RE: Potential Meeting Topics

["Acs, Laszlo" <Laszlo.Acs@netlds.com>]

OK... I'll add some two or three cents worth, may as well get a
discussion going on this thread.  Mark, you've hit upon quite a list of
meeting topics that could occupy an entire year of User Group meeting
sessions if each topic is treated exhaustively, dealt with one at a time
per meeting.  Each topic idea you listed is an excellent choice and I
think the only opinion I would have to add to this would be a
prioritization of the list, though some of the individual line items
(most that are indented) are subsets of broader themes and, depending on
the depth of the broader subject, should and can be discussed within a
single meeting.

How about some back issues of Unix & Linux Mags and Journals for ideas
and answers?  Anyone with an extensive collection, or anyone know of
some library that would archive back issues?  I'd be interested in
information sources for solutions to problems that could be accessed
locally, through the net, or ftp-site (ultimately in a searchable
form...).

Now, to add a couple of gratuitous comments to the on-going prose:

>From:	Erich Schroeder [SMTP:erich@museum.state.il.us]
>Sent:	Friday, February 13, 1998 12:21 PM
>To:	luci-discuss@luci.org
>Subject:	Re: Potential Meeting Topics
>
>
>Hi,
>  I think that these are good topics. I also want to note that our new 
>linux-based server is up and running. It came with redhat 5.0 
>pre-installed. Among other things I note that postgres is running on it. 
>I sure would like to have someone who has worked with it guide me through 
>at some point. I may try it myself, but...seems daunting. 
>
>  I'm interested in this as I'm (more or less) in charge of developing a 
>museum-wide method for dealing with collections data. We are at the very 
>beginning of planning, and I'm wondering if a linux-based system would be 
>good for linking together all this stuff. We'll see.
>
>  There are a few applications that I've dealt with that might be of 
>interest. One that comes to mind is the collaberative software "habanero" 
>which is under development over at NCSA. 
>
>I'll comment on a few of Marks suggestions...
>
>On Fri, 30 Jan 1998, mwb wrote:
>
>> 
>> 
>> As I said at the meeting, I have several ideas for topics that I
>> would find interesting.  Some of the ideas will fall under different
>> categories, and may be listed more than once.
>> 
>> IP Protocol
>>    IP names
>>    Configuring email - to send to local ISP
>>    netmask, network, broadcast, and why NT doesn't
>>          use newtwork, netmask (or so I've been told)
>
>Netmask. I've had a mental block on non-base-10 systems since the 8th 
>grade, so I could use a explaination of the numbering.
>
>[Acs, Laszlo]  Hmmm....  I thought octal and hex were a cake walk, and
>remember programming in the seventies in nothing but hex and octal, usually
>without the privilege of an assembler, completely in 8088 and 6502 code.
>This type of programming required a lot of conversion between decimal, hex
>and octal (and ASCII).  A topic on an easy method of converting from one
>method to the other couldn't possibly take an entire meeting.  This forum
>would be the perfect place.  As soon as I have a few minutes in the next week
>or two, perhaps I could sit down and write a few lines on what I used to do
>and how I went about it.  If I haven't followed up on this by the next
>meeting, I could go over the numerology of non-decimal based number systems,
>including mathematical and Boolean manipulations using analogous and/or
>divergent base-numbers.
>
>> Email
>>    Procmail filtering
>>    Demonstrate different mail packages-
>>       pine, mutt, emacs mail -
>>       Then give your biased opinion on them
>
>I had procmail filters in place (under AIX) for a while. I stopped when I 
>found that I was missing some messages. The were just lost (didn't show 
>up in the backup folder *or* in the log file).
>
>> Emacs
>>    Using Gnus
>>    Using Gnu mail
>>    Using W el
>[Acs, Laszlo]  What's a 'W el' ??
>
>>    Using the lisp interpreter
>>    Writing config files
>
>I've never seen Emacs running until I tried it out on this new machine. I 
>had no idea of what to do, so I would also like to see a demonstration.
>
>[Acs, Laszlo]  Concerning EMACS:
>	About 6 or 7 years ago, I got my hands on a rather good and wonderfully
>brief 'handbook' on a BSD implementation of EMACS.  I'll have to go through a
>couple of boxes (I'm one of those that have trouble throwing out 'junk') of
>notes and papers I have of those days and see if I can find it.  From what I
>remember, it was around twenty pages bound quasi-professionally by one of
>those machines that does that plastic binding.  I remember that this was the
>editor of choice to use programming C++,  Scheme,  Lisp and various other
>scripts, since it was robust enough to allow auto-backup, compiling, linking,
>shelling, and recursive children without ever popping out of the first
>invoked environment, and debugging was a dream.  I remember that if I wanted
>to take a break and get some stress relief, I could even Telnet to my
>favorite MUD and waste some time killing Orcs and stuff, all the while never
>exiting Emacs.  
>	Though, I'm sorry to say, my senior year was the only time I've ever used
>it.  And with the passage of that amount of time, any experience I attained
>is lost in the haze of time and other nonesuch.
>
>> Kernel Stuff
>>    Compiling kernels
>>    Applying patches to the kernel
>
>[Acs, Laszlo]  Kernel stuff...  there's tons of config options that require
>re-compiles.  More than a single meeting could be occupied with variations of
>this theme.  Discussions could get into the meat of patches and what benefit
>(or hazard) these patches have.  Some questions: What options can be set and
>unset, what patches can be implemented (and why would we care) with/without
>re-compiles, would updates without taking the time or effort to recompile
>leave one in a flaky state, what do some of the patch's RFC (Request for
>Comments) pages (those that are intense and deeply comprehensive that would
>merit such a thing) REALLY say... etc.
>
>>    Module - like the modversion stuff
>>        And plenty of biased opinion
>
>I never got modules to work on my box. This is a good topic.
>
>> X stuff
>>    Setting XDM up to run X terminals
>>    Setting up Linux to run as an X terminal
>>    Doing the above with two linux boxes
>
>Also sound good. I would like to find out if a linux box could take the 
>place of an old textronix term here in the GIS lab. I've never run XDM. I 
>just got back from getting one of our Mac users set up with the MI/X 
>x-server software. I was wondering if XDM on the linux box would apply 
>here also?
>
>> NFS
>>    Show how to set it up as a server & client
>>
>> Samba
>
>I have had good luck with a combination of NFS and Samba under AIX, 
>SunOS, and Linux. I can add to a discussion of this, but I would not 
>count myself as an expert.
>
>[Acs, Laszlo]  Ditto.  This is a good topic having lot's of potential in
>cross-platform file processing.  I'd be interested in a mind-expanding
>discussion with examples concerning NFS & Samba, perhaps implementing remote
>scripts through 'rsh' piping results back from the remote to a local space.
>
>Well, I've got work to do....
>
>Laszlo Acs
>Lexis Document Services
>Computer Systems Services
>Phone:  (217) 492-0453
>Fax:      (217) 492-0649
>email:    Laszlo.Acs@netlds.com
>
>

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