Bay Area Linux Users Group (BALUG)

About BALUG

BALUG is the Bay Area Linux Users Group.
We generally meet monthly in San Francisco (in/near SOMA/Chinatown area, near downtown). We also operate several mailing lists.

BALUG meetings

BALUG generally meets the third Tuesday of each month. We talk about Linux and related topics, and we typically share ample portions of food (e.g. Chinese).

We typically have a speaker/presentation for our meetings (generally starting around the tail end of dinner or immediately following dinner). In any case, with or without a speaker/presentation arranged and scheduled, our meetings include good people, and interesting conversations. And if we haven't announced/posted a speaker/presentation, don't let that fool you - sometimes we manage to score an excellent speaker/presentation (e.g. at the last minute) without our having managed to get it posted onto the web site and an announcement sent out in advance.

Please RSVP if you're planning to attend.
Meeting kicks off at 6:30 P.M. - we start with meet and greet and chat and such, then proceed with dining around 7:00 P.M. for dinner - please arrive before 7:00 P.M. if you want to join us for dinner.

RSVP

Please RSVP if you're planning to attend. To do so please e-mail us a note at
rsvp@balug.org
indicating meeting date. If you'll be bringing additional guest(s) please let us know total number of folks you're RSVPing for.
Also please let us know any special requirements or concerns you may have (e.g. if you have any particular dietary considerations, so that we might possibly be able to accommodate you, or if you won't be dining with us but do wish to otherwise join our meeting).

dinner costs? May vary - see venue for more information (we may dine and share "family" style and split up the costs, if folks are agreeable to that - for Henry's Hunan Restaurant, typical cost per person including tax and tip (but not including beverages beyond complementary tea) would be in the $13.00 to $20.00 range, and commonly around $15.00 to $17.00. Cash may be preferred to ease splitting up the check. One can also specifically order the dish(es) one needs/prefers (e.g. for dietary considerations) - and we also commonly order some dish(es) that may meet various dietary considerations (e.g. vegetarian, non-pork, ...)).

Next meetings:

• Please RSVP (including indicating date) for meetings you plan to attend - Thank You
• 2018-05-15

  We don't have a formal presentation lined up for this meeting, but we do have a suggested discussion topic: Security ...

  And more specifically - we have at least one relative expert and a more specific area of Security. Most notably: Security for developers from a Linux sysadmin perspective. Notably:

  • On security, most of developers' focus is often on their code itself, and with little attention to the broader scope/context
  • Security for sysadmins is a topic often rather well covered by sysadmins (and others) for sysadmins
  • Developers (and software architects, etc.) often can greatly improve security by learning from the perspective of sysadmins, e.g.:
  • Least Privilege Principle and Defense in Depth, notably including use of:
    • users, groups, permissions
    • Set Group ID (SGID) - including directories
    • Set User ID (SUID)
    • sudo(8) and secure use thereof (specifying, etc.)
    • Sticky Bit - notably on directories
    • chroot, BSD "jail", containers/Docker, etc.
    • ssh-keys: authorized_keys and restricting commands, source IPs, etc.
    • Kerberos
    • passwords, salts, hashes, pepper
    • various authentication means - less secure and more so
    • encryption; secure data storage
    • trust relationships
    • data validation
    • code review, security review, pair programming
    • scanning, testing, top vulnerabilities in/from developer realm
    • etc.

• 2018-06-19 Elizabeth K. Joseph: DC/OS (the datacenter operating system)

  Elizabeth K. Joseph joins us to give an introduction to DC/OS.

  Tooling around container orchestration has gained a lot of attention recently with various open source tools promising to deliver the framework to manage a highly available container infrastructure. This talk will explore DC/OS (the datacenter operating system) an open-source, distributed operating system based on the Apache Mesos distributed systems kernel. DC/OS manages multiple machines in the cloud or on-premises from a single interface; deploys containers, distributed services, and legacy applications into those machines; and provides networking, service discovery and resource management to keep the services running and communicating with each other.

  A demo using real streaming will also be given to show how DC/OS can easily use various popular open source big data tools to process data coming in and present it to the user.

  Bio: Elizabeth K. Joseph spent much of the past decade working as a Linux systems administrator, and today works as a Developer Advocate at Mesosphere. She is the author of Common OpenStack Deployments and The Official Ubuntu Book.

• 2018-07-17
• 2018-08-21
• 2018-09-18
• 2018-10-16
• 2018-11-20
• ... BALUG generally meets the third Tuesday of each month. Subscribe to our "announce" list to learn of upcoming meetings and speakers/presentations.

Meeting venue (at least until further notice or otherwise noted):
Henry's Hunan Restaurant
110 Natoma St. (between 2nd & New Montgomery, not to be confused with their other locations)
San Francisco, CA 94105-3704
1-415-546-4999
Dinner costs? We typically share and dine "family style" and split up the costs, for folks are agreeable to that (folks may also order item(s) specifically for themselves - e.g. if they have specific dietary restrictions).

BALUG Mailing Lists

BALUG Mailing Lists:

• BALUG-Announce ("announce") - low-volume announce-only (non-discussion) mailing list (e.g. important announcements about meeting programs and other BALUG newsy/noteworthy items; if you subscribe to any of our lists, you'll want to include this one)
• BALUG-Talk ("talk") general public BALUG, Linux and related discussion (see the URL for policies)
• BALUG-Admin ("admin") - administrivia (for those interested in the inner workings of the BALUG group)
• BALUG-Test ("test")- for testing purposes

CABAL

• Need details?
• Let us know if you're bringing a computer and monitor (what kinds?) or joining as a helper.
• Check out the CABAL InstallFest Schedule.

Volunteering and helping BALUG

We could also always use more volunteers to make BALUG even better! Some of the tasks which could use more volunteers include:

• help arrange speakers/presentations for our meetings (help refer to us, coordinate schedules, etc.)
• publicity (helping us get information out in as timely a manner as feasible, and in as many places as appropriate)
• website: webmaster and/or assistance with routine updates/additions
• writing up meeting "minutes" (brief summaries of meeting highlights - e.g. information on presentations, interesting/noteworthy discussions/topics, etc.; suitable for web use, or even just rough notes on the relevant items)
• mailing list maintenance

If you're at all interested in helping with any and/or all of the above, please contact BALUG contact.