BillingsLUG

Billings Linux Users Group

Where:

Computer4Kids, 4017 1st Ave South.
North side of street.

When:

7PM on Thursday July 17th, 2008

Speakers:

All

Talk:

Spontaneous

Abstract:

Talk about our latest adventures in Linux, latest in the news. Continue
plans on Septembers InstallFest. I also have 4 new books to give away:

Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache All in One

Refactoring HTML: Improving the Design of Existing Web Applications

Running Xen: A Hands-On Guide to the Art of Virtualization

Dojo - JavaScript Library to Build Ajax Applications

Hi Billings LUGers,

Where:

Computer4Kids, 4017 1st Ave South
(North side of the street)

When:

7:00 PM Thursday June 19th, 2008

Speakers:

Andrew Niemantsverdriet

Talks:

pfSense

Abstract:

Tonight, Andrew will be giving a demo of pfSense -- a free, open source firewall and router distribution based on FreeBSD. For more information, the project's website is at http://www.pfsense.com

Billings Linux Users Group

Where:

Computer4Kids, 4017 1st Ave South.
North side of street.

When:

7PM on Thursday May 15th, 2008

Speakers:

Warren Sanders

Donnie Lunder

Talk:

Remote Desktops

Abstract:

Demonstration on how to access applications, terminal services, and sessions via Linux. Talking about X11 forwarding, NX, rdesktop, and VNC.

Billings Linux Users Group

Where:

Computer4Kids, 4017 1st Ave South.
North side of street.

When:

7PM on Thursday April 17th, 2008

Speakers:

Dan Spencer

Mike DeLoach

Talk:

Untangle: Firewall

Abstract:

It's firewall software! Firewall evaluates traffic traveling across your network by applying your rules until a block/pass verdict is reached or a default action is taken.

Also, I have another preview book to give away! Anyone interested in Linux driver development? Essential Linux Device Drivers by Sreekrishnan Venkateswaran; http://www.informit.com/title/0132396556

Billings Linux Users Group

Where:

Computer4Kids, 4017 1st Ave South.
North side of street, tucked behind the Mustang Barbershop.

When:

7PM on Thursday March 20th, 2008 (Note new time)

Speakers:

Brian Irish

Talks:

DD-WRT v24 firmware on a Linksys WRT54GS wireless router

Abstract:

Brian will be demonstrating DD-WRT v24 firmware on a Linksys WRT54GS wireless router. One of the new features that he will be focusing on is virtual wireless interfaces that allow for multiple SSIDs served by a single router.

Billings Linux Users Group

Where:

Computer4Kids, 4017 1st Ave South.
North side of street, behind the Mustang Barbershop.

When:

7:30 PM on Thursday February 21st, 2008

Speakers:

Andrew Niemantsverdriet

Warren Sanders

Talks:

Basic WiFi Security and Why You Need It

digiKam

Abstract:

Andrew works every day with wireless systems and knows them inside out. Learn the basics in how to secure your wireless network. Hear from an expert what you should know before exposing your network.

Warren, will tentatively demo digiKam. digiKam is an advanced digital photo management application for KDE, which makes importing and organizing digital photos a "snap". I will be out of town most of the day but will try to make it back in time for the meeting.

Billings Linux Users Group

Where:

Computer4Kids, 4017 1st Ave South.
North side of street, tucked behind the Mustang Barbershop.

When:

7:30 PM on Thursday January 17th, 2008

Speakers:

Dan Spencer

Donnie Lunder

Warren Sanders

Talks:

EasyFWGen

FireHOL

digiKam

Abstract:

Dan mentioned using a cool firewall tool called Easy Firewall Generator. This program generates an iptables firewall script for use with the 2.4 or later linux kernel. It's so easy Dan plans to do it on Slackware just to make things a bit more challenging. ;-)

Donnie would like to talk about FireHOL. FireHOL is an iptables stateful packet filtering firewall builder. Both of these look complex to me so hope to learn a bit about their differences.

Warren, time permitting will change it up a bit by talking about something totally different; digiKam. digiKam is an advanced digital photo management application for KDE, which makes importing and organizing digital photos a "snap".

Billings Linux Users Group

Where:

Computer4Kids, 4017 1st Ave South.
North side of street, tucked behind the Mustang Barbershop.

When:

7:30 PM on Tuesday December 18th, 2007

Speaker:

Donnie Lunder

Talk:

LinuxMCE

Abstract:

LinuxMCE is a free, open source add-on to Kubuntu including a 10' UI, complete whole-house media solution with pvr + distributed media, and the most advanced smarthome solution available. It is stable, easy to use, and requires no knowledge of Linux and only basic computer skills.

Billings Linux Users Group

Where:

Computer4Kids, 4017 1st Ave South.
North side of street, tucked behind the Mustang Barbershop.

When:

7:30 PM on Thursday November 15th, 2007

Speaker:

Group Discus

Talk:

gOS Linux Distribution

Abstract:

gOS is based on Ubuntu 7.10 but uses Enlightenment 17 instead of the usual Gnome/KDE desktops. Earlier this month it was introduced to come pre-installed on the $198 Everex Green gPC TC2502 sold at Wal-Mart. At this meeting we will go under the hood and take a closer look.

This is just a reminder about our meeting tonight. We will start
meeting at 6pm tonight at:

Computer 4 Kids
4017 1st Ave S, Billings, MT

This meeting will be somewhat more relaxed that normal. Anyone
unfamiliar with C4K will get to see what they are about first hand.
We will discuss some of C4K's processes, and brainstorm as a group to
possible solutions.

If all goes well, we will learn about the Hotplug.d service and a
little shell scripting.

Additionally, I will be cooking up some fresh pizza, and you are
welcome to bring your favorite drink. We will start the food portion
of the meeting earlier than usual at about 6 and by 7:30 should be
getting into Hotplug.d and some Bash.

If you ever want to chat with some of the local Linux users, many of
us are in #ubuntu-montana on irc.freenode.com

Billings Linux Users Group
The meeting will be held this Thursday.

Where:

MCS Office Products
1812 Grand Avenue

When:

7:30 PM on Thursday September 20th, 2007

Speaker:

Donnie Lunder

Talk:

Live Asteriks vzmigration

Abstract:

This will be a demonstration more in line with the power of OpenVZ's vzmigration tool. In this demo we'll see how it can handle a live phone call.

Billings Linux Users Group
The meeting was postponed one week as Shawn was out of town last week.

Where:

ATM Express Inc., 145 Regal Street Suite 7.
Turn south at 15th Street West and Central Avenue.

When:

7:30 PM on Tuesday August 21st, 2007

Speaker:

George Milliken

Talk:

SugarCRM and the Oracle port

Abstract:

Talk about the SugarCRM package, the way the source is organized, the things I have learned in working on a port from MySQL to php dbx (to support Oracle oci8). A little about the CRM application in general, their competitors, the way companies use CRM.

Books for review:

The Official Ubuntu Book (2nd Edition)

The Official Damn Small Linux(R) Book: The Tiny Adaptable Linux That Runs on Anything

RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails

Enterprise AJAX: Strategies for Building High Performance Web Applications

Ajax Construction Kit: Building Plug-and-Play Ajax Applications

Billings Linux Users Group
The meeting was postponed one week as Shawn was out of town last week.

Where:

ATM Express Inc., 145 Regal Street Suite 7.
Turn south at 15th Street West and Central Avenue.

When:

7:30 PM on Tuesday July 24th, 2007

Speaker:

Tentatively: Shawn Wilson

Talk:

Tentatively: Gentoo Installation

Abstract:

Quick review of a Gentoo installation.

Billings Linux Users Group
The meeting will be postponed one week as I will be out of town this week.

Where:

Computer4Kids, 4017 1st Ave South.
North side of street, tucked behind the Mustang Barbershop.

When:

7:30 PM on Tuesday June 26th, 2007

Speaker:

Brian Kelly

Talk:

MythTV

Abstract:

Brian may be adding more info on this later this week.

Where:

MCS Office Products, Inc. at 1812 Grand Ave.

When:

7:30 PM on Tuesday May 15th, 2007

Speaker:

Warren Sanders

Talk:

Show n' Tell IPCop mini-itx style

Abstract:

Last year I purchased a fanless mini-itx system customized for my personal firewall at home. This past week I installed IPCop on it. I plan to show you under the hood and maybe even do a quick IPCop install.

Where:

ATM Express, Inc. at 145 Regal St. Suite 7 which is south of Central at 15th Street West.

When:

7:30 PM on Tuesday April 17th, 2007

Speaker:

Warren Sanders

Talk:

Virtual Users With Postfix, PostfixAdmin, Courier, Mailscanner, ClamAV On CentOS

Abstract:

In this presentation I want to show the rpm/Red Hat way of installing this popular setup of virtual users and postfix. Last meeting and some post prior, Dan asked if I would show some Red Hat stuff. The presentation is a bit long winded and may be strained for time, so I have been working on pre-baking some of the steps and working out the bugs to get the time down this past week. So some steps will be just like watching the Food Network Channel!

Two new books to be given away this month:

The Linux Programmer's Toolbox (Prentice Hall Open Source Software Development Series) (Paperback)

The Apache Modules Book: Application Development with Apache (Prentice Hall Open Source Software Development Series) (Paperback)

We're giving MCS a break this month and heading over to the Computer4Kids shop. They are located at 4017 South 1st Street. Not only is Dan hosting he has also volunteered to talk about connecting Linux to an MS Advanced Server Domain. The idea is to be able to use a single logon for corporate type environments.

Also worth noting... feel free to bring refreshments of your choice. Some brews will be provided.

Please note the meeting will be held Friday the 23rd. Check with the Event calendar often for the latest dates and locations.

Once again we are postponing our monthly meeting one week. Please check the Events calendar. We will resume our monthly meeting February 27th. Sorry for any inconveniences this may have caused.

I want to point out a new plugin to the website that allows you to volunteer for a timeslot at a meeting. What I'm hoping to do with this is schedule out into future meetings. Currently each meeting has two one hour time slots but rarely will both be filled but I would like to at least have someone volunteer one slot; even if it is just a show-n-tell you want to do. For February I have already asked Donnie if he would give us a show-n-tell so I have already added him in.

The plugin is also designed to send you a reminder and you can check off a box to have it send you a copy of the event information. However at this time the server is only setup to deliver locally so hopefully that issue can be solved eventually.

To access the volunteer timeslots, you can just click the Upcoming event directly or through the Events calendar which would be extra clicks to get there. To volunteer you need to check one of the two slots and hit Submit assuming you already logged in. So yes you need to have an account and be logged in to volunteer. Also after submitting you can add a note to the Volunteer roster and I can use that to further describe the meeting as the notes are not viewable to those not logged in.

So don't be afraid to commit to a slot. You can remove yourself just as easily as you added yourself. Feel free to play with it!

Please note the day changed for our monthly meetings to the third Tuesday of every month.

Please note this month we are meeting on Tuesday rather than Thursday. Same place, same time; MCS Office Products, 1812 Grand Avenue at 7:30PM.

Time has come around again where we discus BillingsLUG business. Tomorrow night we will discuss meeting ideas, meeting date, meeting place, speakers, marketing, and possible InstallFest interests.

Anyone wishing to bring in any new toys they got for Christmas, please feel fee to bring them in for a little show-n-tell. Always fun stuff!

Starting this month our "Super Host" Jason Huether (MCS Office Products) has a scheduling conflict with our normal 3rd Thursday of the month meetings. He has offered to host it on Tuesday the 16th. Same time; 730.

Does anyone have other ideas/offers for hosting 3rd Thursdays? Does a different night work better for others? Best way to do this is to post your vote.

Also if anyone wants to do a talk on something, please chime in.

Happy Holidays fellow LUGgers! Next Thursday is our next scheduled meeting. I wanted to get this out early this month so you might be able to plan ahead. It's just before the big Christmas weekend, so hopefully you can make it to the meeting.

This months topic is in season! I knew about this since some time this summer and waited to tell you. Craig Hicks will be talking about a team project he has been working on since this summer. I'm sure you all have heard of the Wizards of Christmas... the light show Christmas display? Well this is that project. Unfortunately he can't just take his server out of service Thursday for our meeting and we can't all just go to his house and tour as there is no parking. We can on our own drive by to see it in action. Craig plans to talk about the project and how this is done. I am told their goal is to port it to Linux as well as other OSes.

I also want to mention that Craig's house is entered in the Gazette's "Share the spirit contest". He would appreciate your vote and check out some video by KULR8 here as well: Montana Christmas

Mark your calendar apps and see you next Thursday the 21st at 7:30.

I'm putting my foot down. I'm lynching the TiVo's from my wife for one evening. She fought the good fight, but I convinced her I need to upgrade the drives. So I am brining in my two TiVo's; a Series 1 and a Series 2. I plan to take the new unused "perpendicular" drive back out of the Series 1 and put it in the Series 2. But first I need to create a backup of the existing Series 2 in order to save my settings and recordings; or else my wife WILL have a bone to pick with me. In case you are wondering if this is on topic, yes it is a Linux distro and I will be working with some Live CD's.

I also want to hand out the rest of the door prizes as I got more and just can't seem to get rid of them.

While Shawn Wilson was ill last month, Bryan was the only presenter. This Thursday Shawn plans to give last months vi/vim talk.

I also want to mention here that there will be a couple door prizes again. You must be present to get in on those.

Last month I only mentioned the door prizes in the BillingsLUG Mailing List as sort of an added bonus to those keeping tabs on us there. I may on occasion add something in the email notice not on this main site, so please sign up if you have not already.

You may have heard of Distro wars and X wars but there is another arena you may have heard of... editor wars. When giving your Linux profile to an interviewer, he most likely will ask what editor you prefer; vi or emacs? I would be looking for more options personally.

Shawn Wilson will be talking about vi/vim this month. So even if you don't prefer to use vi, you probably should brush up on the basics of how to get around in it at the least. Much of editing cron daemons call on vi.

Also Bryan Irish is working on his VPN hacked access point. He would like to demo what he has done so far in setting this up on the DD-WRT.

This month I asked Donnie if he would like to show us a couple tricks you can do with your WiFi access point to detour unauthorized access. Sort of a "having fun with your neighbors" security feature!

I also have a little added incentive for attending this month. SuSe Linux has sent some spiff door prizes! If time permits we can take a peak at SuSe 10.1 included in this kit they sent.

It's summer, so everyone should be having fun doing those fun summer things like BBQs and camping.

Tonight we will be having our LUG meeting at MCS Office Products on 1812 Grand. Much thanks to Shawn and ATM Express for hosting last month's meeting. Thanks!

Tonight, I (Donnie) will give a demonstration of Synergy, a client/server application that lets you share your keyboard and mouse (and more) between multiple computers. It's a software KVM without the V.

Also, in keeping with a new summer tradition, all LUG'ers and friends and family are invited to meet for a pre-meeting meal. This month, we will meet at Grains of Montana located at 926 Grand Ave at 6:30.

A little change-up this month. We will be meeting at ATM Express (1911 King Ave West) for this Thursday's meeting. We're giving Jason a break as he spends some time with family coming to visit him. Also to add to this change-up, we are planning to meet for dinner at Fuddruckers (2011 Overland Ave) about 6:30 PM. If you are new to the group and would like to find us, please contact me directly and I can give you some info on who to look for.

Donnie Lunder will be giving us a demo on Jinzora this Thursday. For you music buffs; this is an awesome web app that handles your music collection and lets you categorize them nicely. "Jinzora is a web based PHP/MySQL application. It enables you to manage and stream your digital music and videos to any internet connected computer, your home stereo set or a hardware jukebox device."

This month I thought I would take a stab at showing something I know virtually nothing about at the time of this writing! Okay, well I have a clue, but not much experience with it yet. I would like to talk about and demonstrate at least one method of creating an encrypted file system (in Linux of course). I have run into at least a couple articles this past week on the topic of the ever increasing theft of portable computers and the detrimental value of just the data alone. Not having a laptop anymore, I will just substitute with a desktop PC. To summarize this, I will be talking about encrypting an FC4 partition using dm-crypt with LUKS encryption, without patching the kernel and the util-linux package.

It's been a while since we have taken a look at what's new as far as Live distros. I thought it might be fun to take a look at a few of the latest greatest. In testing a couple out I'm quite impressed with how they're coming along. So instead of gathering around one PC, we will grab a CD and play around in them and talk about what we like and dislike.

Keeping up with our theme of "homework"... I had hoped to have a place or discussion to come up with some task oriented questions. I'll mention one here and if others come over the list we can add them.

1. Creative ways to... Mount local or remote Windows filesystem/shares for file editing.

Lastly... Jason has some Ubuntu CD's to give away. Somehow he ended up with a surprise shipment of them. Please help him get rid of them ;-) And I too have some things to get rid of... I got a shipment of development CD's and shirts and toys from a database company. Lets say... it's enough to do a trade show booth ;-)

This month Shawn Wilson plans to give us a brief demo on BASH scripting. Other things we might fill our time wisely with is talking about some common tasks and ways of performing them. If you find the time before Thursday, think about some of the items below and share your preferred method.

Linux Homework: Come up with various ways to do the following:

1. Creative ways to... Run a task at a predetermined time (you pick the time: computer startup, shutdown, hourly, daily, weekly, ping request, new mail, or sometime else)

2. Creative ways to... Renaming a set of files using regular expressions
3. Creative ways to... Compress files and folders & extracting archives
4. Creative ways to... Copy files over the network
5. Creative ways to... Search and replace over multiple files

This month Shawn Wilson plans to give us a brief demo on BASH scripting. Other things we might fill our time wisely with is talking about some common tasks and ways of performing them. If you find the time before Thursday, think about some of the items below and share your preferred method.

Linux Homework: Come up with various ways to do the following:

1. Creative ways to... Run a task at a predetermined time (you pick the time: computer startup, shutdown, hourly, daily, weekly, ping request, new mail, or sometime else)

2. Creative ways to... Renaming a set of files using regular expressions
3. Creative ways to... Compress files and folders & extracting archives
4. Creative ways to... Copy files over the network
5. Creative ways to... Search and replace over multiple files

This Thursday is our next scheduled meeting. I think last month turned out to be a good meeting. However this month I'll continue the "getting back to the basics" but not as in depth. Perhaps we can revisit some of the already covered commands and some others not covered. I would like to leave plenty of time for computer talk and possibly to help Craig out with his web server. Donnie has mentioned also having some CD's to hand out; linux for human beings! Ok it's actually Ubuntu 5.10 and it contains an installer CD and a live CD.

Yes we are having a meeting this month. I (Warren) think it's about time to get back to the basics in Linux. We usually have this type of meeting at least once a year. What I want to talk about this month is some "basic" tools we use on a daily basis. To make this fun I wont be listing all the tools I plan to describe. So bring your list and we can cover multiple tools and compare the same ones and talk about the different ones.

This month Donnie Lunder will show how using iptables you are able to utilize two different Internet connections at the same time. It is still a rather simple example, so feel free to bring your own personal snippets of iptables commands and questions.

This month Shawn Wilson would like to share his experiences with LDAP, specifically when used for authentication of multiple hosts in a small enterprise environment. Shawn will give an overview of how authentication happens in Linux and where LDAP fits in the picture and then move on to a step-by-step installation and configuration.

Once you have LDAP working properly for authentication it only makes sense to start integrating other services there as well (address books, virtual email accounts, etc.). Anyways that's all stuff that could be discussed in future meetings.

I have been clanking around with SmoothWall now for a couple months. It is time now to reveal my findings. This month I will show how to install, configure and use a SmoothWall Firewall. I will also show you how to get around some quirks and customize your Smoothie!

This months topic is a revisit of a wrt54g hack. FYI, this is a wireless Linksys router. An offer I could not refuse! Any time someone wants to give a presentation it is almost always accepted. Ken Dyke of the Bozeman LUG will travel to Billings tomorrow evening to present this to us. With the experience of Donnie and Ken, I'm sure we'll have the best coverage.

As usual, not much thought was put into the planning of tonights meeting. I have been working with The GIMP a bit over the past few weeks. I thought I'd show some cool things I do with it. Scott uses it a fair bit as well; I'm sure he will like to show off some things he uses it for too.

Anyone needing to solve some issues with their Linux box, please feel free to bring it on in so we can talk about your problems. Doctor fees will apply ;) Just kidding.

At the last moment I decided to do a impromptu example upgrading some spam/virus services and testing its effectiveness. Other than that, we shall catch up on the latest news on the Linux front.

If you are reading this here at the YVLUG site... you will also know that I'm bringing my AMD64 FC2 Shuttle Shoebox.

Tonight's the night! Ever since our observed Independence Day holiday, I have been dragging behind. At least I was able to confirm with Shawn Wilson; he will be introducing us to Gentoo tonight. A change of Linux distribution face for a change! Thanks Shawn!

This Thursday is our monthly meeting already. I'm hoping that I will make it as it is the last day of inventory at my office.

Donnie Lunder has offered to show-n-tell a wireless router you can compile Linux on. Scott Dowdle will discuss the latest craze in DVR software; MythTV. Scott and I are avid TiVo users and are enthusiastic about digging into this project.

Scott Dowdle will give us the run down on Scribus desktop publishing. Also bring your ideas on the upcoming Installfest.