Houston Linux Users Group

The HAL-PC Samba/Network Administration SIG (sometimes also called the Samba/Open Networking SIG, much to SIG Leader Rick Archibald's dismay!) is kind of a spin-off of HLUG (most Samba members are also HLUG members), so we'll be including updates from their meetings here as well.

hlug: What to do this Friday night?!? Come to @coffeegroundz for the @geekgathering. Linux folks and MORE! Plus, CGz is a GREAT place!

hlug: Four of us are now at Byzantio! Come join us! http://www.byzantiohouston.com 403 W. Gray 77019

hlug: RT @dsilverman: OMG!!1! It's Wednesday, so tonight is Technology Bytes, 8-10p CST 90.1FM, www.kpft.org. We answer your computer questions.

hlug: Linux Workshop starts in TWELVE minutes!! 6-9pm CST at HAL-PC. Don't Tweet & drive!!

So, what do you do on a Wednesday night in the fourth largest city in America? You GEEK OUT, of course! Here's how:

First, some housekeeping details: you may have noticed that I don't update quite as often as in the past. I am no longer an officeholder at the Houston Area League of PC Users, but that organization continues improvement efforts and reorganization as we speak, or type (check their site for the latest).

Second, I continue to press onward with technological interests such as the open source movement, computer security, backup methodology, unusual internet content, publishing, et cetera.

Thirdly, I'll use this blog to prognosticate and pass on interesting tidbits to whomever reads this blog, as well as for my own use (as an online link repository, for example).

Upcoming topics here may include...

The Nmap book by the Nmap guy
BackTrack 4 final release changes and progress
Recent TRK changes and improvements
Adventures In Learning Perl (hopefully without attacking competing languages much)
Adventures In Deleted File Recovery (or Oops I Did It Again, and in a different oddball file format this time)

So stay tuned and let's see what I come up with.

hlug: Holiday Party - "Meet Willie" (Sorry, Simmons not Nelson.) Details at Meetup: http://bit.ly/4UBY6t. Find the RSVP here: http://bit.ly/65C9oR

hlug: HLUG/HAL-PC Samba & Network Admin. mailing list is up: http://bit.ly/753Y2Q. Current project is buiding an ISP-grade mail server.

Although I am mostly ashamed at having been talked into establishing a Facebook account, I have found something about that system that's actually socially redeeming. Somebody established "INTERCAL Enthusiasts" on FB. I'm not even a proper programmer and this is funny to me:

Here is the "Hello, world" program in INTERCAL:

DO ,1 - #13
PLEASE DO ,1 SUB #1 - #234
DO ,1 SUB #2 - #112
DO ,1 SUB #3 - #112
DO ,1 SUB #4 - #0
DO ,1 SUB #5 - #64
DO ,1 SUB #6 - #194
DO ,1 SUB #7 - #48
PLEASE DO ,1 SUB #8 - #22
DO ,1 SUB #9 - #248
DO ,1 SUB #10 - #168
DO ,1 SUB #11 - #24
DO ,1 SUB #12 - #16
DO ,1 SUB #13 - #214
PLEASE READ OUT ,1
PLEASE GIVE UP

For more of whatever the above is, go to

The Intercal Place

, which is outside FB and should be given the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Yes, from OUR Congress.

hlug: Been v.v.v. busy w/ HLUG & HAL bus., no time to tweet. 13 at the WEEKLY Workshop this week, 4 at the Happy Hour afterwards. Come join us!

About a half-dozen denizens of Hal were present at the "users groups" table that Tech Fest afforded us, and the one other group that showed, the Houston Java Users Group. As for us, we got over six sheets' worth of email contacts and I'd guess that it totals to over 100 people expressing interest (Chris or Jim Ward may have the sheets and therefore could give an accurate count).

The scene was mostly .net developers but about 20% of the subjects were applicable to other things. It was well attended by head hunters, too; I'll be there next year.

HAL-PC FUNDRAISER POSTPONED
Due to various time constraints, the Sept. 7th BBQ has been put off at least 6-8 weeks. Stay tuned to the Hal-PC site for re-scheduling notices.
LINUX 101 ROCKS YOUR SOCKS
I dropped into the Linux 101 SIG (special interest group) meeting after the executive committee broke up for the night (and John Davis and me had finished talking about the Houston Punk scene) and saw that they are drawing about the healthy half-dozen or so that my SIG used to draw (I think they're doing OK as well). And I'm not just pimping them because they (Linux 101, 1st Tue. of Month, 7pm, Hal-PC) looked at the latest Linux Mint. But that helped.

hlug: Linux 101 tonight, Workshop & Happy Hour tomorrow -- http://www.meetup.com/houston-linux/

Hit this link for what's happening on September the 26th. Seminars!
Presentations! Job and app training possibilities! More geekiness! Such a deal.

On Labor Day, the Hal-PC folk would like to see you at the Volunteer Appreciation / Fund Raising Event! It's open (to other than registered volunteers with enough time logged) to all for a $15 donation that will help upgrade computers and such. Hours (for eating) are 1-6pm. Time to geekily parTAY. Check the link for directions to the Galleria-area HQ building.

As I understand it, we have a new leader: Ron Lyle! Congratulations to he who stepped up to the plate. An election was held and Ron won (this would have been last Saturday; I was... let's just say "on call"). So under Ron's direction, meetings continue as the masthead of this blog states: every second and fourth Saturday, 2pm at Hal.

In other news, it's been suggested to me (by Jim Ward) that the Presidency of HLUG, as opposed to the Special Interest Group leadership position for the scheduled time slot, become a separate position (I think he had in mind an emeritus capacity). It seems doable to consider me a publicity figurehead at least in order to continue with this blog and other promotional activities, in spite of my employer's shift changes and their effects, which take me out of the scheduled flow. Also, having a President (in addition to a SIG Leader) maintains a connection with the structure of HLUG that originally merged with Hal about ten years ago; continuity is good.

I agree to such an arrangement if it's amenable to the new leader and the membership. Also, I'll be describing/pimping/reviewing the meetings here into the future (and naturally able to review something when I am not called upon to work Saturday and therefore could show up at the meeting).

See some of you at the Hal Board meeting tomorrow night.

hlug: tomorrow (Wed.) - Linux Workshop (6pm at HAL-PC) & Happy Hour (9:30 at Byzantio)

hlug: Added OpenSourceJobs-Charlie McClaskie South Florida ...an IT Recruiter/Columnist for Linux-Mag.comOpenSourceJobs Post if you don't like.

hlug: 1st Byz(antio) tweet -- Workshop report: 12 at the meeting at HAL, 6 went to Byzantio, 5 joined us there; 17 total.

Labor Day BBQ Plans Forming:
Watch the Hal-PC home page for details on the upcoming feedfest. It's a volunteer appreciation event and is being put together as we speak (type).

Saturday HLUG meet:
The 22nd is the second meeting date of the month and so far, there's no new President. I may be able to make it in order to help facilitate an election but if I'm not there, I give my blessing to a quorum present. Here's my suggestion for upcoming topics that I think would make good presentations ---

VMware
Virtual Box
VMware VS Virtual Box
IPv6
current developments in TRK (may have an expert for this)
current developments at insecure.org (I'm looking into this)

More Thoughts On Unconfiguration (if that's a word):
Previously (under the rubric "Off-Topic") I posted on Mac OS 9.1's ability to wipe settings and prefs in a way that distantly suggested sys-unconfig in Solaris. The distant relationship is that one is able to change some things without reinstalling the whole shebang (which can take many, many hours with some of Sun's products as we know). Can someone at a future meeting tell me if this is now possible in some Linux or other? I don't mind admitting that I don't know.

hlug: What a 3rd & 4th tweet today -- I must be insane -- or worse, really getting into this.

hlug: Just added @ConnectLinux & @linuxinstall to our followings -- let me know if they are good, bad, or ugly ...

hlug: I hate tweeting more than 1ce a day, BUT ... big HAL-PC Labor Day BBQ Benefit just approved & announced. ... Save the date, details TBA

hlug: Workshop rpt: 14 attended; 9 went to Byzantio; 2 regulars joined us there & found 2 new friends already there. Sounds like 16 or 18 total!

...and on a Linux basis, it is. But I dabble in all kinds of systems and I just discovered something that might be useful to one or two of you.

PROBLEM:
You have a late-1990's-era Mac (that you aren't using to run NetBSD or FreeBSD or some Linux coded to those processors) with OS9 or 9.1 and you forgot the password. Rather than research which file the password's in (which is probably visible using the version of Norton Utilities or the equivalent app for that OS), you elect to reinstall. But this wipes your unsaved files about which you may have forgotten, as well as preferences, settings, drivers, scripts, OS upgrades and apps, all of which will need to be relocated and installed. How to avoid this?

SOLUTION:
Don't worry about it.

It just so happens that the installer for OS 9.1/9.2 (and maybe further down... can't remember) has a curious set of options under the button labeled so. Using the "Options" button and several other checkboxes that come into play, you get three install choices. You could (in the presence of a pre-existing OS) reinstall:

* Without checking the "clean install" box
* With a check in the "clean install" box
* By selecting the "erase disk" choice (thus making a "clean install" check irrelevant)

Apparently these (ordered) options produce the following results:
* preserves settings and preferences
* wipes setting and preferences; leaves everything else
* bare-metal install - all user-added material lost

I tried the first option and still got the login for the password I couldn't remember. I then tried the second option since I wanted to avoid the third. The result of the second - amazingly - was that I was presented with the opportunity to set a new password, and upon getting in, saw all the apps, files and settings that I'd been afraid I'd lose, and in the places I'd originally put them.

[My guess is that the first two options address only the System Folder and that the third option covers the whole disk. Kinda almost reminds me of sys-unconfig in Solaris.]

Love Macs or hate them, there's a rationale to Macs that once learned, you can repair to and count on, since that unchanging rationale makes its own internal sort of sense. And here comes my theory about the relative business models: that's because there's time to write things that way, as long as you're not part of some organization that aims at being the low-cost leader via saving money on allowed programming hours, then pressing users into service as beta testers... but that would be baseless supposition, right?

hlug: Workshop (6-9 HAL) & Happy Hour (9:30-?? Byzantio) tonight. Either, or, both, & ...

LOTS OF NEWS ABOUT HLUG

1.Last Saturday's Show: The Recent BSD Activity
2.Last Saturday's Show: Synfig's Capabilities
3.The New President Of HLUG

The show of Saturday the 8th saw me get not only the announced topic out of the way, but two others that I'd been wanting to bring up. BSD's movements of late constituted the two unknowns; the announced subject was (at Russell's suggestion) something about Synfig, a tool that could become almost as big as Open Office – at least for the animation community.

The two big differences to my mind between Linux and BSD (the movement beginning in 1993 (93-FreeBSD, 94-NetBSD, 95-OpenBSD, roughly) would be that the license is different, and secondly that the product orientation is way different. By orientation, I mean that the maintainers of these distributions seem to concentrate upon server use and if one wants a full-feature desktop, one can install it oneself. There might be a change in this orientation of theirs in the wind; the first reason that I believe this is the following offering.

PC-BSD is a distribution that takes FreeBSD and puts KDE on top of it. It's a three-CD load and I can't say too much about it because I tried to load the thing onto four different machines at my house and nothing took it. I didn't even get to command line; the install froze about halfway through. Now, one attendee said that he'd gotten it to load in a VM but I'm about ¼ Luddite, so I'm behind on getting any of those virtual products working at my place. I'll complain that any distro that can't load on my stuff needs work at the installer, but that may be just me...

Next reason I think BSD's low opinion of desktop products may be changing is something that I did get going, namely BSD Anywhere. This is a live-CD-only distro that failed on a few of my machines (notably the dual core) but worked on a Dell P3 550mhz with 512 ram from 2002. It's an OpenBSD product running Enlightenment as a desktop and includes a recent Firefox and Thunderbird load (visible on an CDE/NeXT/OSX-like dock at the bottom center of the screen) and although it was a little slow at surfing on this old of a computer, it was serviceable. The really sneaky thing about this distribution was the fact that the GUI (Enlightenment) didn't even list one tenth of the available applications! And if you went to the .org's website, the easily located list under “software” revealed the presence of such tools as netfwd, hydra, iperf, nmap... the list went on and on. I had no idea that this distro qualified as a Security Distribution like Back Track, but it does. Apparently, command-line only versions of the “stealth” apps are the ones included...

Synfig is a tool on which I am absolutely incompetent, but by loading it onto my Core2duo, I could at least prove that it could be installed on Fedora 11 and could run fairly well. This 2-D cartoon illustration system was best demonstrated by the demo reel at the website, but having the tool installed and running allowed my to show what a great job the .org did in putting together the help Wiki. Never liked those things before but this one's slick. And Synfig shows yet again what the Open Source movement can do. Fifty years ago only big animation houses like Disney could afford to do art like this. Today? The capability is free to all. Don't miss the demo movie: they do a scene that mimics the film "Ice Age" perfectly.

OH YES... one little program note. I'm no longer President of HLUG since my employer will now have me on rotating Saturdays, throwing 50 percent of meeting dates askew, so that puts me out. I'll still be attending meetings when possible, plus attending the Wednesday workshops and doing all the Board of Directors stuff. It's just that the conflict with this particular office can't be solved. So be thinking of who you want as President and I'll help as and when I can.

Also, as HLUG moves into the future, I'll note its activities at this blog as well as whatever interests me personally (which I do anyway). My interest in promoting Linux is the same, and so mandates spreading the word about HLUG and Hal-PC in any event.

hlug: lolcat worth posting here: "Kitteh " - http://cheezburger.com/tw/?v1-173944 #lol #ichc Don't forget - Workshop 6-9pm & Byzantio after

Last Saturday's presentation on Subversion, the ubiquitous version control system, consisted in large part of a history of the entire issue of such systems' necessity. How does one organize a project to write a multi-thousand-line program using more than one programmer? As long as one person's writing the program, the problem never comes up. But hand the job to a department of two or more programmers and one needs a way to synchronize the effort.

It occurs to me that the two systems we've examined in detail so far typify the two large conceptual categories of the vast enterprise of software development. Whereas the open source model (illustrated by the development of Linux, for instance) might logically benefit from a decentralized system (like Bazaar), the closed source or corporate model might logically benefit from a centralized system (like Subversion). Ed suggested that the differences between the two categories of systems were less serious than many supposed, and that the considerable configuration options in both were sufficient to accommodate most situations. Furthermore, the claim that one system ate up storage space at a greater rate than the other was shown to be possible in both types, depending upon configuration and one's perspective regarding client or server.

Oops. My tendency to oversimplification is making Ed sound like the fence-sitter that I am, rather than the advocate he may prefer to be... but I'm in a hurry.

Coming up two weeks from last Saturday (August 8th, second Sat. of the month) will be my presentation on an animation program that runs under Linux. Which one? Ah, that would be telling. Stay tuned.

hlug: @linuxquestions Why do I like LQ? ... How shall I count the ways? (w/ apologies to EBB - http://bit.ly/BkI14

hlug: Workshop tonight -- every Wednesday -- 6-9pm & always (for now) Byzantio 9:30 - closing

hlug: 12 at the Workshop last night, 12 at Byzantio after, only 6 overlap. http://bit.ly/xNaiX

I'm well aware that in the world of version control systems, there's a decentralized model, of which Bazaar is a worthy example. We had a good presentation (click on "presentations" at left) from Russell Adams not long ago regarding the broad version control picture and that particular application. There is another perspective, though, being the centralized organizational approach, of which Subversion is a worthy example, and we'll have a show on that program at our next meeting (July 25th).

One reason for doing a Subversion show (in addition to having competent personnel to deliver it) is that nothing succeeds like success. Subversion is one of the leading version control schemes in IT today, and probably the most popular one in the open source movement right now. So we'll give it its due.

Although the show on the 11th may not have been quite tight, the show checked off several subjects I've been keen upon. First of all, I got the core 2 duo running and showed off several nice things:

FEDORA 11: My over-the-wire upgrade from 10.3 to 11.x actually happened. I'd tried that twice before (in Mandriva/Mandrake and in Ubuntu 7.something) and blew away the MBR, the file system, everything. But going to Fedora 11 live ACTUALLY WORKED. The download and reboot/rebuild took about 8.5 hours, but what the heck.

BACK TRACK 4 pre-final release: The live DVD running KDE 4.whateversthelatestversion showed off its newfound stability, as well as the formidable arsenal of tools to do everything from network enumeration to penetration testing to password recovery to cisco-specific analysis and so on.

URBAN TERROR 4: A game based on the open-sourced Quake 3 engine and FREE, I showed off (and on Fedora this time, as opposed to Linux Mint, which I usually run in mixed company) to the small but teeming crowd how fast I could get my posterior handed to me.

There was more, but you had to be there.

UP NEXT: ED ON SUBVERSION (another perspective on version control)!

hlug: No Samba & Net. Admin. this Sat. -- HAL is closed for the holiday.

hlug: Workshop tonight 6-9 Byzantio 9:30 - closing

First of all, the next presentation will give Russell a rest, consisting as it will of myself delivering the long-rumored ripoff of Linux Journal articles (one featuring references to BackTrack, as seen at HLUG presentations recently, and which we'll revisit a bit). We'll also snatch one or two looks at the way they do the "Linux Minute" on their website. This will happen on Saturday, July 11th at 2pm, at the Hal-PC HQ.

Second of all, Russell has uploaded the .pdf of his presentation slides from last Saturday's Linux accounting show, findable at the most recent entry under "presentations" at adamsinfoserv.com.

Third of all, some things being discussed for upcoming shows include a regex review and whatever we can talk Katrina into showing us before she's on assignment again. Mr. Spotswood also is continuing to test various open-source programs and he should have some comment on them before too long.

hlug: Check out pv(Pipe Viewer) http://www.ivarch.com/programs/pv.shtml

HLUG member Robert Spotswood's article on antivirus programs has been updated with more results info HERE.

Russell Adams has confirmed the Linux accounting show (specifically, his approach to it) for the 27th of this month!

My thanks for the votes last meeting, regarding which something like this happened:

ME: "Since it's June, shouldn't there be a..."
RICK: "Nominate chair."
LIGHTSEY: "Second."
CARLILE: "Vote carries."
ME: "... election?"

And that's about the way it went. Moving right along to my continuing conspiracy to get people other than myself to do presentations...

We still have access to Russell Adams, not yet back up East on assignment (report on his Version Control show below) and it looks like we can have him do something on accounting in Linux (which he does, via a text-based scheme). How many times have you suggested Linux only to hear "I'm tied to Microsoft because of Quick Books"? I realize we aren't all accountants or consultants, but such a presentation would break new ground, plus viewers of the video file could benefit.

This would occur on the upcoming fourth Saturday the 27th at the usual 2pm, at the Hal-PC headquarters. I'm 95% sure that a consulting gig has not grabbed him yet for this date.

Version Control is a matter on which I've wanted to have a presentation for some time, and we got someone to do it - and indeed, someone who uses it regularly. Mr. Russell Adams presented a general introduction to the subject (we all use version control - I make documents titled by date all the time), then mentioned the differing organization methods (centralized like Subversion vs. decentralized like Git and Bazaar). He favors Bazaar; check on his site under "Presentations" for the slides he used (created in Org-Mode, of course...!).

hlug: @shardrix Doesn't "hlug" count as a HAL twitter?

hlug: At HLUG today Russell Adams: VERSION CONTROL SYSTEMS! see: http://www.petejamison.blogspot.com/

Since Russell Adams is not on assignment at the moment, he can deliver us the following presentation:

VERSION CONTROL SYSTEMS!
NEXT MEETING!
ON THE THIRTEENTH!!!

He'll give a short history of version control programs so that the lesser-initiated will be aware of the problems that such schemes address. Then he'll give an in-depth description of his preferred program (one of the distributed-model ones as opposed to the central-server-model ones, not that I'm slamming the latter category).

The Linux Journal tribute and article/idea ripoff program will move one meeting into the future.

hlug: Heading to HAL for the Weekly Linux Workshop http://bit.ly/wLL8S

hlug: Now the important news: Added the Weekly Workshop to the LQ calendar http://bit.ly/wLL8S

hlug: 31 followers, wow :-J (that's tongue-in-cheek ;-))

Due to the 3-day weekend, there will be no meeting on 5/23/09 (I wish Hal-PC had a more predictable schedule about holidays). Here are the upcoming dates and topics:

JUNE 13th: LINUX JOURNAL ripoff day (coverage of several of their recent major articles)
JUNE 27th: OPEN SOLARIS AND ITS SUB-DISTRIBUTIONS
JULY 11th: RECOVERING LOST DATA WITH TRINITY RESCUE KIT
JULY 25th: OPEN

(...if I do say so myself)

On Saturday, 9 May of this year, it was revealed that I think that LinuxXP is the worst Linux distribution ever - except that I LIED. It really isn't.

But all this isn't false advertising because when I originally started kicking the tires on it about a month ago, that was my opinion THEN. Since then, I'm a little more sympathetic to the developer because it actually delivered on some of the promise of the concept. Also, leaving aside that there are more interesting things happening in Linux than this, I provided an historical service to the Linux community by focusing on this distro, since (evinced by web searches) there are some that think that this distro is a hoax. But it's true; a guy in Russia (where Russian versions are apparently selling for about 1700 rubles or 50 bucks American) decided to try to make Linux easier for Windows users by taking a copy of Linux and putting a custom GUI on top that looks like XP.

Basically this 2008 version (shareware 30 days) that I tested revealed itself to be a year-old copy of Fedora with the Gnome desktop running WINE underneath the GUI that offered stuff like XP-ish icons and a "Start" button in the lower left hand corner.

To its credit, WINE ran both the installers and the programs of several things I tested like WinRAR, Microsoft Encarta (failing at the point where it had to integrate with Windows Media Player, of course) and several archiving programs. No special button-pushing required: just plop in the CD, open the disc-looking icon and look around for something with a .exe on the end of it and click. And surprise: WINE was not slow! This test machine was a P3 550 with 458 on the RAM, built in Feb. of 2000 and it was perking along nicely. Whatever the objection to WINE (like your favorite program not showing up on the compatibility list yet), it's at least not slow in these latter years.

Courtesy of the Gnome crew, there was another concession to the Windows user, being a ripoff of "System Information", the convenient little report that tells about the OS build, hardware specifics, etc. The Gnome version was far more comprehensive than that in XP though, resembling the "Apple System Profiler" that some of you know well.

Although some things worked better than I've experienced in more than a few Linux-i (like super easy installation of Firefox plug-ins for Adobe stuff), LinuxXP is an example of a strategy whose time has probably passed. The other example of WINE reliance (Lindows/Linspire) I have no experience with, but five years ago it was persuasive that Linux was scaring Windows users since they had trouble finding basic controls. But today GUI development has converged so much that many things look like all the other examples in modern OS's. Maybe people are less scared of computing in general as well.

So there you have it. Next meeting (skipping one slot of course due to Memorial Day), I think I'll have another weirdo OS for you, BUT THIS TIME AROUND which may be relevant to your getting a job or something. Stay tuned...

hlug: Also at HAL (www.hal-pc.org/map) today, Bob DuVernay on Acronis & Casper. 1pm . . . I may start Samba late.

hlug: It's Samba Saturday -- Samba & Net. Admin. SIG meets at 2 at HAL www.hal-pc.org/map. Disaster Recovery, Episode 2

Linux 101 - first Tuesday of the month at 7pm with Sibley Cooley. Basic tools and distributions.
Linux Workshop - every Wednesday from 6 to 9pm in the back lab. Bring your machine and we'll help with installs.
HLUG - two Saturdays a month (second and fourth) at 2pm, featuring a speaking presentation on a topic of interest.

A local representative of SANS, Mike Pilkington, gave a sample module of his Wireless Security course at our last HLUG meeting. SANS is a group that gives computer administration and security classes nationwide and beyond, and from what I saw, at a high level of technical detail and competence. A highlight of the talk (for me at least) was when he used the venerable BackTrack 3 in the testing of various aspects of the local network. I was quite pleased that he did so noninvasively, so as to prevent anyone official from bursting into the room and demanding an explanation. Video of the talk should show up here before too long. Also, Mike's class, Security 617, is detailed here.

Next Meeting:
On Saturday, May 9 at 2pm at the Hal-PC offices, I'll deliver a demonstration of what I'll style THE WORST LINUX DISTRIBUTION IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE. Airsickness bags will be provided.

hlug: Reminder: Weekly Linux Workshop tomorrow: 6-9 @HAL-PC www.hal-pc.org/map Installs, problems solved, friends & talk Dinner after 9:30 -- ???

hlug: 4 new followers this am, Welcome. Hope you are interested in Linux & HLUG. This is mostly about what we're doing in Houston.

hlug: SAT 4/25/09: Pen Testing DeLuxe Mr. Mike Pilkington (teacher of an upcoming SANS mentor class) petejamison.blogspot.com www.hal-pc.org/map

Mr. Mike Pilkington (teacher of an upcoming SANS mentor class) will address HLUG this Saturday at 2pm on wireless access point security. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're wondering why a Linux users' group would want to know about network security in the context of mostly making a bunch of Windows users happy. Here's two reasons:

First, networks largely feeding gobs of Windows boxes constitute the environment that Linux often finds itself in.

Second, Mike will demonstrate the "evaluation" of networks using various Linux-based doohickeys (if that's the way you spell the plural of 'doohickey'). Be there or be uninformed.

hlug: geting ready for the Wed. Linux Workshop @ HAL-PC (6-9) www.hal-pc.org/map & dinner @ Byzatio @9:30 afterward www.byzantiohouston.com