RESCHEDULED: Thursday, December 2, 2010

For the last ten years, TriLUG has been operating as a NC non-profit corporation. In the early days, that structure was necessary because the LUG accepted donated hardware and re-donated it to schools and local LUG's. Since then, Linux has become more mainstream, accepted at corporations, and sometimes even used at schools. And in that time, TriLUG's mission has changed significantly, from being an incubator to more of an educational/technical/social group.

We're still devoted to education and outreach, promoting the use of free and open source software. However, as a business, the main income and expenses that we maintain are related to pizza and meetings.

We are entirely a volunteer-run organization. The Steering Committee members dedicate a lot of time to putting together quality programs for the members to learn from and enjoy. But there is also an overhead associated with running the LUG, and that involves paperwork, taxes and corporate filings.

Complicating matters is the fact that we are run by a collection of volunteers that changes every year in May. As the LUG's leadership undergoes its annual transition, we rely on effective hand-off's. Over time, the Steering Committee has been focused on tactical problems: where to find speakers, the price of pizza, finding donors and sponsors. In the meantime, some of the hand-off's and administrative tasks have taken a back seat. In fact, we have sometimes been delinquent in some of our administrative duties. This is not a recent problem... it has persisted for several years.

The meeting on 12/2 is for interested LUG members to discuss the current state of the LUG as an organization, and to brainstorm on possible changes that might make reduce our administrative overhead. We will not be planning meeting content or sysadmin duties or other tactical things -- this meeting is strategic. It's the boring stuff -- paying taxes, filing paperwork.

The "fun" stuff -- meetings, events, technical discussions, and so on -- will continue as normal.

DATE - Thursday, December 2, 2010 TIME - 7:00pm LOCATION - RedHat HQ ROOM - Cafeteria / Conference Room (where we normally meet) DIRECTIONS - http://www.redhat.com/about/contact/ww/americas/raleigh.html

UPDATE: A full audio recording (2hrs, 50mins) of the meeting can be found at: http://www.trilug.org/media/ trilug-organizational-mtg-2010-12-01.wav

NOTE - THE DECEMBER MEETING WILL NOT BE AT RED HAT. IT WILL BE AT SPLAT SPACE IN DURHAM. STARTS AT 7PM.

MAP - http://splatspace.org/location/

Every year, we try to do something a little different for our December "holiday" meeting. This year is no exception.

We will be meeting at Splat Space, the newly-formed "hackerspace" in Durham. This meeting will be an interactive hands-on workshop, with a handful of demo stations that each showcase one Linux-based "appliance". For example, we'll show:

• BackupPC - Take an old PC and put a large hard disk on it, and let it handle your backups.
• MythTV - Watch and record TV using a Linux PC.
• Asterisk - Have your own PBX, with voice mail and call routing.

If you are interested in a particular topic, or if you would like to volunteer to run one of the demo stations, sign up on the wiki --> http://trilug.org/wiki/Meeting:2010_December_9

Have you ever wanted to use your computer to record or play music?

In the old days, it took a studio full of equipment to produce and record music. But now, the required tools are much more affordable, and can easily fit into a home studio. There is a wide selection of very robust audio applications that run on standard PC hardware, and many of them are FREE ("free" as in "beer" -- but also as in "freedom").

Adam Drew has been playing and recording music on and with computers for 15 years. He was introduced to free and open source software when he went to work at Red Hat, where he does filesystem and cluster support.

Adam will show how anyone can use Linux-based software to produce studio-quality music. We'll look at what tools are available, how they work together, and we'll see and hear them in action. We'll also learn a bit about what community resources are available for learning more about the tools and technology so that you can get plugged in and start making music at home and get your questions answered when they come up.

Come join us for a lively toe-tapping demonstration!

--

Adam invites you to take a look at (and edit) his audio knowledgebase at http://LinkedListCorruption.com/audio-kbase . And if you need to reach him personally, send him an email at adam@LinkedListCorruption.com .

We would also like to thank our meeting sponsor, Uzoma Nwosu from the Signal Foundation (www.signalfest.com).

UPDATE: An audio recording of this presentation can be accessed at: http://www.trilug.org/media/trilug-OSS-for-musicians-mtg-2010-11-11.wav

Also, a text copy of Jym Williams Zavada's meeting notes can be had at: http://www.trilug.org/~jrwz/2010-11-11-mtg-notes.txt

Time & Place: October 14, 2010, 7pm, at Red Hat HQ

Title: Introduction to ModSecurity, the Open Source Web Application Firewall

About this talk:

So your web server listens on port 80 and your firewall blocks most everything else. Secure, right? How about that port 80? Do you trust your application code? Is your server patched? Are your developers really more clever than the folks who want to break in? Is security even on the mind of your developers?

Our traditional firewalls (packet filters) may have narrowed the field to HTTP, but crackers and worms have responded by refocusing their efforts directly at HTTP. Worse yet, most packet filters think all HTTP requests look legitimate. What's your next line of defense?

This presentation introduces ModSecurity, a web application firewall (WAF). ModSecurity is open source, mature, stable, flexible, and updated frequently. It can run embedded in Apache or as a reverse proxy in front of any traditional web server. It is highly discriminating and it definitely understands HTTP at a deeper level than your packet filter.

Come learn how to get started with ModSecurity. You'll be glad that you did.

About the presenter:

Cristóbal Palmer, a long-time member of the TriLUG Steering Committee, just finished his MSIS at UNC Chapel Hill, where he is a Systems Administrator with ibiblio.org. He also works with Caktus Consulting Group, a local django development shop.

High Altitude Balloon Flights to Near Space Presented by Jonathan R. Trappe & Tanner Lovelace

Recently, several LUG members competed in a challenge to gather pictures of the curved horizon of the Earth from near-space... not with rockets and elaborate gear, but on the cheap, using a balloon and consumer-grade equipment.

Jonathan Trappe and long-time LUG member Tanner Lovelace will talk about the challenge rules, and how the team assembled and weighed ideas quickly, launching their balloon after just three weeks of planning. Then we'll hear how things did not quite go as planned, but how these quick-thinking geeks recovered to achieve their goal.

After the launch and recovery of their high-altitude balloon, this team was featured on WRAL, NPR news, and on the front page of the News & Observer! But NOW, they're hitting the big time -- speaking at a TriLUG meeting!

The IPv4 address space is running out, and the future has arrived. IPv6 is the new standard for the Internet, and the time to adopt it is now.

Long time TriLUG member Kevin Otte is a Linux Systems Administrator and a Network Engineer, and he has more IP addresses in his home than some countries have.

Come hear Kevin give us not only the "what it is" and "the end is nigh" parts of the IPv6 puzzle, but also the "how can I tinker with it" and "why would I want to" parts, as well.

Meeting logistics on the wiki.

We all love free software. We think it should be used everywhere, right? And that means Linux... Linux everywhere, right?

Not always. Actually, there are times when Linux is not such a great fit for the task. There are other solutions...

Wesley Shields will be telling us about his favorite open source project, and how it can be a good fit for companies that need a Unix solution. He'll tell us what's similar to Linux, what's different, and why companies might care.

Wes is a Senior Information Security Engineer for a government contractor. He spends his days in the trenches fighting the APT and his nights poking at FreeBSD with a stick. His interests include C code, network traffic and general mischief and shenanigans.

6/10 7pm, Red Hat HQ

This month, YOU are the speaker!

Got something interesting that you'd like to share? can't wait for BarCamp? We're hosting our own mini "unconference" style meeting, where members of the audience will be given 5-10 minutes to present an idea or open source tool.

To get an idea of what folks have in mind, see the wiki page here -> Meeting:2010_June_10

Vote for your favorite presentation... the winner gets a prize (TBA).