For the last 11 years now (!!), the Bellingham Linux Users Group (BLUG) have been producing Linuxfest Northwest, a two day knowledge exchange covering a number of free and open source technologies. And it’s completely free (as in no cost) to attend. The whole thing is run by volunteers.
My career has made me mostly a Windows guy, but I’m no stranger to Linux. So I made the drive (about 1.5 hours) and sat in on a few sessions. I also manned the LOPSA booth for a short while. It was a nice trip – Bellingham is beautiful this time of year – and not too far out of the way. The event is held at the Bellingham Technical College and the facilities there are excellent.
Late in the day on Sunday, I made a 360° PhotoSynth from in front of the LOPSA booth in the exhibitor hall. Here it is. Hopefully no one will mind that I made this using a Microsoft technology! Although these pics make the event look very sparsely attended, that’s only because the event was very nearly over when I found the time to take my pictures. Attendance was much heavier on Saturday.
For me, the most informative sessions were one I didn’t see, and one I did see.
The one I didn’t see (ironically because of time conflicts) was Nick Webb’s Save Your Life with Time Management. He has distilled the best of Tom Limoncelli’s book, Time Management For System Administrators, into a nice set of slides which are available here. It will take you about ten minutes to read through them, and I guarantee they are worthwhile minutes. If as a sysadmin you are always feeling behind the 8-ball, just stop now and go read Nick’s presentation! If that’s not enough motivation to begin implementing a new time management strategy, get and read Tom’s book, which is mercifully short and masterfully wise.
The one I did see was Owen DeLong’s Essential IPv6 for the Linux Administrator. Owen is the IPv6 Evangelist for Hurricane Electric, who have long been the most IPv6-friendly backbone/transit provider and hosting company on the planet. As of today, there are about 507 days before the world literally runs out of IPv4 addresses, and that’s just a staggering number, isn’t it? Just as eye-opening was the fact that there’s really no good, standardized, and battle-tested recipes for IPv6 versions of things we take for granted with IPv4. For instance, if you’re using auto-addressing from your IPv6 router, how do you also tell clients about necessary services on your network … like where the DNS server is? On the other hand, there are some nifty features in IPv6’s auto-addressing scheme which pretty much put DHCP to shame. You can switch over to a new auto-addressing router in under 60 seconds with no advance preparation whatsoever!
Alas, Owen’s presentation is not yet online, but a number of others are available at the Hurricane Electric website. If you’re looking to study up on IPv6, you probably want Iljitsch van Beijnum’s Running IPv6. Iljitsch has written a number of articles on the subject at Ars Technica. We all need to get this on our radars!
All in all, a worthwhile event. I will be sure to attend next year.
