Hal Steger, Funambol: Cross-Platform Mobile Apps

Funambol is the leading provider of open source push email and mobile synchronization for the mass market. It is also the world's most established cross-platform mobile open source project, whose software has been downloaded 2.5 million times by a global community of 50,000 developers and project participants. Developers use Funambol to build innovative mobile apps and services that run on multiple mobile platforms, including smartphones such as the iPhone, Google Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm and Mobile Linux, as well as 1.5 billion mass market feature phones. At its core, Funambol is an engine that can sync virtually any type of data with any type of mobile device. This session will consist of a technical introduction to using Funambol on Linux for building cross-platform mobile apps and services. It will cover the Funambol Server, Funambol Mobile Clients and resources available to people interested in building cross-platform mobile apps and services.

Hal Steger is VP Marketing at Funambol. He has twenty years of technical marketing experience at software companies, including Oracle, Compuware/Uniface, Hewlett-Packard and several high profile Silicon Valley Startups. Hal was co-founder and VP Marketing at Rubric, the pioneer of the category of Marketing Automation systems. Rubric was acquired for $370M. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business.

Bill Ward, Making Your Life Easier with Perl

Whether you're updating a directory full of symbolic links or making bulk edits to a group of text files, or any other tedious manual task, there is a myriad of opportunities on Linux for automation via scripting in languages such as Perl. In this talk Bill will review some useful tips and techniques for automating tasks under Linux, revealing key aspects of the Perl language, and features such as regular expressions, along the way. Learn how to identify and install Perl modules, including using your Debian or RPM packaging system to keep them up to date. No prior Perl knowledge is required.

Bill Ward has been programming in Perl since 1993 in the system administration and Web development fields. He has been teaching Perl since the late 1990's, first at De Anza College and later as his own company, Bay View Training. He also works at Oracle as a software architect in the Infrastructure Systems Development group. He was the founder of PenLUG in 2003. His company is offering Perl training classes open to the public in October in Sunnyvale, CA, and in November in Dallas, TX, and he is available for private Perl coaching or on-site training classes.

Slides

• penlug-talk-slides.odp: OpenOffice Presentation
• penlug-talk-slides.pdf: PDF Format

Alan DuBoff, Embedded Linux, turning ideas into products, and why Linux is tossing the embedded space on it's ear

Alan DuBoff worked on the Kerbango Internet Radio, which was an early adopter of Embedded Linux. Alan will show the Kerbango radio, open it up and explain the components designed into it, and what it takes to turn ideas into real products. The Kerbango radio received a Best Innovation award at the 2001 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, receiving almost as quick of a death from the parent company who acquired it. Understand why this was such a controversial product for the industry. Selecting Linux was a much more difficult choice 9 years ago than it is today. Linux is really leaving the embedded space tossed on it's ear. There are lots of devices coming to market and being developed which run Embedded Linux. This is truly one of the most exciting areas of the high tech industry, and certainly for the Linux community as a whole. Learn some about the roots of Linux in the embedded space, how it has been evolving, and what still plagues it.

Alan has also worked on set-top boxes, cell phones, and other embedded devices with Linux and other embedded systems. He has interfaced computers with satellite dishes, jukeboxes, touch screens, and other widgets. He has also worked on systems involving systems programming, graphics, systems programming, UI, speech recognition, IVR, and more. He is currently working for Sun Microsystems.

Presentation Slides

The slides for the meeting are available in OpenOffice.org Impress (OpenDocument) and PDF (Adobe Acrobat) formats.

Robert Scott, Alpaca

Although Linux has all of the necessary tools to do networking, including gateway devices, it is missing a comprehensive configuration utility to stitch it all together. At the end of the day, networking in Linux is hard, and we thought it was time for a change. We wanted something that was powerful, easy to use and looked good. We wanted to make open source networking sexy. Thus, we embarked on a journey to unite both classical and romantic beauty by marrying some of the most powerful tools in Linux Networking with some of the most celebrated web technologies. What emerged was the “Untangle Net Alpaca” -- a new open source networking utility that presents a consistent, reliable platform for setting up a wide range of networking tasks, including PPPoE Management, NAT, Redirect, Packet Filtering, Bridging, DNS, DHCP (dnsmasq), and more.

At this talk, we will go through the design and function of Untangle Net Alpaca and demonstrate how you can use it to easily provide network services at the gateway.

Robert Scott is a keyboard operator at Untangle. He is a passionate member of the Free and Open Source Software community with over 10 years of Linux experience and dedicates some of his time to developing an Open Source Car Stereo at cadvium.net. He enjoys working in a wide range of languages and development environments. He graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Harvard University in 2002.

David Weekly, Tinkering Before Millions

How to take a hobby hack and turn it into a service used by millions (and hopefully that MAKES millions).

David Weekly is the founder and CPO of PBwiki. PBwiki is the world's largest business wiki host and is home to over 500,000 communities, including groups at over at third of the Fortune 500. He graduated as a President Scholar from Stanford in 2000 with a BS in Computer Science and has worked for such institutions as Harvard Physics, MIT Lincoln Labs, Stanford Graphics, atWeb, Legato, and There.com. David wrote the first layman's level description of MP3 in early 1997, reverse engineered the Napster protocol in an evening, and was a finalist in the ACM International Programming Competition. David lives in a Cupertino mansion with seven others (he's the sommelier) and throws periodic all-night hackathons called SuperHappyDevHouse there. David is an adviser to several Bay Area startups, including Jaxtr, KiteDance, MusicManagement, and IncentAlign. He last spoke at PenLUG in November 2006.

Presentation Materials

• TinkeringBeforeMillions.ppt: Slides (PowerPoint format)
• TinkeringBeforeMillions.pdf: Slides (PDF format)

Audio (Podcast) of the Meeting

A Podcast of this meeting is hosted on the Internet Archive.

Video of the Meeting

Alex Honor, CTL

CTL is a new open source software project providing a cross-platform command dispatching framework for distributed application and system management. The talk is based on notes here.

Alex Honor is a developer and open-source project-leader for ControlTier Software. Alex has been designing and implementing automation and administration solutions for over 15 years. He was head of architecture and system engineering at E*TRADE, where he led the scaling of infrastructure from one application on 3 nodes to dozens of applications across thousands of nodes in multiple data centers. Alex has held engineering and operations management positions in government and startups always focusing on distributed systems. His current focus is on CTL, a next-generation automation framework for system and application administration. Alex also provides design consulting to ControlTier's SaaS (Software as a Service) and e-commerce customers to automate their online operations.

David Fetter, DBI-Link and PostgreSQL

Have you ever needed to get data from a spreadsheet and put it in a database? Have you ever wanted to do real queries on a CSV file? DBI-Link 3.0 makes these operations easy. For years, DBI-Link has been used in large production systems for communicating between Postgres and other data sources, not just other RDBMSs. Find out what's new in the latest version, and make your migration easier.

David Fetter is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and has worked in various commercial enterprises, non-profits and educational institutions. He has worked extensively with Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Perl, PHP, PL/SQL, PL/PgSQL, PL/Perl and (of course!) vim on transaction processing and business intelligence systems. In his free time, he brews beer, rides his bicycle, and helps run several organizations for computer professionals including the San Francisco Perl Users' Group and the San Francisco PostgreSQL Users' Group.

James Burgett, ACCRC

The Alameda County Computer Resource Center (ACCRC) is a non profit organization which provides free electronics recycling. James will be speaking on the topic of giving computers to the needy through the diversion of machines from the waste stream and the difficulty of placing free hardware in a world that was trained to expect zero-sum economic behavior ("If it's free then something must be wrong with it"). He will discuss the recent installfest (350 machines assembled), including lessons learned and plans for future fests.

James Burgett founded the ACCRC, Alameda County Computer Resource Center, to essentially make money off of equipment that other people thought was obsolete garbage. Thirteen years later he’s reformatted, refurbished and donated thousands of computers to folks who might not ever have the chance to own one. The ACCRC offers workshops on how to refurbish and reuse junked equipment and how to install and use the open source OS Ubuntu Linux which is free for all. Saving valuable equipment from the landfill, James explains, is not exactly profitable for the California Electronics Recycling Initiative, which encourages recyclers to mine and grind parts rather than refurb for reuse.

Video of the Meeting

Sponsors

Thomas Belote, Wireless Mesh Networking

As a grad student at SJSU, Thomas has worked on Wireless Mesh Networking and Mobile Ad Hoc Networking. The talk will compare solutions like OLSR and Microsoft's sorta open source Mesh Connectivity Layer (though it doesn't run on Linux). He will discuss why WDS is not sufficient and a mesh protocol is needed, and discuss the lack of openness thus far in 802.11s even though it is included in the OLPC, as well as security issues that I am still currently researching.

Amanda - open source backup

Amanda is a popular open source network backup and recovery system. The talk will be about Amanda, open source project, how it is different from other backup solutions, current status and why you should use it. A roadmap for the community version will also be presented.

Zmanda is the company that provides enterprise subscription to Amanda. The talk will also cover important features of the recent Amanda enterprise release and how Zmanda contributes to the Amanda community.

Paddy Sreenivasan

Paddy is the Vice President of Engineering and a founder of Zmanda, Inc. He is responsible for technical strategy and development of leading software products for data protection. Paddy has over 13 years of experience in development and management of software for enterprise storage. In addition, he has worked with various open source communities, including leading the development of an open source high-availability clustering solution.

Paddy is one of the Amanda project administrators and developer. He has spoken about Amanda in various user groups and conferences.

2008 PenLUG meetings:

• January 24, 2008: Paddy Sreenivasan, Amanda
• February 28, 2008: Thomas Belote, Wireless Mesh Networking
• March 27, 2008: James Burgett, ACCRC
• April 24, 2008: David Fetter, DBI-Link and PostgreSQL
• May 22, 2008: Alex Honor, CTL
• June 26, 2008: David Weekly, PBWiki
• July 24, 2008: Robert Scott, Alpaca
• August 28, 2008: Alan DuBoff, Embedded Linux Devices & Internet Radio
• September 25, 2008: Bill Ward, Making Your Life Easier with Perl
• October 23, 2008: Hal Steger, Funambol: Cross-Platform Mobile Apps
• November 13, 2008^?: TBD
• December 11, 2008^?: TBD

Bill Kendrick & Akkana Peck, Graphics APIs

This meeting will feature presentations on APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) at two different ends of the spectrum of graphics software: Tux Paint and GIMP. Whether you're interested in writing a plugin for a graphics program, or a user who wants to learn how they work under the covers, this meeting should provide some fascinating insight into the inner workings of graphics APIs.

Bill Kendrick is the principal author of Tux Paint, a graphics program for kids. The latest version (0.9.18) introduces a new plugin API, allowing for easier development of "Magic" tools (e.g., effects like blur, smudge, tint, mirror-image, etc.) and he will be talking about this API.

Akkana Peck is a freelance programmer, occasional GIMP contributor and author of the book Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional. She will be talking about GIMP scripting in various languages, primarily its native language, "script-fu".

Slides

The slides for these presentations are available from the speakers' respective Web sites:

• Bill - TuxPaint
• Akkana - GIMP

• February 28, 2008: Thomas Belote, Wireless Mesh Networking

Robert Scott, Linux-based car computer

Robert Scott is working on a Linux and Open Source based car computer, and will give a presentation about it which will cover the following areas:

• Motivations behind the open source car stereo.
• Design goals.
• Design decisions.
• Some sample code.
• Demonstration throughout the supplement the presentation.

Robert Scott is currently working as a Software Developer at Untangle. A few years ago he started looking for a way to access a network of applications in a car. Dissatisfied with the current solutions, he decided to take on this challenge during his free time, and cadvium was born. Robert, a strong believer in Open Source, releases most the software for cadvium under GPLv2.

Before Untangle, Robert worked a Mykotronx Inc, and completed his undergraduate studies in computer science in 2002.

• January 24, 2008: Paddy Sreenivasan, Amanda

Other 2008 dates are available.

If you or someone you know would like to present at an upcoming PenLUG meeting (any date marked "TBD" is available), please let us know at officers@penlug.org. Thanks!

Dirk Morris, Untangle

"Trade-Offs in Building Entire Networks in Software"

Untangle, an open source software company, has developed a virtualization platform for packaging and delivering networking applications that make it easier for businesses to adopt open source software. In this presentation, Untangle's Founder/CTO, Dirk Morris, will layout a new model for deploying software at the network gateway to overcome the challenges of running multiple applications (firewall, IPS, VPN, Spam Blocker, Spyware Blocker, Web Filter, etc.) on standard x86 based hardware. Dirk will present an insider's look at the tradeoffs Untangle made when designing a virtual network and tricks learned in maintaining high performance between competing applications running on the same system.

About Dirk Morris

Dirk Morris is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Untangle and visionary behind the Untangle Gateway Platform.

Prior to Untangle, Dirk was Chief Architect at Akheron Technologies, where he invented the patent-pending High Bandwidth Transparent Vectoring used in the company's proxy firewall engine. He has also held positions as lead engineer at VerticalNet and H.L.L.C. Consulting, developing Java-based distributed monitor and intrusion detection systems.

Earlier in his career, Dirk worked on survivability simulations at CERT/CC (Computer Emergency Response Team), the renowned, federally-funded Center for Internet security operated by Carnegie Mellon University.

Dirk earned a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University.

Slides

Here are the slides from the presentation (PowerPoint format, but should be usable in OpenOffice.org):

• VirtualNetworks_PenLUG_Oct25_07.ppt:

John D. Mitchell, Krugle

Lost & Found: How Search-Driven Development Saves Developer Sanity Using Linux and Open-Source

John D. Mitchell Chief Architect, Krugle

Modern software development is beset with numerous challenges. As organizations grow, teams become more distributed, time to market pressure increases, requirements evolve more rapidly, and systems get exponentially more complicated, the sheer volue of data becomes overwhelming. High-quality information becomes harder to find at all and much harder to find quickly.

Developers are already adapting to this new reality by using search tools to instigate their activities. Searching for code examples, bug reports, requirement details, workarounds, new tools, progress indicators, cost estimates, people to help, and the like. Alas, traditional search technologies have helped a bit in isolation but have not integrated all of the disparate sources of technical information into a single, coherent way that blends the realities of proprietary development with all of the benefits of the open-source ecosystem.

This talk shows how tools and processes enabling search-driven development provides huge benefits in areas such as development speed, education, reuse, management, and risk reduction and how these tools and services were built with open-source software and deployed on Linux clusters.

Speaker: John Mitchell

John has developed systems ranging from aerospace and consumer electronics to medical informatics and e-commerce. He has written for a variety of publications including JavaWorld, Linux Journal, and Dr. Dobb's Journal. John brings extensive experience in technology transfer, open source, and development communities as both an independent consultant and CTO of such companies as the MageLang Institute and jGuru.com.

Slides

The slides from the presentation are available here:

• krugle_lost-and-found.pdf: Slides from Krugle talk

• Book Reviews - Book Reviews

Securing Web Applications in the LAMP Environment - Qualys

Most web application vulnerabilities can be exploited regardless of network and host security settings. This presentation demonstrates the steps that system administrators can take to minimize the impact to users and application owners of common web-based attacks such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and remote file include -- even when they do not have access or cannot change the site's code.

Even though vulnerabilities must be fixed in the application's source code, a securely deployed LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL^?, PHP) stack can minimize the scope of compromise. Attendees will not only be shown the latest trends in web-based exploits, but also learn how to apply often over-looked or misapplied Apache and MySQL^? configuration settings. Examples will include httpd.conf, mod_rewrite, mod_security, php.ini, and MySQL^?.

This presentation will step through the exploit of a common web application and examine the LAMP configurations that do and do not affect its security. This will enable system administrators to better understand where they should focus their security efforts.

Bio Mike Shema - Security Research Engineer, Qualys

Mike Shema is the co-author of Hacking Exposed: Web Applications, The Anti-Hacker Toolkit, and the author of Hack Notes: Web Application Security. He has extensive consulting experience with information security within a variety of industries. While his security background ranges across network penetration testing, wireless auditing, code review, and training, he primarily focuses on web application security. He currently works at Qualys, developing tools that automate the web application audit process.

Bio Matthew Wirges - QA Security Engineer, Qualys

Matt Wirges is a QA Security Engineer at Qualys where he focuses primarily on security issues with Qualys' pre-release web components and quality assurance of Qualys' other web capabilities. Prior to joining Qualys, Matt was a Lead IT Security and Privacy Analyst at Purdue University, where he developed a university-wide incident response program, the VSC, which is a web interface to a cluster of Nessus vulnerability scanners, and other duties included incident handling and risk analysis. Prior to this work, Matt was a web application developer writing applications in PHP, Perl, and Zope. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional and received a Bachelors of Science in Interdisciplinary Computer Science from Purdue University.

Presentation Slides

• penlug-presentation-23AUG07.pdf: Securing Web Applications in the LAMP Environment - Qualys

References/Resources

• Ajax “Worm” based on proof of concept by Anurag Agarwal http://myappsecurity.blogspot.com/2006/12/ajax-worm-proof-of-concept.html
  
• Web Application Security Consortium's Threat Classification http://www.webappsec.org/projects/threat/
  
• mod_security http://www.modsecurity.org
  
• PHP Security http://php-security.net
  
• MySQL Reference Documentation http://dev.mysql.com/doc/
  
• Apache Documentation http://httpd.apache.org/docs/
  
• selinux http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/
  
• CIS Apache Security Benchmark http://www.cisecurity.org/bench_apache.html