BALUG-Admin

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545 discussions

[DRAFT] BALUG 2007-11-20: James Burgett, "ACCRC+Linux: Keeping computers out of Landfills"; etc.
by Michael Paoli 09 Nov '07

09 Nov '07

[ Note this is DRAFT for announcement. Flyer isn't present at the URL shown ... yet. If I don't get an updated flyer, I may make some edits on the older version and then use that. I did include mention of the door prizes - but kept it very brief. Anyway, I hope to have the "final" version out this evening / tonight, or 2007-11-07 A.M. I also tried to better approximate RFC 1153 message digest format, as that may make reading in many mail clients a bit more convenient and user-friendly. ] Contents: Bay Area Linux Users Group (BALUG)[1] 2007-11-20: James Burgett, Alameda County Computer Resource Center (ACCRC)[2]: "Free Software, The Environment, Social Welfare, and the Digital Divide" RSVP door prizes Other upcoming BALUG meetings references (about BALUG, time, location, etc.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For our 2007-11-20 BALUG meeting we are pleased to present: James Burgett, Alameda County Computer Resource Center (ACCRC)[2]: "Free Software, The Environment, Social Welfare, and the Digital Divide" flyer[3] (PDF) to help promote the event James will recount the path ACCRC has taken as it's grown in the last five years to reclaim and reuse computers, peripherals, and other electronic devices people donate. In general, ACCRC gives computers to individuals and worthy organizations without charge or strings. ACCRC uses Linux on the systems it gives away and has developed quite a bit of expertise in installing various Linux distros on various (old) hardware. ------------------------------ Planning to come to BALUG meeting? Please e-mail us a note at: rsvp(a)balug.org indicating meeting date and if more than just yourself the number of folks you're RSVPing for, etc. See also: http://www.balug.org/#RSVP[4] Thank you for RSVPing if you're planning to attend. ------------------------------ Door prizes[6]! Yes, we have at least the following for door prizes: _Pro Oracle Database 10g RAC on LINUX_ ISBN: 1-59059-524-6 _Practices of an Agile Developer_ ISBN: 0-9745140-8-X ------------------------------ Other upcoming BALUG meetings We also have quite a lineup of speakers/presentations for BALUG meetings. Not only do we have James Burgett, ACCRC[2] as noted above, but we also have the following lined up for the months ahead - be sure to check out our website http://www.balug.org/[1] for more details and the latest updates. If you're not already subscribed to the BALUG "announce" list[5], be sure to subscribe to be notified of these and future announcements. 2007-12 (no meeting in December this year) 2008-01-15 Eric S. Raymond 2008-02-19 Bruce Perens 2008-03-18 (TBD) 2008-04-15 Eric Allman ------------------------------ references: 1. http://www.balug.org/ 2. http://www.accrc.org/ 3. http://www.balug.org/flyers/2007-11-12.pdf 4. http://www.balug.org/#RSVP 5. http://www.new.balug.org/#Lists door prizes (past and coming up): 6. http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin-balug.org/2007-August/000401.h… meeting time, location, and lots of other great BALUG information: Bay Area Linux Users Group (BALUG) http://www.balug.org/

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BayAreaLinuxUsersGroup Domains ---> BALUG.org
by Andrew Fife 04 Nov '07

04 Nov '07

I believe that all 6 of the domains that were purchased now point to new.balug.org Bayarealinuxusersgroup.com/.net/.org Bayarealinuxusergroup.com/.net/.org -Andrew ---------------------------------------- Andrew Fife Untangle - Open Source Security Gateway download.untangle.com 650.425.3327 (O) 415.806.6028 (C) afife(a)untangle.com

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List "policy"/description tweaks
by Michael Paoli 03 Nov '07

03 Nov '07

List "policy"/description tweaks. These are changes I have in mind for the lists. This isn't for the (shorter) text that appears on our main http://[www.]balug.org/ web pages, but rather on the more detailed Mailman list pages, e.g.: http://lists.balug.org/listinfo.cgi/balug-talk-balug.org What I show below is draft of text changes (I'd also do similar on Balug-Admin regarding automagic subscrition to Balug-Announce). The text below doesn't include the relevant URLs (those would be linked appropriately from the text), and there may also be some slight tweaking of e-mail address configurations (most notably admins and moderators for the lists, and any related @balug.org aliases - I'll coordinate with Rick Moen to be sure anything we do there is and works reasonably). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Balug-Announce This is a low-volume* announce-only (non-discussion) mailing list to cover items of key interest to Bay Area Linux Users Group (BALUG) and its members (e.g. meeting announcements/programs, important announcements, BALUG "news" items of note, and items highly likely to be of interest to many/most BALUG folks and related Linux community). If you subscribe to any of BALUG's lists, you should subscribe at least to Balug-Announce. For more general BALUG and related discussion, see the Balug-Talk list. If you think you have something highly worthy of being sent to the Balug-Announce list, send it to the Balug-Announce list moderators, and we'll consider sending it along, including it, or providing a short reference to it. Note, however, in most cases it is typically more appropriate to post an item to Balug-Talk, and if we deem it appropriate to do so, we may then cross-reference the item posted on Balug-Talk and/or include some of its relevant content on item(s) we send to Balug-Announce. Balug-Announce does not have the "digest" option enabled, as its mailings should be important, and might sometimes be time critical. Note however that the mailings may, however, be in a digest-like form (e.g. a single mailing may include several items of note, and may also have a very brief summary or subject of each noted near the top of the e-mail's body). Balug-Announce is publicly archived. *approximately 1 to 3 e-mails per month - we aim to keep the average at or below 3 per month ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Balug-Talk This is a public discussion mailing list for Bay Area Linux Users Group (BALUG). Items should generally be reasonably appropriate/relevant to the group (e.g. Linux and Open Source, in, around, or including the greater San Francisco Bay Area, etc.). Please try to use/update Subject: on mailings to reasonably summarize what the posting is about. If you feel compelled to post on something rather to quite off-topic, kindly try to indicate so in the Subject: (e.g. start it with "[O.T.]" or something like that). And of course, don't spam the list. We intend to interpret the above, notwithstanding the below, rather liberally. Job postings - job postings/listings are disallowed*, with one exception**. Note however that there isn't a prohibition against noting one's availability for job/contract work, posting a "position wanted" item, or discussion about employment and employers, job markets, recruiting/hiring/firing, whether or not not the list should allow job posting and under what circumstances, how to and not to do a job posting and where, etc. The prohibition is to be interpreted rather narrowly - just don't post a job listing or collection of job listings, or something with the rather exclusive intent to refer to your, your company, or your agency's job listing(s) or job site. If you're looking for places where job postings are permitted/welcomed, you may want to check some other resources (e.g. SVLUG Jobs or BayLISA Jobs, or consult the policy regarding such for SF-LUG). Balug-Talk is publicly archived NOTE: Subscribers to Balug-Talk should also be subscribed to Balug-Announce. If you're subscribed to Balug-Talk, but not subscribed to Balug-Announce, you may find yourself automagicly also added as subscribed to Balug-Announce. If for some reason you don't want that to happen (e.g. you use distinct e-mail addresses for each to route/filter/sort more to your preferences), send an e-mail note to Balug-Announce list admin indicating what e-mail address you don't want automagicly added to Balug-Announce, and why, and we'll add it to our exceptions list. * Job posting policy (general prohibition) may be subject to change/adjustment over time, mostly based upon majority (or at least plurality) of wishes of users subscribed to Balug-Talk (e.g. policy might be adjusted slightly or significantly, or BALUG might decide to create a separate "jobs" list). ** If you have been scheduled and confirmed to give a talk/presentation at BALUG, or have rather to quite recently given such a talk, you are permitted to make a job posting/announcement to BALUG-Talk. It may be advisable to include short mention towards the top of the e-mail that reminds folks how this specificly fits within list policy (e.g. "Thanks for having me for the ... BALUG talk. Per the list policy, here are the currently open positions I'd like to mention:"). Please, only one job posting e-mail per talk/presentation. It may be highly advisable to include relevant links and/or contact information in the posting where folks will be able to obtain updates on the position(s) (e.g. description changes, position closed, additional positions opened, etc.) so one doesn't feel tempted to "need" to make a follow-up posting to the list about the position(s). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ See also, e.g.: http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin-balug.org/2007-October/000419.… (starting about halfway down that item) for a bit of earlier discussion on some of these items.

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Lists: stats, etc.
by Michael Paoli 22 Oct '07

22 Oct '07

stats: list membership (~482 total uniques) total uniques up slightly (by about 5%) from not too long ago. list subscribers (does include also those with delivery disabled): $ wc -l */memb*`date -I` 27 balug-admin/membership_2007-10-21 304 balug-announce/membership_2007-10-21 251 balug-talk/membership_2007-10-21 $ sort -u */membership_*`date -I` | wc -l 482 Note also that it appears we have a fairly large number of folks that are subscribed to "talk", but *NOT* subscribed to "announce". Theoretically (at least logically) that shouldn't be the case (in general - typically exceptions being per-list e-mail addresses), but it is totally under "user" control. A quick count of that: $ { sort -u balug-talk/membership_`date -I` > cat balug-announce/membership_`date -I` \ > balug-announce/membership_`date -I`; } | sort | uniq -u | wc -l 172 ... nevertheless *that* number is down moderately from not too long ago. After considering various options, what I'm inclined to do to "rectify" that, is after announcing it and noting it on the lists appropriately, for e-mail addresses that are on the "talk" and/or "admin" list lists, they'll get periodically added to the "announce" list - unless they specifically notify "us" (list admin(s)) that they want to be on an "exception" list (e.g. if they have and want to use separate per-list subscription addresses). The process would be semi-manual at least initially, but would, longer term, be fully automated (well, except for the being added to the "exception" list - that might require manually adding the e-mail address to a file). The above noted approach has the advantages of: * it avoids the potential complications of lists subscribed to lists and differing options/configurations (e.g. we want "announce" to be non-digested, but we want folks to have digested form be option for "talk"; if we subscribed "talk" to "announce", then those getting "talk" digested, and not subscribed to "announce" would only see "announce" within digested "talk" e-mails) * it allows users to have separate per-list e-mail subscription addresses if they desire such, and provides means for them to request not being automatically added to "announce" based on subscription to "talk" and/or "admin". I'm also inclined to set up an alias for the balug list admin(s) - that way folks have a consistent e-mail address that can be used for that. (Mailman lists and displays the list admin e-mail address(es) - it looks a lot more clean if there's a "generic" address for that function, rather than listing all the individual folks that are in the set of list admins for any given list). references/excerpts: http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin-balug.org/2007-September/00040…

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Probably should not have been approved for "announce": Maemo (N800 Linux tablet) course at Stanford on November 6
by Michael Paoli 16 Oct '07

16 Oct '07

This message probably should not have been approved for the BALUG "announce" list: http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-announce-balug.org/2007-October/0000… The evidence would seem to indicate it got "approved" (perhaps someone accidentally clicked the wrong item or thought it was for a different list), though it's not impossible that it may have been passed/approved through some header forging or the like. The message would have been okay for "talk" (that's a relatively open forum, though it could still do without all the attachments). "announce", however should be quite low volume (like 1 to 3 messages per month) and quite topical to BALUG (not a catch-all for any and/or everything LINUX, OpenSource, etc., that anyone and/or everyone may care to announce). If there are non-BALUG events of note that we want to mention on "announce", it's probably most suitable to include a short mention and reference to such along with one of our regular mailings to "announce" ... if at all.

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Re: [Balug-Admin] consider changing the format ... brief time that lets people make announcements
by Michael Paoli 21 Sep '07

21 Sep '07

I think we more-or-less already do that, ... just not all that formally. Typically, frequently, commonly just before the talk/presentation starts, and/or around when the more formal part of talk/presentation ends, we tend to make, and allow for brief announcements (e.g. plug our upcoming meetings events, other events of note, and if someone wants to make a quite brief announcement that's relevant, they can). Quoting jim stockford: > we might consider changing the meeting format > to allow what bayPIGgies call "mapping", a brief > time that lets people make announcements > (including a plea for a ride after the meeting) > such as hiring and other things. > seems to me possible good times for such an > interlude would be at the start of dinner or just > before the speaker begins. probably limit total > time to five or seven minutes, each speaker > getting maybe 60 seconds.

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BALUG "todo" list, volunteering, miscellaneous; etc.
by Michael Paoli 19 Sep '07

19 Sep '07

It's slightly out-of-date already, but a bit over 2 weeks ago, I started a BALUG "todo" list on a wiki page: http://sf-lug.com/wiki/doku.php?id=balug_todo_list Rough ideas and rationale on the list: * easier/better to have it in a (relatively) consistent spot, be able to update, etc. (as compared to archived list e-mails) * idea (thus far) to roughly rank things from highest to lowest priority down the list - but also group related/dependant tasks together where that makes sense. If there's stuff you feel needs or ought to be done (or even "wish-list" items - can go towards tail end of list), feel free to note/update on there ... especially if you're actively working on any of these various BALUG tasks and related stuff (e.g. general administrivia and organizational stuff, systems administration and/or web stuff for BALUG sites, speaker coordination, etc.) If folks want to do more with/for BALUG, feel free to volunteer. The "admin" list has probably been at least a slight bit quieter than it ought to. Much of the day-to-day administrivia happens via off-list communication - mostly using the BALUG e-mail aliases found under: http://www.balug.org/#Contact The "admin" list has a larger audience - and is also publicly archived (and thus not suitable for all of the communications). I try to encourage folks (and try to also remember myself) to - if there's no reason not to have it publicly archived and visible to all, to send it to the "admin" list, rather than just off-list e-mail alias(es) (all of us on those aliases are also on the "admin" list). Perhaps I (and/or others) will update the "todo" list soon, but some of the stuff we're working on: * new(er) web site stuff (beta.balug.org, etc.) * Dec. 2007 - no BALUG meeting * Feb. 2008 meeting date - any venue conflicts with Chinese New Year? * BALUG meeting food at restaurant (tweak/overhaul our "standard affair" food) * BALUG "steering" committee(?) - working to get some of us BALUG administrivia "movers and shakers" (okay, those who do some or much of that work) in a bit more regular real-time interactive communication to work on generally better planning and improving BALUG stuff (e-mail only gets us so far). In any case, hopefully the "todo" list (wiki page) gives one at least a rough overview of things BALUG would like to get done and in many cases where BALUG could make use of additional assistance/resources. If you want to volunteer and help BALUG, feel free to drop a note to balug-contact(a)balug.org (or one of the e-mail addresses under http://www.balug.org/#Contact if you're only interested in assisting with that particular role/area).

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BALUG announcment is out (John D. Mitchell), etc.
by Michael Paoli 08 Sep '07

08 Sep '07

The announcment is out: http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-announce-balug.org/2007-September/00… I Bcced: John D. Mitchell when I sent it. I also forwarded a short note to 4 additional UGs - and have thus far seen it show up on 3 of those 4 UG lists (haven't seen it show up on Oakland perl Mongers - at least yet, anyway: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/oakland/2007-September/date.html ): ----- Forwarded message from Michael Paoli ----- Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2007 23:30:44 -0700 From: Michael Paoli Subject: BALUG 2007-09-18: John D. Mitchell, Krugle Chief Architect - Find and reuse code; etc. To: Bay Area Debian <bad(a)bad.debian.net>, Berkeley Unix User Group <buug(a)weak.org>, SF-LUG <sf-lug(a)linuxmafia.com>, Oakland Perl Mongers <oakland(a)pm.org> Bay Area Linux Users Group (BALUG) BALUG 2007-09-18: John D. Mitchell, Krugle Chief Architect - Find and reuse code; etc. BALUG 2007-10-16: Paddy Sreenivasan of Zmanda The announcement (that and other details): http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-announce-balug.org/2007-September/00… For the latest information, check the BALUG site: http://www.balug.org/ ----- End forwarded message -----

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Fwd: beta.balug.org. (?) and other useful ideas?
by Michael Paoli 05 Sep '07

05 Sep '07

Originally sent to the BALUG contact, webmaster, and sysadmins aliases, presented here slightly redacted: ----- Forwarded message from Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu> ----- Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 20:10:35 -0700 From: Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu> Reply-To: balug-sysadmins(a)balug.org Subject: beta.balug.org. (?) and other useful ideas? To: balug-contact(a)balug.org, balug-sysadmins(a)balug.org Cc: balug-webmaster(a)balug.org Anyway, a couple of (random?) thoughts/ideas that may be rather to quite useful - or perhaps at least so in part. A) beta.balug.org.? One of the issues that's been going on for a while is the "tension" between: Preserve/restore all the useful old stuff as much as feasible (and move it to new appropriate manageable home) - even if it means lots of newer/spiffier stuff is deferred for quite a while and: The heck with that, let's run from that old unmanageable mess as fast as possible even if we have to give up trying to save any of the old stuff, just start fresh, and kiss the old stuff bye-bye. One possible approach (there may be other approaches that would do similarly) on that that may rather substantially well cover *both* of the "competing"/"/conflicting" objectives might be roughly as follows: a) create beta.balug.org. We can mention/promote it on www.balug.org. (e.g. link to cool stuff on beta.balug.org. that isn't available/feasible to do (yet anyway) on www.balug.org.) - but continue to present core useful information on www.balug.org. (and presumably likewise include that or quite similar content on beta.balug.org.) We can create a separate beta.balug.org (highly analogous to how we've created new.balug.org ... doesn't even have to be on the same system ... could be anywhere). We could go *relatively* hog wild on beta.balug.org., but we'd want to observe a few "restrictions" ... just enough that would 1) allow us to later smoothly integrate www.balug.org. and beta.balug.org into a smooth homogeneous unified www.balug.org. and 2) provide *reasonably* consistent information between www.balug.org. and beta.balug.org. (e.g. we don't want them providing conflicting information) 1) would mostly involve some relatively simple rules on URL construction, such that in the future we could redirect http[s]://beta.balug.org/<whatever> to http[s]://www.balug.org/<whatever> and users(/bookmarks/search engines) would find essentially that same content they were looking for at the beta URL that would be then getting (301 "permanent") redirected (at some future post-unification date and time). Using this type of a beta.balug.org. approach could help us well cover both of the "competing" (save, preserve, and move, vs. drop and run) approaches on dealing with the "old" (DreamHost.com hosted) stuff. The name(s) used needn't be specifically and precisely beta.balug.org., but we would want to pick exactly what name(s) we'd be using quite carefully and with due technical and other considerations. Our DNS limitations with DreamHost.com impose some slight restrictions (we can't pick completely arbitrary names), but as long as we avoid name conflict with DreamHost.com DNS names (that are more-or-less effectively "mandatory" with a domain hosted there), we're relatively free to pick a name, and can delegate it via DNS - quite like the case is presently with new.balug.org. B) Additional colo box(es)? <redacted> may have a bit more to say on this. There was some talk(/offer?) of providing a (possibly virtual) new/additional host for BALUG (presumably in a colo, or other reliably hosted infrastructure/location). While at first reaction I may have stated/thought "Naw, we really don't need that, have the old stuff we're moving off of, and have stuff we can share and do on the SF-LUG.com box", since then my thinking and opinion has shifted, mainly because a) once we're finally and completely moved off of all DreamHost.com hosted, that would leave us with exactly one system ... though we may have backups of stuff elsewhere, it doesn't give us a highly reliable infrastructure (one significant booboo <redacted> or a significant hardware problem, or long maintenance outage, etc.), and that box could be effectively blown out of the water for days or more - and it could be quite a while before BALUG on-line infrastructure was operational again (approximately up to days or more). b) It would be quite nice to have BALUG have a much more robust infrastructure set-up. E.g. two independent systems (either or both of which could be virtual, or shared resources on a common box, so long as the two systems were highly independent (not both on same box or at same location)), so that BALUG infrastructure could continue to function at least reasonably, and perhaps identically or nearly so, if either system were to suddenly become unavailable for a while (even a fairly long while). As a random comment, I'll also note that this is (or will be) much more an issue for BALUG, than SF-LUG, as SF-LUG has two systems (SF-LUG.com and SF-LUG.org - highly independent and separate systems). Anyway, being able to reasonably gain a substantially independent system, that could be used for redundancy, failover, etc. could be a really good thing for BALUG - especially as and when we move fully clear of DreamHost.com ----- End forwarded message -----

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Fwd: new.balug.org vs.(?) beta.balug.org (Re: beta.balug.org. (?) and other useful ideas?)
by Michael Paoli 05 Sep '07

05 Sep '07

And some information/clarification on new vs. beta (somewhat different purposes). Also, since that earlier e-mail (later on 2007-09-01) some infrastructure has been put in place to automagically propagate at least some web content from http://www.new.balug.org/ to http://www.balug.org/ Also, at least some initial bits of the beta.balug.org. infrastructure have been put into place (DNS, a very minimal bit of web stuff - doesn't yet have it's own DocumentRoot separate from new.balug.org, but that will likely happen in the near future). references/excerpts: ----- Forwarded message from Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu> ----- Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2007 20:57:48 -0700 From: Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu> Reply-To: Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli(a)cal.berkeley.edu> Subject: new.balug.org vs.(?) beta.balug.org (Re: beta.balug.org. (?) and other useful ideas?) To: balug-webmaster(a)balug.org, balug-sysadmins(a)balug.org Cc: balug-contact(a)balug.org This is primarily for our webmaster(s), but also for our BALUG systems administrators and (at least key) contacts, to be sure we're all at least reasonably "on the same page". A) new.balug.org. - please treat it (at least almost) like production - certainly at least in terms of web page content and the like (at least for stuff on/under http://www.new.balug.org/ on (default of) port 80. I will likely quite soon set up mechanism(s) to automagically replicate at least specific web content (page(s)) from http://www.new.balug.org/ (certainly at least including the main page there) to the main BALUG page (http://www.balug.org/) (for lazy (or efficient) typists, the www. can be ommitted in those URLs, and that will likely always be the case). This will also make life a bit easier for our webmasters :-) B) new.balug.org isn't the (proposed) beta.balug.org, nor will it be (though they may share the same IP address). new.balug.org. has mostly been and will become staging for production www.balug.org. Longer term, new.balug.org would likely replace www.balug.org (taking www.balug.org's name). Even longer term (at least as thus far proposed - exactly in what order things change might be subject to change) beta.balug.org would eventually merge its functionality into www.balug.org (and as beta.balug.org went or faded away, it would redirect what's migrated to the location of that material on www.balug.org.) C) beta.balug.org - at least thus far hearing mostly positive feedback on the idea, I'll probably soon start to proceed more in that direction (no "heavy" investments until I'm sure we have something between consensus and at least a quite overwhelming supermajority). ----- End forwarded message -----

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