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Conference of Australian Linux Users Sponsored by:
Technotron Technology Pty Ltd
Netcraft Australia
Oracle Australasia

CALU

CALU lecture notes and papers

Photos!

Tutorials

Inside SMB and Samba - Andrew Tridgell
Friday Morning 9:30am-12:45pm
The inimitable author of Samba helps you understand your networks better and provides you with the tools to debug some of the trickier problems that arise when dealing with complex SMB networks. Anyone who enjoys a good laugh about the protocols the world relies on should attend.

Using Perl to Boost Apache - Jonathon Coombes
Friday Afternoon 1:45pm-5:00pm
Cybersite Consulting's web-server guru introduces you to the web server Apache and the way it can be optimised by using Perl extensions such as modperl and embedded Perl. This talk has an emphasis on practical implementations useful to anyone setting up or maintaining an effective web service.

Enlightenment and X11 - Carsten "rasterman" Haitzler
Friday Morning 9:30am-12:45pm
The Enlightenment author returns to Australia to give a tour of the latest in next generation window managers; how to get the most out of it on any modern machine, how to write new themes for it, and a grab-bag of cool tricks.

The K Desktop Environment - Sirtaj Singh Kang
Friday Morning 9:30am-12:45pm
Core KDE developer Sirtaj gives you a first-hand introduction to programming using the Qt toolkit, continuing on to the use of the basic tools in the KDE libraries, and the general framework of a KDE application. Anyone interested in the inner workings of KDE, or developing for KDE should attend.

The GNOME Project - Federico Mena Quintero
Friday Afternoon 1:45pm-5:00pm
The co-founder of the GNOME Project will fly "down under" to talk about the project. Catering primarily for those interested in what benefits GNOME will bring the end-user, the tutorial will also briefly cover GNOME from a programmer's perspective.

Linux Packet Filtering - Paul "rusty" Russell & Michael Neuling
Friday Afternoon 1:45pm-5:00pm
The authors of the Linux 2.2 IP packet filtering code tell you how to use a Linux box as a packet filter for your networks, using either the 2.0 or 2.2 kernels. Knowledge of how to set up networking under Linux is assumed, but no prior packet filtering experience is required.

Short Talks and Papers

High Capacity Email - Simon Horman
Sunday Morning 8:30am-9:45am
Zip World's Senior Technician talks about serious email load. Implementing a server farm in a manner transparent to users is not trivial, but yields both increased capacity and high availability.

Support Options in an OSS Environment - Matthew Tippett
Sunday Morning 9:45am-11:00am
LinuxSA cofounder and Linux Consultant Matthew Tippett discusses issues surrounding Open Source support now that Open Source products are becoming politically acceptable in the Commercial Information Technology marketplace. He looks at the point of view of a small-to-medium sized company aiming to provide support for Open Source Software.

Building a Linuxwulf - Duncan Grove
Saturday Afternoon 2:15pm-3:30pm
PhD student gives an introduction to Beowulf, with particular attention to building a Linux-based cluster of machines, as is being done to greatly enhance the computing power available to computational chemists at Adelaide University.

Examining RPM - Richard Keech
Saturday Afternoon 3:45pm-5:00pm
Cybersource's Unix Systems Consultant gives a technical overview of the Red Hat Packaging Method, describing how RPM is used from the point of view of end-users, administrators and developers. He shows how RPM can be used to simplify the management of software on a system, but it will be of most interest to developers wishing to deploy software using RPM.

Scientific Linux - Dr Graeme Cross
Saturday Afternoon 1:00pm-2:15pm
Drawing from his experience at Monash University's Water Studies Centre, this presentation presents the reasons why Linux has quietly become a dominant platform in the scientific and engineering markets. The tour includes the broad range of free scientific software available, the Beowulf project, Real-Time Linux, the Linux Lab project, LabView for Linux, embedded Linux, the benefits of source access, and a summary of other resources.

Running Linux on the L4 Microkernel - Conrad Parker, Andrew O'Brien
Saturday Afternoon 1:00pm-2:15pm
L4 is a lean, efficient microkernel capable of running Linux with performance comparable to native implementations. Intended mainly for kernel developers, this presentation briefly introduces the concepts underlying the L4 microkernel, and then concentrates on the design of Linux on L4.

Future of Linux Packet Filtering - Paul Russell & Michael Neuling
Sunday Morning 9:45am-11:00am
What's wrong with 2.2's masquerading, NAT, transparent proxy and firewalling code? How could it be made better? What are the people who wrote the packet filtering in Linux 2.2 doing about it? Kernel programmers and hard-core users of these features should attend and find out.

System Level Performance Management - Ken McDonell
Saturday Afternoon 1:00pm-2:15pm
Silicon Graphics proposes a new framework for Linux designed to assist all aspects of system-level performance monitoring and management. Architecture, services, APIs and protocols are designed to operate efficiently for large configurations (both large machines, and clusters like Beowulf with a large number of nodes), but can also provide value for small configurations.

Linux and the Hardware Vendors - Marcio Saito
Saturday Afternoon 3:45pm-5:00pm
Sponsors TPC are flying in Cyclades's Technical Director to talk about success Cyclades have had with Linux.

Oracle and Linux - Surfing the Wave - Brett Hathan
Sunday Morning 8:30am-9:45am
Oracle's Regional Product Marketing Manager, Intel Solutions will discuss Oracle's ongoing support and development for the Linux platform, and the impact of Linux in the Intel-based solutions market.

rsync in HTTP - Andrew Tridgell
Saturday Afternoon 2:15pm-3:30pm
Andrew talks about the rsync algorithm and its applications. He'll discuss the project at ANU to incorporate rsync into HTTP (particularly into squid and apache) and what the expected gains would be.

Introduction to BSD for Linux Users - Darren Reed
Sunday Morning 9:45am-11:00am
The author of ipfilter, and contributor to all three free BSD variants (FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD), describes what to expect if you wander into one of those boxes. Experience something different; if the MS ship is sinking, it's nice to know there's more than one escape route.

Linux on the Sparc and Ultrasparc - David S. Miller
Saturday Afternoon 3:45pm-5:00pm
The author of the Linux MIPS, Sparc and Ultrasparc ports, and all-around kernel demigod flies in from Silicon Valley to describe how the port of the Linux kernel to Sun hardware happened, and shares the problems he hit taking Linux to new frontiers.

Linux/PPC Goes 64-Bit: Fattening the Cow - Cort Dougan
Saturday Afternoon 2:15pm-3:30pm
The Linux PowerPC maintainer discusses supporting both 32-bit and 64-bit word sizes on the PowerPC. Many assumptions that can normally be made are no longer a given, and optimizing can be made even harder. This work puts Linux/PPC in the domain of traditionally slow and proprietary operating systems - the 64-bit PowerPC.

Porting Linux to the Power Macintosh - Paul Mackerras
Saturday Afternoon 2:15pm-3:30pm
This paper describes a port of the Linux kernel to the PCI-based Power Macintosh.

Something Warmfuzzy and Linuxy - Jon "maddog" Hall
Sunday Morning 8:30am-9:45am
We promised maddog we'd give him some speaking space to make up for the short keynote. We dont' yet know what it is, but you can be sure it'll be both entertaining and thought provoking.

This conference was the result of the joint efforts of the Linux user groups of Australia.