The 3ourn l of AUUG Inc. Volume 25 ¯ Number 4 December 2004 Features: A Convert to the Fold 7 Lions Commentary, part 1 16 News: Minutes of AUUG Annual General Meeting, 1 September 2004 54 AUUG 2005 annual conference: CFP 58 First Australian UNIX Developer’s Symposium: CFP 59 First Digital Pest Symposium 60 Regulars: Editorial 1 President’s Column 3 My Home Network 4 This Issue’s CD 29 The Future of AUUG CDs 30 A Hacker’s Diary 31 AUUG Corporate Members 56 Letters to AUUG 56 About AUUGN 61 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 Frank Crawford <[email protected]> Well, after many, many years of involvement with mittee, preparing each edition. Curr ently, this AUUGN, I’ve finally been roped into writing the consists of Greg Lehey and myself, but we are editorial. In fact, AUUGN has a very long and keen to expand this by a few more, in an effort to distinguished history, providing important infor- spr ead the load. And as with previous changes, mation to generations of Unix users. During that we have a “new” approach to finding contribu- time, therehave been a range of editors all of tions. AUUG has a huge body of work, from whom have guided it through ups and downs. both the Annual Conference and regional meet- Certainly you will know many of the recent ones, ings that should be seen morewidely, especially such as David Purdue (current AUUG President), by those who weren't able to attend these events. Gunther Feuereisen and most recently Con Zy- Over and above this, we arealways looking for maris (Open Source Advocate). In fact, if I go new columns, book reviews and one offpapers. back through the past AUUGNs, it is interesting In addition we will also be publishing items of in- that the editors wereall well respected in the ter est fr om thr oughout the Open Source and Unix Unix community, spending a number of years un- (yes thereissome “proprietary” Unix) community. dertaking duty for the community. These includ- AUUG has a very wide and knowledgeable com- ed such people as Jagoda Crawford (yes, my munity and we want to see items of interest to all wife), John Carey and Peter Ivanov. parts of it, and hope to see all those parts con- Each one of these editors has brought their own tributing. style and experiences to the role and the AU- Finally I'd like to thank all those who have con- UGNs of each period reflect this. We move from tributed and continue to contribute, and that all the early periods wherealot of the content was the readers continue to find AUUGN an important on new developments within the Unix kernel, on part of their universe. to softwaredevelopment, and now to an era dominated by Open Source development. If thereisone thing constant throughout the en- tir e time it is the difficulty in finding contributors. This has been tackled by differ ent editors in their own ways. We have had republication of other user journals (e.g. USENIX's :login;) to publication of AUUG regional conferences, and on to reprint- ing of open source publications found around the Inter net. Well now we have a new era, Con has stepped down, and rather than putting the load on a sin- gle person, AUUGN will have an editorial com- AUUGN Volume 25 Number 4 2December 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] See page 61 for information about AUUGN. Vice-president Ste veLander s AUUG Incorporated gratefully acknowledges the Digital Smarties support of its corporate sponsor: 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] December 2004 3AUUGN Volume 25 Number 4 • The Digital Pests Symposium—to be held in President'sColumn Melbour ne on the 8th of February, this will featur e pr esentations discussing how to handle David Purdue <[email protected]> spam, viruses, adware, spywareand other ma- “reshape: Function: transitiveverb : to givea licious programming. This is also being run by newfor m or orientation to : reor ganise” Adrian Close <[email protected]>, who is —Merriam-Webster Dictionary looking for another one or two presentations, so drop him a line if you have any ideas. As you should be aware, the AUUG Board are busy reshaping AUUG—in both what we do and • Canberra in April as a co-conference with lin- how we do it—in order to improve member ser- ux.conf.au (LCA). vices and the value of an AUUG membership, to • The First Australian Unix Developer's Sympo- update the organisation and keep it relevant. sium—a conference for all those developing Within this change we aretaking great careto softwar e in UNIX like environments. There keep AUUG's corevalues the same. One of our will be two streams, one for newcomers to first tasks was to clearly state these values, as can lear n the basics of the UNIX programming be seen now on the AUUG home page: philosophy and tools, and one for experi- enced programmers to discuss the latest and “AUUG’s role is building a community by con- gr eatest development tools and techniques. necting, supporting and promoting people with an interest in interoperable computing—which we • The UNIX Systems Administration Sympo- see as a key to achieving fitness for purpose and sium—focusing on the technical problems in- value for money in Information and Communica- volved in maintaining UNIX systems and net- tion Technology. works of UNIX systems. “Our members areprofessionals who careabout • The AUUG Security Symposium—discussing all aspects of computer and network security, • Unix operating systems from proprietary ven- over the past few years this has been our most dors popular symposium. • Linux, BSD and other Open Source operating • Open Source Userconf—many open source systems events arestaged for the benefit of Open • Open standards, specifically those which en- Source Developers. The Userconf will change able the free and unrestricted interchange of the focus to those who use and rely on open infor mation source. • Open Source applications, regardless of the • AOSS7—The 7th Australian Open Source Sym- platfor m they run on posium, a low-cost conference run by open source developers for open source developers. • other cool technical stuff” In addition, we arelooking at running another One of the main areas of focus for us is events. “Code-Con Goes Bush”—a weekend in the Of course, our main event will still be our Annual wilder ness with just your laptop, a generator,a Confer ence—AUUG 2005 will be held in Sydney data projector and a gang of code-hacking geeks on October 12—14, with tutorials to be held on for company. October 9—11. Adrian Close <adrian@au- ug.org.au> has volunteered to act as Programme These events areall at differ ent stages of organi- Committee Chair,and I'm surehewould like to sation, but we will publish a full calendar in Jan- hear from anyone with ideas for presentations or uary 2005. volunteers for the Programme Committee. Weare As ever—AUUG is a member based organisation, just finalising the conference theme and invited and the success of these events depends on find- speakers, so expect to see a call for papers real ing volunteers to organise and run them (with lots soon now. of support from the board and AUUG's executive We have also started the organisation of seven dir ector,Liz Carroll). So if these events interest one-day symposia—smaller events that will be you, please consider putting your hand up to con- held in capital cities around the country. These tribute—dr op anote to [email protected]. will be: As has been previously noted, this is the last dead tr ee edition of AUUGN you will be receiving. However,AUUG will still distribute CD's of popu- AUUGN Volume 25 Number 4 4December 2004 lar open source software, and AUUGN will ap- pear on those—in some differ ent bundles to facil- itate reading online or printing your own paper My Home Network copy.