[ncolug] February NCOLUG Mtg

From: "M. Knisely" <charon79m@xxxxxxxxx>
To: ncolug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:50:57 -0500
Well the February meeting has come and gone.  Topics covered were:


*Unison:*

Unison is a file synchronization program available for Linux, Mac, and
Windows.  We demonstrated this application's ability to make some pretty
logical decisions about how to synchronize directories.  We also looked at
the efficiencies of syncing the deltas instead of rewriting the entire file,
thank you rsync!

Running the app is incredibly simple:  unison root1 root2

What this command will do is compare the two directories "root1" and
"root2".  The first time the command runs it catalogs the files in each
directory and learns what needs done to sync the directories.  By default,
it looks for user input to verify the sync process, but you soon learn that
this little app is pretty good at knowing what needs done.  The only time I
found that I would need to intercede would be in the "Oh, I didn't mean to
delete that!" situations.

Unison is one amazing little app with some VERY powerful features.  I'm
definitely going to keep this tool at my disposal!


*SSH:*

Part of the beauty of Unison is that it is capable of syncing across an SSH
session.  In exploring this idea, we got into some of the other fantastic
things you can do with SSH.  First we looked at the basics of remote console
access.  Next we had some fun pulling xeyes across the tunnel.  Once we
tried a more intense application, synaptic, we found that compression was a
necessity.  Once we looked at tunneling X11, it was natural to explore all
the other fun you can have through an SSH tunnel.  We looked at local and
remote port forwarding and talked about the HUGE security implications of
this.  LOTS of fun!


*Mini-mini-install-fest-ish:*

Some of you may be familiar with the term Install-Fest... for those who are
not, this is a meeting where people bring in their machines and we get Linux
up an running on them.  Often this type of a meeting happens over a weekend
where you can devote an entire day to getting some old clunker to run the
most recent release of Mandrivia... I wan The Spinning CUBE OF COMPIZ
MAN!!!!  but I digress.

So we had some users that needed machines tweeked, so we spent the rest of
the time working out some kinks.

We had a user with a laptop running Ubuntu that needed some updates and some
programming tools, so we got those going.  Thank you, MT Business
Technologies Advanced Systems Group for your new "more speedy" Internet
pipe!

Another user had a laptop running some OS sold out of Redmond, Wa... Can't
remember the name Velveta, Visualy Impared, Visitor, eh... anyway... He,
logically wanted to put Linux on this machien but didn't want to partition
the drive up.  We used my bootable thumb drive to install Ubuntu inside this
other OS using Wubi.

Lastly, we had a poor soul that was experiencing some odd display issues
when running X.  These types of quirks used to be a common occurance in
Linux; however, over the last 5 years they've all but become extinct.  We
did some digging on that and found a fix for the display error.
Interestingly his system wouldn't completely shut down after this "fix."
Hopefully he has some time to dig into the side-effect and post back the
ultimate solution.

#####################

In all, teh February meeting was a wonderful time.  I look forward to the
March meeting and am open for topic suggestions!  Hey, maybe someone else
would even like to take a turn presenting?

Michael J. Knisely
[ncolug] February NCOLUG Mtg

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