Some more ideas: - lighttpd - djbdns - qmail - assp - kvm - livecd/bootable usb creation
- nagios alternatives, what are they, can we see demos, example configs, scalability/usability comparisons... (my relationship with nagios is a love/hate, with mostly hate) small tricks/advanced topics: - things you didn't know you could do with iptables (such as mangle-marking to make filter decisions earlier and thus quicker) - advanced networking tutorials (bridging, bonding, vlan, stuff out of lartc) - qos traffic shaping - openvpn - ha router/firewall w/keepalived + conntrackd + iptables (+ openvpn even) - ha file sharing w/nfs + drbd + heartbeat Most of these already have online tutorials, documentation, and complete user communities around them. But seeing them in action or having a local resource for help can be beneficial, and could be enticing for meeting attendance. You'd probably have to conduct a poll to see what topics people are interested enough in to convene a meeting over... The feeling I get from the plug, is that most of us here are compentent, very resourceful people, and getting help from someone else is usually a last resort--we've already researched for ourselves and hit dead ends. Or, we know the research is going to be long and bet that someone else here has already done it recently and we can get a quick jumpstart into it by posting here first. Additionally, most of the projects that we'd do that would involve a deep topic like one of those I've listed, would require far more research and detailed fiddling than could be covered in a group meeting covering the topic in a general way--so as far as technical need, our meetings don't really feel in high demand. But, for professional networking, yes, I think they can be great. We could always reformat the meetings as workshops instead of presentations. Now, on the contrary to my very last statements, there are some huge exceptions. For example, when Jay Pipes came out from MySQL and drew a large crowd, despite the majority of us being seasoned in SQL (be it MySQL/MSSQL/Postgres/Oracle), it was very informative, instructional, and good to stay abreast of what's going on at MySQL. I can say similar about Aaron Anderson's presentation about scalability planning (have those slides been posted?). Both broad topics that do affect or have concerned at one point most of us on the list. In short, just as Hans said, it comes down to content first. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
