KLUG Meeting Minutes and Agenda (#29) The 29th meeting of the Kingston Linux User Group was held Wed, Mar. 7, 2001 at 7PM at RMC. The meeting lasted until about 10:15 PM. The attendees were: Drummond, Mark Gauthier, Daniel Gillis, Maxwell Lott, Rodney MacIntosh, Bob MacLachlan, Ross MacPherson, Alex Mitton, Doug Paul, Derek Szafranski, Mike Webster, Scott <7sw3@qlink.queensu.ca> Meeting Schedule: 30 - Mon. Apr. 2 at RMC. "System Administration II" 31 - Wed. May. 2 at RMC. "Compiling a Kernel" - Doug Mitton 32 - Mon. Jun. 4 at RMC. "Introduction To TCP/IP Networking" 33 - Wed. Jul. 4 at RMC. "Connecting to an Internet ISP (PPP/LAN)" Summary Of Activities: - Web page and domain - http://www.klug.on.ca/ - Hosted by Internet Kingston! (Thanks!) - Mailing List - http://www.yahoogroups.com/search?query=klug- - You have to register for a free Yahoo account first. - Usenet Group - kingston.os.linux (General, not just KLUG) Agenda/Minutes: 1) Roll Call and Introductions (if required) - See attendees above. Some how we have got to get back into this if there are new attendees. We just seem to start right in to the presentation and such. 2) This Meeting: There were 12 attendees to our 18th presentation "System Administration I" by Mark Drummond. System Administration I covers some linux/unix basics about file system structure, ownership and permissions as well as tasks like maintaining user accounts, adding/ removing applications, basic security and customizing. The presentation involved the Slackware system installed last month running mainly in console mode but some graphical tools were used. Mark first added a user, and explained the interactions between the /etc/passwd, shadow and group files. He showed the various file attributes and how they are set for users and to allow file sharing between users. Customization of the user account was through /etc/skel for global settings and the hidden .profile mechanism for individual users. Also usermod, which is a command to centralize some of the administration. There was then a download and installation of a couple of applications via a source install from linuxmafia.org and freshmeat.net. There was also an explanation of the .tgz, .deb and .rpm package types. Mandrake uses mainly the .rpm format slackware the .tgz. One of the packages was DOSEmu which is a DOS emulator that runs under Linux and allows some of your favorite old games and utilities to be run without rebooting. Mark then described the standard or traditional linux/unix file system hierarchy and the significance of the various branches and the considerations when designing a hard drive partitioning scheme. The system logging function was touched on briefly as well as a description of the value of log review and preservation in the /var/log/ subdirectory. There were also some interesting off topic detours ... Mark showed some of the features available through Internet Kingston as our web host. All the features are available via http://klug.on.ca/personal for self administration and your resulting web URL is http://klug.on.ca/~username/. Contact Mark for details if you have any ideas for a web page project. There was also a demonstration of Distributed Net, the subject arose after a discussion of encryption of passwords. The basic DNET URL is http://www.distributed.net/ and the KLUG specific URL is http://stats.distributed.net/rc5-64/tmsummary.php3?team=17822 A quick discussion of DVD decoding and that was pretty well the end of this KLUG presentation. Thanks Mark, Alex for the conference room and to all who attended and participated. 3) Next Meeting: Mon, Apr. 2 at RMC, 7pm room G307. "System Administration II"