SCALE 8x - 2010 Southern California Linux Expo - Intermediate

Linux Troubleshooting 2: Network

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:53 +0000

In this talk Kyle Rankin will break down network troubleshooting on Linux systems into basic steps and apply them to a few common networking problems.

Troubleshooting is a skill that some people find natural and others have to work at it. Either way it's something everyone gets better at with practice. In this talk, Rankin will break down network troubleshooting on a Linux system into a common set of tests and steps that you can apply to a majority of networking problems. Included will be basics of DNS troubleshooting, Layer 1, Layer 2, and Layer 3 troubleshooting, and an example problem solving session.

Troubleshooting is a skill that some people find natural and others have to work at it. Either way it's something everyone gets better at with practice.

In this talk, Rankin will break down network troubleshooting on a Linux system into a common set of tests and steps that you can apply to a majority of networking problems. Included will be basics of DNS troubleshooting, Layer 1, Layer 2, and Layer 3 troubleshooting, and an example problem solving session.

Speaker: Kyle Rankin

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Open Source Content Filtering with DansGuardian

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:53 +0000

Installation, configuration and usage of the application.

Are you a parent trying to protect your kids from unwanted internet content? IT for a business with slumping productivity? Whatever your needs, DansGuardian is the Open Source solution that can handle it. This session is a DansGaurdian overview and will cover the installation of DansGuardian and squid. From installation and basic configuration to filtering group management, blacklists, exceptions and regular expression matching, we'll cover what you need to know about DansGuardian.

From installation and basic configuration to filtering group management, blacklists, exceptions and regular expression matching, we'll cover what you need to know about DansGuardian.

Speaker: Andrew Vandever

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Get Developing - it's easy.

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:53 +0000

We all know that Linux has some wonderful tools for developing applications. I learnt these tools to become the sole IT support for my business ( a sucessful dental office). I'll tell you what I did, and hopefully inspire you to do the same.

I started writing an application called "openMolar" in November of 2008. openMolar is an application used in my dental practice. To do this I had to learn Python, Qt4, the bazaar version control system, mysql, GNU gettext, and debian packaging. I also learnt to use the Launchpad facilities for code hosting, bug tracking, translation and a PPA repository for ubuntu . In this talk, I hope to give you a basic synopsis of why I chose these particular tools (because, let's face it, there are some fine alternatives to each). I do not claim to be anything other than an enthusiastic hobbyist in any of these areas, but I have successfully used them to get my application to a stage which is working well in a demanding real-life situation. So if you are not developing applications yet, or are doing so using different tools, please come along and hear what I hope is an interesting story of "an application from scratch". p.s. if you are not writing code yet... I will endeavour to change this. If I (a middle-aged dentist) can write working code.. anyone can.

I want to discuss the following items during the talk.

1. Having A problem to solve - a demonstration of my application in use.
2. Choosing a license.
3. Why Python?
4. Why PyQt?
5. Collaborating with others, using launchpad for code hosting and bug tracking.
6. Packaging the app so that you get feedback. Debian packaging and the use of a PPA.
7. Translating into other languages - the GNU gettext tools. Porquoi?
8. the future for the application - can we make money from this?

Speaker: Neil Wallace

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Scaling Facebook via Open Source

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:53 +0000

It's not possible to scale a site like Facebook simply by sharding your databases, learn why we developed or contributed to a series of open source infrastructure technologies such as Cassandra, Hive, Haystack, memcached, MySQL, PHP, Scribe, and Thrift.

From the day that Mark Zuckerberg started building Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004 until today, the site has been built on common open source software such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Now Facebook reaches over 350 million people per month, is the largest PHP site in the world, and has released major pieces of their infrastructure as open source. It's not possible to scale a site like Facebook simply by sharding your databases; rather we've developed and contributed to a series of open source infrastructure technologies. Some of these projects include Cassandra, Hive, Haystack, memcached, and Scribe, where each focuses on solving a specific problem with thrift allowing them to communicate across languages. This talk will give you a better idea of what it takes to scale Facebook, a look into the infrastructure we use to do so, and dive into performance work we're focused on in order to scale PHP to over 350 billion page views per month.

It's not possible to scale a site like Facebook simply by sharding your databases; rather we've developed and contributed to a series of open source infrastructure technologies. Some of these projects include Cassandra, Hive, Haystack, memcached, and Scribe, where each focuses on solving a specific problem with thrift allowing them to communicate across languages. This talk will give you a better idea of what it takes to scale Facebook, a look into the infrastructure we use to do so, and dive into performance work we're focused on in order to scale PHP to over 350 billion page views per month.

Speaker: David Recordon

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Pew Pew: Writing Games with Ruby

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:53 +0000

Exploring 2D game development with open source tools and Ruby.

Rubygame is a cross-platform multimedia library for the most beautiful programming language in the world: Ruby. It embraces the Ruby spirit to provide developers with a library that is clean and easy to use so you can get things done painlessly, and yet powerful and flexible so you can get them done right. With that in mind, this class will guide participants through the process of creating 2D games with Rubygame. At the end of the class the participants will have a basic understanding of how 2D games work and will have created a small space invaders clone with animation and sound. Participants should have a solid understanding of Ruby programming.

Participants should have a solid understanding of Ruby programming.

Speaker: Shawn Anderson

Linux Virtualization Technologies Compared

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:53 +0000

Compares the benefits and tradeoffs of Xen, KVM, OpenVZ and Vservers on Linux

Linux supports multiple open-source technologies for virtualization, the most popular being Xen, KVM, OpenVZ and Vservers. Each has its strengths, weaknesses and tradeoffs, so selecting the right one for your environment is non-trivial. This talk will cover the capabilities of the four major virtualization types, in the areas of resource use, isolation, manageability, flexibility and future support.

This talk will cover the capabilities of the four major virtualization types,
in the following areas.

Resource use : All methods of virtualization impose an overhead in addition to
the cost of processes running within each virtual machine. However, this
overhead varies between KVM (the most expensive) and OpenVZ (the cheapest).

Isolation : Virtual machines should be ideally isolated from each other and
from the host system, and be limited in the amount of CPU, RAM, disk space
and network bandwidth they can use. However, in practice the level of isolation
depends on the technology used - Xen performs with best, Vservers the worst.

Manageability : A good virtualization technology makes it easy to create,
manage, move and destroy virtual systems. Each of the four types has its
own tools, commands and configuration file format.

Flexibility : Some virtualization methods like OpenVZ and Vservers can only
run Linux, while others like Xen and KVM can run almost any operating system,
if they have the required hardware support.

Future support : Each technology is developed by different groups, and not all
are as well maintained. KVM is the leader here, as it is now part of the Linux
kernel, while Vservers seems to be falling behind.

Speaker: Jamie Cameron

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PANEL: Git Tips and Tricks

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:53 +0000

Users of the git revision control system discuss tips, configuration and tools for using it effectively.

Major free software projects including Linux, Samba, and X are relying on git, and software collaboration sites including GitHub, Gitorious, and Sourceforge support it. But more than any other revision control system, git has spawned a bewildering array of hacks, hooks, and alternate workflows. This panel discussion will bring together a variety of git users--who use it for tasks such as open-source and in-house software projects, a public web site, system administration, a wiki, and small-scale individual projects. As panel moderator, I'll coordinate the panelists to discuss deploying and managing software with git, how to implement policy and workflow (including how to use git as a centralized revision control system), and the ultimate git hook: a git-backed wiki. The panel should inform Linux users who just want to follow the latest version of their favorite software or track down a bug with "git bisect," help webmasters and sysadmins who want something more than rsync, and of course give software developers some ideas about productive ways to work together.

This panel discussion will bring together a variety of
git users--who use it for tasks such as open-source
and in-house software projects, a public web site,
system administration, a wiki, and small-scale
individual projects. As panel moderator, I'll
coordinate the panelists to discuss deploying
and managing software with git, how to implement
policy and workflow (including how to use git as a
centralized revision control system), and the ultimate
git hook: a git-backed wiki.

The panel should inform Linux users who just want to
follow the latest version of their favorite software
or track down a bug with "git bisect," help webmasters
and sysadmins who want something more than rsync,
and of course give software developers some ideas
about productive ways to work together.

Speaker: Don Marti
Speaker: Jason Haslup
Speaker: Shawn Pearce
Speaker: Doug Judd

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Five Stages of Benchmark Loss: PTS and You

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:53 +0000

Covers Phoronix Test Suite's development background and some guidance for how Benchmarking and Testing can improve the Linux ecosystem.

Phoronix Test Suite is a benchmarking and validation test suite that has been under development by Phoronix Media for the last few years. During it's development we have discovered many performance issues across the industry. This presentation provides an brief overview of Phoronix Test Suite, it's capabilities and features. Some brief history of the critical triggers and light bulb moments for improvement of the test suite which apply equally to any testing infrastructure. The presentation then moves on to the typical response that the community has to benchmark results (typically when they lose). A rough survival guide will be covered showing the behaviors that we have seen and how the community use this information to improve Linux's performance and stability in the industry.

Will be delivered on acceptance of the submission. Likewise for the presentation.

Speaker: Matthew Tippett
Speaker: Michael Larabel

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Seaside: Your next Web Framework

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:53 +0000

A brief introduction to Seaside - a revolutionary web framework running on most of the current open source and commercial Smalltalk implementations

Sure, Smalltalk is where we got our modern view of windows and mice and “the desktop” and object-oriented programming and extreme programming two decades ago, but what has Smalltalk done for us lately? I’ll answer this by showing off the Seaside web application framework. Imagine being able to debug a broken web-hit in the middle of the hit, fixing the code, and continuing before the browser knows that something went wrong. Imagine being able to reuse control flows and web components with the ease of OO programming. Imagine being able to do test-driven development, even for HTML delivery. Imagine taking an application from “three guys in Starbucks on a laptop” to “3000 hits per second on your Amazon EC2 cloud” with no major changes in design. No need to imagine… I’ll demonstrate all this and more. Smalltalk knowledge is not required: I’ll start with a brief overview of Smalltalk using Squeak, the free implementation that’s even included in the OLPC XO. General knowledge of Object-oriented Programming basics would be helpful, though.

I’ll answer this by showing off the Seaside web application framework. Imagine being able to debug a broken web-hit in the middle of the hit, fixing the code, and continuing before the browser knows that something went wrong. Imagine being able to reuse control flows and web components with the ease of OO programming. Imagine being able to do test-driven development, even for HTML delivery.

Imagine taking an application from “three guys in Starbucks on a laptop” to “3000 hits per second on your Amazon EC2 cloud” with no major changes in design. No need to imagine…

I’ll demonstrate all this and more.

Smalltalk knowledge is not required: I’ll start with a brief overview of Smalltalk using Squeak, the free implementation that’s even included in the OLPC XO. General knowledge of Object-oriented Programming basics would be helpful, though.

Speaker: Randal Schwartz

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Advanced Security: A self-assessment study

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:53 +0000

Half Day Tutorial covering advanced security for SysAdmins.

This class takes an unconventional approach to advanced security for system administrators. The approach is based on the idea that we can usually figure out how to secure something once we know what needs securing, but the difficulty is usually in enumerating the things that require security.

In this class, you will learn how to perform a comprehensive evaluation of your workplace security. This encompasses any organizational policies, applicable government regulations effecting system administration, network topology, personnel involved, systems, and other areas requiring evaluation to understand the full spectrum of security issues at a particular workplace.

The goal is for you to take home a detailed list of questions to answer and risks to evaluate, as well as the tools to answer those questions, evaluate those risks, and propose solutions to meet the security needs of your organization.

Speaker: David Parter