WLUG - Worcester Linux Users' Group, Worcester, MA

Notes from Previous Meetings

March 10, 2022 @ Hudson Public Library and Jitsi Web Conference - John Stoffel and Tim Keller - KiCAD EDA software - Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac709-0RG_M

February 10, 2022 @ Jitsi Web Conference - Bill Cattey - Fossil: Github in a box! - Recording: https://youtu.be/Zn_JTg3JDbI

January 13, 2022 @ Jitsi Web Conference - Kalman Reti - Emacs (and lisp) for fun and pro fit - Recording: https://youtu.be/cVy-kMSnaHc

December 9, 2021 @ Hudson Public Library and Jitsi Web Conference - Tim Keller - Jail breaking that Wii you've got laying around to run Linux!

November 18, 2021 - For the first time in over a year and a half, WLUG met in person at the Hudson Public Library while also broadcasting via Jitsi web conferencing. Topic: Intel Management Engine

April 2021 - October 2021 - WLUG has continued meeting virtually every month via Jitsi web conferencing.

February 2020 - March 2021 - WLUG is still alive! We've been meeting virtually via Jitsi web conferencing for the last year.

January 10, 2020 - General Discussion - The Future of WLUG

December 19, 2019 - Joshua Stone - Fedora Silverblue, Toolbox, and Flatpaks

Modernizing the Linux Desktop slides in PDF format.

November 14, 2019 - Tim Keller - ZFS on Linux

October 10, 2019 - Tim Keller, Logan Brown, Frank Sweetser - Computer Aided Design: FreeCAD, OpenSCAD, TinkerCAD

September 12, 2019 - General Discussion - TinkerCAD codeblocks, Storage Technologies, and more

August 15, 2019 - General Discussion - Using Linux to drive a Curio die cut machine

July 28, 2019 - Tim Keller - Raspberry Pi 4

June 13, 2019 - General Discussion - Side Channel Attacks on CPU Microarchitectures

May 16, 2019 - Tim Keller - Linux Gaming

April 18, 2019 - Ian Gelman - Open Broadcaster Software

March 14, 2019 - Tim Keller - Containerized applications: Appimage, Snaps, Flatpaks

February 21, 2019 - Tim Keller - AWX: A Web UI and API Platform for Ansible

January 10, 2019 - Dr. Keith Wright - A Scheme to Bootstrap Trust

December 13, 2018 - Frank Sweetser - DMARC, SPF and DKIM

November 8, 2018 - Ian Gelman - GNURadio / Software Defined Radio / GQRX

October 11, 2018 - Logan Brown - Enterprise Wi-Fi

September 13, 2018 - Tim Keller - git LFS (Large File Support)

August 9, 2018 - Eric Martin - Bro Network Security Monitor

July 12, 2018 - Open topic meeting - Mailing List move and website updates

June 14, 2018 - General discussion around Github, Branch Scope, and VDO, Red Hat's new dedup/compression block layer

May 17, 2018 - Tim Keller - Digital Ocean, Droplets, MFA ssh, and WLUG mailing list/website discussion

April 12, 2018 - Lightning talks on various security-oriented Linux features and distributions

Logan Brown - Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux), audit2allow, and SE Android

Greg Avedissian - "heads" Linux Distribution

Chuck Anderson - QubesOS

March 15, 2018 - Tim Keller - Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) full-disk encryption

February 20, 2018 - Dr. Nick Howgrave-Graham - Deep dive into the math behind encryption

January 18, 2018 - General discussion about the Spectre/Meldown vulnerabilities

December 14, 2017 - Open topic meeting

November 9, 2017 - Tim Keller - 3D Printing FOSS software

October 12, 2017 - Tim Keller - Ansible talk and demo

September 14, 2017 - Logan Brown - Ceph Filesystem talk and demo

August 10, 2017 - Hosted by Doug Mildram - WLUG 20th Anniversary BBQ: Marvel at 20 years of WLUG and where linux has come in 20 years!

June 8, 2017 - Tim Keller - WiFI-Pineapple / FireJail

May 17, 2017 - Tim Keller: RetroPI, Chuck Anderson: Kodi

April 13, 2017 - Tim Keller - GlusterFS, a distributed clustered file system that lets you take a whole bunch of servers and combine their storage into a single large file system

March 9, 2017 - Tim Keller - KVM, Virtualized Windows apps, and Linux Mint

February 16, 2017 - Tim Keller - Storage protocols, iSCSI, the GFS2 clustered filesystem, LVM, and partitioning, including a two node demo

January 12, 2017 - Jon "maddog" Hall - How to pick a Single Board Computer

December 8th, 2016 - Eric Martin - Setting up a personal DNS RPZ server

November 10, 2016 - Eric Martin - GPG Key Signing Party

October 13th, 2016 - Hosted by Dick Goodman - WLUG Pizza Party

September 15, 2016 - William Temple - Container technologies including Docker

August 18, 2016 - Open topic meeting

July 14, 2016 - Tim Keller - SCM with git and gitlab

June 9, 2016 - Jon "maddog" Hall - Back from the Dead: Projects that maddog is working on, and why you should care

Abstract: Only a month after a massive heart attack maddog will be talking about some of the projects he is working on:

Rebooting the Linux Professional Institute (and why you should care)
Selling small computers in Brazil (and why you should care)
Creating jobs for the jobless and help for the clueless (and why you should care)
"maddog's monastery and marina of math, music. micro-computing, micro-brewery. micro-winery, micro-distillery and bait shop"

May 12, 2016 - Kevin Harrington - Field trip to the new location of Technocopia at 44 Portland St. 6th Floor, Worcester including a demo of Bowler Studio, a robotics IDE.

April 14, 2016 - Greg Avedissian - FM radio station broadcast management with Linux, including demo

March 10, 2016 - Frank Sweetser- BIND DNS Response Policy Zones (RPZ)

February 11, 2016 - Tim Keller - ELK (Elastisearch, Logstash, Kibana)

December 10, 2015 - Dmitri Pal, Red Hat, Inc. - Identity Management, FreeIPA, and Kerberos (slides) (video)

November 12, 2015 - Logan Brown - ownCloud introduction and demo

September 10, 2015 - Tim Keller - STEAM - Science Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics

August 13, 2015 - Frank Sweetser - Software Defined Networking

July 9, 2015 - WLUG Picnic

June 11, 2015 - Tim Keller - ZFS (Zettabyte File System) on Linux

May 14, 2015 - Frank Sweetser and Jeff - 3D Printing

April 9, 2015 - Tim Keller - Raspberry Pi GPIO

March 12, 2015 - Chuck Anderson - Using Raspberry Pi's for "Whole House Sound"

February 12, 2015 - Andy Stewart - Wireless Mesh Networking

January 8, 2015 - Frank Sweetser - The 802.11ac Wi-Fi Standard

December 11, 2014 - Jon "maddog" Hall - Project Caua: How to finance your university education while building a business

November 13, 2014 - Logan Brown - Asterisk Open Source PBX

August 14, 2014 - Tim Keller - Python: The Sysadmins Chainsaw Swissarmy Knife

July 10, 2014 - WLUG Picnic

May 8, 2014 - Kevin Harrington - Tour of Technocopia hackerspace & talk on OpenSCAD

Linux and Software Defined Radio (February 20, 2014)

Presented by Andy Stewart

Linux and Software Defined Radio slides in PDF format.

January 9, 2014 - Chuck Anderson - Lsyncd, Rsync, and more

November 13, 2013 - Chuck Anderson - OpenWRT/CeroWRT Demo

October 9, 2013 - Jim Gettys - Internet Buffer Bloat

September 11, 2013 - Eric Martin - PGP Keysigning Party

March 13, 2013 - Roundtable discussion of people's Favorite Android Apps

February 13, 2013 - Chuck Anderson - More Raspberry Pi

January 9, 2013 - Keith Wright - Literate Programming

December 12, 2012 - WLUG website discussion

October 10, 2012 - Tim Keller - OpenStack

September 12, 2012 - Karl Lind - Raspberry Pi

June 13, 2012 - Dan Walsh, Red Hat - Secure Virtual Containers/Multi-Tenancy

May 9, 2012 - Chuck Anderson - Fedora 17 demo and feature review

April 12, 2012 - Tim Keller - ZFS

March 14, 2012 - Chuck Anderson - FreeNAS on a HP Microserver N40L

January 11, 2012 - Henrique Polido - Java NIO, Hadoop, Map/Reduce

December 14, 2011 - Henrique Polido - XMonad

Intro to IPv6 (September 14, 2011)

Presented by Chuck Anderson

Intro to IPv6 slides in PDF format.

August 10, 2011 - WLUG BBQ

Init Systems (May 11, 2011)

Presented by Chuck Anderson

Init Systems slides in PDF format.

April 13, 2011 - Geoffrey Stewart - Scratch

Virtualization Technologies (March 9, 2011)

Presented by Tim Keller

Virtualization Technologies slides in OpenOffice format.

February 9, 2011 - Chuck Anerson - GNOME 3 Shell / Fedora 15 Feature Overview and Demo

August 12, 2010 - WLUG BBQ

A Complete Guide to SSDs (May 12, 2010)

Presented by Jeff Moyer

A Complete Guide to SSDs slides in PDF format.

BtrFS (March 2010)

Presented by Frank Sweetser

The slides from Frank's talk are available in PDF format.

Using libHaru (January 14, 2010)

Presented by Andy Stewart

Using libHaru slides in PDF format.

GEGL, Generic Graphics Library (June 19, 2008)

Presented by Frank Sweetser

The slides from Frank's talk are available in PDF format.

Puppet (November 15, 2007)

Presented by Frank Sweetser

The slides from Frank's talk are available in PDF and ODP formats.

Ruby on Rails (May 10, 2006)

Presented by Frank Sweetser

The slides from Frank's talk are available in PDF format.

Other interesting links are:
Movies
Online Tutorial

Introduction to Wifi Security (March 15, 2006)

Presented by Frank Sweetser

WLUG member Frank Sweetser gave a quick overview of some of the major security related issues in setting up a wireless network, the major vulnerabilities (WEP weaknesses in particular), and ways to close up the holes. He also included a brief demo of Back Track, a bootable linux CD that includes numerous security related tools, and used it to crack a WEP key. Frank is currently employed by WPI in the Network Operations and Security department.

Linux on the Routerboard 532 (February 16, 2006)

Presented by Andy Stewart

WLUG founder Andy Stewart gave a talk on his experience with Linux on the Routerboard 532. Andy's intent was to build a firewall with GPL'd software, no moving parts, and no noise. Several pieces of software from the embedded Linux world were used. The PDF slides are available, as well as the HTML version.

Hacking the Linux Automounter (November 2, 2005)

Presented by Jeff Moyer

Jeff Moyer from Red Hat, Inc. discussed the Linux Automounter. The automounter provides a mechanism for automatically mounting file systems upon access, and unmounting them when they are no longer referenced. The PDF slides are available.

Linux on Appliances (May 19, 2005)

Presented by Jason Schonberg

Jason Schonberg discussed running Linux on appliances such as the Cobalt Qube. Included in this discussion are topics such as compilers, cross compilation, emulation of older hardware, and features of the Cobalt Qube. The original OpenOffice slides as well as the HTML version are available.

HOWTO Make Video DVDs (March 23, 2005)

Presented by Andy Stewart

Andy Stewart discussed his experience with Linux software, his video capture card, and some simple video editing, all used for the creation of DVDs containing video content for his own personal use. The slides are available here, and the OpenOffice slide sources are available here. Andy's quick HOWTO is also available.

Vesta - An Advanced Configuration Management System (February 13, 2005)

Presented by Scott Venier

Scott Venier discussed Vesta and its main features of source control, configuration, and file building. The slides are available here, and the StarOffice slide sources are available here.

Netdump and crash (January 13, 2005)

Presented by Jeff Moyer, Red Hat

Jeff Moyer discussed the use of Netdump and crash for handling Linux kernel crash dumps and the analysis of a running kernel. The slides are available here.

Bootsplash and gfxboot (June 17, 2004)

Presented by Andy Stewart

WLUG founder Andy Stewart gave a talk about using gfxboot to graphically spice up the GRUB boot menu, and how the bootsplash software could be used to present a graphically pleasing screen during boot, complete with progress bars. The slides are available online, or one may download the OpenOffice source file.

Creating and Rendering 3D Objects in Linux (May 19, 2004)

Presented by Tim Keller

WLUG member Tim Keller gave a talk about different Open Source tools that he uses to create 3D object in Linux. Mentioned in this talk were Povray, Kpovmodeler, and Blender. The slides are available online, or one may download the OpenOffice source file.

TeX and LaTeX (March 24, 2004)

Presented by Doug Waud

WLUG member Doug Waud discussed the use of TeX and LaTeX. These programs are used as part of a document preparation system designed to make mathematics look beautiful when typeset.

The PDF version of Doug's presentation can be viewed, as well as the LaTeX source file.

Special Guest – J.D. Frazer (February 25, 2004)

J.D. is the cartoonist who writes the comic strip User Friendly. He gave us a great talk about what its like to be a cartoonist. We also broadcast this talk on the Access Grid, and were joined by two groups of people from Australia(!).

PGP (January 15, 2004)

Presented by Chuck Anderson

Chuck gave us a talk about the use of PGP.

PGP® or Pretty Good Privacy® is a powerful cryptographic product family that enables people to securely exchange messages, and to secure files, disk volumes and network connections with both privacy and strong authentication.

Slides for this presentation can be viewed here.

Revolution OS (December 12, 2003)

This meeting was a joint meeting between WLUG and the Worcester County IEEE Computer Society. At this meeting, we showed the DVD entitled Revolution OS. From the Revolution OS website:

REVOLUTION OS tells the inside story of the hackers who rebelled against the proprietary software model and Microsoft to create GNU/Linux and the Open Source movement.

REVOLUTION OS features interviews with Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, Brian Behlendorf, Michael Tiemann, Larry Augustin, Frank Hecker, and Rob Malda.

Lifelines and GEDCOM– Genealogy on Linux (October 9, 2003)

Presented by Doug Waud

WLUG member Doug Waud discussed the Lifelines software. Lifelines allows the user to enter genealogical information and print it out in a variety of different report formats.

The HTML version of Doug's talk can be seen here.

An Introduction to Linux for Newcomers (September 10, 2003)

Presented by Andy Stewart

This evening's talk was a broad overview of topics of interest to Linux newcomers,such as: What is Linux? Why might I wish to run Linux? From where would I obtain Linux? Also discussed were the Linux demonstration CDs such as Knoppix and SuSE Live Eval.

Slides for this presentation can be viewed here, or one may grab the StarOffice source.

Live Demo: Linux Terminal Server Project (August 14, 2003)

Presented by: Andy Stewart

Andy Stewart gave a talk about the Linux Terminal Server Project. With this software, a user can turn a lowly Pentium 90 with around 16 – 32 MB of memory into a diskless graphics terminal which can log into a more powerful server. After the talk, Andy demonstrated a client booting over the network, and then logged into the server. After that, Andy took a client machine brought in by Doug Waud and got it to function as a client also.

Slides from this meeting can be viewed or you can grab the StarOffice source.

WLUG's Annual Barbecue: (July 16, 2003)

Guest Speaker: Vince McHugh – NECS/Cannon (May 15, 2003)

The guest speaker for this meeting was Vince McHugh. Vince is a member of GNHLUG and also a Systems Support Manager for NECS/Canon (the largest independent Canon dealer in New England). Vince has been involved with Linux for the last 4-5 years, and also possesses a Novell CNE and a Windows MCP.

Vince gave a two part talk. The first part was about the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS). The second part was about imaging and scanning. In this context, Vince talked about how NECS is making Canon scanning products work in the Linux environment.

Slides from this meeting can be viewed or you can grab the StarOffice source. My apologies...the viewable files don't look as good since the “slide effects” do not transfer well to HTML. Here is the 7 MB gzipped PDF file.

Live Demo: A Linux Digital Video Recorder (April 16, 2003)

Presented by Tim Keller

WLUG member Tim Keller spoke about his experience building a digital video recorder using a video capture card and the Myth TV software. Tim mentioned that any video capture card which is supported by Video4Linux should work with Myth TV. (Other video capture cards may also work). As a video source, Tim used his Nintendo.

Guest Speaker: Jon "maddog" Hall (March 26, 2003)

Jon "maddog" Hall, the executive director of Linux International, gave a talk entitled Linux in Emerging Technologies. Abstract: Linux is being used in a series of emerging economies around the world. As maddog goes on his travels, he becomes aware of more and more of these uses and why these groups are using it. Some reasons are not obvious, and some are very interesting. This meeting was attended by 40 people(!). Thanks, maddog!

WLUG LAN Party: (February 19, 2003)

WLUG held a LAN Party on this date, where several people brough their computers, laptops, and some network gear. A small network was created where people tested network diags, ran security screens such as nessus, and played multiplayer games such as FreeCIV.

Live Demo: Install Linux on an iPAQ (January 15, 2003)

Presented by Brad Noyes and Wes Allen

Brad Noyes showed us how to install the iPAQ boot loader on Wes' iPAQ. After that, Brad used minicom and an xmodem file transfer to load Opie into the iPAQ. This all worked successfully – no bricks here! Brad also mentioned several useful websites which discuss Opie and other useful software for Linux on the iPAQ.

Live Demo: Scanner Use with Linux (November 20, 2002)

Presented by Scott Venier

Scott demonstrated how to make his scanner work under Linux using the SANE scanner library. Scott also got Doug Waud's scanner (Mustek with parallel port interface) to work. Scott was using the text based scanimage program for image capture.

WLUG Install Fest (October 24, 2002)

WLUG held an install fest on this date. Unfortunately, attendance was sparse.

Live Demo: Videolan Client and Server (September 18, 2002)

Andy Stewart, Doug Waud, and Scott Venier built a small network at the WLUG meeting. Andy loaded up a DVD and used the Videolan software to broadcast the DVD out onto the network. Scott's machine picked up the broadcast, andhe was able to view the DVD without a problem. Doug's machine was unfortunately too slow to successfully pick up the video stream.

Annual WLUG Barbecue (August 22, 2002)

The annual WLUG barbecue was held at Doug Waud's house in Shrewsbury. After eating lots of food, Doug regaled us with his poetic wit, which can be read here.

Live Demo: Wireless Networking (July 17, 2002)

Presented by Andy Stewart

Andy Stewart brought his laptop and wireless card to do a live demo of how to get wireless networking with Linux. Other WLUG members brought their wireless laptops and a small network was created.

Live Demo: PLIP - Parallel Line Internet Protocol (May 15, 2002)

Presented by Andy Stewart

You may view the online presentation at 800x600 or 1280x1024. You may also download a PDF version of the slides if you wish.

Tim Keller Hacks the Linux Kernel (April 11, 2002)

Presented by Tim Keller

Tim discusses with WLUG his experience in adding a new signal to his copy of the Linux kernel.

Borland Kylix for Linux (February 14, 2002)

Presented by Marc Hughes

You may view the online presentation at your leisure.

Linux Distribution "Bakeoff" (January 16, 2002)

WLUG members Doug Waud and Tim Keller discussed the distribution specific features of SuSE Linux 7.2 and Mandrake 8.1, respectively. There were no slides for this presentation.

USB Compact Flash Reader (October 11, 2001)

Presented by Doug Waud

You may view the online presentation at your leisure, or you may download the HTML slides and associated graphics.

DVDs and Linux (August 16, 2001)

Presented by Brian J. Conway

You may view the online presentation at your leisure, or you may download the original (gzipped) StarOffice slides.

Linux & Digital Cameras (July 18, 2001)

Presented by Marc Hughes

You may view the online presentation at your leisure, or you may download the original (gzipped) StarOffice slides.

Logical Volume Management and Journaling Filesystems (June 14, 2001)

Presented by Tim Keller

You may view the online presentation at your leisure, or you may download the original (gzipped) StarOffice 5.2 slides.

Practical Use of IPCHAINS (May 16, 2001)

Presented by Andy Stewart and Doug Waud

Doug presented the simpler case of getting a firewall up and running using network address translation (NAT). Doug's original slides (gzipped StarOffice 5.2) and his online presentation are available.

Andy then went into more details of IPCHAINS with usage examples. Andy's original slides (gzipped StarOffice 5.2) and his online version of the presentation are also available. Andy's firewall script, leveraged from work done by Bob Ziegler, is available here. The original copy of Bob's script is available here.

Welcome to Linux (April 23, 2001)

Presented by Andy Stewart at a meeting of the Delphi Developers Group of Greater Boston

You may view the online presentation at your leisure, or you may download the original (gzipped) StarOffice 5.2 slides.

Firewalls - What They Are, What They Do, and What Do They Protect Against (April 2001)

Presented by Robert Ziegler, author of Linux Firewalls, published by New Riders Publishing.

You may view the online presentation at your leisure, or you may download the original (gzipped) PowerPoint slides.

Home Networking (March 2001)

Presented by Doug Waud. Written by Doug Waud, Chuck Anderson, and Stephen Daukas.

You may view the online presentation at your leisure, or you may download the HTML or the download the original StarOffice slide deck.

Eazel and Nautilus (December 2000)

Presented by Bart Decrem and Mike Fleming from Eazel

You may view the online presentation or download the slides.

Linux Multimedia (October 2000)

Presented by Nate Godin, President of the WPI Linux Association

You may view the online presentation at your leisure.

Mission Critical Linux - High Availability Cluster Overview (September 2000)

Presented by Tim Burke, Mission Critical Linux

You may download the entire presentation or you may view the online presentation.

Software Package Management II

Presentation #1 - Packaging Software with RPM (July 2000)

Presented by Charles Anderson

You may download the entire presentation or you may view the online presentation.