[ Triangle Linux Users Group ]

TriLUG Install and Hack Day, will be kind of like an install fest, where members can meet to share ideas and skills. The theme for this hack day will be on running Linux (OpenWRT) on Wireless Routers. This topic keeps re-appearing on the TriLUG mailing list every few months, so why not get together and help each other do something fun.

Date:
The hack day will be on Saturday 21st January 2012. All day. 10am - 5pm

Location:
Techshop RDU located at 5905 Triangle Drive Raleigh, NC 27617.

The activities for the day include:

• installing OpenWRT firmware (linux) on peoples routers
• learn some embedded linux skills
• build and customizing OpenWRT packages
• take apart routers to add serial ports and other electronics
• fix bricked and broken routers if we can

What to Bring

1. laptop/desktop for building and deploying code
2. wireless router or other funky equipment to run OpenWRT
3. CAT5 network cable
4. serial cables, usb-serial adapters, jtag pods

Topic: Open Source Showcase and Holiday Social
Presenter: You!
When: Thursday, December 8, 7pm
Where: SplatSpace, 331 W. Main St., Durham, NC
Map: http://splatspace.org/location/
Permalink: http://trilug.org/2011-12-08/showcase

Back by popular demand, our holiday meeting will be at SplatSpace (our local hackerspace) in Durham, NC.

We will provide space to anyone who wants to showcase open source projects they find interesting. It can be software, hardware, or data -- just as long as it's free (as in speech). Think of it as a science fair or show-and-tell for open source enthusiasts.

We will also open up the kitchen area for anyone who wants to bring snacks, desserts, and drinks to share with everyone else. These items do not have to be open source, but you definitely get extra geek cred if there is a creative-commons licensed recipe sitting next to the food you bring. It also makes it easier for folks like me, who try and avoid gluten, to know what's safe to eat.

The doors open at 7pm and you can wander from table to table, to see the neat things people are showcasing. If you are presenting something, be sure to let us know which things you want to see. We will try to coordinate breaks for people so that even the presenters get a chance to see the things that interest them.

If you'd like to showcase something or bring some food to share, please add an entry to the wiki page: http://trilug.org/wiki/Meeting:2011_December_8

PLEASE NOTE: To make things a little harder for spammers, you have to enter a username and password to access the wiki. The username is "TRI" and the password is "LUG".

You may also add things to the wiki page that you simply wish someone would demonstrate. That said, please consider running that table yourself. It's completely OK to show up with 20 copies of a live CD that you've been meaning to try out and to invite others to sit down and tinker on it with you. The important parts of this meeting are sharing your interests with others and socializing. Please let us know ASAP that you intend to present something, so that we can reserve a table and chair for you.

Alan Porter, one of our fantastic steering committee members, has volunteered to demo an Arduino system, "that measures and records environmental stats for our hermit crab's cage. It's like a Star Trek tricorder for crustaceans. The hardware and development tools are all open source - so share and enjoy!"

I've heard rumors that someone is bringing egg nog, but I'm not sure how much. What are you bringing? Go add it to the wiki now :)

Looking forward to seeing all of you at SplatSpace on December 8!

Kind regards,
Justis Peters

Topic: Nagios and Cacti
Presenter: Dylan Lusk
When: Thursday, November 10, 7pm
Where: Red Hat HQ, NCSU Centennial Campus
Map: http://www.redhat.com/about/contact/ww/americas/raleigh.html

No network is complete without an effective monitoring solution, and who doesn't love a good graph or two?

Come to TriLUG's November meeting to learn the ins and outs of network and service monitoring. Fellow TriLUG member Dylan Lusk will introduce Nagios and Cacti, two premier projects in the world of FOSS monitoring tools.

Dylan will go into the details of setting up a host system to monitor the health of your network. He will then show how to setup and integrate devices and services into the monitoring.

About Nagios and Cacti:

Nagios is a powerful monitoring system that enables organizations to identify and resolve IT infrastructure problems before they affect critical business processes.

Cacti is a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of RRDTool's data storage and graphing functionality.

About Dylan:

Dylan Lusk is currently a network engineer and system administrator for a regional telecommunications provider. Over the years he has honed his expertise in a variety of networking-related positions, including stints at a Charlotte datacenter/ISP and a major credit card company. His extensive experience with open source network monitoring stretches back to the days when Nagios was called NetSaint (circa 2000). Over those years, he has successfully monitored everything from blade servers in the lab to climate sensors in enterprise-grade network deployments.

Topic: FabLab
Presenter: Drew Nelson
When: Thursday, October 13th, 7pm
Where: Red Hat HQ, NCSU Centennial Campus
Map: http://www.redhat.com/about/contact/ww/americas/raleigh.html
Permalink: http://trilug.org/2011-10-13/fablab

Drew will take us through the challenges and rewards of using Open Source software at FabLab.

Fab labs provide widespread access to modern means for invention. They began as an outreach project from MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA). Projects being developed and produced in fab labs include solar and wind-powered turbines, thin-client computers and wireless data networks, analytical instrumentation for agriculture and healthcare, custom housing, and rapid-prototyping of rapid-prototyping machines.