Talks 2003
From CLUG Wiki
Past Talks
25-11-2003: Linux games
Presenter: Marc Welz
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: AGM
- Talk by Marc Welz on linux games
- 2003 Annual General Meeting and election of the new Committee
- A Christmas Party with free pizza, beer and cold drink
11-11-2003: Mutt
Presenter: Johan Botha
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Mutt is a a popular, powerful and extremely flexible mail user agent (or mail client).
See http://www.mutt.org/ for more information.
28-10-2003: Usermode Linux (UML)
Presenter: Warwick Duncan
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: User mode linux allows you to create one or more virtual linux machines all running on your main box.
Each can run different application and from both the inside and outside look like separate linux machines.
See http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/ for more information.
14-10-2003: Linux Input / Terminal??
Presenter: Marc Welz??
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: The topic will be either developing windows applications under linux by Paul Sheer,
or (if Paul is unavailable), Linux input / terminal stuff by Marc Welz.
30-09-2003: X fonts
Presenter: Paul Sheer
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: How X fonts work, how to configure them properly etc.
09-09-2003: Speaking text-based protocols
Presenter: Marc Welz
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
26-08-2003: RAID
Presenter: Mark Ter Morshuizen
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Mark will be talking about both hardware and software RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks)
12-08-2003: Cryptography
Presenter: Abraham van der Merwe
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: This talk covered the basic theory behind cryptography and crypto-analysis. You can download my slides below:
29-07-2003: Administering and writing PAM modules
Presenter: Marc Welz
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: PAM: pluggable authentication modules, and is the
modular authentication system used Linux (and other operating systems).
08-07-2003: Windows app developent with the GNU toolchain
Presenter: Paul Sheer
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Did this talk happen??
10-06-2003: IPSEC
Presenter: Paul Sheer
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: IP secure is a set of security extensions to IPv4. It is a protocol for negotiation of encryption and authentication at the IP level (i.e. between two machines). IPSEC allows encryption of all traffic between two machines.
This is a low level talk about the IPSEC protocol rather than configuring IPSEC on linux.
Paul will be talking about his understanding of IPSEC from his experience writing support
for it into his operating system, PaulOS, and from reading the RFC's.
27-05-2003: Palm pilot programming
Presenter: Steven van der Merwe
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: This talk is likely to have a java focus.
13-05-2003: Low Level DNS
Presenter: Paul Sheer
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Paul Sheer will be talking about the low level workings of DNS (domain name service),
the packet format, etc.; based on his readings of the appropriate RFC's and his
experience writing his own DNS server.
For those who don't know, DNS is an integral part of the IP network -
the distributed database of mappings between hostnames and IP addresses.
29-04-2003: Advanced Routing
Presenter: Abraham van der Merwe
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: For more information of the sorts of topics covered by an advanced
routing talk take a look at the Linux Advanced Routing HOWTO and Zebra
08-04-2003: Sendmail.cf
Presenter: Hendrik Visagie
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: sendmail.cf - the sendmail configuration file - the ideas, formats and methods behind this file.
Sendmail is a (widely-used) mail transport agent (like exim and postfix) and is considered by many people as difficult to configure largely due to the obscure syntax on its configuration file.
Still many Unix operating systems and linux distributions still have
sendmail as the default mail transport agent.
25-03-2003: XML
Presenter: Johann Botha
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Extensible Markup Language (XML), with some background about SGML, HTML, XHTML and DocBookXML.
The talk will include some examples using XML tools on Linux and a PHP XML parser.
11-03-2003: QoS - Linux Traffic Control
Presenter: Abraham van der Merwe
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: This talk was about using the traffic control and netfilter infrastructure to manage bandwidth more effectively and how to collect statistics to aid with that process.
Unfortunately most of the tools I demonstrated are proprietary (please contact Frogfoot Networks if you need something). For the standard free stuff, you can find lots of very useful documentation, patches and utilities on these pages:
25-02-2003: Linux Gaming
Presenter: David Duncan
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Topics will cover:
- The impact and development of games for the linux community.
- How to run games under linux.
- Insight of game developers in choosing linux as a developement platform.
- The future of linux gaming.
20-02-2003: John "Maddog" Hall
Presenter: John "Maddog" Hall
Venue: UCT Leslie 2D
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Maddog will be talking about Linux International and anything else he feel like talking about - his talk is usually about 1h30m.
For those who don't know who Maddog is:
Maddog is one of the most influential thought leaders in the Linux community today. Linux Magazine puts it this way: "'Maddog' Hall is the guy that companies like IBM and HP go to when they want to find out how to do the right thing by the Linux community".
Jon has been in the computer industry since 1969, using Unix since 1977, and Linux since 1994.
He has been a software engineer, systems administrator, product manager, marketing manager and professional educator. Jon has been the Executive Director of Linux International since 1995, the first four years as a volunteer. Jon has been employed by VA Linux systems, Compaq Computer Corporation in the Digital UNIX Marketing group and Bell Laboratories among other companies.
Before that he was Department Head of Computer Science at Hartford State
Technical College, where his students lovingly (he hopes) gave him the
nickname maddog. Maddog as he prefers to be called, has an MS in
Computer Science from RPI (1977) and a BS in Commerce and Engineering
from Drexel University (1973).
11-02-2003: Postfix (the MTA)
Presenter: Warwick Duncan
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Also: how to do spam and virus scanning with amavisd-new and clamav. Postfix is considered one of the two most secure mail transport agents, amavisd-new is a rewrite of the amavisd content scanning package, and clamav is a opensource antivirus software package.
- Postfix: http://www.postfix.org/
- ClamAV: http://clamav.elektrapro.com/
- amavisd-new: http://www.ijs.si/software/amavisd/
28-01-2003: ADSL Router
Presenter: Paul Sheer
Venue: UCT Old ChemEng LT2
Time: 6:30pm
Notes: Paul will be giving a talk on ADSL based on experience gained while coding the protocol directly from the RFC for PaulOS (his operating system) for a router he is working on. This talk is not very linux focussed - it is more about the details of ADSL (what it is and how to works etc). Paul will also give information on Telkom's ADSL offering - cost, availability etc.
For those who don't know what ADSL is - from a definition on ADSL on webopedia.com:
- Short for asymmetric digital subscriber line, a new technology that allows more data to be sent over existing copper telephone lines (POTS). ADSL supports data rates of from 1.5 to 9 Mbps when receiving data (known as the downstream rate) and from 16 to 640 Kbps when sending data (known as the upstream rate).
- ADSL requires a special ADSL modem.
- ADSL is growing in popularity as more areas around the world gain access.
ADSL is being (or about to be) provided by Telkom on some exchanges in Cape Town.
Paul will provide more information about this as well.
