The Journal of AUUG Inc. Volume 25 ¯ Number 3 September 2004 Features: mychart Charting System for Recreational Boats 8 Lions Commentary, part 1 17 Managing Debian 24 SEQUENT: Asynchronous Distributed Data Exchange 51 Framework News: Minutes to AUUG board meeting of 5 May 2004 13 Liberal license for ancient UNIX sources 16 First Australian UNIX Developer’s Symposium: CFP 60 First Digital Pest Symposium 61 Regulars: Editorial 1 President’s Column 3 About AUUGN 4 My Home Network 5 AUUG Corporate Members 23 A Hacker’s Diary 29 Letters to AUUG 58 Chapter Meetings and Contact Details 62 AUUG Membership AppLication Form 63 ISSN 1035-7521 Print post approved by Australia Post - PP2391500002 AUUGN The journal of AUUG Inc. Volume 25, Number 3 September 2004 Editor ial Gr eg Lehey <[email protected]> After last quarter's spectacularly late delivery of For those newcomers who don't recall the “Lions AUUGN, things aregradually getting back to nor- Book”, this is the “Commentary on the Sixth Edi- mal. I had hoped to have this on your desk by tion UNIX Operating System” that John Lions the end of September,but it wasn't to be. Given wr ote for classes at UNSW back in 1977. Suppos- that that was only a couple of weeks after the “Ju- edly they werethe most-photocopied of all UNIX- ly” edition, this doesn’t seem to be such a prob- related documents. Ihad mislaid my photocopy, lem. I'm fully expecting to get the December is- poor as it was (weren't they all?) some time earli- sue out in time to keep you from boredom over er,soIwas delighted to have an easy to read ver- the Christmas break. sion. First the good news: last quarter I asked for vol- As Eric Raymond says, the thing that withheld the unteers for an editorial team. I'm pleased to an- publication of the notes at the time was the trade nounce that Frank Crawford has risen to the chal- secr et status of the UNIX kernel. That changed lenge and is now part of the team. As a result, with Caldera's release of “Ancient UNIX” on 20 I'm pleased to say that I'll be staying on the team January 2002, and Peter Salus, who has full rights too. to reprint, has agreed to let us reprint them. As a result, we can now print the notes (and convert Only one problem with Frank: he's the most reli- them back into John Lions' beloved tr off;see able person I know in AUUG. When things go page 20). Due to the size, we'll be spreading it wr ong, you can rely on Frank to help out. Ther e over the next few issues. should be morelike him: but therearen't. And that's my worry. We can do with morepeople on The posting on USENET didn't include the source the team; just because thereare now two of us code which was an integral part of the notes. I doesn't mean that we can't do with more. don't intend to print them hereeither; nowadays it's a lot easier to have that sort of thing online. What feedback we've had about the change of I'll be including them in the next AUUG CD-R. subject matter has generally been well received. In this issue, I'm continuing the idea of reprinting About CD-Rs: as I stated last month, due to a AUUG's own content. It hasn't yet been possible comedy (for want of a moreappr opriate word) of to include any of the papers from this year's con- err ors, we ended up including one moreCD-R fer ence in this issue, but we'reconfident to get than intended in the last issue of AUUGN. To some of the better ones in the December issue. make up for that, this issue doesn't contain any. In the meantime, I’ve dug up some “oldies but We'll resume the usual CD-R per quarter next goodies” for this issue. quarter,and after that therewill be only the CD-R: this is the second-last AUUGN on paper.From Alittle over ten years ago, when people still read next year,the content will be on CD-R instead. If USENET news, I came into my office (in Ger- this is your first issue, and you’d like a CD-R, many) one day to find two cryptic messages sent please contact Liz Carroll, our Executive Director to alt.folklore.computers.They were (see page 2), and she will get you one. uuencodedand borethe subject line “Leo’s notes”. Even while I was uudecoding the mes- sages, I thought “Let it be the Lions book!”. And it was, somewhat incongruously refor matted in TEX. AUUGN Volume 25 Number 3 2September 2004 AUUG Membership and General Correspondence The AUUG Secretar iat Andrew Freder ickCowie Operational Dynamics AUUG Inc GPO Box 4339 PO Box 7071 Sydney, NSW,2001 Baulkham Hills BC NSW 2153 Telephone: +61-2-9977-6866 Telephone: 02 8824 9511 [email protected] or 1800 625 655 (Toll-Fr ee) Facsimile: 02 8824 9522 Enno Davids Email: [email protected] Michael Still Phone: +61 414 382 568 [email protected] AUUG ExecutiveDirector Immediate past president: Elizabeth Carroll AUUG Inc Greg Lehey PO Box 7071 PO Box 460 Baulkham Hills BC NSW 2153 Echunga, SA, 5153 [email protected] Bus. Tel (08) 8388 8286, Mobile 0418 838 708, Fax (08) 8388 8725 AUUG BoardofDirector s [email protected] Email: [email protected] President Retur ning officer: David Purdue Jason Ozolins Sun Microsystems Level 6, 476 St Kilda Road Assistant Returning officer: Melbour ne, VIC 3004 Phone: +61 3 9869 6412, David Baldwin Fax: +61 3 9869 6288 [email protected] AUUG Incorporated gratefully acknowledges the Vice-president support of its corporate sponsor: Ste veLander s Digital Smarties PO Box 717 Willetton WA6155 Business phone: +61 8 9313 6868 Business fax: +61 8 9313 6077 [email protected] Secretar y Jonathon Coombes Cybersite Consulting Pty Ltd 34 Newcastle Road, Wallsend NSW 2287 Business Telephone: +61 2 4965 6989 [email protected] Tr easurer Gordon Hubbard Custom Technology Australia Pty Ltd 3Spring Street, Bus Tel: 02 9659 9590, Bus Fax: 02 9659 9510 [email protected] Ordinar y boardmember s Grant Allen Adr ian Close Cybersource Pty.Ltd. 4, 10 Queen Street Melbourne VIC 3000 Business Telephone: +61 3 9621 2377 Business Fax: +61 3 9621 2377 Mobile: +61 417 346 094 [email protected] September 2004 3AUUGN Volume 25 Number 3 the activities we areproposing areaimed at fos- President'sColumn tering community. For example, we arecontinu- ing to expand the series of one-day symposia that David Purdue <[email protected]> we have been running for several years. To stay “The repor ts of mydeath aregreatlyexa ggerat- up to date with these developments, make sure ed” you aresubscribed to auug-announce (go to http://www.auug.or g.au/mailman/listinfo/auug- The text of a cablesent byMarkTwain from announce to subscribe or check your subscrip- London to the press in the United States after tion options). his obituaryhad been mistakenlypublished. So now is a good time to pipe up about what you —The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, think AUUG is and whereitshould go. AUUG is Thir d Edition avolunteer organisation—I encourage you all to Youmay have read recently some direpredictions participate, even if it is just turning up to your lo- regarding the futureofAUUG. However,follow- cal chapter meetings. If you have ideas, com- ing the success of our recent conference, AU- ments, criticisms or a wish to get involved and UG'2004, I can safely say that those predictions just do something, please contact the AUUG wer e misguided at best, misleading at worst. board at <[email protected]> Inter est in AUUG is high—we have over 800 peo- Finally, it is my great pleasuretoannounce that ple subscribed to auug-announce, and therehas AUUG has promoted Liz Carroll to the position of been a lot of press coverage for the conference, Executive Director.Inpractical terms, this means especially the presentations of the four main par- that we have given Liz the means to delegate ties on their approaches to open computing in away much of the clerical grunt work she used to gover nment—the culmination of a process AUUG do, so she can focus on promoting AUUG. kicked offtwo years ago. The conference was successful in every respect. Using the three main criteria we use for measur- ing success—attendance, revenue and profit—it was our most successful conference for about 5 years. AUUG has also received a lot of very posi- tive feedback on the quality of the conference— fr om attendees, speakers and sponsors. This in- cludes a couple of attendees who have given pr esents to Liz for making the conference experi- ence easier—of course, Liz did not tell me about this until after she had gone home, so she didn't have to sharethe chocolates! This is not to say that AUUG does not face some challenges. But we have a board in place that is actively addressing these challenges and coming up with workable solutions. We are focussing on what AUUG is. Who areour members and what can AUUG, as a volunteer or- ganisation, deliver to support our members in their professional activities? By the time this AU- UGN appears, the board will have voted on a new tag line and statement of purpose, and that should be on the front page of the web site (http://www.auug.or g.au/).