Regular Expressions are a powerful concept which can elevate your Linux skills to the 'guru' category. The Linux Operating System is full of utilities where it's possible to use regular expressions. I will cover the definition of a regular expression, how to write regular expressions, and some common examples. By the end of the 1/2 hour session, attendess will be able write simple regexps and will have the fundamental understanding of regexps necessary to write advanced expressions.
The Linux operating system, spoken of so much recently, is composed of the Linux kernel, licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and a great deal of additional software, licensed under a variety of "free/open source" licenses. Because it is freely available and redistributable, there is no one vendor from which the operating system is purchased. Instead, any person, organization or company can choose to develop and maintain a Linux "distribution", a specific set of software packages, bundled with the Linux kernel.
Some people are unaware of just how numerous and diverse Linux distributions are. Others fear that the availability of multiple varieties of Linux will fracture the Linux market and keep vendors from choosing to support it. In this talk, we'll examine the breadth and diversity of Linux distributions, through well-known ones such as Red Hat, Slackware, Debian, etc., to over a hundred lesser known ones. We'll look at the reasons numerous distributions have come into being and how to choose between them. Then we'll finish up with a look at the advantages and disadvantages that the diversity of Linux distributions brings and what the Linux community is doing to control the disadvantages while enjoying the advantages.
About the speaker: Elizabeth O. Coolbaugh is the co-founder of LWN.net, also known as the "Linux Weekly News", an on-line magazine that has been reporting on the Linux Community since January, 1998. Ms. Coolbaugh has worked in computer systems administrations since 1981, with Unix since 1985 and with Linux since 1997.
An introduction to the GNU General Public License, and how it uses copyright law to keep free software free.
Meeting Date: 12 December 2000
Main Topic: Open. For Business. (7:15 pm)
Brian Cabral and Todd Gibson:
The GNU/Linux and Open Source revolution is proceeding at lightning speed. As businesses hear about and begin to learn about GNU/Linux and other Open Source tools, their first question is "Why Bother?" and their second question is "What's in it for us?".
This talk looked at how businesses make their IT decisions and why they should be choosing GNU/Linux and Open Source solutions.
Although the talk was not the typical CLUE "tech talk", it presented some valuable ideas about how to promote the use of GNU/Linux and Open Source solutions in your business and your customers' businesses.
KISS Session Topic: Small Linux Distros
Tom Poindexter answered these questions about Small Linux Distros:
- Why might you ever want to do such a silly thing?
- Floppy to the rescue!
- Building a useful router/firewall machine out of a 'junker' 386.
- How does one squeeze Linux onto one floppy, including applications?
- Notable floppy based distributions.
Meeting Date: 14 November 2000
Main Topic: Debian GNU/Linux
Bdale Garbee explained the Debian packaging system for system
admins and aspiring Debian developers. He spoke about
relevant Debian policies and philosophies, and touched on a variety of
moderate to advanced Debian system administration topics.
KISS Session Topic: What's Cool about Debian? (6:30 pm)
Bdale Garbee presented a brief overview of what Debian is and why it's cool.
He walked through a typical install process, and ended with a few common admin
tasks and where to go for more info.
Meeting Date: 10 October 2000
Main Topic: Advanced Apache
Roy Johnston discussed advanced Apache web server topics.
KISS Session Topic: RPM
Dave Hahn discussed how to set up PPP connections. PPP is the software protocol
used to connect computers to the internet using a modem.
Meeting Date: 11 September 2000
Main Topic: CVS
Ken Weinert spoke on CVS:
CVS (Concurrent Versions System) is an open source development tool that is a layer built
on top of RCS (Revision Control System.)
I gave brief background on CVS, where to obtain it, installing it on your system,
and reasons why you should use it (even if you are an individual developer.)
I discussed some of the common commands like logging in, importing existing software, creating
new projects, and keeping the repository in sync. Mention will be made of some common situations
with multiple developers and the best way to work together.
I briefly covered platforms other than Linux, and some front ends to CVS to make it easier on the
novice user.
KISS Session Topic: RPM
Rick Burtong will discuss file permissions -- Using the chown & chmod commands
--Linux file ownership and modes. Reading, writing, and execution, groups and users.
Meeting Date: 8 August 2000
Main Topic: Introduction to Apache Web Server
Roy Johnston talked about Apache.
KISS Session Topic: RPM
Jim Intriglia discussed the Red Hat Package Manager
Meeting Date: 11 July 2000
Main Topic: Tool Command Language (tcl)
Tom Poindexter talked about Tcl:
- significant Tcl applications
- Tcl history, present state and futures
- language features
- web applications with Tcl
- how folks might want to use Tcl
- Tcl resources: books, web, software
KISS Session Topic: 3-D Gaming - HongKongPhooey
Ed Meyer answered these questions about Linux Gaming:
- What does it take for PC Gaming?
- What hardware should you upgrade?
- What games can you play in Linux?
- Where can you get Linux games?
- Where can you get support?
- Where can you play with other people?
Meeting Date: 9 May 2000
Main Topic: Setting Up and Using the SGI XFS Filesystem on Linux (7:15 pm)
Eric Eastman said:
This talk will cover how to download, build, and use the Linux version
of SGI's XFS filesystem and will go over the advantages of XFS as
compared to the Linux EXT2 filesystem. The XFS filesystem is a
World-Class high performance 64-bit filesystem that was originally
developed for SGI's IRIX version of UNIX that has now been released as
Open Source software under the GPL, and is currently in early beta for
Linux. With the XFS, "fsck" checks are a thing of the past, as XFS uses
journaling technology to enable sub-second filesystem recovery after a
system crash. XFS is designed for heavy production use and scales to
support filesystems and file sizes of millions of terabytes.
Eric Eastman has been a System Engineer with SGI since 1996,
specializing in large disk and tape storage systems. Eric has a BS in
Mathematics from Metropolitan State College of Denver and first started
using LINUX 1995.
KISS Session Topic: VMWare
Matt Durrell discussed the VMWare emulator. It allows you to run many operating systems within Linux.
Meeting Date: 11 April 2000
Main Topic: XML (Extensible Markup Language)
Uche Ogbuji said:
If you duck past all the hype about XML, you will find that it truly
brings about the potential to revolutionize information exchange. This is
not because of any intrinsic merit in angle brackets and the like, but for
a more fundamental reason that Linux users are especially likely to
appreciate: openness.
XML is all about opening up the rules and formats involved in processing
data. This is of particular interest to Linux users because proprietary
data-formats have long closed off many important applications to
Linux. XML and its related technologies are a powerful tool in making
Linux as serious a data-processing environment as any other.
In my talk I shall give a very brief overview of XML. Then I shall talk
in rather more detail about some of the key technolgies surrounding XML,
such as XSLT, RDF and XLink. Finally I shall cover a selection of Linux
and OSS projects making use of XML, including Mozilla, GNOME and Cocoon.
Uche Ogbuji is co-founder
of Fourthought, Inc. a software-development consultancy specializing in
middleware applications using open technologies, including Linux, XML, Python
and CORBA. Uche Ogbuji has given many presentations on Linux, Python, XML and
database programming, and has written many articles on these topics, especially in
LinuxWorld. He is currently working on a book, The Linux Database
Bible.
KISS Session Topic: Linux Initialization
Lynn Danielson discussed Linux initialization.
Meeting Date: 14 March 2000
Main Topic: An Evening with Perl
Tony Foiani covered the very basics of PERL, and provided home and work examples
It was in some ways designed to "replace" tools like awk, sed, and shell scripting, so we
covered the advantages (and disadvantages) in that light. Also, we discussed
some of the most common and powerful extensions. Finally,
we talked a bit about the culture that has grown up around around Perl.
KISS Session Topic: What can I do with my Linux command line utilites?
Jeffery Cann covered use of Linux filesystem, filesystem utilities and pipes combined to produce
the application NoSQL. The presentation slides
are available at http://members.home.net/jccann/NoSQL.
Meeting Date: 8 February 2000
Main Topic: Security and Firewalling
The main presentation was presented by Kevin Fenzi of Linux Security
HOWTO fame and KRUD. He discussed Firewalling with Linux:
Firewalling with linux: An overview of what firewalls are and do, and
then a discussion of ipfwadm (2.0.x kernels), ipchains (2.2.x) and the
upcoming iptables (2.4.x). We also discussed firewall tools and
scripts that make setting up a linux firewall a snap!
KISS Session Topic:
Philip Rotherman discussed Linux system administration issues.
Meeting Date: 11 January 2000
Main Topic: TCP/IP - Part 3: Bezerkly Socket Programming
Eric Gustafson presented TCP/IP, Part 3 of 3. He approached
TCP/IP from the application programmer's view. This session
covered the basics of using the standard Berkeley Socket Interface,
"sockets". Initial coverage was made using the C library API
for TCP based connections.
Meeting Date: 14 December 1999
Main Topic: Linux Software Development
Jeff Cann described the unique opportunities of using Linux as a platform
for software development. Hi covered software development methods and
tools available for the Linux developer.
Jeff is the CLUE web master and a Senior Developer for Standard and Poor's
in Englewood, Colorado. He has been a profesional software developer for 5 years,
working on UNIX and Linux.
Refer to Jeff's web site for presentation slides.
KISS Session Topic:
Jim Intriglia will present an Introduction to Java on Linux provides
an overview of the popular object-oriented programming language and
system platform, as well as strategies for getting started developing
Java software applications.
Refer to Jim's web site
for additional presentation information.
Meeting Date: 9 November 1999
Main Topic: Installing Oracle 8.0.5 on Linux
Rick Helmich described how to install Oracle 8.0.5 on Linux
systems. He presented a check list of requirements for hardware
and software as well as a few shell and sql scripts that will make living
with an Oracle DB easier. Rick is a CLUE member and Oracle DBA.
KISS Session Topic:
Rick Burton talked about mount/umount, fstab, mkfs, mkbootdisk,
repairing lilo, and the difference between the msdos floppy filenames and the
ISO9660 CD filenames.
Meeting Date: 12 October 1999
Main Topic: Linux Tape Drives
Kelly Beavers of Ecrix presented the new VXA tape drive. The VXA tape drive uses new tape reading and writing technology to improved speed, quality and reliability. The VXA tape drives have been used successfully in Linux systems.
KISS Session Topic: Jeffery Cann discussed the MySQL database.
Meeting Date: 14 September 1999
Main Topic: Linux Games
The motto on the Loki Entertainment web site is "Loki - the games that Linux people play". Scott Draeker of Loki Entertainment Software discussed Loki's recent entry in the Linux game market.
If you attended the August CLUE meeting, you saw the game "CIV: Call to Power" demonstrated on a Linux machine. Loki has announced that "Myth II The Slaughter", "Railroad Tycoon II" and "Eric's Ultimate Solitaire" are being ported to Linux.
KISS Session Topic: Joe Brockmeier discussed the Top Ten Linux commands.
Meeting Date: 10 August 1999
Main Topic: TCP/IP
Networking, Part 2 -- UNIX Configuration
Part two will built upon the basics of TCP and
IP discussed in Part one. The presentation started with a terse
presentation of the materials not covered in part one: TCP, protocol layering,
and TCP/UDP port numbers.
The main emphasis of the presntation focused on
how the unix "utilities", non-kernel parts of the system, utilize the TCP/IP
stack to provide services such as ftp, http, mail, remote file services,
etc. Substantial attention was given to 'inetd', the "Inet Super
Server", with subsiquent time applied to other common services not
covered under the inet umbrella. Basic configurations of 'inetd',
as well as a loose discussion of other, non-'inetd' application configurations
were also covered.
KISS Session Topic: Lynn
Danielson discussed Windows and Linux networking using SAMBA
Configuration.
Meeting Date: 13 July 1999
Main Topic: TCP/IP Protocol Fundamentals and Packet Switching.
Eric Gustafson discussed the basics needed to understand the TCP/IP protocol suite. The discussion started with the basics of packet switched networks, including a short description of Ethernet and other packet switched technologies. Building on packet switching the internet protocol (IP) was introduced and it's relation to packet switching and Local Area Networks (LANs). The discussion of IP included addressing, internetwork architecture, and routing with in that architecture.
KISS Session Topic: Dave Hahn discussed Linux PPP Configuration
Meeting Date: 8 June 1999
Main Topic: Using Linux in a corporate environment.
John Carpenter of SKLD Information Services discussed the use of Linux (Red Hat distribution) in SKLD's computing environment.
John is the Information Systems manager for SKLD. He has worked with the UNIX operating system since 1983, and has over five years experience managing the largest real estate title database in Colorado. John also manages an information technology group that processed and stored over 3,700,000 document images during 1998. He is currently managing the conversion of ~22,000,000 document pages to digital images. Many of John's database and imaging projects have utilized Red Hat Linux based on its cost, reliability, and support via net news.