopsa.org - the new League Of Professional System Administrators
http://www.geeklog.net - We had a discussion on translating /looking up substitutions for internationalisation.
http://www.linuxbutler.ca/rsdidw.html - When request meets implementation
http://www.monkeybagel.com - Some sysadmin humour (dark humour in some cases)

November Meeting

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 10:04:00 -0500

We have another meeting Thursday, Nov 17, 2005 at Altera.
See the calendar for address information, or check the meeting location link at the top.

We may even have a proposal for a new format to add some useful substance to these meetings - it’s a thought. In addition, I do not know how many people are members of Usenix and SAGE, but there have been some rather interesting developments in the past week. I’ll be chatting about that for a bit as well.

Site Difficulties

Sun, 06 Nov 2005 17:59:00 -0500

If you tried to add info and failed, it may have been due to the OS upgrade done last week. I’m hoping everything is OK now.

Another LPI exam?

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 00:20:00 -0500

I’m thinking it’s time to sponsor another exam. Maybe in late January? If anyone is interested, comment below.

There are tutorials on the IBM developer works site to help with covering the required material for the 100 series.

More info can be posted if interest is there.

October Meeting

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 22:51:00 -0500

There will be an October meeting. Sorry for the lack last month, but I was distracted.

Topics: tracking what you are doing, documentation, and the never ending “This is your new top priority”.

Time management may also be a good item, given the last comment. Who can point out what is important right now and say that if you want me to do this, this other item drops off the radar until complete. Who sets priorities?

Request for Linux Assistance - Mail Server

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 18:12:00 -0500

I have lost the author name for this item

This is not so much a story, unless you consider someone in this day and age not being at home in the Linux environment. There, I’ve admitted it to the world at large that I’m a Windows geek. It’s not pretty and it’s not by choice but it is the way of the world at the moment. I need help to mend my heathen ways and so I ask for assistance from all and sundry. Any intelligent advice will be appreciated.

No September Meeting

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 13:33:00 -0500

No meeting this month. I have had something come up, so no meeting. Stay tuned for next month instead.

August Meeting

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 00:17:00 -0500

It’s near the and of summer. Everyone is either on vacation, or just getting back from one. Time to think about what to do in the fall. New servers? New filers? Better security? Bring any and all ideas.If you are into gadgets, I’ll have a copy of O’Reilly’s latest magazine offering with me, MAKE.

Sysadmin Day!!!

Fri, 29 Jul 2005 14:39:00 -0500

Today is sysadmin day. Visit the sysadminday website for more info.

July Meeting

Wed, 20 Jul 2005 11:56:00 -0500

Slight change of venue this time. We will be meeting at the Tim Horton’s Carling at March. See the event calendar for full address. The last time we were there, there was an accessible hotspot, so you should be able to get a connection If you bring a laptop.I still want to get my open filer finished, but it doesn’t look like it for this week. Other topics are welcome: solaris 10, bsd, knoppix, anything goes. Policies, standards, ITIL, whatever.

SAGE Elections this weekend

Tue, 14 Jun 2005 23:13:00 -0500

For anyone who is a member of SAGE, the elections for a new board of directors is this weekend. If you are a member, please cast your vote. It is important for the continuation of the organization.

I’ve duplicated part of the announcement below and you can read the candidate statements on the main SAGE page.

The SAGE Leadership Committee has completed fielding a list of candidates for the new SAGE Board, formally known as the Board of The System Administrators Guild, Incorporated. The election is scheduled to take place electronically, beginning on June 17th, 2005, closing 17:00 PDT June 24th 2005.

June Meeting

Sat, 11 Jun 2005 00:12:00 -0500

It’s June, we are almost halfway into the new year, and things haven’t changed too much. We still don’t have many new topics, many new people, and Ottawa is still in a very slow recovery mode. This month, I hope to at least talk about the open filer, that I mentioned last month.

Same bat time, same bat channel. Look at the meeting link

System Upgrade

Sun, 05 Jun 2005 03:47:00 -0500

I finally got around to upgrading to the latest version of the software. There may be a few items broken/missing, as some of the modules I was using supposedly are not compatible. Any discrepancies should get ironed out over the next couple of days.

May Meeting: Thursday, May 19, 2005

Mon, 16 May 2005 11:22:00 -0500

May meeting is fast approaching. Hopefully we will have a little discussion regarding the upcomming LPI exams, and a little discussion regarding a couple of storage technoogies, ATAoE and OpenFiler.

For location details, check out the Meeting Info link.

April Meeting

Sun, 17 Apr 2005 23:16:00 -0500

It’s that time again…

Welcome to April. We are having a meeting this Thursday, April 21 at the Altera Technology Center as usual. It seems that none of the prior topics have panned out as expected, so this month, something that might be of broader interest: digital copyright law. There are a number of things that can be discussed, one of which is the potential Canadian modification of the copyright laws and allowing for serious privacy infringements. The current minister of heritage is bowing to pressure from the CRIA and these changes could appear as soon as June this year. This is not the first time that this has raised it’s head, and it may not be the last.

Confirmed: LPI Exam May 28, 2005

Mon, 11 Apr 2005 22:21:00 -0500

Ottawa Valley SAGE is pleased to sponsor another LPI exam session on May 28, 2005.

Yes, I know it’s a bit out of the way, but we do have use of the training center there, and it holds about 40 to 50 people. Traditionally, space has not been an issue.

We will try to have the next one in a downtown location, to assist with the people who prefer to not visit the ‘burbs.

Yet another LPI exam

Sat, 19 Mar 2005 09:29:00 -0500

We are considering offering another set of LPI exams on Saturday May 28, 2005. There will be two seatings, one at 11:00, the other at 1:00. The location is yet to be determined, but we definately have a location in the west end. A finalized location will be posted within the next two weeks.

March Meeting

Wed, 09 Mar 2005 17:08:00 -0500

Same old same old.. Well, not quite. I was looking at a project called openNMS and was wondering if anyone had looked at it yet, and if so, wanted to talk about it.

If not, I thought we could try it out.

If anyone wants to have a look, the project is located at www.opennms.org

It looks to be a pretty full featured monitoring system, and I can’t afford a copy of HP OpenView :) (supposedly neither can my employer). I’m planning on giving it a shot on my own network, so I may have some info for the meeting.

Email fixed

Wed, 09 Mar 2005 17:05:00 -0500

That last item should have read as email fixed. This doesn’t mean mailing lists, but that will be fixed shortly as well. You can now receive password reminders.

Email broken

Sat, 26 Feb 2005 13:02:00 -0500

Well, I guess this would indicate why there have been few comments lately, etc. It appears that there was a typo in the email processing routine of the software. I just tried sending an email to myself from the site after Kelly told me that he couldn’t get a password reset email. I suspect this would have affected new signup as well. Not amusing. All appears to be fixed now, so anyone who needs a password reminder/reset should now be able to get one. Sorry for the inconvenience.

February Meeting

Sun, 13 Feb 2005 16:01:00 -0500

It’s that time of the month again. Come out and be social. Who knows, maybe the answers you are looking for are right under your nose.

January Meeting

Sun, 16 Jan 2005 17:48:00 -0500

Happy new year to all!

Meeting delayed 1 week: Now January 27

It’s 2005 and we should try something new for ovSAGE. We should have a training session during the meetings, a Q&A, maybe a vendor visit, or a hardware presenation. This doesn’t have to be every meeting, but we are supposed to be about forwarding the profession.

It’s a bit late to do anything like this for January, so how about next month? Anyone have a pet project they want to get going? Some technology they want to implement? Lets get a few show and tell sessions on the go and get a few contributions up on the site. We ahe a forum, and we have postings. I can create new areas as we want them, and if someone want to start a discussion group, we can have that as well. I will be reviving the Mailman list for February, so we will have a mailing list available again.

December Meeting: Thursday, Dec 16

Fri, 10 Dec 2004 23:22:00 -0500

No wild and crazy topics, maybe a view to what should be done in the new year? Things to cover, training? vendor visits? Special topics and presentations? Come one, come all… step right up and suggest some new and exciting things for the local system administrators. If you don’t play, you can never win. Anyone can contribute their $0.02. That’s right, Big Top System Administration. Only a few virtual front row seats available.

Reminder: LPI Exam Saturday

Fri, 10 Dec 2004 23:20:00 -0500

Just a reminder that the exam will be happening Saturday Dec 11, 2004. Seatings at 11:00 and 13:00.

Power bumps, hacking attacks, and Bell woes

Tue, 07 Dec 2004 22:03:00 -0500

May you live in interesting times is certainly the thing for this week.

Bell cut off my provider last week for a day and a half, today there is a network flood that causes my DSL modem to lock up, and I walked on the power bar where I had plugged in while I was moving the server into a rack. I’m surprised anything survived.

At least this constituted some activity on the site. If anyone was actually trying to view/post/comment, my apologies.

Registration closing

Sun, 05 Dec 2004 22:39:00 -0500

We have to have the exams shipped in from Toronto, so anyone who has not signed up by Monday night may not have an exam to write on. I will send a confirmation email to everyone who is scheduled to write.

November Meeting, Thursday Nov 20, 2004

Sat, 13 Nov 2004 20:19:00 -0500

Meeting this Thursday, Nov 20, 2004. See calendar for details.

Last meeting had some relatively lively discussion, hopefully we can keep the trend going. Given that we will be punting the LPI exams out, this could help map out training (if people want it), and we could discuss GNU cfengine.

LPI Exam Update (delaying for a few weeks)

Sat, 13 Nov 2004 20:07:00 -0500

Just to clear up any confusion, you need to send an email to lpi_exams@ovsage.org with the following information:

Name (First Last)
Valid Email Address
LPI Identification Number (you need this to take the exam)
Which exams will you be taking? (101R 101D 102 201 or 202)
Exam 101 can be done with a RedHat Package Manager (101R) or Debian Package Manager (101D) specialty
Which Seating (11:00 or 13:00, or both) in order to write the exam

Looks like we will have a little more time to get ready. We didn’t get the request for the exams in early enough, so we will be punting out 3 weeks and making it the 11th of December instead.

LPI Exam Nov 20, 2004

Mon, 08 Nov 2004 00:50:00 -0500

We will be hosting an exam on Nov 20 at the Altera offices in Kanata.

I know it’s a bit out of the way, but we do have use of the training center there, and it holds about 40 people. Space is limited to that many people.

Some details about the location …

We are setting up for two seatings, 11:00 and 13:00
For those who use public transit, and are are not familiar with Kanata, the bus route 160 passes along March Road (near the building) on Saturdays octranspo schedule.

It can be transferred to from the Terry Fox Park & Ride in Kanata Centrum. You will want to get off at the former Ceyba building (if anyone remembers what it is called now, this would be a good spot to post).
This is across from MDS Nordion on March Rd. If you look across their parking lot, you will see the PMC Sierra Building. This is where Altera is located. If you miss the stop, you should be able to stop near Lockheed, and walk back. Don’t blame me, I didn’t design the bus routes.

I was considering holding a training day to review the info from the IBM website that has review material on the prior Saturday, but I don’t know if there is any interest. I just learned that I will be working that day, so this is no longer an option. It will be considered for future exams.

Post October Meeting

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 23:48:00 -0500

Some items came up during the meeting that were not fully addressed, including:

the upcoming LPI exams
a software tool that I forgot the name of
“PGP Trash Troll Delete”.

I have some info for all of the above

The next set of LPI exams are scheduled for Saturday, November 20, 2004 at Altera in Kanata.
- We are hoping for two seatings, 11:000 and 13:00
- For those who use public transit, and are are not familiar with Kanata, the bus route 160 passes along March Road (near the building) on Saturdays octranspo schedule.
  
  It can be transferred to from the Terry Fox Park & Ride in Kanata Centrum. You will want to get off at the former Ceyba building (if anyone remembers what it is called now, this would be a good spot to post). This is across from MDS Nordion on March Rd. If you look across their parking lot, you will see the PMC Sierra Building. This is where Altera is located. If you miss the stop, you should be able to stop near Lockheed, and walk back. Don’t blame me, I didn’t design the bus routes.
- I believe we can seat about 40 people, exact numbers will be posted later, so the space is limited.
- I was considering holding a training day to review the info from the IBM website that has review material on the prior Saturday, but I don’t know if there will be any interest.
- The exam announcement will be posted to OCLUG, OCUUG, but I missed the deadline for Monitor magazine.
- Registration is done online at linuxbutler.ca, but the page has not been updated yet to show the new dates.
- The cost will be $60.00 per exam
- The exams will be 101, 102, 201, and 202
The software tool I forgot the name of is Cfengine
The following is an excerpt from the Cfengine site:

October Meeting - This Thursday (see calendar)

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 22:20:00 -0500

Last meeting, we discussed the potential LPI certification testing, which went ahead. This time around, we will be discussing the next round, as well as the possibility of trying to set up a training day for the exam.

We could set up and review the objectives, as well as set up a small network kind of like an installfest, but with the LPI objectives as the goal. This needs some work, but I’m willing to spend a Saturday or a Sunday at it.

Future LPI exams

Sun, 26 Sep 2004 23:20:00 -0500

As you can see, especially with the LPI icon over to the side, I’ve added a section specifically for the LPI exams we will be sponsoring on a hopefully regular basis.

If things go well, we are considering another set in late November, probably the Saturday after the ovSAGE meeting. We will assume potentially two seatings, 11:00 and 13:00. This will be confirmed with a posting and an email to all registered participants.

Meeting this week See calendar entry in events block

Mon, 20 Sep 2004 18:05:00 -0500

As discussed last meeting, we bounced out a week for this month. Same bat time, same bat channel, just different week of the month. Some things to discuss would include “Is there going to be a LPI exam this weekend?” It seems that I wasn’t the only one who wondered. Unfortunately, I never received the email to approve Walt’s post. I just noticed it today after restarting my server.

LPI Exams???

Wed, 08 Sep 2004 17:37:00 -0500

As requested…

At last night’s OCLUG meeting, I heard that they were running Linux Professional Institute exams on Saturday, September 25, (registration at Linux Butler) at Altera. Exam pricing is $60/exam, but discounted to $50 for OVSAGE members.

It would be nice if this were mentioned on www.ovsage.org

Post July Meeting Info

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 22:55:00 -0500

We had a successful meeting, people arrived, we chatted, we even watched a short talk that had been given at BSDcan 2004 on IP Law and Innovation. The meeting was well attended (for us), and we actually managed the planned agenda. Another first.

We started with a video from the BSDcan 2004 conference that was held at UofO last May, and other than the sound being a little on the low side, it was pretty interesting. There are other videos planned for future meetings, so don’t feel left out. Come out see the next one.

Exams Tomorrow

Fri, 09 Jul 2004 22:09:00 -0500

LPI tests tomorrow! If you haven’t signed up by now, you don’t know what you are missing.

Meeting location page added

Wed, 07 Jul 2004 23:32:00 -0500

I’ve been shamed into it. Brenda had a reference to a “How to get there” on the sign up page for the LPI exams, and I decided that it would be a good thing to add. It is visible in the menu bar along the top of the page as “Meeting Info”

Post June Meeting Info

Thu, 17 Jun 2004 23:38:00 -0500

Meeting over, attendance low. That was the lowest attendance in months - all of three people. Oh well, at least it was easy to pick who got the book, I flipped a coin for it. This month we had a copy of Using SANs and NAS to give away.

As far as the rest of the meeting was concerned, we had a brief discussion of Linux certification, and where to go for review information for the LPI exams

June Meeting

Sat, 12 Jun 2004 12:19:00 -0500

As you can see on the left, there is a meeting this Thursday at Altera.

Topics this time around will include the upcoming LPI exams, Doom as a system administartion tool, and anything else that strikes our fancy.

This week, there will be an O’Reilly book up for grabs, title not being specified on purpose.Topics this time around will include the upcoming LPI exams, Doom as a system administartion tool, and aything else that strikes our fancy.

LPI Exam Opportunity

Fri, 04 Jun 2004 19:50:00 -0500

ovSAGE is pleased to announce that we will be sponsoring an LPI certification testing session.

We are considering July 10, 2004 as the tentative date. Click on “read more” for details

[![no description](/img/2004/LPI-Logo.png)](http://www.lpi.org)

The exam will be held Altera’s Ottawa Technology Center; the same place we hold our monthly meetings. The exact date and detailed information will be posted later, as more information is made available.

This will be an open testing (as in open to the community at large), and we hope to see lots of people attending to get their certification. If you know of anyone who has ever thought of getting a Linux certification, this is one of those golden opportunities, as there is no local testing center yet.

More items...

Fri, 04 Jun 2004 00:09:00 -0500

I finally got around to it… Migrating the contents of the old email list to this site.If you look at the top menu bar, you might see a choice called Historical Information. It’s not much, but it does contain the entire contents of the original mailing list that was used for the founding of the group.

Check it out.

Theme changed

Wed, 02 Jun 2004 01:31:00 -0500

Based on a couple of comments, I have altered the default theme and done a little cleanup. I’m not sure it’s perfect, but it should do for now. I’m willing to take suggestions on graphics and colours.

New Additions

Sat, 22 May 2004 18:29:00 -0500

We now have the Forum software installed. This should allow for a better flow of information, as well as add some flexibility. Suggestions, contributions, or anything should be accepted. I have put in a couple of general topics, but no content yet. I’m hoping to get some stuff posted this weekend..

Meeting this Thursday

Mon, 17 May 2004 23:23:00 -0500

Monthly Meeting this Thursday at AlteraI just spent the weekend at BSDcan 2004, the first BSD conference in Canada. Turnout was considerably higher than expected (something like 175 vs 75), making it a complete success. There were some very interesting presentations, and we even managed to tape about 1/3 of them.

I’ll be bringing one copy of freeBSD 4.8 and one copy of netBSD 1.5.3 to the meeting to give away. I would have liked to get a few more copies, but they all magically vanished.

Finally

Tue, 27 Apr 2004 00:43:00 -0500

I finally got around to getting the newer version installed.Of course, the backup I did from the previous server (e-smith based) was considered lost, as the default backups only include a limited subset of the system, and I thought I had forgotten to use the built-in backup tool.

I found the backup, but I’m not sure where the corruption happened last time, and this version is currently working. I think I’ll hold off on screwing with it until it’s soaked overnight.

Broken sections of the site

Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:28:00 -0500

I have been rather emiss in the maintenance of the site. I had made an attempt to upgrade the system, and it resulted in major corruption of the back end database. Attempts to recover and go back were not completely successful. A new version will be installed next week, along with a different server machine. It will be a clean install, and I will be attempting to copy over data from the current database. I doubt anything of real value is here, so we might be starting clean.

April Meeting

Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:08:00 -0500

If you didn’t notice the block on the left, there is a meeting this Thursday at Altera, same as usual. Paul Garrett (N-Able Technologies) is planning on presenting on extending the AD schema.

Please try to be there by 19:00, and there should be a sign with a number to call.

March Meeting

Wed, 17 Mar 2004 01:25:00 -0500

If you didn’t notice the calendar icon, the meeting for this month is this Thursday.We even have a prepared topic this time around. Paul Garrett is willing to talk about extending the active directory schema and display specifiers if it would be of any interest.

I think so, as Active Directory appears to be part of most of our lives. At least we could get some useful info into it.

January Meeting

Tue, 20 Jan 2004 23:59:00 -0500

For those who can make it, There will be a meeting this Thursday at Altera in Kanata.I’m blaming a busy schedule, a lousy software upgrade, and oncall for this one.

For those interested, there will be an O’Reilley book up for grabs as an incentive.

Topics can include sendmail, webmin, and why do we have those exchange servers anyway?

November Meeting

Fri, 28 Nov 2003 00:42:00 -0500

It’s the best turnout we’ve had in years.It’s sad when 5 people attending are the best you can show. Thanks to Kelly for hosting at Altera, and to Walt, Bruce, and Ed for attending. It was sort of like old homecoming week, given that four of us have worked together at various times in the past.
We did discuss the concept of topics for future meetings, as well as to how we can increase the attendance. Any suggestions are welcome if you wish to post to the topics forum.

Going on Safari?

Thu, 10 Jul 2003 00:16:00 -0500

Note: This offer no longer exists

Ever wonder how to fit all those O’Reilly books on a bookshelf? Try using a virtual bookshelf and an O’Reilly subscription service.

Yes, this is a plug for a service, but it is actually useful, and given how much I’ve personally spent on O’Reilly books, this looks like a good deal to me.

![no description](/img/2003/Oreilly_safari_logo_b9002d.png)

If you’re not yet familiar with the O’Reilly Network Safari Bookshelf, it’s worth a look. With Safari, you can access over 1,000 technical books from the top technical book publishers – O’Reilly (of course), Pearson, and Microsoft Press. There is an extremely cool search capability that allows you to search through all 1,000+ books for the answer you need–or even code samples–in minutes. Check it out at: The Safari Website

June Meeting Info

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 21:31:00 -0500

Congratulations to Kelly.

He received the first O’Reilly book that was being given out. He is now the proud owner of Using Samba, and hopefully he will post a review on the site after he reads up on the topic.

Next month, there will be another book on the table. For those interested, the meeting conversation included site monitoring, ecommerce, and burn out.

Scott

Mailing list software installed

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 14:26:00 -0500

UPDATE - The mailing list software has been broken for quite some time.

I was completely unaware for a while, that shows the activity it wasn’t getting. I have decided not to revive the mailman based system, but to add a new one. Hopefully it will integrate into this system a little better.As some/most of you know by now, I have installed mailman on the web server. You can sign up for announcements at http://www.ovsage.org/mailman

Do we have any topics?

Fri, 13 Jun 2003 00:38:00 -0500

This area is for the proposal of topics for future meetings.If anyone has any ideas for meetings, please post them here. If you have something you want to present, please feel free to volunteer to do so.

It would be a good idea to post meeting ideas individually as new topics, so we can have a separate running commentary on each topic. Once we get a few on the go, we can have a vote on what we want to see when.

Next Meeting New Website

Thu, 08 May 2003 23:45:00 -0500

May Meeting - Wednesday, May 21, 2003

19:00 - 21:30
Altera Ottawa Technology Center
411 Legget Drive, Suite 100 Kanata

Topic(s): Serial resources, server rooms, console management

Check out the website. It’s at http://www.ovsage.org

I will be migrating the contents of this group over to the website
over the next couple of weeks, primarily to get rid of the annoying
advertising. It also will allow for a much more flexible site.

Apathy Reigns!

Thu, 08 May 2003 22:46:00 -0500

As has become customary, attendance is rather low at the meetings. If anyone has an idea as to how to increase the attendance, it would be a good thing.

Is there a special topic someone would like to see? Perhaps a training night on some obscure topic - or even a common one. A bring your favorite hack and talk about it….

The list can be endless, so if someone has something they would like to talk about, find out about, or even teach, here’s a chance.
Remember, this is supposed to be about the profession of System

UPS

Fri, 25 Apr 2003 19:27:00 -0500

Hi All,
I have to unload 20 UPS’s cheap, resellers welcome.

They are APC SmartUPS, rack mountable, heavy!! Some plug into 120 volts,
some into 220 volts. About 19" x 16" x 6", $200 each.

836 5471, ask for me.

I hope this message is appropriate use of the mailing list.
cheers – Rick

–
Rick Leir 613-828-8289 -> rleir
http://www.leirtech.com/rick/ AT leirtech
DOT com
I tend to think of C# as Java with Security, Reliability and
Productivity deleted. – James Gosling

RE

Thu, 24 Apr 2003 23:05:00 -0500

Sorry
about the Dates confusing with the Symposium conflict, I was looking at my
Outlook from Thursday meetings in which the 15th was the 3rd thursday of the
month and just went back a day.
As
Scott had helped me with, indeed I will be able to go to the May 21st
meeting.

New Look!!

Thu, 24 Apr 2003 21:33:00 -0500

Welcome to the new (finally) website. I know it’s a bit minimalistic right now, but I wanted to get something new up and running so that there would appear to be progress.

We need a list of topics, and some moderators for these topics. I suspect that some topics would include:

gereral Unix administration
windows administration
specific unices
embedded OS
security admin
etc.

Any additions/changes/enhancements are welcome.
I also want to get some information posted on here. FAQs, HOWTOs, Links, Tips & Tricks, etc. It would be nice if this could get built out into a well organized community resource, but that’s probably a pipe dream (at least right now).
Show up for a meeting, meet the people, socialize, volunteer.

Re: RE: [ovsage] Re: April Meeting

Wed, 23 Apr 2003 21:23:00 -0500

Hi Dave,

It’s great to hear from you. Maybe we can get together for some wings? Just to clear up the confusion that post sent, Hooters is not a former Nortel building (although it did have the nickname Fitz 4). The building behind Hooters is :) I used to work in the larger former Nortel building just
across the street.

I would like to address the concern regarding a conflict with the 15th
Annual Canadian IT Security Symposium at the Congress Centre. That is the
second Wednesday of May, so the third Wednesday is still good.

RE-18

Wed, 23 Apr 2003 20:55:00 -0500

Sorry,
I meant Wed. May 14th.

RE-ovsage [ovsage] Re

Wed, 23 Apr 2003 20:55:00 -0500

Scott,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop. Patrick and I have been swamped with
work here at CCRA with 4 new Sun Enterprise 10000 servers and a pair of
honking Compaq SAN arrays… so we are very delinquent in attending any of
your local SAGE events… but one of these days we will get out there! We
are now housed in Bells Corners, on Fitzgerald behind Hooters! (a former
Nortel building!)

Change: [ovsage] April Meeting

Wed, 23 Apr 2003 11:09:00 -0500

Well…

If it’s not too short a notice, let’s punt it to Friday the 25 at
7:00 (same location) for this meeting and change the monthly to every
third Wednesday for the next while and see if that helps with
attendance.

Scott

— In ovsage@yahoogroups.com, Kelly Kendrick <kkendric @a…> wrote:

Fellow SAGEs:

Whoops! My bad for not catching this sooner. Unfortunately, I have a
conflict for the next several Tuesdays and Thursdays, so unfortunately, we
can’t meet here at these times. (Other nights are fairly open for me.) I
truly apologize for that. Please let me attempt to make it up by offering a
“mystery gift” to the person who’s name will be drawn at random from the
attendees of the next meeting.

RE [ovsage] April Meeting

Tue, 22 Apr 2003 20:37:00 -0500

Fellow SAGEs:

Whoops! My bad for not catching this sooner. Unfortunately, I have a
conflict for the next several Tuesdays and Thursdays, so unfortunately, we
can’t meet here at these times. (Other nights are fairly open for me.) I
truly apologize for that. Please let me attempt to make it up by offering a
“mystery gift” to the person who’s name will be drawn at random from the
attendees of the next meeting.

April Meeting

Tue, 22 Apr 2003 01:36:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Altera Ottawa Technology Center
Intellectual Property Business Unit
411 Legget Drive, Suite 100
Kanata, Ontario

Date: Thursday April 24, 2003

Time: 19:00

Directions: visit the following link
http://www.altera.com/corporate/contact/directions/con-drv_ottawa.pdf

Topics: Q&A session… ie: bring some questions and we’ll see if we
can answer them. Additionally, bring along some ideas for future
sessions.

OCUUG Meeting April 15th

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 22:30:00 -0500

April 15th, 2003, 18:30 EST

85 Albert St, Suite 1200
Ottawa, ON, K1P 6A4
Tel:613.232.3948

High Availability Cluster Multiprocessing for AIX

“Combines the leading UNIX based clustering solution with advanced
server technology for 24x7 system availability, scalability and ease
of management Provides ongoing access to database resources for
exceptional flexibility, reliability and application execution
Significantly reduces unplanned outages; allows cluster upgrades and
reconfiguration without interrupting operation.”

The presentation will address the following:

March Meeting

Thu, 13 Mar 2003 16:07:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Altera Ottawa Technology Center
Intellectual Property Business Unit
411 Legget Drive, Suite 100
Kanata, Ontario

Date: Thursday March 20, 2003

Time: 19:00

Directions: visit the following link
http://www.altera.com/corporate/contact/directions/con-drv_ottawa.pdf

Topics:
Remote management tools

November Meeting

Fri, 15 Nov 2002 00:52:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Altera Ottawa Technology Center
Intellectual Property Business Unit
411 Legget Drive, Suite 100
Kanata, Ontario

Date: Thursday November 21, 2002

Time: 19:00

Directions: visit the following link
http://www.altera.com/corporate/contact/directions/con-drv_ottawa.pdf

Topics:
membership, other user groups, new mailing list server trial

Re

Wed, 23 Oct 2002 04:47:00 -0500

Thanks Geoff!

— Geoff Halprin <ghalprin @e-smith.com> wrote:

Greetings,

It is with pleasure, in these uncertain times, that
I can announce two
new openings in the Mitel Technical Support
organisation, supporting
the (linux based) SME Server, and
soon-to-be-released 3050 soft-phone
application.

You will find more information in the careers
section at:
http://www.mitel.com/

The two job requisitions are: 1970, 1982.

Warm regards,

Geoff

Geoff Halprin
geoff_halprin@mitel.com
Director, Network Operations
p: +1.613.592.2122
Network Server Solutions Group
f: +1.613.592.1175
Mitel Networks
http://www.mitel.com
350 Legget Drive, Kanata (Ottawa), Ontario K2K 2W7,
Canada

Member, System Administrators Guild
http://www.sage.org

Linux Support Positions at Mitel

Mon, 21 Oct 2002 15:23:00 -0500

Greetings,

It is with pleasure, in these uncertain times, that I can announce two
new openings in the Mitel Technical Support organisation, supporting
the (linux based) SME Server, and soon-to-be-released 3050 soft-phone
application.

You will find more information in the careers section at:
http://www.mitel.com/

The two job requisitions are: 1970, 1982.

Warm regards,

Geoff

Directions: Queensway Heading east or west, take the Metcalfe Exit
and head north to Laurier turn either left or right and you will come
to a city parking lot. You can take a chance on the lot just north of
Slater at Metcalfe if you want to take a chance.

June Meeting

Tue, 18 Jun 2002 19:39:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Zucotto Wireless
130 Slater St.
Suite 1300
Ottawa

Date: Thursday June May 20, 2002

Time: 19:00

Ottawa Caleton Unix Users Group Meeting Tuesday June 11, 2002

Fri, 07 Jun 2002 22:21:00 -0500

Community Service Announcement…

*********************************************************************
OTTAWA CARLETON UNIX USERS GROUP AND EXITCERTIFIED INVITE YOU TO
ATTEND:
http://www.ocuug.on.ca

*********************************************************************
WHAT: IPv6: The Future of the Internet

WHEN: June 11, 6:30-8:00pm

DESCRIPTION: The current Internet Protocol, IPv4, faces problems of
ddress exhaustion, manual configuration, poor security, and router
ottlenecks. See how the replacement, IPv6, provides for a greatly
xpanded, more dynamic, easier to use, and efficient Internet, and how
the tools are available now, in Solaris.

Details Complete

Wed, 15 May 2002 23:23:00 -0500

Sorry for the delay, other things were on my mind last night and I
forgot to post.

Updated details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Tim Hortons
Eagleson Rd
Kanata

Date: Thursday May 16, 2002

Time: 19:00

Directions: Queensway Heading east or west, take the Eagleson Exit
and head south past Hazeldean Rd. The Tim Hortons
location is next to the ESSO station on the intersection
of Eagleson and Stonehaven.

Resend - with correct dates May Meeting

Sun, 12 May 2002 22:13:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: TBD, potentially ExitCertified
85 Albert St., Suite 1200
Second building on NE corner of Metcalfe and Albert

Date: Thursday May 16, 2002

Time: 7:00PM

Remember, this is subject to change and will be reposted Tuesday
night with finalized details.

Directions: Queensway Heading east or west, take the Metcalfe Exit
and head north to Laurier or Albert.

There is a public parking lot 2 blocks west on Laurier
and another one block east.

May Meeting Announcement

Sun, 12 May 2002 22:12:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: TBD, potentially ExitCertified
85 Albert St., Suite 1200
Second building on NE corner of Metcalfe and Albert

Date: Thursday April 18, 2002

Time: 7:00PM

Remember, this is subject to change and will be reposted Tuesday
night with finalized details.

Directions: Queensway Heading east or west, take the Metcalfe Exit
and head north to Laurier or Albert.

There is a public parking lot 2 blocks west on Laurier
and another one block east.

OCUUG Meeting this Tuesday night.

Sun, 12 May 2002 22:08:00 -0500

This is a reminder for those interested…

So what is the OCUUG?

The Ottawa Carleton Unix Users Group (OCUUG) is a group of hobbyists
and professionals who have an interest in Unix-like operating
systems. By Unix, we mean any operating system which is Unix-like and
we will refer to this as *NIX. Everyone with similar interests is
welcome. OCUUG provides an open forum to discuss *NIX related
topics . The meetings and topics are driven by the interests of the
group.

Re

Mon, 22 Apr 2002 13:54:00 -0500

On Mon, Apr 22, 2002 at 10:03:14AM -0400, Scott Murphy wrote:

From: Adrian Chung
Reply-To: ovsage@yahoogroups.com
To: Ottawa Valley SAGE
Subject: [ovsage] Centralized password databases.
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 21:19:07 -0400

…

I’m tending towards an rsync of the shadow/password files, or a
custom script that merges password change differences for entries
in the password database.

You can rsync across an ssh tunnel, so that would protect your
data. You still have the problem as to how to manage updates
though… If the password is changed on the co-lo and the local in
the same day and you only sync once a day, which takes precedence?

Re

Mon, 22 Apr 2002 12:16:00 -0500

Lots of useless header info stripped out

From: Adrian Chung Reply-To: ovsage@yahoogroups.com To: Ottawa Valley SAGE Subject: [ovsage] Centralized password databases. Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 21:19:07 -0400

Aloha!

I’m looking to co-locate a server that will act as a web and mail server. I’ve currently got a server on my LAN doing this, but I’m soliciting advice on how best to achieve a centralized authentication scheme once it’s moved.

Ultimately I’d like to have users able to set their passwords using one mechanism that is tied to a database shared between both the co-lo server and any servers running here.

Centralized password databases.

Sun, 21 Apr 2002 21:19:00 -0500

Aloha!

I’m looking to co-locate a server that will act as a web and mail
server. I’ve currently got a server on my LAN doing this, but I’m
soliciting advice on how best to achieve a centralized authentication
scheme once it’s moved.

Ultimately I’d like to have users able to set their passwords using
one mechanism that is tied to a database shared between both the co-lo
server and any servers running here.

April Meeting Announcement

Mon, 15 Apr 2002 15:53:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Exit Certified
85 Albert St., Suite 1200
Second building on NE corner of Metcalfe and Albert

Date: Thursday April 18, 2002

Time: 7:00PM

Directions: Queensway Heading east or west, take the Metcalfe Exit
and head north to Laurier or Albert.

There is a public parking lot 2 blocks west on Laurier
and another one block east.

If you continue to Albert, you can park in the World Exchange Plaza
garage. The sign is obvious as you reach Albert.

OCUUG arising from the dead...

Mon, 08 Apr 2002 23:21:00 -0500

Spring is in the air (at least that’s what they tell me) and the
Ottawa Carleton Unix Users Group (OCUUG) is coming out of a long
hibernation.

If you are interested in Unix or Unix like operating systems, read on.

So what is the OCUUG?

March Meeting Minutes

Sun, 24 Mar 2002 21:42:00 -0500

Attendees:

Scott
Adrian
Steve
Kelly

Topics covered:

Steve finally gave his mystery talk about high availability and
network redundancy using IP multipath under Solaris. ;) And,
touched on how *not* to build a datacenter.
Scott talked about the SAGE Code of Ethics (both the original[1],
and revised version[2] which he had a part in), and the Ottawa
Carleton UNIX Users Group (OCUUG) and what’s happening there.
I touched briefly on my home network, and per protocol/flow based
monitoring[3].

Re Re March Meeting

Thu, 21 Mar 2002 13:26:00 -0500

Hi Scott,

I was hoping to make it to tonight’s meeting, but I am
currently fighting a cold (and the cold is winning)!

I hope you have a good meeting anyway.

Cheers,

— ovsage <scott5 @ovsage.org> wrote:

We will be meeting at Exit Certified.

You can park in the same location as you normally
do.

The address is 85 Albert St., Suite 1200

Just go north two blocks from e-smith’s location on
Metcalfe and
Laurier and you will be on Metcalfe and Albert.
Cross the street to
the north side of Albert and go east. It is the
second building on
the left, just past all the bus stops.

March Meeting Followup

Wed, 20 Mar 2002 18:52:00 -0500

We will be meeting at Exit Certified.

You can park in the same location as you normally do.

The address is 85 Albert St., Suite 1200

Just go north two blocks from e-smith’s location on Metcalfe and
Laurier and you will be on Metcalfe and Albert. Cross the street to
the north side of Albert and go east. It is the second building on
the left, just past all the bus stops.

Re March Meeting

Mon, 18 Mar 2002 01:57:00 -0500

On Mon, Mar 18, 2002 at 03:40:07AM -0000, ovsage wrote:

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: unknown (Adrian, can we use the Mitel location, or should
we look to using Exit Certified?)

This week’s meeting is going to be a difficult one, since we’re
physically moving on Thursday evening. So, if we can use Mitel’s
facilities for meetings eventually, I’d still have to say that this
Thursday we probably can’t.

March Meeting

Sun, 17 Mar 2002 22:40:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: unknown (Adrian, can we use the Mitel location, or should
we look to using Exit Certified?)

Date: Thursday March 21, 2002

Time: 7:00PM

Directions: will be posted as soon as the location is finalized.

Topics:

Mystery Topic Revealed - Stephen Beaton (deferred from February
deferred from January, deferred from December) The different methods
of network redundancy on Solaris servers. Network redundancy the
cheap hard way or the easy, more costly way.

February Meeting Minutes

Tue, 26 Feb 2002 12:12:00 -0500

February Meeting Minutes:

Attendees:

Scott
Adrian
Ed
Gabe

Topics covered:

I talked about setting up proxy ARP to do pseudo-bridging[1], which
I don’t have a formal write up for yet, but will soon, and will send
around when I do.
I also talked about how done _wrong_, proxy ARP can wreak havoc on
an ISP subnet that’s one big bridged ethernet segment. I spoke from
experience. :) Beware of blindly enabling proxy ARP on an external
ISP connected interface if it’s a bridged connection.

Re Previous Messages

Mon, 25 Feb 2002 17:52:00 -0500

On Sat, Feb 23, 2002 at 03:55:30PM -0000, ovsage wrote:
[…]

If I remember correctly, we had not edcided on a topic for March, so
I guess it’s time to solicit suggestions.

Or a location, which is up for deciding. If we’re interested in
holding meetings at Mitel at March/Carling, I can find out about doing
that, but I won’t know until we move into our new digs March 15th.

Re Re Re February Meeting

Mon, 25 Feb 2002 17:46:00 -0500

On Thu, Feb 21, 2002 at 04:22:58PM -0500, Stephen Beaton wrote:
[…]

Seems that I have been involved in some of the more convoluted
network infrastructure designs for the past couple of years, so I
will probably talk about the different methods of network redundancy
on Solaris servers. Network redundancy the cheap hard way or the
easy, more costly way :) If your interested in any other aspects of
putting a light out data center together, let me know and I will try
and put together a bit more.

previous messages

Sat, 23 Feb 2002 10:55:00 -0500

I just love the moderation process…

The previous messages were queued and I never received the
notifications.

If I remember correctly, we had not decided on a topic for March, so
I guess it’s time to solicit suggestions.

Ed, you have anything you want to talk about?

Also, I’m changing the moderation rules so that the regular attendees
can post without approval.

Scott

Re February Meeting

Sat, 23 Feb 2002 10:53:00 -0500

Ok,
Time to apologize yet again, but due to the aggressive time schedule
I am currently under to complete a ridiculous number of tasks before
Feb. 25th, plus the fact that I can only work on some of my servers now
before 9am and after 5pm I am going to have to postpone again. Good news
is.. Feb. 25th was a date set back in December, and after that I am back
to regular working hours (like I believe that)

Re Re February Meeting

Sat, 23 Feb 2002 10:53:00 -0500

Ok, (Cut-n-Paste time since egroups *will not* send me a verification
email for my address)

Time to apologize yet again, but due to the aggressive time
schedule I am currently under to complete a ridiculous number of tasks
before Feb. 25th, plus the fact that I can only work on some of my
servers now before 9am and after 5pm I am going to have to postpone
again. Good news is.. Feb. 25th was a date set back in December, and
after that I am back to regular working hours (like I believe that)

Topics for next months meeting.

Mon, 18 Feb 2002 16:16:00 -0500

Howdy everyone, this is a call for topics for the February’s meeting.

We’re still awaiting Steve’s mystery talk, but I’ve also got something
to talk about if anyone’s interested.

I’d like to talk about using proxy-arp and other goodies under Linux
2.2/2.4 to build pseudo-bridges.

An application of this stems from the following scenario:

I’ve got a small subnet of ISP assigned IP addresses. Two are used
for Internet facing servers, and the last is used for a NAT’ing
firewall gateway.

It's that time again - February Meeting - 2002/02/21 @ 19

Fri, 15 Feb 2002 12:20:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Mitel Networks
Suite 1500, 15th Floor.
150 Metcalfe St.

SW corner of Metcalfe and Laurier

Date: Thursday February 21, 2002

Time: 7:00PM

Directions: Queensway Heading east or west, take the Metcalfe Exit
and head north to Laurier.

There is a public parking lot 2 blocks west on Laurier
and another one block east.

Topics:

Mystery Topic - Stephen Beaton (deferred from January, deferred from
December) I’m keeping this on the schedule until it happens.

January Meeting Minutes.

Sat, 02 Feb 2002 10:19:00 -0500

Here’s info from the January meeting:

Attendees:

Scott
Adrian
Ed
Mike from ExitCertified.com

It was a pretty informal meeting, but we covered a few different
things:

Ed brought some give-aways with him, including some Silly Putty, and
some Sun software.
Scott talked about revamping the ovsage.org website, which will
hopefully include secure email, and @ovsage.org addresses for those
interested.
We also touched on using a Linux bootable CD to replace Windows
administrator passwords via the on-disk registry, and saving
RealAudio streams to disk – Scott recommends searching asian sites
for “streambox”.

January Meeting

Mon, 28 Jan 2002 14:20:00 -0500

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2002. It has already started to appear as a different kind
of year.. Imagine +5 at the end of January.

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Mitel Networks
Suite 1500, 15th Floor.
150 Metcalfe St.

SW corner of Metcalfe and Laurier

Date: Thursday January 31, 2002

Time: 7:00PM

Directions: Queensway Heading east or west, take the Metcalfe Exit
and head north to Laurier.

Re

Wed, 19 Dec 2001 11:44:00 -0500

On Tue, Dec 18, 2001 at 04:21:26PM -0000, ovsage wrote:
[…]
> Date: Thursday December 20, 2001
>
> Time: 7:00PM
>
> Directions: Queensway Heading east or west, take the Metcalfe Exit
> and head north to Laurier.
>
> There is a public parking lot 2 blocks west on Laurier and another
> one block east.
>
> Topics: Mystery Topic - Stephen Beaton
> LISA 2001 - Scott Murphy

December Meeting

Tue, 18 Dec 2001 11:21:00 -0500

Season’s Greetings!!

Sorry for the delay in getting this announcement out, but here it is.

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Mitel Networks
Suite 1500, 15th Floor.
150 Metcalfe St.

SW corner of Metcalfe and Laurier

Wed, 03 Oct 2001 21:42:00 -0500

So, it’s a little late… But what happened with the meeting last
month? :)

–
Adrian Chung (adrian at enfusion-group dot com)
http://www.enfusion-group.com/~adrian
GPG Fingerprint: C620 C8EA 86BA 79CC 384C E7BE A10C 353B 919D 1A17
[rogue.enfusion-group.com] 3:16pm up 60 days, 6:25, 2 users

August Meeting

Wed, 22 Aug 2001 11:00:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: E-Smith, Inc. (Mitel?)
Suite 1500, 15th Floor.
150 Metcalfe St.

SW corner of Metcalfe and Laurier

Date: Thursday August 30, 2001

Time: 19:00

Directions: Queensway Heading east or west, take the Metcalfe Exit
and head north to Laurier.

There is a public parking lot 2 blocks west on Laurier
and another one block east.

Topics: Due to the small turnout at the last meeting, this will
repeat last month’s topics:
Followup to GPG/PGP key signing
Open forum - topic suggestions welcome.

Re

Mon, 23 Jul 2001 23:57:00 -0500

On Mon, Jul 23, 2001 at 10:43:05PM -0400, D. Scott Murphy wrote:
> Not I, I had a look at the schedule and did not see anything I was
> willing to pay that much to go see. On the other hand, the
> proceedings will probably be on the web site afterwards, like they
> are for the other ones.

Yeah, turns out I can’t attend most of the sessions anyways, too many
deadlines this week.

RE

Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:43:00 -0500

Not I,
I had a look at the schedule and did not see anything I was willing to pay that
much to go see. On the other hand, the proceedings will probably be on the web
site afterwards, like they are for the other ones.

Ottawa Linux Symposium

Mon, 23 Jul 2001 22:13:00 -0500

Any of you guys planning on attending OLS this week?

Just curious. I’m going, but don’t know anyone else who is. :)

July Meeting - Thursday July 26, 2001

Sat, 21 Jul 2001 00:46:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: E-Smith, Inc.
Suite 1500, 15th Floor.
150 Metcalfe St.

SW corner of Metcalfe and Laurier

Date: Thursday July 26, 2001

Time: 19:00

Directions: Queensway Heading east or west, take the Metcalfe Exit
and head north to Laurier.

There is a public parking lot 2 blocks west on Laurier
and another one block east.

Topics: Followup to GPG/PGP key signing, open forum. Topic
suggestions welcome.

ovSAGE June Meeting

Thu, 14 Jun 2001 16:05:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: E-Smith, Inc.
Suite 1500, 15th Floor.
150 Metcalfe St.

SW corner of Metcalfe and Laurier

Date: Thursday June 21, 2001

Time: 19:00

Directions: Queensway Heading east or west, take the Metcalfe Exit
and head north to Laurier.

There is a public parking lot 2 blocks west on Laurier
and another one block east.

Topics: PGP/GPG and key signing party

Notes: Arrive no later than 7:00PM, so that we can sign everyone
in.

May Meeting 2001

Sun, 06 May 2001 23:01:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Tim Hortons
Eagleson Rd
Kanata

Date: Thursday May 17, 2001

Time: 19:00

There is ample parking available beside the building.

Topics: FreeS/WAN
VPN Tunnels
CIPE

RE [ovsage] April Meeting

Sun, 06 May 2001 22:59:00 -0500

I’m for Linux in the enterprise, but then again you probably guessed that :)

-Gabe

Gabriel M. O’Brien

SDE Systems Integrator

April Meeting

Sun, 15 Apr 2001 22:07:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Tim Hortons
Eagleson Rd
Kanata

Date: Thursday April 19, 2001

Time: 19:00

There is ample parking available beside the building.

Topics: Someone suggest one.
Linux in the enterprise?
Appliance technology?

March Meeting

Tue, 13 Mar 2001 10:51:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Tim Hortons
Eagleson Rd
Kanata

Date: Thursday March 15, 2001

Time: 19:00

There is ample parking available beside the building.

Topics: Heterogeneous password management
Alternative meeting locations
TBD

*NIX based firewalls

Wed, 14 Feb 2001 19:59:00 -0500

Actually, a general question about firewalling/monitoring. I used to
use a program named “portsentry” which would monitor all of the ports
on a firewall, and in the event that it detected a port-scan, would do
two things. It would add the remote IP to the hosts.deny file, and it
would deny any further packets from that host destined to the
firewall. It was amazing to see the number of hosts that it would
catch in a 24 hour period.

RE

Tue, 13 Feb 2001 21:01:00 -0500

Hi
Adrian,

Aloha!

Tue, 13 Feb 2001 20:49:00 -0500

Hi! Being a new comer to this list, I thought it might be prudent to
find out more information about the group, board, and meeting times.

>From the Yahoo Groups! archives, it doesn’t look like the list is all
that busy… And the last mention of the OVSAGE board was in
1999-ish, has it changed much?

In case anyone’s interested, here’s a little bit about myself. I’m a
recent graduate from the University of Guelph, and moved to Ottawa in
May 2000. I’m currently employed by e-smith, Inc, as a Senior
Software Developer. I’m a member of both USENIX and SAGE, as well as
OCLUG.

Date Correction

Wed, 17 Jan 2001 19:59:00 -0500

Thanks Ed,

Just what I needed…

I meant Thursday, the 25. Stupid calendar was set up showing Monday to
Sunday.

Scott

RE [ovsage] January Meeting

Wed, 17 Jan 2001 19:14:00 -0500

Hi Scott,

Do you mean “Thursday, January 25th” or “Friday, January 26th”, 2001?

Thanks,

—–Original Message—–
From: scott5@ovsage.org [mailto:scott5@ovsage.org]
Sent: January 16, 2001 2:46 PM
To: ovsage@egroups.com
Subject: [ovsage] January Meeting

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location:

January Meeting

Tue, 16 Jan 2001 14:57:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Tim Hortons
Eagleson Rd
Kanata

Date: Thursday January 26, 2001

Time: 19:00

There is ample parking available beside the building.

Topics: Alternative meeting locations, TBD

Trolling for talent

Fri, 24 Nov 2000 15:34:00 -0500

Hi there…

Trolling for talent here. I’m with a UNIX support group
at Nortel Networks and we are currently looking to fill
a postition for at least an intermediate level UNIX systems
administrator.
Please, if you or anyone you know is interested, call me
or email your resume…or fax it to: (613) 765-4353

Thanks
Bill

–
Bill MacDonald Nortel Networks
Unix Systems Administrator Information Services
Lab 5 West/Tower UNIX CSA ESN 393-8492 or (613) 763-8492
Design Environment Solutions(DES) bmac@nortelnetworks.com

November Meeting

Tue, 07 Nov 2000 17:08:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: 3685 Richmond Rd.
Nortel Bells Corners Campus
Ground Floor, Fundy Room

Date: Thursday November 16, 2000

Time: 19:00

Directions: This location is in Bells Corners, next to the Petro
Canada Station, across the street from the Barons Best
Western Hotel.

There is ample parking available beside the building.

Note: Non-Nortel people will have to be signed in.
Please be prompt.

September Meeting

Thu, 28 Sep 2000 08:29:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: 3685 Richmond Rd.
Nortel Bells Corners Campus
Ground Floor, Fundy Room

Date: Thursday September 28, 2000

Time: 19:00

Directions: This location is in Bells Corners, next to the Petro
Canada Station, across the street from the Barons Best
Western Hotel.

There is ample parking available beside the building.

Note: Non-Nortel people will have to be signed in.
Please be prompt.

CHANGE

Mon, 18 Sep 2000 22:30:00 -0500

We would like to notify you of a change to the standard monthly
meeting. Due to a scheduling conflict, the meeting will be
delayed a week and now occur on Thursday, September 28, 2000

Monthly Meeting

Date: Thursday, September 28, 2000
Time: 7:00PM - 9:00PM EDT (GMT-04:00)

A detailed announcement will be sent under separate cover.

Reminder - Monthly Meeting

Mon, 18 Sep 2000 19:02:00 -0500

We would like to remind you of this upcoming event.

Monthly Meeting

Date: Thursday, September 21, 2000
Time: 7:00PM - 9:00PM EDT (GMT-04:00)

This is your reminder notice for the monthly meeting. A detailed
description will be sent under separate cover.

SANS Parliament Hill 2000 Training materials

Sat, 26 Aug 2000 00:24:00 -0500

Limited quantities of the training materials that were used for SANS
Parliament Hill 2000 are available. Visit the website for more
information http://www.ovsage.org

Of course, this is long gone now (2016)

August Meeting

Thu, 17 Aug 2000 11:41:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: 3685 Richmond Rd.
Nortel Bells Corners Campus
Ground Floor, Fundy Room

Date: Thursday August 17, 2000

Time: 19:00

Directions: This location is in Bells Corners, next to the Petro
Canada Station, across the street from the Barons Best
Western Hotel.

There is ample parking available beside the building.

Note: Non-Nortel people will have to be signed in.
Please be prompt.

Reminder - Monthly Meeting

Wed, 16 Aug 2000 19:02:00 -0500

We would like to remind you of this upcoming event.

Monthly Meeting

Date: Thursday, August 17, 2000
Time: 7:00PM - 9:00PM EDT (GMT-04:00)

This is your reminder notice for the monthly meeting. A detailed
description will be sent under separate cover.

Reminder - Monthly Meeting

Mon, 14 Aug 2000 19:02:00 -0500

We would like to remind you of this upcoming event.

Monthly Meeting

Date: Thursday, August 17, 2000
Time: 7:00PM - 9:00PM EDT (GMT-04:00)

This is your reminder notice for the monthly meeting. A detailed
description will be sent under separate cover.

Reminder - Monthly Meeting

Wed, 19 Jul 2000 19:02:00 -0500

We would like to remind you of this upcoming event.

Monthly Meeting

Date: Thursday, July 20, 2000
Time: 7:00PM - 9:00PM EDT (GMT-04:00)

This is your reminder notice for the monthly meeting. A detailed
description will be sent under separate cover.

July Meeting

Tue, 18 Jul 2000 11:44:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Tim Horton’s
Eagleson Rd,
Kanata

Date: Thursday July 20, 2000

Time: 19:00

Directions: Eagleson @ Stonehaven, Next to the ESSO station

There is plenty of parking available beside the building.

Reminder - Monthly Meeting

Mon, 17 Jul 2000 19:02:00 -0500

We would like to remind you of this upcoming event.

Monthly Meeting

Date: Thursday, July 20, 2000
Time: 7:00PM - 9:00PM EDT (GMT-04:00)

This is your reminder notice for the monthly meeting. A detailed
description will be sent under separate cover.

Ignore automated post, Meeting delayed 1 week

Thu, 15 Jun 2000 04:57:00 -0500

Due to scheduling difficulties, the meeting will be delayed for one
week.

New date: 2000-06-22

location to be determined.

Reminder - Monthly Meeting

Wed, 14 Jun 2000 19:02:00 -0500

We would like to remind you of this upcoming event.

Monthly Meeting

Date: Thursday, June 15, 2000
Time: 7:00PM - 9:00PM EDT (GMT-04:00)

This is your reminder notice for the monthly meeting. A detailed
description will be sent under separate cover.

Mon, 20 Mar 2000 13:14:00 -0500

I was unable to reach your WEB site from the Usenix/Sage homepage. Is
the following URL still valid?

http://www.mwaa.on.ca/ovsage

I found the link on the following page:

http://www.usenix.org/sage/locals/localgroups.php

Re,
Dwayne Martin - MITS Manager
Cadence Design Systems, 1130 Morrison Dr, Suite 100,
Ottawa, Ont, Canada K2H-9N6
EMAIL: martind@Cadence.COM
PHN: (613)726-2800

[ovsage] Monthly Meeting

Wed, 15 Mar 2000 19:00:00 -0500

Luck o’ the Irish! You can get all your St. Patrick’s day party
supplies at GreatEntertaining.com. We’ve got beer-making kits,
green salami, shamrock confetti, gold coins for the little
leprechauns & more. Shop today.
http://clickhere.egroups.com/click/2783

Reminder from the ovsage calendar at eGroups.com

Event: Monthly Meeting
URL: http://www.egroups.com/cal?listname=ovsage&md=d&day=11032
Date: Thu Mar 16, 2000
Time: 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

This is your reminder notice for the monthly meeting. A detailed description will be sent under separate cover.

[ovsage] March meeting

Wed, 15 Mar 2000 17:38:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: 25 Fitzgerald Drive
Nortel Fitzgerald Campus
Ground Floor, Rose Room

Date: Thursday March 16, 2000

Time: 19:00

Directions: This location is in Bells Corners, next to the Canadian Tire
Building.

There is plenty of parking available beside the building.

Note: Non-Nortel people will have to be signed in. When you enter
the building, go to the security station. Tell the security
guard that you are here for the SAGE meeting in the Rose
Room.

[ovsage] Monthly Meeting

Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:03:00 -0500

Find the best, real greeting cards online at Sparks.com.
Try us now and get your First Card FREE!
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Reminder from the ovsage calendar at eGroups.com

Event: Monthly Meeting
URL: http://www.egroups.com/cal?listname=ovsage&md=d&day=11032
Date: Thu Mar 16, 2000
Time: 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

This is your reminder notice for the monthly meeting. A detailed description will be sent under separate cover.

eGroups.com - The easiest way for groups of people to communicate!
http://www.egroups.com

[ovsage] location change for the 2000/02/24 meeting

Wed, 23 Feb 2000 16:15:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: 25 Fitzgerald Drive
Nortel Fitzgerald Facility
Ground Floor

Date: Thursday February 24, 2000

Time: 19:00

Directions: This location is in Bells Corners, next to the Canadian Tire
Building.

There is plenty of parking available beside the building.

Note: Non-Nortel people will have to be signed in. When you enter
the building, go to the security station. Tell the security
guard that you are here for the SAGE meeting.

[ovsage] Emergency Notice

Thu, 17 Feb 2000 21:03:00 -0500

Sorry for the short notice, but due to a family emergency, we will be
unable to use our meeting location this evening. We will reschedule for
next Thursday.

[ovsage] and year...

Mon, 07 Feb 2000 12:30:00 -0500

OK, so I got the year wrong too… I have to start checking all aspects
of the message.

===================================================================

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Ambleside Phase 1.
1081 Ambleside Dr
Boardroom.

Date: Thursday February 17, 2000

Time: 19:00

Directions: Ambleside Dr. runs parallel to Richmond Rd (1 street
north). The nearest well known intersection is Woodroffe
Ave & Richmond Rd. From there, go west on Richmond Rd.
(approx 1 mile) and turn right on McEwen. This will
become Ambleside Dr. Turn left at Ambleside Phase 1.

[ovsage] Corrected February date...

Mon, 07 Feb 2000 11:57:00 -0500

OK, so I got the month wrong… I have to stop cutting and pasting.

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Ambleside Phase 1.
1081 Ambleside Dr
Boardroom.

Date: Thursday February 17, 1999

Time: 19:00

[ovsage] February Meeting

Mon, 07 Feb 2000 10:46:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Ambleside Phase 1.
1081 Ambleside Dr
Boardroom.

Date: Thursday January 17, 1999

Time: 19:00

[ovsage] !!! Meeting Date Change - Jan 27 !!!

Tue, 18 Jan 2000 16:13:00 -0500

CHANGE OF DATE - CHANGE OF DATE - CHANGE OF DATE - CHANGE OF DATE
CHANGE OF DATE - CHANGE OF DATE - CHANGE OF DATE - CHANGE OF DATE
CHANGE OF DATE - CHANGE OF DATE - CHANGE OF DATE - CHANGE OF DATE

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Ambleside Phase 1.
1081 Ambleside Dr
Boardroom.

Date: Thursday January 27, 1999

[ovsage] January Meeting

Wed, 12 Jan 2000 00:25:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Ambleside Phase 1.
1081 Ambleside Dr
Boardroom.

Date: Thursday Jqanuary 20, 1999

Time: 19:00

[ovsage] OVSAGE Minutes for 991118

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 13:23:00 -0500

OVSAGE Minutes

Date: Thursday, November 18, 1999
Present: Scott Murphy, Kelly Kendrick, Pierre Charbonneau, Gabriel
O’Brien

Agenda: Presentation on LISA

Scott gave a brief presentation on LISA which we continued to discuss
throughout the evening.

Scott explained our current status and formal relationship with
USENIX and SAGE.

Pierre and Gabe suggested we should take steps to formalize our
membership in SAGE so as to be able to take advantage of the resources
Scot outline earlier.

[ovsage] December Meeting

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 11:14:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Ambleside Phase 1.
1081 Ambleside Dr
Boardroom.

Date: Thursday December 16, 1999

Time: 19:00

[ovsage] November Meeting

Mon, 15 Nov 1999 15:22:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Ambleside Phase 1.
1081 Ambleside Dr
Boardroom.

Date: Thursday November 18, 1999

Time: 19:00

[ovsage] Re [ovsage] October Meeting

Thu, 21 Oct 1999 16:25:00 -0500

Hi Scott,

I have booked the boardroom. I forgot to mention, but last time
(and this time)
Ambleside requested a $10.00 fee for the room. I quess that nothing
is for free
these days, but I believe that is reasonable.
Maybe we could split the cost…

What do you think???

Later
Pierre Charbonneau

—–Original Message—–
From: scott5@nortelnetworks.com [mailto:scott5@nortelnetworks.com]
Sent: Monday, October 18, 1999 4:58 PM
To: ovsage@eGroups.com
Subject: [ovsage] October Meeting

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

[ovsage] October Meeting

Mon, 18 Oct 1999 16:58:00 -0500

Details for the next meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Ambleside Phase 1.
1081 Ambleside Dr
Boardroom.

Date: Thursday October 21, 1999

Time: 19:00

[ovsage] Re [ovsage] September Meeting - September 30, 1999

Hi Scott,

Just to confirm that I booked to boardroom at Ambleside for
Thursday Aug. 26 at 19:00.

I will meet you at your place around 6:30 pm.

Later
Pierre Charbonneau

[ovsage] RE [ovsage] Again, Date Correction

Tue, 17 Aug 1999 15:13:00 -0500

Hi Scott,

I have made myself a note to reserve the boardroom
on Thursday Aug. 26, 1999 at 19:00. I don’t think it will
be a problem, but I cannot confirm until next Monday as
Ambleside members will only confirm the room a couple of days
in advance.

I will let you know by Monday afternoon.

Later,
Pierre Charbonneau.

—–Original Message—–
From: scott5@nortelnetworks.com [mailto:scott5@nortelnetworks.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 1999 11:36 AM
To: ovsage@eGroups.com
Subject: [ovsage] Again, Date Correction

[ovsage] Again, Date Correction

Tue, 17 Aug 1999 11:35:00 -0500

Date: Thursday, August 16, 1999

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
wrong date!!!!!!!

Location: Ambelside Phase 1
Time: 19:00

Topics: TBD

I will post an additional message once I get final confirmation of

location.

I think my brain is still on vacation. The correct date is:
Thursday, August 26, 1999.

Scott

[ovsage] August Meeting - date change

Tue, 17 Aug 1999 10:41:00 -0500

Date: Thursday, August 16, 1999
Location: Ambelside Phase 1
Time: 19:00

Topics: TBD

I will post an additional message once I get final confirmation of the
location.

[ovsage] August Meeting Addendum

Thu, 12 Aug 1999 16:15:00 -0500

I forgot the date…

August 24 was supposed to preceed the year :)

Scott

[ovsage] Re [ovsage] August Meeting

Thu, 12 Aug 1999 15:01:00 -0500

Tuesday August ??

—–Original Message—–
From: Murphy, Scott [FITZ3:9D15:EXCH]
Sent: Thursday, August 12, 1999 2:24 PM
To: ovsage@eGroups.com
Subject: [ovsage] August Meeting

After a short hiatus (read summer holidays), I believe it’s time for an
August meeting.

Date: Tuesday, August 1999
Location: Tentatively Ambelside Phase 1
Time: 19:00

Topics: TBD

I will post an additional message once I get confirmation of the
location.

eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/ovsage
http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications

[ovsage] August Meeting

Thu, 12 Aug 1999 14:23:00 -0500

After a short hiatus (read summer holidays), I believe it’s time for an
August meeting.

Date: Tuesday, August 1999
Location: Tentatively Ambelside Phase 1
Time: 19:00

Topics: TBD

I will post an additional message once I get confirmation of the
location.

[ovsage] job position at Apple Computers

Thu, 12 Aug 1999 12:11:00 -0500

Hello I was wondering if you could post this position to your jobs
mailing list?

Thank You

Jackie Jarvis

Responsible for the day to day administration and management of Unix
workstations in a R&D environment. Work with a team of sytem
administrators to insure our Unix and network architecture supports our
design processes and methodologies. Responsibilities also include setting
up user accounts and environments, insuring that design data is backed
up, working with project teams to maintain the printer/plotter
environments etc. High familiarity with Unix and shell scripting a must.
C,C++ experience preferable.

[ovsage] Meeting Reminder - May 18, 1999

Thu, 13 May 1999 23:29:00 -0500

The next meeting will be Tuesday, May 18, 1999

Location: Rideau Campus, Algonquin College
Room: To Be Determined
Time: 7pm until 9:30 pm

We have decided that the third Tuesday of every month will be the
meeting night, and that we have a permanent home at Algonquin. Once
we have nailed down a room, the meetings can be cast in stone.

Directions:
Algonquin is off the Nicholas split of the Queensway on Lees Avenue.
The Ottawa Carleton Linux Users Group have a map located at the
following URL: http://www.oclug.on.ca/news.php
According to their web page, parking is free.

[ovsage] Ottawa Valley SAGE info thought

Thu, 06 May 1999 11:20:00 -0500

To whom it may concern:

I am an experienced UNIX systems administration consultant traveling in
Ottawa/Toronto area on business in the next three months. During which time
I would like to have the opportunities to network with talented people in
the same field. If you may send me contact and event information, I’d
appreciate it.

Looking forward to meeting you.

Sincerely

Robert Tseng
Comrise Technology, Inc.
1301 Concord Center, State Hwy 36
Hazlet, NJ 07752 U.S.A.
Phone: 800-862-2330 / 613-224-8290
http://www.comrise.com
mailto:rtseng@comrise.com

[ovsage] Reminder Note

Tue, 20 Apr 1999 14:35:00 -0500

+----------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+  
|  NEW LOCATION  |  NEW LOCATION  |  NEW LOCATION  |  NEW LOCATION  |  
+----------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+

Location: Rideau Campus of Algonquin College
Room: E128
Time: 7pm until 9:30 pm

Agenda:
The topics for discussion are wide open. Come out and take
advantage of the open forum

[ovsage] Re

Mon, 19 Apr 1999 00:44:00 -0500

Original Article: http://www.egroups.com/list/ovsage/?start=11

Hi,

We are currently investigating the possibility of setting up
a console server. It would reside on a Compaq PC running Lynux
(Redhat 5.2).

Would you have any suggestions on communication software that I could
install that would allow remote access.
Thanks,
Pierre Charbonneau

What exactly do you want it to be a console server for? unix boxes?
Assuming you have several serial ports, just plug them into what ever machines you want to be the console for. From here on our there are MANY configuration options, depending on exactly how you want to access it. One of the simplest is to just telnet to the linux box and run a program like minicom (which should be included with redhat– assuming you chose to load it– try /usr/bin/minicom). Minicom is a serial communications program commonly used to control a modem for dialing BBS’s, etc. I use it daily as a console for programming routers. Basically you start up minicom, select the serial port you want to use, set the baud rate to what ever you need (typically 9600, 8N1) and go.

[ovsage] Re: April Meeting

Thu, 15 Apr 1999 13:21:00 -0500

We now have a room at the Rideau Campus of Algonquin, room E128 booked from 6pm until 10pm.

Original Article: http://www.egroups.com/list/ovsage/?start=14

The April meeting will be held on the 20th, at 19:30hrs. The location is
yet to be determined.

We may be holding future meetings at the Rideau campus of Algonquin, but
that has not yet been confirmed. If this does not pan out, we will have
the meeting at the Ambleside Board Room as per the previous meetings.

[ovsage] April Meeting

Wed, 07 Apr 1999 22:55:00 -0500

The April meeting will be held on the 20th, at 19:30hrs. The location is
yet to be determined.

We may be holding future meetings at the Rideau campus of Algonquin, but
that has not yet been confirmed. If this does not pan out, we will have
the meeting at the Ambleside Board Room as per the previous meetings.

As we are still getting a minimal attendance, the topics for discussion
are pretty open. Come out and take advantage of the open forum.

[ovsage] Re: Console Server

Wed, 07 Apr 1999 22:44:00 -0500

Original Article: http://www.egroups.com/list/ovsage/?start=11

Hi,

We are currently investigating the possibility of setting up
a console server. It would reside on a Compaq PC running Lynux
(Redhat 5.2).

Would you have any suggestions on communication software that I could
install that would allow remote access.
Thanks,
Pierre Charbonneau

You might want to investigate VNC as a remote management tool, but then
you could also just telnet to the box. The solution would most likely be
dependant on what you are trying to accomplish. The easiest method would
be telnet.

[ovsage] Console Server

Wed, 07 Apr 1999 12:34:00 -0500

Hi,

We are currently investigating the possibility of setting up
a console server. It would reside on a Compaq PC running Lynux
(Redhat 5.2).

Would you have any suggestions on communication software that I could
install that would allow remote access.
Thanks,
Pierre Charbonneau

eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/list/ovsage
Free Web-based e-mail groups by eGroups.com

[ovsage] Reminder - March Meeting

Tue, 16 Mar 1999 08:03:00 -0500

The next meeting for the Ottawa Valley SAGE group will be March 23, 1999. The
location will be the same as the last time, the boardroom at Ambelside. Location:
Ambleside Phase 1
1081 Ambleside Dr.
Boardroom.

Date: Tuesday March 23,1999

Time: 19:00

Directions:
Ambleside Dr. runs parallel to Richmond Rd (1 street north).
The nearest well known intersection is Woodroffe Ave & Richmond
Rd. From there, go west on Richmond Rd. (approx 1 mile) and
turn right onMcEwen. This will become Ambleside Dr. Turn left
at Ambleside Phase 1. Thereis plenty of parking available beside
the building.

[ovsage] Repost - March Meeting

Sun, 07 Mar 1999 18:33:00 -0500

The next meeting for the Ottawa Valley SAGE group will be March 23, 1999. The
location will be the same as the last time, the boardroom at Ambelside.
Location:
Ambleside Phase 1
1081 Ambleside Dr.
Boardroom.

Date: Tuesday March 23,1999

Time: 19:00

Directions:
Ambleside Dr. runs parallel to Richmond Rd (1 street north).
The nearest well known intersection is Woodroffe Ave & Richmond
Rd. From there, go west on Richmond Rd. (approx 1 mile) and
turn right onMcEwen. This will become Ambleside Dr. Turn left
at Ambleside Phase 1. Thereis plenty of parking available beside
the building.

[ovsage] March Meeting

Sat, 06 Mar 1999 19:22:00 -0500

The next meeting for the Ottawa Valley SAGE group will be March 23, 1999.

The location will be the same as the last time, the boardroom at Ambelside.

Location: Ambleside Phase 1.
1081 Ambleside Dr
Boardroom.

Date: Tuesday March 23, 1999

Time: 19:00

[ovsage] Reminder

Mon, 15 Feb 1999 13:59:00 -0500

Reminder from the ovsage calendar at eGroups.com

Event: OVsage meeting
Date: Tuesday February 16, 1999
Time: 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
URL: http://www.egroups.com/cal?listname=ovsage&md=d&day=10638

Description: First Meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Ambleside Phase 1.
1081 Ambleside Dr
Boardroom.

Date: Tuesday February 16, 1999

Time: 19:00

[ovsage] Inaugural Meeting

Wed, 10 Feb 1999 10:39:00 -0500

Announcement!

Details for the first meeting of Ottawa Valley SAGE.

Location: Ambleside Phase 1.
1081 Ambleside Dr
Boardroom.

Date: Tuesday February 16, 1999

Time: 19:00

[ovsage] Meeting night proposal.

Sun, 24 Jan 1999 23:42:00 -0500

As there has been no activity as to what night would be good, I think
that Tuesday night (February 16)would be appropriate for the meeting.
Location is still to be determined.

Dissention?
Discussion?

Scott

eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/list/ovsage
Free Web-based e-mail groups by eGroups.com

[ovsage] Re Meeting location?

Mon, 18 Jan 1999 14:46:00 -0500

At LISA we had discussed meeting possibly at Algonquin as the
OCunix group does– any further ideas?

I think Algonquin would be a good location for a regularly scheduled time and
place. How much notice does Algonquin need to allow us a room?

In addition, one of the list members has proposed a conference room near Hunt
Club and Riverside for the first meeting, as he does not need to give much
notice.

[ovsage] Meeting location?

Mon, 18 Jan 1999 09:31:00 -0500

At LISA we had discussed meeting possibly at Algonquin as the
OCunix group does– any further ideas?

–

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kevin Currie | | | | email:
Sys Admin | .|||. .|||. |kcurrie (at) cisco.com
Cisco Systems | ..:|||||||:…:|||||||:.. | (613) 274-4023
Ottawa, Ontario |—————————–|

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/list/ovsage
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[ovsage] Ottawa Valley SAGE has a web page

Thu, 14 Jan 1999 22:30:00 -0500

Visit the new Ottawa Valley SAGE web page at
http://www.mwaa.on.ca/ovsage.

eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/list/ovsage
Free Web-based e-mail groups by eGroups.com

Welcome to the ovsage E-Mail Group

Wed, 16 Dec 1998 21:27:00 -0500

This group is for the members of the Ottawa VAlley SAGE Local. The purpose of this group is to promote the profession of System Administration.

Group Moderator: ovsage-owner@egroups.com

To subscribe, send a message to ovsage-subscribe@egroups.com or go to this e-group’s home page at http://www.egroups.com/list/ovsage

Ottawa Valley SAGE

March 2026 Meeting

Site Inactivity

February 2026 Meeting

Site migration 2026

Using a Pi3B in 2024

Kanboard via Podman

The Return of Containers

Design Thoughts

Interesting things that changed

About

Welcome to Ottawa Valley SAGE!

History

Current Status

More Docker

Docker Night

Recent happenings

Miracles Happen

Still Waiting

Back to normal

Still working on it.

Items left to go

Progress of a sort

Of course, it's not all easy

The new generator works

The previous article was premature!

After a long hiatus, we are live

Side Effects of Web Server Changes

LISA'16 Was Fun

July Meeting Notes

Recap

Logo Issue

June Meeting Recap

Overview

Off Topic: A Bit Warm

SSL Testing with Qualys Labs

Why?

Post April Follow-Up

March Followup

jupyter-talk

Overview

Post February Update

Access control headers

OSX and the dd command

Simple Additions

New year, new site

Oddities as I do the conversion

November Follow-up

Ottawa Valley SAGE Event Calendar

The group calendar

Photos from LISA'15

Post October Followup

Post September Follow-up

August Followup

July Follow-up

June Follow-Up

Photos from BSDCan 2015

May 2015 Followup

Post April Follow-up

Pi Day 2015

Post February Meeting Notes

I have migrated hosting providers again

January Meeting 2015: *Not* a Puppet Talk

SysAdmin Appreciation Day

Post June Meeting Followup...

The schedule for the rest of the year has been published.

April followup

April Meeting: Topic discussions

New event system in use

February Meeting 2014

Git for sysadmins

Speaker Bio

Building a Firewall Appliance with pfSense and ALIX2D3

Purpose

January Meeting: Ringing in the GNU year

December Meeting: Annual Social

Photos from LISA'13

November Meeting 2013

October Follow-Up

October Meeting 2013

January Meeting 2015: Not a Puppet Talk