Presentations
- Providing Active Directory services from Linux, using Samba4 - Andrew Bartlett
- Rapid repeatable provisioning of Linux systems - Richard Keech
- Automating system administration - Devdas Bhagat
- A new device mapper snapshot implementation - Tomonori Fujita
- Free and Open Source Software in Environmental Forecasting - Christopher Edsall
- System-level Performance Management with PCP - Nathan Scott
- Rails Deployment In The Enterprise - Transmitting A Litle Experience - Robert Postill
- Managing systems with Red Hat Satellite - Richard Keech
- 747s on Treadmills: Experiences scaling uptime and management in the face of the Thundering Masses - Matt Moor
- System administration consequences of the endgame of IPv4 and deployment of IPv6 - Glen Turner
- Google and IPv6 - Angus Lees
- Database backed DNS systems - Devdas Bhagat
- Keeping On Trac - Steven Ellis
- Help! My spam filter is eating my real email! - Roland Turner
- I Hate Spam - Peter Chubb
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Providing Active Directory services from Linux, using Samba4 - Andrew Bartlett
In this talk Andrew Bartlett will look at the challenges and experiences from the first production deployments of Samba4, as an Active Directory Domain Controller.
This talk will give a practical demonstration on how system Administrators can now deploy Samba4 into their production environments, thus doing it's small part in ridding the world of some of Microsoft's dominance.
Active Directory and it's logon protocols are no longer the sole preserve of proprietory software, with Samba4 providing the crucial bridge between Windows desktops and the world of free software.
Bio
Andrew has been a member of the Samba Team since 2001, and has worked on the Samba4 project since 2004. Andrew's development focus in on Authentication systems (such as Kerberos) but he takes a keen interest in all the pieces that make Samba4 an Active Directory domain controller. He regularly speaks at the annual SambaXP conference in Germany, and at the annual CIFS conference in San Jose.
Away from the computer Andrew prefers to be cycling or walking the Australian Bush.
Length: 50m
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Rapid repeatable provisioning of Linux systems - Richard Keech
Installing Red Hat / Fedora systems can be automated using Kickstart.
This presentation describes how Kickstart can be used as part of a custom build disc for RHEL/CentOS/Fedora. The system provides a means of building systems that is:
- scripted, not image-based
- self contained
- adaptable
- rapid
- able to support multiple install profiles
- able to be version-controlled
I've developed this system in consulting to Red Hat customers over the last three years and I've found it very successful.
Bio:
Richard Keech has been an instructor and consultant for Red Hat for nearly nine years. In 1998 he became the first RHCE. He has presented at many conferences including AUUG / SAGE conferences. Richard is an Engineering Graduate of RMIT.
Length: 50 minutes
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Automating system administration - Devdas Bhagat
This talk will cover the benefits and challenges involved in automating system administration.
Most system administrators know why they need to automate. The theory behind this is less well known than the practice. However, with established teams and manual processes, it can be fairly difficult to get things to change.
The talk will cover a real life example of how the speaker managed to get a team of 48 people who used to do things manually (or with minimal shell scripting) to move to an automated process. We will take a look at the technology involved, as well as the people issues.
Bio
Devdas Bhagat is a long time Linux user, a system administrator, a developer and has done some network engineering. His work background is mostly in the Internet/ISP sector.
Devdas currently works at Directi, a fairly large domain registrar, where he is responsible for improving the system administration and development groups, in terms of reliability, work quality and turn around times for requests.
Length: 25 minutes
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A new device mapper snapshot implementation - Tomonori Fujita
The device snapshot feature is very useful for various purposes, backup on a file server, virtual machine management, etc. The Linux kernel provides Device Mapper snapshot functionality (dm-snapshot). However, when you create lots of snapshots, the performance greately degrades. It's an inherent problem with the current dm-snapshot design.
I'll talk about a new device mapper snapshot implementation that I've been working on , the implementation difference, performance results, etc. I also talk about remote replication solution exploiting the new snapshot feature.
Bio
Tomonori FUJITA has worked with the Linux kernel at NTT, he focuses on storage issues; SCSI, the block subsystem, IOMMU, etc. He talked at Ottawa Linux Symposium 2005 and 2006, Linux Storage & Filesystem Workshop 2007 and 2008.
Length: 25 minutes
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Free and Open Source Software in Environmental Forecasting - Christopher Edsall
Several years ago an interdisciplinary team of scientists and IT staff set out to create an integrated suite of environmental prediction models (weather, sea state, river flow, inundation). "EcoConnect" - a 24 by 7 operational system - was built using a large number of Free and Open Source packages.
This talk will detail some of the architecture choices made and demonstrate how FOSS packages are used in the software development, deployment, product generation, scheduling and monitoring of our system. And there will be animations.
Bio
My first experience of linux was when I studied physics and Canterbury University. I then went on to work at an ISP before coming to NIWA to administer the Cray supercomputer.
I have attended LCA's since the 2006 one in Dunedin.
Length: 25 minutes
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System-level Performance Management with PCP - Nathan Scott
A detailed look at Performance Co-Pilot ( http://oss.sgi.com/projects/pcp ) and its use in analysing and managing the performance of complex systems. Practical deployment, operational and analysis advice is on offer, from someone using these tools on a day-to-day basis on production systems to understand real problems.
This talk is particularly suited to people attempting to understand the behaviour and performance of distributed systems, clusters, NUMA systems, "interesting" storage subsystems, etc.
Bio
Nathan has been a performance analyst working at Aconex for a few years now, and has many years of software development experience prior to that. In a past life, he worked as part of the XFS filesystem development team, hacking on the Linux kernel, and still dabbles there from time-to-time.
He has been using and improving the PCP toolkit for many years, and expects to do so for many more.
Length: 25 minutes
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Rails Deployment In The Enterprise - Transmitting A Litle Experience - Robert Postill
After deploying a number of Rails applications I've started to develop some knowledge about how to deploy Rails applications. Certainly I've started to answer some of the basic questions:
- How can I deploy a Rails application in a mixed environment?
- What will I need to do to have a secure ruby version?
- What can I expect from Ruby performance wise?
- Which libraries should I pick?
- How can I test the application's performance?
- What marks Linux out as a deployment platform for Ruby and Rails applications?
So in this talk I'm going to make some suggestions that should help you get through your early rails deployments. Certainly they should save you some of the pain that I've experienced. At least some of these suggestions will apply even if you're developing an application on your own, however all of the suggestions will apply to the enterprise. They'll help you get going, grow with minimal pain and stay secure as you grow.
Why do I want to do that? Because I've been deploying Java and Rails in corporates over seven years, mainly in large corporates with big infrastructure functions. These departments need to help to decide what they should do about Rails and Ruby. Because deploying a new application needs a plan, more so if the application is written in a new language. Because if you take on some of those ideas then that will help us both if I come and work with you. Finally, because if the ideas are given some testing, some intellectual examination and the proverbial kick in the tyres then the ideas get better.
Bio
I've been doing architecture, development and systems administration consulting for over six years now. Specifically I have been working for large Australian Corporations like Sensis and NAB for he last three years. At Sensis I had the opportunity to develop three rails applications and am just completing a JRuby application. Before that I've consulted for the likes of Nokia, Rolls Royce and various UK public sector organisations. I have also worked in the managed backup and disaster recovery space as a senior UNIX admin. My linkedin profile fills in some more details.
Length: 50 minutes
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Managing systems with Red Hat Satellite - Richard Keech
Managing large-scale installations of Red Hat Enterprise Linux often involves the use of a system known as Satellite. This talk describes how organisations use Satellite to make their management and operation of Linux systems more efficient. Satellite can also be used as part of a PXE-based solution for System provisioning. The talk describes how to install systems from a Satellite.
Bio
Richard Keech has been an instructor and consultant for Red Hat for nearly nine years. In 1998 he became the first RHCE. He has presented at many conferences including AUUG / SAGE conferences. Richard is an Engineering Graduate of RMIT.
Length: 25 minutes
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747s on Treadmills: Experiences scaling uptime and management in the face of the Thundering Masses - Matt Moor
In 2007, Bulletproof Networks got the opportunity to host a major donations drive for a notable Australian charity. Hilarity ensued as we realised just how much load a PHP driven website could generate.
In 2008, we decided a little more forethought and a little less melting might be a good idea. Over a period of three months, we designed and redesigned the architecture, planned and tested our assumptions and debated with the developers.
Through a combination of VMware, really large boxes, and lots of open source software we've managed to survive hundreds of thousands of donations, tens of megabits of traffic, and multiple major hardware failures. All in six weeks.
In this talk, I'll talk about what we did right, what we did wrong, and the realities of scaling PHP web applications without significant developer time.
Bio
Matt Moor is a Senior Architect at Bulletproof Networks, a Managed Hosting Provider, and has been using and working with Open Source for around 10 years, 7 of which as a professional sysadmin.
Matt spends his time designing, building and troubleshooting networks based around IPTables, LVS, Apache, Squid, VMware and Cisco. Occasionally, people make him do stuff with Enterprise applications, too.
Matt has been involved in the Open Source community since 2001, and was on the committee of the Sydney Linux Users Group from 2005 - 2008. Matt was also heavily involved in building and operating the LCA2007 network.
Length: 50 minutes
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System administration consequences of the endgame of IPv4 and deployment of IPv6 - Glen Turner
Unused IPv4 address space will be unavailable from 2011. ISPs will respond by minimising future IPv4 address use, most importantly by extensive use of network address translation within ISP's networks.
Network address translation is extensively used within customer sites today. It's use within ISP's networks has to date been limited to speciality networks such as 3G, and even then customers tend to have differing IPv4 addresses.
This talk teases out the implications for system administrators in this pending change in Internet design towards "carrier-class NAT". In particular, the threat of the return of the pre-Internet "walled garden" of access to only ISP-mediated services is examined with care: what mechanisms could be used, what defences are possible for providers of non-ISP-supported applications?
IPv6 is a failing response to the exhaustion of new IPv4 addresses. Despite its low deployment to date, it is possible for ISPs to rapidly deploy this protocol. A rapidity for which system administrators may not be prepared for.
This talk examines the steps which system administrators should take to be prepared for an IPv6 deployment, and then the steps to actually deploy IPv6 when connectivity is available. The traps encountered by system administrators in actual deployments are discussed.
Techniques for test IPv6 connectivity are discussed.
Bio
Glen has been a senior network engineer with Australia's Academic & Research Network (AARNet) since 1998. During that time he has: co-designed and deployed two ISP-sized networks, repaired countless university networks, designed and deployed two generations of QoS, and was deeply involved in Australia's first large rollouts of VoIP, multicast and IPv6, written vast amounts of documentation and drunk far too much coffee.
Length: 50 minutes
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Google and IPv6 - Angus Lees
At Google, we've been investigating serving over IPv6. I'll present a combination of talks recently given elsewhere: A general overview of Google's work with IPv6 and future plans, and present the results of some IPv6 usage/impact statistics that we've gathered from Google users.
The general message will be "IPv6 is real and coming soon to a popular website near you" and admins will be given advice on what they should verify on their network in order to be ready. Much of our experiences will be of interest to other content providers also.
Bio
Angus lived in Sydney until starting work for Google in Dublin, Ireland in 2005. Since deciding to start the IPv6 project over lunch one day, he has been part of a small team working to add a AAAA record to www.google.com.
In his pre-Google life, he was actively involved with the Sydney Linux User's Group and previous LCAs. He has worked for various companies as a sysadmin/programmer, from online casinos to satellite networking in the desert.
Length: 50 minutes
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Database backed DNS systems - Devdas Bhagat
For people who have more than a few zones to manage, editing BIND's flat files is a lot of work. This is specially true if management of each zone is delegated to other people, as in the case of ISPs, domain registrars or DNS providers.
For such users, a database backed DNS system is useful because it allows for easier-to-build web based control panels, without the complexity of editing flat files.
The speaker has experience with two database backed nameservers, BIND-DLZ and PowerDNS. The talk will cover both servers in brief, including configuration and performance
Bio
Devdas Bhagat is a long time Linux user, a system administrator, a developer and has done some network engineering. His work background is mostly in the Internet/ISP sector.
Devdas currently works at Directi, a fairly large domain registrar, where he is responsible for improving the system administration and development groups, in terms of reliability, work quality and turn around times for requests.
Length: 25 minutes
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Keeping On Trac - Steven Ellis
Trac is a powerful and effective tool to manage a wide variety of projects, small or large, that aims to be simple to deploy, manage, and use. This simplicity has seen a huge level of adoption amongst a wide variety of Open Source projects, as well as the project management tool of choice within numerous enterprise environments.
- Are you capturing all of your tasks and workload?
- Colour coded post-it notes are not sufficient.
- Just how useful is your documentation?
- You do have documentation don't you?
- Version more than your code.
- Yes even Sys Admins generate code.
As well as covering the key concepts of Trac the talk will work through some example use cases of how Trac can be leveraged by Sys Admins as well as your company's development teams. Trac might even be good enough to get that manager off your back as he can now see what is going on without calling yet another pointless meeting.
Bio
Steven's passion for FOSS comes from both development and operational experience. Within his role as OpenMedia's Technical Director he provides technical direction and operational guidance for a number of New Zealand companies on the use of Open Source and Linux. For over three years he ran the Linux operations team at IBM NZ, and looked after a number of their enterprise customers in the Asia Pacific market.
As developer of the MythTV based consumer appliance myPVR for OpenMedia, Steven has leveraged his over 12 years experience with Linux, and nearly 20 years experience of FOSS. OpenMedia was one of the first companies in the world to offer a truly consumer ready appliance based on MythTV.
This background and experience provides an interesting bridge between two quite contrasting worlds, the consumer versus large scale business.
Length: 25 minutes
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Help! My spam filter is eating my real email! - Roland Turner
No-one has produced a perfect filter to differentiate spam from "ham", so while your spam filter is stopping most of your spam, it's also stopping some of the email that you actually want to receive. Worse, as spam volumes continue to grow - and spam filters therefore become more aggressive - the amount of legitimate email that is being lost is on the rise.
BoxSentry's pioneering approach to reducing this problem it to focus primarily on identifying legitimate senders and authenticating messages that claim to be from these senders, largely through analysing users' communication patterns and behaviour. To date, our approach has only been available as an email security appliance, sized and priced for medium to large enterprises and service providers. We are now making available open-source tools - and the integration into several widely used email-servers, email-clients and email security tools - to allow individuals and small organisations to take advantage of this same approach.
This talk will:
- explain the problem, including detailed examples of where anti-spam systems can't help but make mistakes
- explain BoxSentry's approach
- briefly introduce the open-source components and tools that we are making available to allow anyone (well, anyone who uses email or maintains open-source email software) to use our approach.
Bio
Raz is a roaming Aussie, currently based in Singapore. He has been a FL/OSS advocate since the late '80s and an email admin in various volunteer and professional capacities since the early '90s. In addition to co-founding the UTS Programmers' Society and the Sydney chapter of the Australian Public-Access Network Association, he is most proud of both having originally proposed licensing the Mozilla source tree under the Gnu GPL (i.e. in additional to the MPL) and then convincing several Netscape employees that it was worth doing.
He is currently working as Product Manager for BoxSentry, an innovative Singapore-based company where he is leading the design and deployment effect for their flagship product, RealMail. He is thrilled to finally be releasing as FL/OSS something that he's produced for his day job.
Length: 25 minutes
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I Hate Spam - Peter Chubb
All of us are affected by spam. I'll be giving some war stories ... hear about the time that backscatter spam brought down UNSW CSE's mail servers ... how to report spammers so it doesn't happen to you! ... hear about the time that spamassassin managed to OOM and bring down an important web server ... how to configure your MTA to reject enough spam that spamassassin doesn't have to do so much work.
I'll be giving my examples for Exim configuration, but the principles (and I'll be talking more about what to do than how to do it) will apply to all mail servers.
Length: 25 minutes