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S1 Blueprints for High Availability: Designing Resilient Distributed Systems Who should attend: Beginning and intermediate UNIX system and network administrators, and UNIX developers concerned with building applications that can be deployed and managed in a highly resilient manner. A basic understanding of UNIX system programming, UNIX shell programming, and network environments is required. This course will explore procedures and techniques for designing, building, and managing predictable, resilient UNIX-based systems in a distributed environment. Hardware redundancy, system redundancy, monitoring and verification techniques, network implications, and system and application programming issues will all be addressed. We will discuss the trade-offs among cost, reliability, and complexity. Topics include:
Evan Marcus (S1)
is a senior systems
engineer and high availability specialist with VERITAS Software
Corporation. Evan has more than 12 years of experience in UNIX systems
administration. While employed at Fusion Systems and OpenVision Software, Evan
worked to bring the first high availability software application for SunOS and
Solaris to market. Evan is the author of several articles and talks on the
design of high availability systems.
Who should attend: Name-server administrators and software developers who need a deeper understanding of the DNS protocol and of the internals of BIND. Participants should already be responsible for the operation of at least one campus or ISP name-server farm, should be familiar with Internet protocols such as TCP and UDP, and should know the basic theories of public- and private-key encryption. This tutorial will explain how EDNS, DNSSEC, etc., differ from classic DNS, and how BIND9 differs from classic BIND4/BIND8. Topics include:
Upon completion of the course, attendees will know what the IETF has been up to lately, and what to expect in upcoming BIND releases. This tutorial will not be a rehash of prior material--new subjects will be covered.
Paul Vixie (S2)
was the maintainer of the BIND
software system through version 8. BIND, the Berkeley Internet Name Domain,
includes the name server ("named") used everywhere on the Internet. Paul is also a coauthor of Sendmail: Theory and Practice (Digital Press, 1995).
Who should attend: This class will cover a range of timely and interesting UNIX system administration topics. It is intended for system and network administrators who are interested in picking up several new technologies in an accelerated manner. The format consists of five topics spread throughout the day. Topics in file systems: This section will cover features of modern file systems and how they affect the life of a system administrator. We will survey existing file systems, ending with a brief discussion of the future of file systems and storage. Machine room design: With the ever-increasing popularity of the Web as well as the general necessity for reliable data-access, more and more sites are requiring 24x7 server availability. We will look at the transition from small machine room to (large) data center, and what you can do to make it easier to manage cables, power, A/C, and so on. What's new in BIND9? BINDv9 includes a long laundry list of features needed for modern architectures, huge zones, machines serving a zillion zones, co-existence with PCs, security, and IPv6--specifically, dynamic update, incremental zone transfers, DNS security via DNSSEC and TSIG, A6, and DNAME records. Security topics: We will cover a hodgepodge of topics relating to host- and network-based security, including:
Wireless networking: A brief look at local area networking via wireless bridges. We look at installation, compatibility, range, price, and throughput.
Evi Nemeth
(S3, T3),
a faculty member in
computer sci ence at the University of Colorado, has managed UNIX systems
for the past 20 years, both from the front lines and from the ivory tower. She
is co-author of the UNIX System Administration Handbook.
Who should attend: Network and system administrators, security administrators, and technical auditors who want to secure their UNIX/NTbased networks. Is your UNIX/NTbased network infrastructure up to meeting the challenge of malicious marauders? In this tutorial we'll present the methodologies used by today's hackers to gain access to your networks and critical data. We'll demonstrate a typical attack exploiting both well-known and little-known NT-based vulnerabilities. We'll show how NT attackers can leverage UNIX vulnerabilities to circumvent traditional security mechanisms. And, during the attack, we'll identify opportunities to better secure the host and networks against more esoteric attacks. All examples will be demonstrated on a live network. Topics include:
George Kurtz (S4)
has performed hundreds
of firewall, network, and e-commercerelated security assessments
throughout his security consulting career. He is a regular speaker at many
security conferences and is frequently quoted in The Wall Street Journal,
InfoWorld, USA Today, and the Associated Press and is a co-author of the
widely acclaimed Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets &
Solutions.
Who should attend: System and network administrators who wish to integrate Samba running on a UNIX-based machine with Microsoft Windows clients. No familiarity with Windows networking concepts will be assumed. Samba is a freely available suite of programs that allows UNIX-based machines to provide file and print services to Microsoft Windows PCs without installing any third-party software on the clients. This allows users to access necessary resources from both PCs and UNIX workstations. As Samba makes its way into more and more network shops all over the world, it is common to see "configuring Samba servers" listed as a desired skill on many job descriptions for network administrators. This tutorial will use real-world examples taken from daily administrative tasks. Topics include:
Gerald Carter
(S5, M9)
has been a member of the Samba Team since 1998 and is employed by VA Linux Systems. He is currently working with O'Reilly Publishing on a guide to LDAP for system administrators. He holds a master's degree in computer science from Auburn University, where he was also previously employed as a network and systems administrator. Gerald has published articles with various Web-based magazines such as Linuxworld and has authored instructional course for companies such as Linuxcare. He acted as the lead author of Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours (Sams Publishing.)
Who should attend: This tutorial is directed at system administrators who are implementing network services and are looking for a background in the configuration of those services, and for the basics of the protocols and performance tuning. Attendees should have used or been the client of an IP network and have a basic knowledge of systems administration, but do not need to be experienced network administrators. Both new network administrators and gurus will leave the tutorial having learned something. System administrators are increasingly being tasked with bringing their office environments on-line, with the meaning of "on-line" ranging from a stand-alone client attached to the Internet to a distributed network of Web servers. The prospect of the network services to be configured can be daunting to administrators who aren't familiar with the applications. Configuration examples, discussed with brief overviews of the underlying protocols, can be taken away for direct application at home. Topics include (with a special emphasis on security):
Attendees should leave the course feeling confident in their ability to set up and maintain secure network services. The tutorial will be conducted in an open manner that encourages questions at all times.
Bryan C. Andregg
(S6, M6)
works for Red Hat, Inc. In the past three years Bryan has worked
in or with almost every position at the company, sometimes to a good end. His
current projects include Coffee Making 101 and Linux for Land Rovers. Prior to
Red Hat, Bryan was the systems and network administrator for an ISP. His current title is "Smoke Jumper."
Who should attend: Windows NT/2000 administrators and users who want to keep their systems up and running at peak efficiency. Why isn't my application performing as it should? Why does the file server hang after it's been up for a while? Why does this machine keep crashing? This tutorial presents various Windows NT/2000 system monitoring tools and methods from the point of view of application developers, system administrators, or IT support personnel with problems to solve. We'll review the relevant principles of the operating system and then present a number of system-failure and performance-problem scenarios, each carefully designed to illustrate the value and use of a particular analysis technique. Yes, crash dump analysis is included, but it's by no means our only focus. Topics include:
Jamie Hanrahan (S7)
provides Windows NT driver development, consulting, and training
services to leading companies. He is co-writing a book on Windows NT device
drivers, to be published by O'Reilly and Associates. He also has an extensive
background in VMS device drivers and internals. He is co-author of VMS
Advanced Driver Techniques and received the Instructor of the Year award
while teaching VMS device drivers and internals courses for Digital.
Who should attend: Network, system, and firewall administrators; security auditors and those who are audited; people involved with responding to intrusions or responsible for network-based applications or systems that might be targets for crackers (determined intruders). Participants should understand the basics of TCP/IP networking. Examples will use actual tools and will also include small amounts of HTML, JavaScript, and Tcl. Network-based host intrusions, whether they come from the Internet, an extranet, or an intranet, typically follow a common methodology: reconnaissance, vulnerability research, and exploitation. This tutorial will review the tools and techniques crackers use to perform these activities. You will learn what types of protocols and tools they use, and you will become familiar with a number of current methods and exploits. The course will show how you can generate vulnerability profiles of your own systems. Additionally, it will review some of the important management policies and issues related to these network-based probes. The course will focus primarily on tools that exploit many of the common TCP/IP based protocols, such as WWW, SSL, DNS, ICMP, and SNMP, which underlie virtually all Internet applications, including Web technologies, network management, and remote file systems. Some topics will be addressed at a detailed technical level. This course will concentrate on examples drawn from public-domain tools that are widely available and commonly used by crackers. Topics include:
Topics not covered:
Brad Johnson (S8)
is a vice president of SystemExperts
Corporation, a consulting firm that specializes in system security and
management. He is a well-known authority in the field of secure distributed
systems and has recently served as a technical advisor to both Dateline NBC and
CNN on network security matters. He has participated in seminal industry
initiatives, including the Open Software Foundation, X/Open, and the IETF, and
has often published about open systems.Brad was one of the original members of
the OSF DCE Evaluation Team. He has a B.A. in computer science from Rutgers
University and an M.S. from Lesley College.
Who should attend: System administrators and system engineers responsible for the design and implementation of storage systems. Attendees should be aware of storage systems concepts; a basic familiarity with SAN is helpful but not required. This tutorial, taking a hands-on approach, will provide practical guidelines for the design and implementation of a functional SAN. Beginning with fundamental SAN concepts, we will work through to the implementation of a SAN. A particular focus of the tutorial will be on design models and decisions, the physical and logical SAN layout, and control and monitoring of a SAN. The goal of the tutorial is to enable the attendee to make effective design choices for a SAN and then proceed to a successful SAN implementation, including control and monitoring of the implemented SAN.
Dan Pollack (S9)
was introduced to UNIX in 1988 and has been
a system administrator of one sort or another since 1990. He has worked in the
financial, government, and on-line service industries. For the past four years
he has been designing and implementing storage systems for database
applications. He currently resides at America Online Incorporated in Reston,
Virginia, where he is a Principal System Administrator.
Who should attend: System administrators with at least advanced-beginner to intermediate experience with Perl, who would like a clear understanding of how to use Perl to make their job easier. Perl was originally created to help with system administration, so it is a wonder that there isn't more instructional material available for helping people in our field use Perl to advantage. This tutorial hopes to begin to remedy this situation by presenting a solid three hours of instruction on using Perl for systems administration. You are also likely to deepen your knowledge of Perl. Based on the instructor's just-published O'Reilly book, this tutorial will take a multi-platform approach to the subject. We'll be exploring cutting-edge and old standby systems-administration topics as they manifest themselves on both UNIX and Windows NT/2000 platforms. Topics include:
David N. Blank-Edelman
(S10, S14)
is the Director of
Technology at the Northeastern University College of Computer Science and the
author of the new O'Reilly book Perl for System Administration. He has
spent the last 14 years as a system/network administrator in large
multi-platform environments including Brandeis University, Cambridge Technology
Group, and the MIT Media Laboratory. He has served as Senior Technical Editor
for the Perl Journal and has written many magazine articles on world
music. Who should attend: This tutorial is designed for system administrators at all levels of experience and without regard to particular employment situations. Of course, the legal situation of the system administrator and the appropriate resolution of legal issues may vary depending on many factors, including the status of the employer. We will attempt to address these variations as they become relevant during the tutorial. This tutorial presents an overview of the laws of cyberspace, with particular emphasis on system administrators' rights and liabilities. It then focuses on those current legal and policy developments that are most relevant to system administrators. The format allows plenty of time to ask questions. The course aims to provide attendees with a better understanding of how the law views system administrators, of the sensitive legal issues and potential liabilities they face, and of ways they can help their employers minimize their liability. Topics include:
Daniel Appelman
(S11, S15) is a lawyer with
a major Silicon Valley law firm. He has been practicing in the areas
of cyberspace and software law for over fifteen years. Dan is the attorney for
the USENIX Association and for many high-tech companies.
Who should attend: Anyone who is a system administrator or has access to confidential information, and anyone who manages system administrators or makes policy decisions about computer systems and their users. This introductory tutorial will start by examining some of the ethical responsibilities that come along with access to other users' data, accounts, and confidential information. We will look at several case studies, and all attendees will be encouraged to participate in the discussion. Numerous viewpoints will be considered, in order to give students a perspective from which to develop their own reasoned response to ethical challenges. The SAGE Ethics statement will serve as our model. Topics include:
The answers to these and other problems are often far more complicated than one would initially guess. After completing this tutorial, you will be better able to resolve questionable situations and will have the means to support your decisions.
Lee Damon
(S12, T4)
holds a B.S. in
speech communica tion from Oregon State University. He has been a UNIX system
administrator since 1985 and has been active in SAGE since its inception. He is
a member of the SAGE Ethics Working Group and was one of the commentators on the SAGE Ethics document. He has championed awareness of ethics in the systems
administration community, including writing it into policy documents.
Who should attend: Linux enthusiasts and administrators who want to build their own systems from scratch. Hardware experience is helpful but not necessary. No previous Linux experience is needed, but you should know how to use a screwdriver. This tutorial will help you understand what hardware will be best for your applications, so that you can avoid both underpowering your system and overstressing your budget. You will learn how to avoid certain hardware problems and still find your niche in the cheap/fast/good triad. Topics include:
When you have completed this tutorial, you should be able to comfortably purchase your computer hardware, load Linux, and log into the server.
Ed DeHart
(S13, M7)
is a former member of Carnegie Mellon University's CERT
Coordination Center, which he helped found in 1988. Ed has also owned an ISP,
Pittsburgh OnLine Inc., which operated several UNIX servers. Currently, Ed is
President of Prism Servers, Inc., a manufacturer of Internet firewalls and
UNIX-based Internet servers.
Who should attend: System administrators with at least advanced-beginner to intermediate Perl skills. Perl is an excellent language for rapid development and prototyping. Thanks to the power of the core language and the large body of additional modules, it is often possible to write quick programs to solve pressing problems. System administrators have no shortage of pressing problems, so knowing how to wield this "Swiss Army chain saw" can be a lifesaver. Centered around a set of "battle stories" and the Perl source code used to deal with them, we'll discuss various approaches to solving systems administration crises using Perl. The code will be mostly UNIX-related, with a sprinkling of Windows NT/2000 examples, but the approaches won't be specific to any particular operating system. Students are welcome to bring their own pressure-cooker problems (solved or not) for class discussion.
David N. Blank-Edelman
(S10, S14)
is the Director of
Technology at the Northeastern University College of Computer Science and the
author of the new O'Reilly book Perl for System Administration. He has
spent the last 14 years as a system/network administrator in large
multi-platform environments including Brandeis University, Cambridge Technology
Group, and the MIT Media Laboratory. He has served as Senior Technical Editor
for the Perl Journal and has written many magazine articles on world
music. Who should attend: System administrators in any employment situation and at any level of experience. Of course, the legal situation of the system administrator and the appropriate resolution of legal issues may vary depending on many factors, including the status of the employer. We will attempt to address these variations. This tutorial focuses on the developing right of privacy in cyberspace and on how privacy expectations often conflict with other demands, including those of law enforcement generally, the protection of special categories of users such as children, and the unrestricted use of information available on the Net. We will examine the current status of privacy as an enforceable legal right and see how it fares in competition with other legal rights, such as the rights of speech and press, national security, and fair use of published information. Particular emphasis will be put on addressing how far the system administrator's duties go in policing and enforcing the privacy rights of others. We will discuss real-life situations and the methodology for analyzing and resolving legal issues.
Daniel Appelman
(S11, S15) is a lawyer with
a major Silicon Valley law firm. He has been practicing in the areas
of cyberspace and software law for over fifteen years. Dan is the attorney for
the USENIX Association and for many high-tech companies.
Who should attend: System administrators who need to produce documentation for the systems they manage or who need to improve their documentation skills. This tutorial covers basic techniques for writing effective documentation and improving existing documentation practices. Particular emphasis is placed on documentation as a time-saving tool rather than a workload imposition. Topics include:
Mike Ciavarella (S16) has been producing and editing technical documentation since he naively agreed to write application manuals for his first employer in the early 1980s. He has been a technical editor for MacMillan Press and has been teaching system administrators about documentation for the past four years. Mike has an Honours Degree in Science from the University of Melbourne in Australia, and is currently a Senior Partner with Cybersource Pty Ltd, where he heads Cybersource's Security Practice. In his spare time, Mike is a caffeine addict and photographer. Attendees should be able to make immediate practical use of these techniques.
M1 Network Design for High Availability
NEW Who should attend: System and network designers and administrators who want to improve the availabiity of their network infrastructure and Internet access, and anyone looking for a survey of how IP networks can fail and techniques for keeping critical network services available despite failures. Attendees should already be familiar with basic network terminology and concepts, TCP/IP protocols, and the role of routers and switches. (This tutorial is designed to complement Tutorial S1, "Designing Resilient Distributed Systems--High Availability.") No matter how the price is measured, downtime impacts the bottom line. As organizations grow ever more dependent upon computers and their support networks, hardware and software failures that interfere with business operations are increasingly seen to be unacceptable. Availability has become a key network performance metric, commensurate with throughput and delay. We will discuss how to select and configure appropriate redundancy for common production network needs. The emphasis will be on how to take advantage of standard capabilities to make the network more reliable and to minimize the need for emergency manual intervention. Proven solutions based on open standards and protocols will be provided for a wide range of application requirements. Topics include:
Vincent C. Jones (M1)
is the founder and principal con sultant of Networking
Unlimited, Inc., a network design consulting firm specializing in network
performance and reliability enhancement. Vince has been applying the theory of
networking to the solution of real-world problems for almost three decades and
is the author of High Availability Network Design, to be published later
this year by Addison-Wesley.
Who should attend: Novice and advanced UNIX system and network administrators, and UNIX developers concerned about network performance impacts. A basic understanding of UNIX system facilities and network environments is assumed. We will explore techniques for tuning systems, networks, and application code. Starting from a single-system view, we'll examine how the virtual memory system, the I/O system, and the file system can be measured and optimized. We'll move on to Network File System tuning and performance strategies. Detailed treatment of network performance problems, including network design and media choices, will lead to examples of network capacity planning. Application issues, such as system call optimization, memory usage and monitoring, code profiling, real-time programming, and controlling response time will be covered. Many examples will be given, along with guidelines for capacity planning and customized monitoring based on your workloads and traffic patterns. Analysis periods for particular situations will be provided. Topics include:
Marc Staveley (M2)
recently left Sun Microsystems
Enterprise Services to join a start-up, where he is applying his 16 years of
experience with UNIX development and administration. Previously Marc was an
independent consultant and has held positions at NCR, Princeton University, and
the University of Waterloo. He is a frequent speaker on the topics of
standards-based development, multi-threaded programming, systems administration, and performance tuning.
Who should attend: System administrators who want to learn more about the sendmail program, particularly details of configuration and operational issues (this tutorial will not cover mail front ends). This will be an intense, fast-paced, full-day tutorial for people who have already been exposed to sendmail. This tutorial describes the latest release of Berkeley sendmail, version 8.11. We begin by introducing a bit of the philosophy and history underlying sendmail. Topics include:
Eric Allman
(M3, T9)
is the original author of sendmail. He is the
author of syslog, tset, the -me troff macros, and trek. He was the chief
programmer on the INGRES database management project, designed database user and application interfaces at Britton Lee,and contributed to the Ring Array
Processor project at the International Computer Science Institute. He is a
former member of the USENIX Board of Directors.
Who should attend: System administrators who are responsible for developing strategy for their sites, performing system reviews, planning improvements, or proposing expenditures to improve practices, and consultants wishing to develop their skills in planning work and communicating with clients. As a system administrator, you know when there is a problem. But how can you convince the higher-ups that something needs to be done? The audit is the most valuable tool in your arsenal when it comes to dealing with management, because it forces a rigorous assessment of the current situation, evaluates alternatives, and results in a document that cogently addresses the problems. Audits also have the side effect of uncovering problems you didn't even know existed! An audit enables you to prove your point and also cover your back. It should be your primary tool for:
Audits come in many shapes and sizes. They are a basic mechanism for system review and control over entropy. This tutorial introduces the concepts and principles of audits and will examine in detail how to conduct an audit, including interviews and system inspections, and how to present the results of that work to management in the form of a formal audit report. Topics include:
Geoff Halprin (M4)
is the principal consultant at The
SysAdmin Group. He has been a system administrator for the past 15 years and a
consulting system administrator for over 10. Geoff specializes in data security
and systems management disciplines and in the evaluation and improvement of
systems management practices. He has acted as consultant to a wide variety of
organizations, including government, large corporations, and several major ISPs. Geoff is also the vice-president of the System Administrators Guild of Australia (SAGE-AU) and is a member of the SAGE Executive Committee.
Who should attend: System administrators who are responsible for heterogeneous WinNT- and UNIX-based systems. Attendees should have user-level knowledge of both OSes, and, preferably, systems administration experience in at least one of them. Today's organizations choose computing solutions from a variety of vendors. Often, integrating the solutions into a seamless enterprise is a task left up to system administrators. This course covers specific issues in administering a mixture of NT and UNIX-based systems. The focus will be on practical solutions to real administration problems. Topics include:
For each of the areas we will cover:
Phil Cox
(M5, T2)
is a consultant for SystemExperts
Corporation, a consulting firm that specializes in system security and
management. Phil frequently writes and lectures on issues bridging the gap
between UNIX and Windows NT. He is a featured columnist in ;login;, the
USENIX Association Magazine and has served on numerous USENIX program
committees. Phil holds a B.S. in computer science from the College of
Charleston, South Carolina.
Who should attend: This tutorial is directed at system administrators who are planning on implementing a Linux solution in a production environment. Course attendees should be familiar with the basics of systems administration in a UNIX/Linux environment: user-level commands, administration commands, and TCP/IP networking. The novice administrator and the guru should both leave the tutorial having learned something. From a single server to a network of workstations, the Linux environment can be a daunting task for administrators knowledgeable about other platforms. Starting with a single server and ending with a multi-server 1000+ user environment, case studies will provide practical information for using Linux in the real world. Topics include (with a special emphasis on security):
Upon completion of the course, attendees should feel confident in their ability to set up and maintain a secure and useful Linux network. The tutorial allows for questions at all times.
Bryan C. Andregg
(S6, M6)
works for Red Hat, Inc. In the past three years Bryan has worked
in or with almost every position at the company, sometimes to a good end. His
current projects include Coffee Making 101 and Linux for Land Rovers. Prior to
Red Hat, Bryan was the systems and network administrator for an ISP. His current title is "Smoke Jumper."
Who should attend: UNIX and Linux system and network administrators and operations/support staff. After completing the tutorial, you should be able to establish and maintain a site that allows the benefits of Internet connectivity while protecting your organization's information. You will learn strategies to reduce the threat of Internet intrusions and to improve the security of your UNIX and Linux systems connected to the Internet, as well as how to set up and manage Internet services appropriate to your site's mission. Topics include:
Ed DeHart
(S13, M7)
is a former member of Carnegie Mellon University's CERT
Coordination Center, which he helped found in 1988. Ed has also owned an ISP,
Pittsburgh OnLine Inc., which operated several UNIX servers. Currently, Ed is
President of Prism Servers, Inc., a manufacturer of Internet firewalls and
UNIX-based Internet servers.
Who should attend: System administrators responsible for Windows servers. Topics include:
Aeleen Frisch
(M8, T6)
has been a system administra tor for over 15 years. She currently looks after
a very heterogeneous network of UNIX and Windows NT systems. She is the author
of several books, including Essential Windows NT System
Administration.
Who should attend: Administrators and programmers interested in the potential of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and in exploring issues related to deploying an LDAP infrastructure. This tutorial is not designed to be a how-to for a specific LDAP server, nor is it an LDAP developers' course. Rather, it is an evaluation of the potential of LDAP to allow the consolidation of existing deployed directories. No familiarity with LDAP or other Directory Access Protocols will be assumed. System administrators today run many directory services, though they may be called by such names as DNS and NIS. LDAP, the up-and-coming successor to the X500 directory, promises to allow administrators to consolidate multiple existing directories into one. Vendors across operating-system platforms are lending support. Topics include:
Gerald Carter
(S5, M9)
has been a member of the Samba Team since 1998 and is employed by VA Linux Systems. He is currently working with O'Reilly Publishing on a guide to LDAP for system administrators. He holds a master's degree in computer science from Auburn University, where he was also previously employed as a network and systems administrator. Gerald has published articles with various Web-based magazines such as Linuxworld and has authored instructional course for companies such as Linuxcare. He acted as the lead author of Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours (Sams Publishing.)
Who should attend: System or network administrators who have been exposed to the Domain Name System only as users. A basic understanding of the IP protocols, TCP and UDP, data encapsulation, and the seven-layer model will be beneficial. DNS, the primary method the Internet uses to name and number machines, is used to translate names like "www.usenix.org" into addresses like 131.106.3.253. Any site that is serious about joining the Internet community will need to understand how to configure and administer DNS. This tutorial will describe the basic operation of DNS and will provide instructions and guidelines for the configuration and operation of DNS on UNIX platforms using the BIND software distribution. This class is designed for the beginner and is intended to provide a foundation for the tutorial on "Intermediate Topics in Domain Name System Administration." Topics include:
William LeFebvre
(M10, M13)
has been using UNIX and
Internet technologies since 1983. He has written many articles on UNIX,
networking, and systems administration issues. Currently he writes the monthly
"Daemons & Dragons" column for UNIX Review. William is the editor of
the SAGE series "Short Topics in System Administration." He has taught tutorials since 1989 for such organizations as USENIX, the Sun User Group (SUG), MIS Training Institute, IT Forum, and Great Circle Associates, and he is a certified Cisco Systems Instructor. William is the primary programmer for the popular UNIX utility top and has contributed to several widely used UNIX packages, including Wietse Venema's logdaemon package. He can be reached at wnl@groupsys.com or via https://www.groupsys.com/.
Who should attend: Managers and prospective managers, people who deal with a large customer base, and anyone who is interested in how people communicate and how to communicate more effectively. When you communicate with people, do you wait for them to meet you halfway? Are you disappointed and feel at a loss if they don't? This course gives some simple-to-learn but powerful techniques to help you communicate better with everyone, even those who don't want to communicate with you. The techniques are easy and practical--we'll demonstrate them in class, then you can go practice during the conference. Topics include:
Stephen Johnson
(M11, M14, T11, T14)
has been a technical manager on and off for nearly two
decades, in both large and small companies. At AT&T, he is best known for
writing Yacc, Lint, and the Portable C Compiler. He served as the head of the
UNIX Languages Department at AT&T's Summit Labs. He has also been involved
in a number of Silicon Valley startup companies. He served for ten years on the
USENIX Board of Directors, four of them as president. He presented an invited
talk on management at LISA three years ago, he has taught USENIX tutorials on
technical subjects, and he has led management training seminars at LISA and the
USENIX Annual Conference, as well as at Transmeta.
Who should attend: System administrators supporting many UNIX hosts; network administrators with large, distributed networks; security architects looking for alternative ways to control secure devices; senior administrators looking for mentoring and collaboration tools, or just trying to do more with less. The serial console port on a host or device can give you valuable security data and allow configuration you cannot access via the operating system on most devices. Using standard equipment and the free Conserver application, you can provide your site with managed, secure remote access to the serial consoles of your hosts, network equipment, and even non-networked devices. This class will cover implementation models and Conserver installation and configuration. It will take the mystery out of hooking most serial devices up to your terminal servers. Topics include:
David K. Z. Harris
(M12)
has been a network plumber "for more than a decade," and he Who should attend: Network administrators with a basic understanding of DNS and its configuration, those whose need to learn how to create and delegate subdomains, and administrators planning to install BIND8. Attendees are expected either to have prior experience with DNS, including an understanding of basic operation and zone transfers, or to have attended the "Introduction to Domain Name System Administration" tutorial. Attendees will move beyond the basics into a more thorough understanding of the overall design and implementation of DNS. Topics include:
William LeFebvre
(M10, M13)
has been using UNIX and
Internet technologies since 1983. He has written many articles on UNIX,
networking, and systems administration issues. Currently he writes the monthly
"Daemons & Dragons" column for UNIX Review. William is the editor of
the SAGE series "Short Topics in System Administration." He has taught tutorials since 1989 for such organizations as USENIX, the Sun User Group (SUG), MIS Training Institute, IT Forum, and Great Circle Associates, and he is a certified Cisco Systems Instructor. William is the primary programmer for the popular UNIX utility top and has contributed to several widely used UNIX packages, including Wietse Venema's logdaemon package. He can be reached at wnl@groupsys.com or via https://www.groupsys.com/.
Who should attend: Anyone who needs to deal with difficult people on the job, especially managers and those who deal with difficult clients. Difficult co-workers may be clients, employees, peers, or managers. This tutorial will discuss what makes people difficult, and how you can deal more easily with them without knuckling under. Topics include:
Stephen Johnson (M11, M14, T11, T14) has been a technical manager on and off for nearly two decades, in both large and small companies. At AT&T, he is best known for writing Yacc, Lint, and the Portable C Compiler. He served as the head of the UNIX Languages Department at AT&T's Summit Labs. He has also been involved in a number of Silicon Valley startup companies. He served for ten years on the USENIX Board of Directors, four of them as president. He presented an invited talk on management at LISA three years ago, he has taught USENIX tutorials on technical subjects, and he has led management training seminars at LISA and the USENIX Annual Conference, as well as at Transmeta.
T1 Advanced Solaris Systems Administration Topics Who should attend: UNIX administrators who need more knowledge of Solaris administration. We will discuss the major new features of recent Solaris releases, including which to use (and how) and which to avoid. This in-depth course will provide the information you need to run a Solaris installation effectively. Updated to include Solaris 8 and several other new topics. Topics include:
Peter Baer Galvin (T1)
is the chief technologist for Corporate Technologies, Inc., and was the systems manager for Brown University's
Computer Science Department. He has written articles for Byte and other
magazines, is systems admnistration columnist for SunWorld, and is
co-author of the Operating Systems Concepts and the Applied Operating
Systems Concepts textbooks. As a consultant and trainer, Peter has taught
tutorials on security and systems administration and has given talks at many
conferences.
Who should attend: System and network administrators who will need to implement or maintain Windows 2000based systems and networks, and site managers charged with selecting and setting site security requirements. The security implications of a large Windows 2000 (Win2K) deployment are not yet well understood. This tutorial presents the problems and solutions surrounding Win2K and the security of the networks it runs on. It will cover the design of Win2K from a security standpoint and outline what Win2K has "out of the box" for security, along with Win2K-related risks and appropriate countermeasures. It will conclude with specific recommendations on firewalling Win2K and offer pointers on how to "harden" the system. Topics include:
Phil Cox
(M5, T2)
is a consultant for SystemExperts
Corporation, a consulting firm that specializes in system security and
management. Phil frequently writes and lectures on issues bridging the gap
between UNIX and Windows NT. He is a featured columnist in ;login;, the
USENIX Association Magazine and has served on numerous USENIX program
committees. Phil holds a B.S. in computer science from the College of
Charleston, South Carolina.
Who should attend: This class will cover a range of timely and interesting UNIX system administration topics. It is intended for system and network administrators who are interested in picking up several new technologies in an accelerated manner. The format consists of five topics spread throughout the day. SNMP: An introduction to SNMP, followed by discussion and live examples of popular SNMP agents for Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, and others. We will look at packaged agents, freely available ones, and also command-line SNMP tools. RRDtool and Cricket: These free network monitoring tools can be combined to create a highly customizable Web-based network management system. Those familiar with Perl will be able to apply examples from this section to almost any monitoring scenario. Although everyone understands the value of UNIX system logs, many organizations are still in the Stone Age of log management. This section will discuss popular logging strategies and several free tools to help facilitate their use. Host security: Although the specific configuration tips apply to Linux and Solaris, the concepts are generic, applying well to other UNIX operating systems. The section will include technical discussion designed to help administrators determine weak points in their own installations. Firewall configuration: This section will integrate ideas from the rest of the day. Examples will be drawn from Cisco and Checkpoint, but the focus will be on generic firewalling strategy. Several tools to check firewall configuration will be demonstrated.
Evi Nemeth
(S3, T3),
a faculty member in
computer sci ence at the University of Colorado, has managed UNIX systems
for the past 20 years, both from the front lines and from the ivory tower. She
is co-author of the UNIX System Administration Handbook.
Who should attend: Anyone who is designing, implementing or maintaining a UNIX environment with 2 to 20,000+ hosts. System administrators, architects, and managers who need to maintain multiple hosts with few admins. This tutorial won't propose one "perfect solution." Instead, it will try to raise all the questions you should ask in order to design the right solution for your needs. Topics include:
The class will concentrate on UNIX, but integration with NT/2000 will also be discussed.
Lee Damon
(S12, T4)
holds a B.S. in
speech communication from Oregon State University. He has been a UNIX system
administrator since 1985 and has been active in SAGE since its inception. He is
a member of the SAGE Ethics Working Group and was one of the commentators on the SAGE Ethics document. He has championed awareness of ethics in the systems
administration community, including writing it into policy documents.
Who should attend: Anyone involved with network design, implementation, and support, and content providers who need familiarity with wireless technologies and how those technologies can affect their service offerings. A basic understanding of wired network architecture over local and/or wide areas is required. For years people have dreamed of "unwired" access--anywhere, anytime--to networks and the data they contain. Recently, the advent of standards for wireless LANs, the development of powerful handheld devices, and widespread deployment of services such as digital cellular systems have made the promise of wireless networking more realizable than ever before. Topics include:
Jon Rochlis (T5)
is a independent consultant, providing
high-level advice to large and small businesses in the areas of networking,
network security, distributed systems design and management, and electronic
commerce. He has been a senior consultant with SystemExperts Corp., an
engineering manager with BBN Planet (now GTE), Director of the Cambridge
Technology Center of OpenVision Technologies, and a technical supervisor for the
Development Group of MIT's Distributed Computing and Network Services (DCNS),
the follow-on to Project Athena. Jon has also served on the NEARnet Technical
Committee. He holds a B.S. degree in computer science and engineering from MIT.
Who should attend: Both current and prospective Linux system administrators. It will cover configuring and managing Linux computer systems in production environments, with a focus on the administrative issues involved in deploying Linux systems for real-world tasks and problems arising from both commercial and R&D contexts. Topics include:
Aeleen Frisch
(M8, T6)
has been a system administra tor for over 15 years. She currently looks after
a very heterogeneous network of UNIX and Windows NT systems. She is the author
of several books, including Essential Windows NT System
Administration.
Who should attend: People who investigate computer crimes and are familiar with systems or network administration and the Internet. This tutorial will explain where evidence can be found, how it can be retrieved securely, how to build a picture of the "crime scene," and what can be done beforehand to make investigations easier and more successful. Examples are drawn from UNIX, Windows NT, and telecommunications hardware. Topics include:
Steve Romig (T7)
is in charge of the Ohio State
University Incident Response Team, which provides incident response assistance,
training, consulting, and security auditing service for The Ohio State
University community. He is also working with a group of people from Central
Ohio businesses to improve Internet security response and practices. In years
past Steve has worked as lead UNIX system administrator at one site with 40,000
users and 12 hosts and another site with 3,000 users and over 500 hosts. Steve
received his B.S. in mathematics (computer science track) from Carnegie Mellon
University in 1983. You can reach him by phone at 1-614-688-3412 or by email at
romig@net.ohio-state.edu.
Who should attend: Perl programmers interested in honing their existing Perl skills for quick prototyping, system utilities, software tools, system management tasks, database access, and WWW programming. Participants should have several months' experience of basic Perl scripting. Topics include:
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:
Tom Christiansen (T8)
has been involved with Perl
since day zero of its initial public release in 1987. Lead author of The Perl Cookbook, co-author of the second editions of Programming Perl and Learning Perl, and co-author of Learning Perl on Win32 Systems, Tom is also the major caretaker of Perl's online documentation. He holds undergraduate degrees in computer science and Spanish and a master's in computer science. He now lives in Boulder, Colorado.
Who should attend: This fast-paced tutorial is intended for UNIX administrators who are already familiar with configuring and administering sendmail and who want to learn how to convert to sendmail 8.11 or who want to understand sendmail security better, particularly on firewalls and other similar systems. Sendmail is a powerful Mail Transport Agent that can be configured for many different environments, from firewalls through workstation mail servers. These environments have different security requirements; in particular, in a pure relay configuration (with no local user accounts or delivery) sendmail can be configured to relinquish root permissions. Topics include:
Eric Allman
(M3, T9)
is the original author of sendmail. He is the
author of syslog, tset, the -me troff macros, and trek. He was the chief
programmer on the INGRES database management project, designed database user and application interfaces at Britton Lee,and contributed to the Ring Array
Processor project at the International Computer Science Institute. He is a
former member of the USENIX Board of Directors.
Who should attend: System administrators involved in the design, implementation, and administration of Legato NetWorker. Participants should be familiar with basic NetWorker installation and administration. Participants who are planning to use, but are not yet using, NetWorker should review the NetWorker documentation. Anyone who has implemented a medium to large installation of any commercial backup software package understands the challenges of such a project. This tutorial will focus on the challenges unique to Legato NetWorker, with a heavy emphasis on automation, monitoring, and reporting. The tutorial will also answer questions all NetWorker administrators find themselves asking, and it will provide scripts that can be used to automate NetWorker. Topics include:
After completing this tutorial, participants will be able to answer these questions, will know how to avoid common pitfalls, and will have the tools necessary to completely automate their NetWorker installation.
W. Curtis Preston
(T10, T13)
is a Practice Principal for Collective Technologies and
manages their Backup and Recovery Practice. He has been specializing in backup
and recovery for over seven years and has designed, implemented, and audited
enterprisewide backup and recovery systems for many Fortune 500 and e-commerce
companies. His O'Reilly & Associates book, UNIX Backup &
Recovery, has sold over 20,000 copies, and he writes a regular column for
UnixReview online and SysAdmin magazine. Curtis's Web address is
https://www.backupcentral.com, and he can be reached at curtis@backupcentral.com.
Who should attend: Newly promoted technical managers and those who expect promotion in the near future. So you have done well at your technical job and have been asked to take on some management responsibility. You understand the technical side of the jobs your group is doing. What do you need to succeed as a manager? This class and the accompanying "Management 102" will orient you, introduce you to the skills you will need to be most effective, and suggest ways you can guide your own growth as a manager. (N.B.: The tutorial "Communicating with Everyone" is highly recommended, but not essential.) Topics include:
Stephen Johnson
(M11, M14, T11, T14)
has been a technical manager on and off for nearly two
decades, in both large and small companies. At AT&T, he is best known for
writing Yacc, Lint, and the Portable C Compiler. He served as the head of the
UNIX Languages Department at AT&T's Summit Labs. He has also been involved
in a number of Silicon Valley startup companies. He served for ten years on the
USENIX Board of Directors, four of them as president. He presented an invited
talk on management at LISA three years ago, he has taught USENIX tutorials on
technical subjects, and he has led management training seminars at LISA and the
USENIX Annual Conference, as well as at Transmeta.
Who should attend: UNIX system and network administrators already familiar with or responsible for sendmail, who want to learn how to move their sites to sendmail 8.11 or who want to better understand sendmail security, particularly on firewalls and other similar systems. Sendmail 8.11, the latest release of Open Source sendmail, has many new features. In many cases mail administrators can just compile the new release of sendmail and use their old configuration files, but "power users" may wish to utilize the many new capabilities of version 8.11. Topics include:
Time permitting, musings on the future direction of sendmail will be indulged in.
Gregory Neil Shapiro (T12)
began his professional career as a system administrator for Worcester
Polytechnic Institute (WPI) after graduating from WPI in 1992. During his tenure as senior UNIX system administrator, he became involved with beta testing the BIND name server, the sendmail mail transfer agent, and other UNIX utilities such as emacs and screen. He contributed the secure zones functionality included
in BIND 4.9.X. When presented with the opportunity to join Sendmail, Inc., he
packed his bags and headed west. As lead engineer at Sendmail, Inc., he has
continued to support the open source version while working on Sendmail Pro and
Sendmail Switch, the commercial versions.
Who should attend: UNIX administrators who need to back up and recover their Oracle 7 or 8 database, and NT engineers who need to know more about Oracle architecture and recovery. Topics include:
W. Curtis Preston
(T10, T13)
is a Practice Principal for Collective Technologies and
manages their Backup and Recovery Practice. He has been specializing in backup
and recovery for over seven years and has designed, implemented, and audited
enterprisewide backup and recovery systems for many Fortune 500 and e-commerce
companies. His O'Reilly & Associates book, UNIX Backup &
Recovery, has sold over 20,000 copies, and he writes a regular column for
UnixReview online and SysAdmin magazine. Curtis's Web address is
https://www.backupcentral.com, and he can be reached at curtis@backupcentral.com.
Who should attend: New technical managers or those who expect to be managers soon. (This is a companion tutorial to "Management 101." The tutorial on "Communicating with Everybody:" is also recommended, but not required.) Many managers report that their job seemed very powerful when before they took it, does not feel that way now. This tutorial offers practical techniques that allow people to empower themselves and others. True empowerment comes from within and can be developed even in a hostile environment. Empowering yourself also helps you empower your employees and your boss. Topics include:
Stephen Johnson (M11, M14, T11, T14) has been a technical manager on and off for nearly two decades, in both large and small companies. At AT&T, he is best known for writing Yacc, Lint, and the Portable C Compiler. He served as the head of the UNIX Languages Department at AT&T's Summit Labs. He has also been involved in a number of Silicon Valley startup companies. He served for ten years on the USENIX Board of Directors, four of them as president. He presented an invited talk on management at LISA three years ago, he has taught USENIX tutorials on technical subjects, and he has led management training seminars at LISA and the USENIX Annual Conference, as well as at Transmeta.
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Last changed: 18 Oct 2000 bleu |
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