Talks 2002
From CLUG Wiki
Past Talks
26-11-2002: Source based Distros
Presenter: Hendrik Visagie
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: (Gentoo/SGL/LFS), the workings, reasons & comparisons. (An Overview)
12-11-2002: The Debian Project
Presenter: Johann Botha
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Installation and features of the Debian distribution of linux.
For notes, see: http://www.swimgeek.com/unix/clug/ - HTML Version
22-10-2002: VNC
Presenter: Chris Roomes
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: AGM
For more information on vnc see http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
08-10-2002: Graphing by Abraham vd Merwe
Presenter: Abraham vd Merwe
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: More specifically, it will mostly be about graphing time based data using the RRD Tool and other utilities/libraries.
Ever wanted to know how to check how much bandwidth you're using while you dial up without writing some code? MRTG not powerful enough for you? Don't know how to use RRD functionality in your own C programs, PHP scripts, etc? rrdtool not fast enough for you? Bothered by its licensing scheme? How do you collect data and graph it without introducing races?
Below are some of the material I used to give this talk:
24-09-2002: Ruby
Presenter: Farrel Lifson
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Ruby is an object orientated scripting language that is rapidly gaining mainstream popularity. It was developed in Japan, where is is more popular the Python, but has quickly attained a world wide following. For more information on Ruby see http://www.ruby-lang.org.
Notes for this talk:
10-09-2002: Combatting SPAM
Presenter: Craig Balfour
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: SpamAssassin web site: http://spamassassin.taint.org/
- Bayespam web site: http://www.garyarnold.com/projects.php#bayespam
- and an article by Paul Graham on using Bayesian classification as A Plan for Spam: http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html
27-08-2002: Bundling Dialup's Bandwidth
Presenter: Nigel Kukard
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Bundling bandwidth on multiple dialups.
13-08-2002: I2C
Presenter: Abraham van der Merwe
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: I2C, the serial bus used by most modern PC hardware. Ever wondered how to access those fans and temperature sensors that you see in your BIOS? How about where XFree86 gets all that info about your monitor? Want to see exactly what memory chips you really bought? Join us at tomorrow's CLUG meeting and find out more about your PC hardware than you ever wanted to know!
Most of the stuff I talked about are documented on the LM Sensors page.
30-07-2002: Functional languages
Presenter: Paul Sheer and Marc Welz
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Paul will give a general introduction, Marc will talk on Scheme and hopefully someone else will talk on Haskell.
09-07-2002: iptables
Presenter: Warwick Duncan and Abraham van der Merwe
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Iptables is the firewalling toolkit in linux kernels starting from 2.4 and replaces ipchains which was the firewall in 2.2 kernels.
Warwick will demonstrate the configuration of a network firewall (including stateful firewalling) and talk about what he's leant about setting up iptables on his network firewall.
Abraham will talk about iptables and private IP ranges --
specifically configuring network address translation (NAT).
25-06-2002: Precis - a framework for writing business servlets, fast
Presenter: Dr Evan Summers
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: More information on precis available from the web site http://www.precis.org.za/
11-06-2002: Ethereal
Presenter: ???
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: ethereal is an excellent tool for looking the stort of traffic moving around a network segment.
It allows you capture packets, and look at the contents of them.
Ethereal is an excellent tool for troubleshooting network problems.
28-05-2002: Questions and Answers
Presenter: Committee
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: ask the panel of experts all of your linux questions.
We have decided to have a question and answer session for a change.
This your opportunity to present your linux questions to our panel of experts.
This is your opportunity to pose the problems you've been unable to solve, stuff you've been wondering about, etc.
Of course, if you think you have knowledge and experience to contribute please also attend,
as I'm sure your advice would also be welcome.
14-05-2002: SNMP
Presenter: Hamish Whittal
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: SNMP is the protocol used to monitor and manage networked devices.
If you have access to a jetdirect printer, try typing "snmpwalk your_printer public"
to see what it can tell you about a system.
30-04-2002: Linux from Scratch
Presenter: Robert Laing
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Even if you do not plan to put together a system on your own it may help you
understand things like the Linux filesystem layout, etc.
09-04-2002: Booting Linux
Presenter: Marc Welz
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: This will include such topics as boot loaders, initrd, init,runlevels, diskless bootups, rescue boot disks, etc.
26-03-2002: Embedded Systems
Presenter: Paul Sheer and Abraham van der Merwe
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Paul and Abraham will be demonstrating some embedded systems that they have written and or built.
Paul will be demonstrating PaulOS, the operating system he has written for his embedded system.
12-03-2002: Relational Databases
Presenter: Paul Sheer, Craig Balfour, and Marc Welz
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: This meeting is focusing on a few aspects of databasing. Specifically:
- Paul will demonstrate the relational database system, postgres
- Craig will demonstrate how to use the perl DBI (database interface) to talk directly to database servers such as Mysql, Postgres and Microsoft SQL server.
- Marc will demonstrate some of the fundamental functions of the SQL query language (eg. SELECT, INSERT, JOIN, etc) using shell scripts and linux command line tools.
26-02-2002: LVM
Presenter: Warwick Duncan and Craig Balfour
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: LVM, or logical volume management, is a feature of the 2.4.x kernel series that allows you to
group block devices (hard disks, partitions, network block devices, raid devices) together into a groups
and then into volumes that can be conveniently managed.
LVM makes it easy to add increase the amount of diskspace available in a partition.
For more information see http://www.sistina.com/lvm/
12-02-2002: Live Video and Streaming Audio
Presenter: Thomas Andrews and Paul Sheer
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Tom will show us to setup an icecast server to steam live audio and mp3's across a network. For more information on icecast visit http://www.icecast.org/
Paul will show us how to setup a logitech web cam under linux and try to communicate with a Windows
machine running the Microsoft Netmeeting client.
