This month we are going to do something a little different. Instead of having a formal presentation, we are going to experiment with a "Hackfest." What this means is that we will have free-form lightning talks for up to the first half of the meeting, and then reserve the last half of the meeting so everyone can hack on things or just sit around and chat about Linux. The lightning talks are open to anyone so if you have something interesting you have been working on and could present on it for 5-10 minutes, we will have a sign-up sheet for you at the beginning of the meeting.

The U.C.S.C Long Marine lab includes the 'costalab', where I work
taking care of 4 servers, mostly Ubuntu, and a few windows desktops.

The costalab studies marine mammals and birds all over the world.
Google on 'costalab' to find out more about what we do.

About half of the talk will be specific to the costalab work - what
information the researchers collect, how it is stored and analyzed,
the benefits to the world from this research, etc. This should be of
interest to a much wider audience than linux gurus.

The rest of the talk will be about our Ubuntu servers, how they are

SSH is one of the most widely used network protocols. Much more than a replacement for telnet, SSH has many tricks up its encrypted sleeve and harnessing them is a rite of passage for any keyboard cowboy. In this talk, Aaron will discuss the core protocol itself, the history of development and how you can use OpenSSH to better secure your packets through the tubes.