North Bay Linux Users Group

From the LTIB website (www.bitshrine.org):
The LTIB (Linux Target Image Builder) project is a simple tool that can
be used to develop and deploy BSPs (Board Support Packages) for various
target platforms. Using this tool a user will be able to develop a
GNU/Linux image for their target platform.

This talk with demonstrate the configuration and use of LTIB for
assembling the components of an embedded Linux system. Topics will
include uboot, Linux kernel, and root file system options.

Roger House will be speaking at this month's talk and will answer these questions:
What are mathematical graphs? What are they good for? What is generic programming?
What is it good for? What is Boost? What is the Boost Graph Library (BGL)?
What are they good for?

So how exactly do people use Linux in the workplace these days? In this talk an NBLUG panel of systems administrators will talk about how they use Linux at their work.

Google's Native Client project seeks to provide high-performance, cross-platform, browser-based applications yet allow them to be "untrusted". Performance is in the form of x86 binary code while Security comes from a dual layer sandbox. In this talk I'll overview the goals of the project, how it works, why you might care plus give a demo of a few Native Client applications.

Last month we discussed some cool command line tools. This month Kyle will go to the opposite end of the spectrum and talk about desktop eye candy. Kyle will specifically discuss Compiz Fusion and Gnome Do and go into some of the more advanced configuration options available for Compiz.

A panel of NBLUG members will discuss cool shell tools. We will delve into tools like screen, mutt, vim, and others.

While you might not be able to tell at a cursory glance, a lot has changed behind the scenes on a modern Ubuntu system from what you might be used to if you have used Linux for years. For example, did you know Ubuntu is phasing out System V init? That you can't loopback-mount the initrd? In this talk I would discuss the current changes Ubuntu is making to what we might consider the traditional Linux system. There's a little something for everyone on the talk: For Linux newbies who are curious about what's under the hood I will cover the traditional and modern boot process including how init works and follow up with a guide to where important files are in Ubuntu. For the experienced Linux user I'll show you how (and why) things have changed and where you can look now when you want to, for instance, change the default runlevel on an Ubuntu system.

In the beginning there were only the mainframes. Administration only
required configuration of one system. Users accessed the mainframe from
dumb terminals. Everyone had access to the same resources and had the same
software, because everyone was on the same system. Then came the personal
computer. Users all got their own systems, and system administration
became exponentially more difficult. LTSP gives us a way to get the
terminal server, singular administration and control we admins want and
still give users the warm fuzzy interface, speed and freedom they want.
One system, one set of updates, one place to make changes. We're going to
look in to some of the history of LTSP, overview the technology involved,
and some of the many potential applications. Finally we'll look at the
best way to implement LTSP, and how its working in production in our
corporate environment.

Still using ssh in a for loop to manage server clusters? Rewriting the entire hard drive of hundreds of workstations just to tweak one setting? Managing your systems by hand? Having trouble keeping up with all the changes to all the systems? Maybe it's time to try something new.

Puppet is a system for automating system administration tasks. Puppet is also a declarative language for expressing system configuration, a client and server for distributing it, and a library for realizing the configuration.

Huh? In other words, you edit files in a nice readable language and magically the right things change in the right order on all the right systems. It's like your systems configure themselves.

CTL is a new open source project for enterprise management, written
in Java, but with bindings to Python, Perl, Ruby, shell, Javascript,
and more. CTL is not an acronym; think of what 'apachectl' does for
the Apache webserver, and imagine what such a tool might do for your
entire enterprise and you've got CTL.

About the Speaker:

Alex Honor is open source project lead and principle architect at
ControlTier. Formerly, he was head of E*trade system engineering, and
carried them from dot boom to dot bomb and has been specializing in
cradle to grave distributed enterprise software management ever since.