The Australian System Administrators' Conference 2006
SAGE-AU'2006
Chifley on Northbourne, Canberra, ACT
24th to 28th July, 2006
|
The Australian System Administrators' Conference 2006 Chifley on Northbourne, Canberra, ACT |
|
Elizabeth Zwicky Abstract This full-day tutorial is an introductory tutorial for beginning to intermediate system administrators; it requires no particular background, but assumes that students have some experience with system administration. It is broadly applicable to UNIX and Microsoft systems, but the instructor has a strong UNIX accent. Much of what system administrators do involves problem solving, whether you're dealing with a user problem, a computer problem, or designing a new system. Good problem solving skills can make the difference between having a calm life with satisfied management and feeling like you're forever beating your head against a wall. And it's not the black art it may look like if you've watched an expert; you can easily learn strategies and techniques that will improve your skills. This tutorial will lay out the types of problem solving, and discuss overall strategies and specific techniques for various situations, with examples of both excellent and horrible solutions to problems. Elizabeth Zwicky is now dangerously close to having 20 years experience in the computer industry, mostly in the general vicinity of system administration. She has taught problem solving both formally and informally in a variety of settings. Most recently, while developing computer-aided courses in network troubleshooting, she perfected the art of taking students from "can use a mouse" to "can troubleshoot some networking problems on Suns" in 4 hours of instruction. M2 : Production Change Management Geoff Halprin Abstract The only way to ensure the integrity of a production computing environment is through a formal Change Management process. But anyone who's worked at a large facility can tell you horror stories about having to wait 60 days to reboot a machine, and other complete failures of Change Management processes. Get it wrong and the resuts are, well, bad:
And the obvious cost:
This tutorial looks at Change Management, from principles to implementation. We look at what should be in a CM process, and how to tune the process to meet your business' requirements. Who should attend? System administrators who wish to learn how to better manage change and risk, and become more professional in their system management practices. System administrators who are responsible for developing or managing their organisation's Change Management process, or who are hoping to influence and improve their organisation's process. Geoff Halprin has spent over 25 years as a software developer, system administrator, consultant, and troubleshooter. He has written software from system management tools to mission-critical billing systems, has built and run networks for enterprises of all sizes, and has been called upon to diagnose problems in every aspect of computing infrastructure and software. He has spent more years troubleshooting other people's systems and programs than he cares to remember. Geoff was on the board of the System Administrators Guild (SAGE) and is now a member of the USENIX board of directors. M3 : LDAP Theory and Management Brad Marshall Abstract This tutorial is designed to give participants a basic introduction to the LDAP directory service, and to cover some of the management issues with implementing a directory. The tutorial covers:
Brad Marshall is currently employed in the sysadmin team at CQU’s Information Technology Division. He previously worked at Plugged In Software, a Java development company in Brisbane, and was responsible for PI’s network from June 1997 to July 2003. He has over 8 years experience with Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Windows, among others. He has implemented complex mail server solutions, proxy servers, web servers, custom perl scripting and network integration for clients such as Hastings Deering, Jupiters Technology, Pacific Publications and SKM. Brad is an active contributor to a range of user groups - he has been involved in HUMBUG, Brisbane’s Linux user group, since its inception and helps maintain its servers. He was on the national executive of SAGE-AU from 1999 to 2003, and has helped with mailing list administration and mentoring group. Brad contributes to the Open Source Software community by volunteering his time to maintain a range of packages for Debian, one of the leading Linux distributions. Brad has written articles for linux.com’s Sysadmin and Security sections and currently writes for SAGE-AU’s newsletter, SAGE-Advice, on a wide range of topics - from LDAP to Apache, firewalls and clustering. Brad has also given LDAP tutorials and talks in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart for SAGE-AU, AUUG and HUMBUG. M4 : Perl for System Administration Paul Fenwick Abstract Perl has a long history in system administration, and even the most basic Perl install comes with a powerful and flexible set of useful tools. This full-day tutorial will examine the use of Perl specifically for system administration, including:
Existing Perl experience will enhance the benefits gained from this tutorial, but is not necessary for attendees. This tutorial aims to present code and concepts in a operating system independent fashion whenever possible. However Unix-only material may be presented for some specialised topics. Paul Fenwick has been using Perl for system administration for almost a decade. He is the primary presenter for Perl Training Australia, and has more than eight years of experience in teaching Computer Science. Paul is an active member of the Australian Perl community, and has a continuing interest in Perl security and applications. In his spare time Paul enjoys scuba diving and research into wild edible plants. M5 : LDAP Servers and Applications Brad Marshall Abstract This tutorial is designed to give participants an understanding of using LDAP in various applications, as well as cover using OpenLDAP as a server. The tutorial covers:
Presenter Bio Brad Marshall is currently employed in the sysadmin team at CQU’s Information Technology Division. He previously worked at Plugged In Software, a Java development company in Brisbane, and was responsible for PI’s network from June 1997 to July 2003. He has over 8 years experience with Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Windows, among others. He has implemented complex mail server solutions, proxy servers, web servers, custom perl scripting and network integration for clients such as Hastings Deering, Jupiters Technology, Pacific Publications and SKM. Brad is an active contributor to a range of user groups - he has been involved in HUMBUG, Brisbane’s Linux user group, since its inception and helps maintain its servers. He was on the national executive of SAGE-AU from 1999 to 2003, and has helped with mailing list administration and mentoring group. Brad contributes to the Open Source Software community by volunteering his time to maintain a range of packages for Debian, one of the leading Linux distributions. Brad has written articles for linux.com’s Sysadmin and Security sections and currently writes for SAGE-AU’s newsletter, SAGE-Advice, on a wide range of topics - from LDAP to Apache, firewalls and clustering. Brad has also given LDAP tutorials and talks in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart for SAGE-AU, AUUG and HUMBUG. T1 : Management 101 Elizabeth Zwicky & Geoff Halprin Abstract As system administrators mature in their knowledge and responsibilities, they begin to rely on use of a number of "soft skills" to help them in their jobs. These skills include: project management, vendor relationship management, people management, time management, risk management, written and oral communication, and financial management. This tutorial provides an overview of these many diverse areas, to assist system administrators in becoming more proactive in their duties and to provide tools which assist them to communicate more effectively with their managers, users and other important constituents and users of their services. Who should attend? Systems administrators who have been given non-technical responsibilities and need more assistance in learning techniques which may help them in performing these duties. Presenter Bios Elizabeth Zwicky is now dangerously close to having 20 years experience in the computer industry, mostly in the general vicinity of system administration. She has taught problem solving both formally and informally in a variety of settings. Most recently, while developing computer-aided courses in network troubleshooting, she perfected the art of taking students from "can use a mouse" to "can troubleshoot some networking problems on Suns" in 4 hours of instruction. Geoff Halprin has spent over 25 years as a software developer, system administrator, consultant, and troubleshooter. He has written software from system management tools to mission-critical billing systems, has built and run networks for enterprises of all sizes, and has been called upon to diagnose problems in every aspect of computing infrastructure and software. He has spent more years troubleshooting other people's systems and programs than he cares to remember. Geoff was on the board of the System Administrators Guild (SAGE) and is now a member of the USENIX board of directors. T2 : Security for Sysadmins Phil Kernick Abstract System Administrators are increasingly responsible for delivery of security on the servers and networks that they manage. They form a significant component of the security boundary protecting the information systems. This tutorial details the most important security practices and procedures required to be performed by System Administrators to maintain the security of their systems. Phil Kernick has 17 years of experience in information security and technology. He has focussed on information security for the past 9 years and has INFOSEC and Cisco CCSP security certifications. Phil has specialised in the areas of technical security reviews, vulnerability assessments, application reviews, and SCADA assessment as well as security strategy and policy. Phil has an extensive knowledge and experience of the financial, utility, education, government market segments where he has conducted numerous security and application reviews, vulnerability assessments and information security training programs. Phil~Rs other strengths include well-developed communication skills and has a strong business understanding which complements his technical abilities. Phil is the President of SAGE-AU (The System Administrators Guild of Australia). T3 : MySQL Cluster Stewart Smith Abstract This tutorial covers:
Prior experience using a RDBMS is assumed, as well as a knowledge of SQL and database concepts. Stewart Smith is a Software Engineer at MySQL AB. He works on MySQL Cluster - a clustered database desgined to deliver performance and high availability on commodity hardware. T4 : Making ISA 2004 Work Pete Calvert Abstract This full day tutorial is aimed at sysadmins who are responsible for implementing network and perimeter security measures, including Internet firewalls, application layer filters, and screened networks. The aim of this tutorial is to help them simplify ongoing management, reduce support costs and prevent security breaches through using Microsoft's Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2004. It is expected that attendees for this tutorial should already be familiar with networking concepts, the Microsoft Windows operating system, and have experience with network resources such as internet resources such as web, FTP, and mail servers. Detailed knowledge about deploying these resources is not required. Pete Calvert works for KAZ as both a consultant and a trainer specialising in information security and Microsoft technologies. With more than 16 years working in IT for a variety of organisations in both consultant and trainer capacities, Pete combines real-life examples in to the courses that he delivers. No stranger to systems administration work, including shift work and managing real-time systems, he understands the concerns of sysadmins and the battles that they face. Currently running the SA chapter of SAGE-AU, Pete holds both a business degree and computer science degree and more IT certifications than will (comfortably) fit on a business card. T5 : Advanced Web Site Analysis Steve McInerney Abstract The use of webservers is ubiquitus these days. The owners of those systems are naturally quite keen to see that those expensive collections of hardware and software are used to their fullest potential. Hits, Pages and so on are common terms but what do they actually mean to a system owner? How do they help system owners enhance their site and meet their business needs?In this tutorial we will examine the funkier side of website analysis. Such areas as:
The tutorial will focus on the use of Open Source tools available in *nix environments. While most questions are answered via the use of simple shell one liners, more complex questions require the use of simple perl and/or awk scripts. Understanding of basic unix commands and regular expressions would be highly desirable. This tutorial is aimed at anyone who wants to provide value add to their clients appreciation of their web services. Steve McInerney received a BSc (Computing) from the University of Queensland in 1990. Since then he has filled a variety of technical and advisory roles with and for the Federal Government. Primarily in IT Security and Systems Administration (VMS, Windows and UNIX/BSD/Linux systems), he has also done a fair amount of architecture and advice work. W1 : Time Management for Sysadmins Tom Limoncelli Abstract Tom Limoncelli is on a mission. He wants to see System Administrators work 40 hours a day (not 70), be more relaxed (not stressed), and still get all their work done. It isn't easy. Most time management talks are useless for people with hundreds of screaming users. His first tip will save you an hour each week. Seven more like it and you have gained a day each week! Some of his tips will include:
Tom Limoncelli has been teaching his Time Management for System Administrators Tutorial for 3 years at LISA. His new book, "Time Management for System Administrators" from O'Reilly has been published recently. Thomas Limoncelli is a internationally respected author and speaker on many topics including system administration, networking, and security. A system administrator since 1988, he now speaks at conferences around the world on topics ranging from firewall security to time management. He has worked for Cibernet, Dean For America, Lumeta, Bell Labs / Lucent, AT&T and Mentor Graphics. He shared the 2005 SAGE Outstanding Achievement Award along with Christine Hogan for the creation of the book "The Practice of System and Network Administration" from Addison-Wesley. He holds a B.A. in C.S. from Drew University, Madison, New Jersey, USA. He publishes a blog on www.EverythingSysadmin.com. He now works as a Site Reliability Engineer at Google, Inc in New York City, USA. W2 : Securing DNS Baden Hughes Abstract The Domain Name System (DNS) is a critical piece of infrastructure in today's enterprise IT environments. Securing DNS is complex owing to the architecture of the global domain name system and because of the high degree of dependence upon it by all internet-enabled applications. DNS security is a pervasive problem: you can secure transactions - the queries, responses, and other messages your name server sends and receives. You can secure your name server, refusing queries, zone transfer requests, and dynamic updates from unauthorized addresses, for example. You can even secure zone data by digitally signing it. This tutorial will introduce key DNS security concepts, and show how the application of best practice principles can reduce both the risk and effect of a DNS-oriented attack on network and application infrastructure. Baden Hughes is a research fellow at the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Melbourne. W3 : Advanced Solaris Administration Scott Howard Abstract Solaris 10 contains numerous features which are not widely used by System Administrators, despite their potential to make system more powerful and administrators jobs easier. The purpose of this tutorial is to introduce many of these features, and provide enough detail for Solaris administrators to make use of them. It is not intended as a full training course in the use of these features, instead giving enough detail to allow admins to decide if a feature is a fit for their environment and/or a specific problem. The target audience of this tutorial is intermediate to advanced Solaris administrators, although similar level admins with a non-Solaris background wishing to learn more about Solaris would also be welcome. The intent of these tutorials is to address the topics from a technical point of view, and not on a sales/marketing basis. Scott Howard has been a Senior System Support Engineer for Sun Microsystems for 4 years and has been working as a System Administrator for over 10 years. Scott is one of the authors of the Solaris 10 Certification Exams and of various technical documents for Sun. Scott is also a tech reviewer for several Sun documents, Blueprint articles and Solaris books. W4 : Getting the Most out of Group Policy Pete Calvert Abstract This tutorial is aimed at any systems administrators responsible for managing Active Directory. Much of the power of centralised administration in Microsoft Windows domains comes via the application of Group Policy Objects. This tutorial will cover using GPOs for the application of security, software roll-outs and updates, account policies and how conflicting GPOs are processed. Tools for managing group policies, best practice for implementation and the differences in group policy objects from Windows 2000, XP and 2003 will also be covered. Estimation of target - intermediate/advanced Presenter Bio Pete Calvert works for KAZ as both a consultant and a trainer specialising in information security and Microsoft technologies. With more than 16 years working in IT for a variety of organisations in both consultant and trainer capacities, Pete combines real-life examples in to the courses that he delivers. No stranger to systems administration work, including shift work and managing real-time systems, he understands the concerns of sysadmins and the battles that they face. Currently running the SA chapter of SAGE-AU, Pete holds both a business degree and computer science degree and more IT certifications than will (comfortably) fit on a business card. W5 : Kerberos 101 Paul Armstrong Abstract This half-day tutorial aims to provide an introduction to Kerberos from both the theoretical and practical side. The tutorial will cover the following topics:
Paul Armstrong has a Bachelor of Computer Science and has been working as a systems administrator since 1999. Paul currently works as a jack of all trades for a small Mountain View based search engine. W6 : System Administration for Beginners John Stern Abstract This is a half day tutorial aimed at the beginner through to intermediate level Sysadmins (SAs). No previous knowledge is assumed though having some basic SA experience across any environments and platforms is desirable. We will be exploring the practical or hands on side of SA. This tutorial will look at the tools of the trade for SA's from a general UNIX/Linux perspective though the concepts and examples presented will be mostly applicable to other platforms including Windows and Apple based systems. Attendees will be encouraged to discuss problems. This tutorial will adopt a "Socratic" or interactive approach; you will be asked questions. Practical problems will be discussed and solutions expected as much from the attendees as from the presenter. Anyone doing this tutorial is encouraged to do:
i.e. either (M1 + T2) or (M4 + T2) Material already covered in M1, M4, and T2 may be touched on or refered to but it will not be covered in any depth. These other tutorials are in no way a prerequisite for this tutorial, but they will complement the content in this tutorial. John Stern's first attempt at looking after a computer was with a Sinclair Cambridge (http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/sinclair1.html) at high school. His first "real" computer account was on a VAX batch system in 1979 at Monash University. In 1980 things looked up when they added serial terminals and he was able to login interactively! His first personal computer experience was with an IBM JX pc. After a short stint teaching high school (1980's) he went back to university and did a M.Sc. in Pure Mathematics. In the 1990's he was a Computer Lab manager for the Department of Mathematics looking after 80 Apple Macs, and 24 PC's. Later he managed a SGI Indy (Irix 5.3 & 6.2), before going to work at the Bureau of Meteorology in 1999 as a System Admin. In the meantime he completed a Graduate Diploma in Computer Science, and later a Masters in IT. John is now a System Admin. working for the High Performance Computing and Comunications Centre in the Melbourne Docklands. The HPCCC is a joint BoM/CSIRO facility (http://www.hpccc.gov.au) that looks after a very interesting collection of systems from many different vendors. Some of the operating systems John has worked with include; WinNT, Banyon Vines, MacOS, AIX, SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, Linux (various flavours), FreeBSD, WinME, Win98, WinXp, Win2K, VMS, unicos, Super-UX, UX, DG-UX, etc etc.. Invited Speakers What Big Sites can Learn from Little Sites Abstract Tom has worked at a variety of big and small sites. The problems at small sites weren't any easier and often were more interesting. What can we learn from small sites? First, the fundamentals become much more important at small sites. And what "the fundamentals" are becomes a lot clearer. Secondly, we learn that "we are all small sites". Join Tom on his tour of what he's been doing for the past 4 years, what beasts he's battled, and his thoughts on where we, as an industry, could be going. Why Online Pornography is Bad for your Computer Abstract Around ten years ago, when computer viruses where at the stage of computer graffiti, online sex and pornography business existed somewhat in parallel, quietly attracting more and more customers, collecting decent profits, acquiring new domains and publishing more 'attractive' content. During the last few years, we've been seeing an important change in malware development and distribution. Today, money is the major reason behind the creation of new malicious software, phishing attempts and advertising spam, and well organized groups rather than enthusiastic teenagers run the show. Frequently, more or less sexually explicit messages or pictures are used by mass-mailing worms in order to entice an unsuspected user to open a malicious attachment or follow a link to a malware spreading site. Are there any other connections between computer malware and online pornography and sex related Internet services? What are they, and how do they work? Is there a significant danger for users of infected systems to unwillingly and unknowingly end up in possession of some sexually explicit and often illegal content? Do users following links to supposedly innocent sex related sites or visiting pages hosting pornographic content face risk of exposing their machines to computer malware? The presentation will try to answer the above questions and show some more, and some less obvious, connection between computer malware and sex related content. Jakub Kaminski graduated from Warsaw Technical University. He went on to work for the Institute of Fundamental Technological Research, at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1992 Kaminski moved to Australia and joined CYBEC where he was working for the anti-virus team as Anti-Virus Research Co-ordinator. After the 1999 acquisition, Kaminski became an employee of Computer Associates. He is currently working as Advance Research Director in CA Australia. In June 1995 he also joined the Virus Bulletin as Technical Editor. VB is a UK based and widely recognized publication dedicated to virus and anti-virus research. Jakub is a member of some anti-virus organizations and groups like CARO, AVED, EICAR Expert Forum, WildList Technical Advisory Board and VB Advisory Board. Over last 14 years, he has delivered and published a number of virus research papers and articles. Windows Vista Security Overview Abstract In this keynote talk, Michael will discuss security features in the Windows Vista release, including security fundamentals, threat and vulnerability mitigation, identity and access control and information protection. Michael Kleef is an IT Pro Evangelist for Microsoft for the past 5 years based in Perth WA. His role is to work in the broader technology and user group community to provide answers to technology based problems for the benefit of others. Previous to Microsoft, Michael worked for a national systems integrator focusing on integration work in the Microsoft and Novell space. 14,000 users, Limited Budget and Version 1 Software - Let's Go Build a SAN In this talk, Jen and Daniel will describe how they built a cross platform, centralized student storage system supporting roaming profiles for all the students (14,000 in total, 1,000 concurrent) at the Australian National University - and how it was done with version 1 software. The talk will cover their experience in deploying a solution from both the vendor perspective and from the client perspective, and explain why Apple took on the challenge, and why the university decided to use bleeding edge software. The talk will discuss in detail how the project was delivered, including directory integration for authentication as well as authorization and web interfaces for disk usage reporting and of course mandatory unix scripting to make it actually useful. Presenter Bios Jen Walbank is Apple Australia's National Consultant Engineer for Education. Daniel Rodwell has a Bachelor of IT from Faculty of Computing Science at ANU and is currently the Systems Administrator for MacOSX at Australian National University in the Division of Information. He is looking after all centralized Apple installations. He is responsible for implementing new technology, maintaining existing systems and the integration these systems into the University's diverse computing environment. State of the Broadband Nation In this session, we'll take a look at the current state of play in Australian broadband, and see what is approaching on the horizon. We'll also talk about FTTN, bust a few myths, and look at the alternatives. Simon Hackett founded and runs both Internode, a broadband services provider, and Agile, a broadband network building company. He helped to put AARNet v1 together many moons ago. He likes making good and cool technical things happen in the broadband space. Virtual Infrastructure 3: Upgrade Paths to it and Main Admin Differences from 2.x Matthew Legg is a Senior Windows and VMware architect at TAS, he has lead consolidation assessments and enterprise VMware designs for large enterprises in England and across Australia from 2800 servers down to small and medium businesses. Matthew is leading the VI3 initiative within TAS who has been on the beta program since November 2005. Technical Paper Presenters The ISP Within: Using ISP techniques to support internal customers The managed hosting platform is designed to provide Google's engineers a way to develop and run internal apps on a standard easily supportable system. It provides a platform recognizable to anyone who has deployed a web site on a shared hosting system. The goals of the project are simplicity, security and stability. Daniel Hobe has a BS in Cognitive Science from the University of California San Diego. He is currently a System Administrator for Google in the System Operations group. Wireless Network Security, the Enterprise Way The use of wireless networks is growing at an exponential rate. However since its standardisation, it has been plagued by security flaws that have impaired its use in the enterprise. The weaknesses in WEP have now been patched with WPA, and subsequently replaced with WPA2. Despite these improvements, many organisations still use WEP or fail to implement even rudimentary security, while those that do often rely on the ~Qshared secret~R approach which lacks scalability and security demanded by larger networks. This paper explains the alphabet soup that often perplexes system administrators faced with the task of setting up wireless networks, and shows how to set them up the right way ~V the enterprise way. Using 802.1x and WPA/WPA2, it~Rs possible to do away with shared keys and integrate wireless networks with your existing directory infrastructure; whilst providing the highest level of security possible to keep those war drivers at bay. Phillip Pudney is an Information Security Consultant with CQR Consulting. Before joining CQR, Phillip spent two years conducting research into wireless security at the University of South Australia~Rs Advanced Computing Research Centre. He also taught and helped to develop courses in computer science and security at universities in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Adelaide, and has held a variety of roles in systems administration. Phillip~Rs qualifications include a Masters degree in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Computer and Information Science. Securing websites with hardened Apache configurations and mod-security Web servers are always among the most vulnerable due to their nature of being open to access from the whole world. As companies and organizations take advantage of the considerable benefits that Internet technologies offer, the task of securing a web server to protect web services and sensitive data can become overwhelming for, in most cases, a lone web administrator. There are countless rogue bots and script kiddies wandering about ready to pounce on web servers hosting insecure and unpatched web applications. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive view of security enhancements made to the deployment and maintenance processes of websites through Apache configurations and modules, particularly mod-security. The examples are limited to the popular LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP), but the techniques introduced here can also be applied to other platforms. While there are more layers of security needed to provide complete protection for a web server, the one for discourse here will be the web server (Apache) layer with a touch on web applications written in PHP. In the first half, I will provide a walk-through for securely deploying websites with hardened Apache virtual host configurations. In the second half, I will present mod-security, the open source web application firewall, with its basic and enhanced rule sets, real examples of it in action against web exploits and how to manage a mod-security enabled web server. Linh Vu is the Web/Database Administration officer for the School of Physics in the University of Melbourne. Linh primarily operates Linux web servers running Apache, MySQL, PHP4/5 and RubyOnRails. He also works as a freelance web developer and administrator. He was a speaker at SecureCon 2006 on web security. Building the Australian Grid The Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC) is the peak facility for High Performance Computing in Australia, hosting the most powerful system in Australia. APAC also has partner sites in each state in Australia (VPAC, ac3, TPAC, etc), who also run very powerful systems. APAC, like most HPC organisations throughout the world are implementing a High Performance Grid to seamlessly link these system. This presentation will outline the technologies involve and in particular will describe the gateway systems, which have been established to provide a common link to all systems, while also providing a common security framework. Frank Crawford is professional System Administrator, managed computer systems for the AAEC, Qantas, ANSTO and now ac3 for over 20 years. He has gone from managing Unix systems involved in the control of scientific experiments through to the fastest system in Australia. However he also deals with low-end systems, running a home network which is documented in his regular column, "My Home Network" in AUUGN. In addition to managing system, he is an extensive contributor to such organisations as AUUG and SAGE-AU, having been on the boards of both organisation and a frequent presenter at their conference and author of articles for their newsletters. He is also the co-author of the book OzInternet. Solving Sudoku (using Python and Linux Clusters) Sudoku is a simple logic puzzle which has become popular lately, being syndicated in various newspapers and made available online in many forms. A coffee-break discussion about the number of valid Sudoku grids prompted one of those situations known to sysadmins everywhere - an excuse to massively over-engineer a solution to a problem. This talk shows the author's efforts to solve the problem (mostly an excuse to teach himself the Python programming language), and to then attempt to solve it in parallel over a cluster. Perhaps this is a fairytale about how one can always seize an opportunity to better oneself, or maybe it's a morality tale about what happens when you take a joke too far. John Dalton is currently employed by the University of Tasmania as the sysadmin responsible for their High-Performance Computing facility. He is involved in efforts to link major compute facilities across the country into a single national computer grid. When not at work he spends time with his wife and baby boy, plays cricket (badly), and sings in the Tenor section of the TSO Chorus. He has also been known to take jokes a little too seriously. John is the immediate past president of the Tasmanian chapter of SAGE-AU. SuperComputing: the good, the bad and the ugly A brief history of Supercomputers will be presented. Architectural issues such as vector processors and cross bar switches will be explained, and why they are important to High Performance Computing (HPC). The Top500 list will be visited and some of the magic numbers explained and hopefully de-bunked. Scheduling on big HPC systems will be explored including throughput versus turn arround, fair share scheduling, and more. We will look at other standard features such as; checkpointing, job migration, user accounting, batch queues. This talk will endeavour to describe some of the issues involved in managing and administering a large "Supercomputer". Topics covered will include:
John Stern works at the High Performance Computing and Communications Centre in the Melbourne Docklands in Victoria. The HPCCC is jointly managed by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology and responsible for a number of big systems including an NEC SX6 cluster, an SGI Altix, and an IBM cluster. He has been a systems administrator on an NEC SX4 SX5 and SX6 and briefly looked after a Cray J90. John has been a systems administrator for about 10 years prior to which he was a mathematician. John has looked after many different operating systems ranging from MacOS, Banyan Vines, Win3.11, WinNT, Irix, HPUX, AIX, Solaris, SuperUX, UNICOS, Linux, WinXP, Win2000. Designing an Enterprise Print Solution This paper looks at the various topics that should be considered when designing an enterprise print solution:
Why have an Enterprise Print Solution? What are the benefits of implementing a commercial solution? Looks at the costs to business involved in producing their output and how these can be reduced. Also looks to the creation of organization policies regarding printing. Leads into following topics. Connections to printers. Looks at the options for delivering output to printers. Reviews the connection methods LPR, direct sockets and IPP and the impact these then have on the next topic. Management of printers. Two parts to this are the administrative and the technical. Design decisions made here can impact on support staff long after the initial design and implementation have finished. We look at responsibility levels, the ability to incorporate changes imposed by business units and technological shifts. Also we look at the impact of the inevitable "one off" has on our design. Management of output. Here we look at how our solution handles various types of datastream and what options it provides to manipulate the datastream. We also cover security of the output and the ability to view the output prior to printing and selecting a subset to print. Retaining output for reprinting and the benefits this can provide is reviewed. Most solutions also provide for accounting records to be kept. These along with other statistics kept by the systems if used can provide for better cost recovery, planning and insight by technical and managerial staff. Alternatives to printing output. Looks how these solutions can be used to migrate from a hardcopy delivery mechanism to an electronic delivery with little or no change to applications. Troy Stevens is currently an Enterprise Output Management (EOM) Systems Engineer. Prior to this he spent just over 5 years as network consultant/admin supporting and advising companies on their mainframe print solutions as well as networks. New in MySQL 5.0 and 5.1 A whirlwind tour of new features in MySQL 5.0 and those upcoming in MySQL 5.1. We'll look at what these mean for developers as well as for system administrators and DBAs. Polyinstantiation of directories in an SE Linux system This paper describes the problems related to shared directories such as /tmp and /var/tmp as well as problems related to having multiple SE Linux security contexts used for accessing a single home directory. It then provides detailed information on the solution to this problem that has been implemented with polyinstantiated directories by using the pam_namespace module. Human Interfaces for Geeks As technical professionals we excel at understanding protocols, standards, file-formats, and APIs. Whenever there is a doubt as to the correct way to do things, one merely needs to read the fine manual or source code. Unfortunately the reference manual for humans was lost a long time ago, and the source code is poorly documented. We've been struggling with inter-human communication ever since. Paul Fenwick will present his findings at reverse-engineering the human communication protocol. Paul Fenwick has more than eight years experience in teaching Computer Science, and is the primary presenter at Perl Training Australia. His interests include scuba diving and wild edible plants. |
|
© 2005-2006 The System Administrators Guild of Australia. ABN: 57 082 497 792. Privacy Policy |
