Linux Sessions

Conference Keynote
07/19/2000, 8:45am to 10:15am in Serra I & II

  • Open Source and the Personal Computer Revolution
    Presented by Andy Hertzfeld

    The personal computer revolution was initially driven by enthusiasts, propelled by their idealism and passion . My talk will compare the early days of the personal computer industry with the current situation of the open source movement. It will focus on my experiences at Apple, describing some of the key people at Apple and how their personalities worked their way into their products, especially dwelling on the development of the Macintosh computer. The talk will discuss the structural problems that ensnared the personal computer industry in the 1980s and articulate how the open source movement can help to resolve them. Finally, it will look at the challenges that lie ahead for the open source movement, emphasizing the crucial issue of usability, discussing what the community can do to make open source software easier to use for mainstream users.

 
Linux Applications
07/19/2000, 10:45am to 12:15pm in Ferrante I - III

  • MySQL Optimization or How to Get Your Database Application to go Really Fast
    Presented by David Axmark, Michael (Monty) Widenius

    We'll start with an introduction to MySQL and follow with a tutorial on how to optimize MySQL. For general information about MySQL see http://mysql.com.

 
Linux Landscape
07/19/2000, 10:45am to 12:15pm in Steinbeck

  • State of Linux Security
    Presented by Simson Garfinkel

    The Year 2000 opened with a dud, security wise: despite the predictions of many, the world of computers didn't ground to a halt, and crackers didn't use widespread Y2K related failures as cover for their own attacks. But in the months since we have seen repeated security incidents, including the distributed denial-of-service attacks in February 2000, repeated Visual Basic worms that have disrupted thousands of corporations, and repeated instances of e-commerce firms that did not properly safeguard their customer's data. Although Linux is generally regarded as a secure operating system, you cannot allow your choice of operating system to be a substitute for ongoing vigillance. In this talk, Simson Garfinkel, co-author of Practical UNIX Security, looks at the current "best practices" recommendations of computer security organizations and sees how these apply to both Linux and multi-operating system environments.

  • Linux as the Data Protection Engine
    Presented by Randy Thorburn

    The Linux operating system has found early acceptance in corporations around the world in the role of print server, Web server and email server. But is it ready to take on the mission-critical duties of a backup server? Can you trust your company's crown jewels (its data) to such a young operating system, and what tools are available to make implementation more palatable?. We will show why Linux makes a great data protection server, suitable for almost any size environment. You'll learn how inherent reliability, economical hardware implementations, cost-effective scalability, market growth and acceptance, widespread support,and a growing applications software base account for the widening deployment of Linux within enterprise computing environments.

 
Linux Landscape
07/19/2000, 1:30pm to 3:00pm in Steinbeck

  • Open Source, The Internet, and Apache: The Fates of Computer Technologies
    Presented by Michael Tiemann

    In his book "Guns, Germs, and Steel", Jared Diamond applies a wide range of scientific techniques to answer a historical question: why was material wealth distributed so unequally across different peoples of the world? In this talk, we will apply similar reasoning to the field of computer technology, arguing that open source will be every bit decisive in determining the balance of technological power as guns were to determining the balance of military power.

  • New Challenges for the Linux Community
    Presented by Matt Welsh

    Linux has certainly evolved beyond its garage-hacker roots. People take Linux seriously now. It's often cited as the chief competitor to Microsoft, and the success of Red Hat and other companies is a strong indicator of Linux's continuing growth in the operating systems market. But is that all? Have we won? Is Linux simply "good enough" now and we can continue to just ride the wave of hype and IPOs until we're all rich? I argue that despite our successes, there are still a number of important challenges facing the Linux community. Unless we start to take action now, Linux won't be able to stay on the bleeding edge of technology. It's important that we remember the "fire beneath our feet" lest we become complacent and think that we don't need to continue working hard to keep up with changes in technology and the marketplace. In this talk, I'm going to outline some of the major issues facing the Linux community today, and talk about what I think can be done to solve them. These include problems with hardware support, the lack of experienced developers, the difficulty of finding good documentation, and the inherent limitations of the Open Source development model. I think that Linux can continue to be one of the most important operating systems in the market, but only if we have some direction to keep us on the right track.

 
Linux Applications
07/19/2000, 3:30pm to 5:00pm in Ferrante I - III

  • Doing Things with Words
    Presented by Kevin Lenzo

    Imagine a humanoid robot you couldn't talk to. Admittedly, this might be a boon--at Carnegie Mellon University we have robots walking the halls and chattering at us, though they're hardly humanoid yet. The popular conception of a humanoid robot includes speech interaction. You don't want to have to go up to the robot and type into it--you want to talk to it. The same is true of many software agents. We'll explore open source speech technology and how to put together an application with it. We won't spend much time on "intelligence," or getting the machine to reason, but rather on getting the speech in and out when working with applications. The 90-minute talk is in 3 parts: Recognition (CMU Sphinx), Synthesis (Festival), and Integration (SFipe, "Sphinx and Festival in a Pipe").

 
Linux Systems
07/19/2000, 3:30pm 0

  • Creating Web Farms with Linux
    Presented by Simon Horman

    Since the release of fake much work has been done to realise a High Availability solution under Linux. In this time significant gains have also been made towards scaling services using Linux. This paper will focus on high availability and scalability technologies used to build a web farm. Web farms provide an interesting application of these technologies and is an area where Linux is becoming more and more accepted.

  • Virtual Network Computing
    Presented by James Weatherall, Adam J. Richter

    Virtual Network Computing [VNC] enables an economical and effective client-server capability within a Linux environment. Given this, VNC.holds much promise for extending the value of Linux to a broader set of users across a wide range of markets. It does, though, have more limitations then competing products for other operating systems. This session is intended to increase the visibility of VNC within the Linux open source community, acknowledge the contributions made to date, discuss the current limitations, and build support for turning VNC into an extensible, robust delivery vehicle.

 
Conference Keynote
07/20/2000, 8:45am to 10:15am in Serra I & II

  • Open Source Challenges
    Presented by Tim O'Reilly

  • The Coming Comfy Culture
    Presented by Gregory Benford

    In a unique and riveting Keynote, well known 'hard' science fiction author and physicist Gregory Benford asks the question "Where will cheap chips and servile software take us in a few decades? Building on his experience in constructing devices designed to communicate meaningfully across hundreds of decades (he was part of the team that developed markers for U.S. nuclear waste sites that must last 10,000 years) with his knowledge of technology, Benford looks at the future in terms of fundamental cultural shifts and what they mean. Our future digitized culture will not necessarily share our assumptions or visions. That future will enjoy an ever-attentive urban landscape, one tuned at every turn by ingratiating machines. Products will fare well if they can anticipate how well that culture will accept fine shadings of machine obedience and intrusion into personal lives. How comfy will we get before we object? Much depends upon how we see ourselves.

 
Linux Applications
07/20/2000, 10:45am to 12:15pm in Ferrante I - III

  • GNUMed, An Open Source Comprehensive Software Package for Paperless Medical.Practice
    Presented by Horst Herb

    Medical practice depends on reliable data storage and retrieval as well as expert systems, and is unthinkable without confidentiality of patient data. Yet virtually all commercial software packages are untrustworthy, as the source code is not available and their security behavior in networks is therefore unpredictable. GNUMed, to our knowledge the most comprehensive and secure system of its kind, meets all the needs of a paperless medical practice and sets standards in safety, robustness, connectivity, and data interchangeability. Its "three-tier" model isolates the user interface completely and makes WAN administration of patient databases easy. The transaction server keeps a second human-readable transaction log and monitors the database in a background process continuously for integrity. Encryption of all data is handled by plug-ins for the transaction server.

  • Understanding Linux Certification and Training Opportunities
    Presented by Dan York

    With the Linux operating system receiving a large amount of publicity lately, the question for training centers is what can they do to start teaching classes in Linux. This presentation will address: the current state of Linux certification programs; how training centers can become involved in these programs; what market is out there for Linux classes; how to find instructors and resources to teach Linux; issues particular to setting up classrooms for Linux; resources available for training centers within the larger Linux community. Participants will leave understanding not only the market for Linux training, but also how they can get their training center up and running with teaching this exciting new operating system.

 
Linux Systems
07/20/2000, 10:45am to 12:15pm in Steinbeck

  • State of Samba and Samba Configuration
    Presented by John Terpstra

    Description Coming Soon

  • Porting Windows NT Server Software to Linux
    Presented by Jeremy Allison

    Many Windows NT developers are interested in moving their software to Linux. This tutorial will cover the problems involved, some common pitfalls and the differences between such things as Windows and Linux threading models, synchronisation primitives, inter-process communication, networking APIs and control of server processes. This will be a very technical talk of value to advanced Win32 API developers.

 
Linux Systems
07/20/2000, 1:30pm to 3:00pm in Steinbeck

  • Installing Linux Clusters and Server Farms with VACCINE
    Presented by Roland Dreier

    Join in a demonstration of a highly scalable system for setting up large Linux installations, which present several logistical challenges. Even after the computers have been racked and cabled, setting up the software can consume quite a bit of time. Methods that are acceptable for handling a few systems become prohibitively time-consuming for large installations. We will explore solutions to the problems of node identification, system image distribution, and post-install configuration that can scale to clusters and server farms with thousands of nodes.

  • Implementing Diskless Workstations in a Linux Environment
    Presented by Jim McQuillan, Ron Colcernian

    Linux makes a great platform for deploying diskless workstations that boot from a network server. The goal of the Linux Terminal Server Project (www.LTSP.org) is to create the administration tools to deploy and manage diskless workstations (thin clients) in an enterprise setting. Learn why this technology is so important to the success of Linux in the corporate environment. We have already saved several customers many thousands of dollars and it has earned a first place award in the First Annual Linux Solutions contest put on by the Linux Consultants Support and Resource Center, VarBusiness, and LinuxToday.com.

 
Linux Systems
07/20/2000, 3:30pm to 5:00pm in Steinbeck

  • An Industrial Strength Network Block Device
    Presented by Peter T. Breuer

    The original Linux Network Block Device driver, created by Pavel Machek, has been enhanced for use in an industrial setting. Its networking code has been brought userside to allow secure connections and authentication over dedicated SSL/TCP links. The protocol itself now includes block request journalling and automatic fallover to working channels from dead channels; plus automatic reintegration of recovered links, asynchronous working for greater speed, striped communications and resource distribution, and other goodies designed to secure the driver against attacks and failures. We'll unpack the current device and its development history, how it can be used as part of a secure remote storage solution, and where and how it overcomes defects in the original driver.

  • Transparent Mirroring via the Yoke Device
    Presented by Peter T. Breuer

    The problem with mirrors is that there is never one around when you need it. But production machines can't put up a mirror just like that. The Linux kernel's RAID facilities require the mirror to present itself as a separate device, which means turfing out all local and remote processes on a vulnerable partition in order to remount it under the umbrella of a mirror. Changes in the mirror composition also require profound configuration changes. The yoke device makes mirroring easier by making it transparent. A mirrored partition controlled by yoke is accessible in the same way as it was before--except that all writes to it are now mirrored silently to all the other current facets of the mirror. Mirror facets can be added and removed while the mirror is running. The yoke driver runs a "union block device," composed of a shifting group of participant devices. The current device is the hub in a star topology of local and remote mirror parts, forming a distributed network device. We'll talk about the devices principle of operation. It cuckoos for its facets in a generic manner in-kernel, intercepting calls and substituting and passing on its own. Different mechanisms are required for different major kernel versions.

 
Linux Landscape
07/20/2000, 3:30pm to 5:00pm in Ferrante I - III

  • Measuring and Predicting Hardware Reliability Under Linux
    Presented by Sam Ockman

  • Gotcha's of Starting Again: Building Linux for the Business Back-End
    Presented by John Terpstra

    Find out about the process and obstacles that had to be overcome in the building of TurboLinux 6.0. Starting with a Linux distribution based on glibc 2.0 and egcs-1.x this should surely be a simple task, right? Well, come and hear how this affects you as a programmer and how you as an open source contributor can help to make the next such change a lot less painful.

 

Session room assignments are subject to change.