sunflash-Distributed to mailing list sunflash@suntri sunflash-Send requests and problem reports to owner-sunflash@suntri.east.sun.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Florida SunFlash SUG-EAST SUMMER 1993 TECHNICAL CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION JULY 27-29, 1993 PARK PLAZA CASTLE & CONVENTION CENTER, BOSTON, MA, USA SunFLASH Vol 54 #15 June 1993 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 54.15 SUG-East Summer 1993 Conference & Exhibition To be help in Boston, MA, USA July 27-29, 1993 This will be an educational exposition and conference designed exclusively for professionals involved in the management, purchase, use and development of Sun and Sparc-compatible workstations, servers, hardware, software, and peripherals. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: troll@sug.org (A. Newman) Newsgroups: comp.org.usenix,comp.org.sug,comp.os.misc,comp.misc, comp.unix.large,comp.unix.admin,comp.sys.sun.admin,alt.sys.sun, comp.sys.sun.misc,comp.sys.sun.announce Subject: SUG-East Organization: Sun User Group SUG-EAST SUMMER 1993 TECHNICAL CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION JULY 27-29, 1993 PARK PLAZA CASTLE & CONVENTION CENTER BOSTON, MA The Sun User Group-East Conference and Exhibition is an educational exposition and conference designed exclusively for professionals involved in the management, purchase, use and development of Sun and Sparc-compatible workstations, servers, hardware, software, and peripherals. The Exhibit Hall provides you with direct access to Sun, Sparc, and Solaris products and allows you to compare features, functions and prices quickly, saving you valuable time in product evaluation and research. The Conference program features six in-depth, day-long tutorials on Tuesday, July 27, 1993, followed by two days of hour-long technical sessions and panels. The technical sessions are designed to provide you with the valuable information you need, regardless of level of expertise, and feature special sessions geared especially towards new UNIX users. TUTORIALS: T1) SOLARIS 2.x SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATION S. Lee Henry, Sun User Group T2) X ADMINISTRATION Dinah McNutt, Tivoli Systems Miles O'Neal, Pencom Software T3) Advanced UNIX Security Matt Bishop, Dartmouth University T4) The Domain Name System William Lefebvre, Northwestern University T5) Threads and Threaded Applications John Graham, Catalina Consulting T6) Introduction to Motif Programming David Shaffer, ICS Training Services Full conference attendees may choose one of the above six tutorials. The Sun User Group's acclaimed tutorials are intensive, full-day courses, on timely and useful topics. The information is presented in an easily understood and thorough manner, regardless of the level of expertise they are intended for. Our tutors are experienced and well-respected authors, teachers, and experts in their fields. All tutorials are presented with extensive tutorial notes at no additional charge. These notes aid your following of the course material as it is presented and are valuable reference materials. The Sun User Group tutorials are of value to anyone who needs a thorough grounding in a variety of topics in a limited time. Whether you are a programmer, system administrator, developer, or end user, the Sun User Group tutorial program has something to offer every computer professional. Sun User Group tutorial program attendance is limited. Pre-registration is strongly recommended. 1) "Solaris 2.X Systems Administration" S. Lee Henry Pre-requisites: --------------- The course assumes that you have some experience in systems administration of Sun systems and requires proficiency in basic UNIX commands. Description: ------------ This tutorial is aimed at system administrators with some experience who are now migrating to Solaris and wish to learn more about it. This tutorial addresses topics in Solaris 2.X systems administration including: o Package Administration o Security o Admintool o NIS+ o The Korn Shell o Snoop It will describe some of the operating benefits and key features of Solaris 2.1, and provide insights into managing the Solaris network. Significant detail will be provided on the structure and management of software packages; the enhanced security features of Solaris 2.X (including basic system security and ASET); the use of admintool for managing users, hosts, and printers; the structure and management of NIS+ services; syntax of the Korn shell; and the snoop command for network monitoring. Comparisons with SunOS 4.1.X will be made where appropriate. Scripts and examples will be provided to reinforce major concepts. S. Lee Henry is on the Board of Directors of the Sun User Group and writes a monthly column on Systems Administration for SunExpert magazine. S.Lee has been a UNIX/Sun Systems Administrator in the federal government for the past ten years and is just completing a book on Solaris 2.X Systems Administration (along with John R. Graham from Catalina Consulting Group) for McGraw-Hill. 2) "X Administration" Dinah McNutt and Miles O'Neal Pre-requisites: --------------- The course assumes you have a basic understanding of UNIX system administration concepts and that you understand how to use the X window system (manipulate windows, etc.) The first 3 chapters of "The X Window System User's Guide" by O'Reilly and Associates provides a good overview of the X knowledge you need to have. Description: ------------ This course describes how to configure a user's X environment (which components are important and what they do), color, how to maintain source code, and how to manage the X display manager xdm). We also cover X terminals and troubleshooting. There is an in-depth discussion of font administration (including the X11R5 font server), imake and security. We also discuss strategies for administering different versions of X on the same system and advanced troubleshooting techniques. The focus is on explaining the how's and why's so the student can make educated decisions about administering their environment. Dinah McNutt is a system administration consultant for Tivoli Systems Inc., a company specializing in distributed system administration software. She writes the Daemons and Dragons column for UNIX Review magazine and has written articles for SunExpert, RS/Magazine, and the X Resource Journal. Miles O'Neal is a senior software engineer with Pencom Software, where he manages a project providing X for the NeXT system. He has worked with X ever since it escaped the MIT labs, and has written articles for various computer magazines and journals, including the X Resource Journal. 3) "Advanced UNIX Security" Matt Bishop Prerequisites: -------------- This course assumes some knowledge of basic UNIX security issues and techniques, root privileges, and system administration. Much of the material discussed requires a knowledge of UNIX mechanisms as described in the programmers' manual. Description: ------------ This tutorial will examine four areas of security critical to the functioning of UNIX systems. The first area, user authentication, provides the first line of defense against attackers attempting to penetrate the system. We shall present a model of schemes used to authenticate users, then focus on the particular instance of UNIX passwords. Among topics discussed are how to crack passwords, including a presentation of the way that most fast crypt(3) implementations work, and how to defend against password cracking by using a proactive password checker to test proposed passwords for "guessability" or by having the computer generate passwords. Pitfalls of both methods will be discussed, as will the use of an existing proactive password checker. Finally, the use of shadow password files, and some of the complexities introduced by them, will be analyzed. The second area, management of privileges, and the third, defending against malicious logic, are closely related. In the former we shall discuss managing access to the superuser account, methods of managing the superuser account to reduce the need for its use, the use of a program that implements group accounts, and the writing of safe setuid programs. We shall discuss the implementation of the group account program as an example of the latter. In addition to a quick review of basic security practices that protect against malicious logic, we shall discuss the workings of the Internet worm of November 1988, and several techniques for detecting malicious logic as well as blocking its effects. Some of these techniques can be implemented now; others are still under study. The limits of these techniques (what they cannot do) will be presented in detail, so no false sense of security is given. The final area, networking, covers the security mechanisms available in NIS, NFS, privacy-enhanced electronic mail, and Kerberos (the latter two only briefly). In addition, the Berkeley "trusted hosts" mechanism is described, as is Secure RPC and the network daemons and calls used by Berkeley's implementation of rlogin, rsh, and TCP/IP. Finally, we discuss the security of both Honey DanBer and 4.3 BSD UUCP. In this tutorial, the underlying cryptography used in UNIX authentication, Secure RPC, and privacy-enhanced electronic mail will be presented, as will symmetric key exchange (used by Secure RPC) and Needham-Schroeder protocols (used by Kerberos). Matt Bishop does research in Computer Security at the Math/Computer Science Department of Dartmouth University. He was the Conference Chair for the first two Usenix security workshops and has been published in ;login. 4) "Managing the Domain Name System" William LeFebvre Prerequisites: -------------- Attendees should have a basic knowledge of network and system administration. An in-depth understanding of IP will be beneficial but is not required. This course is designed for any network administrator who is responsible for the operation and maintenance of DNS, but who has little experience with it. Description: ------------ This tutorial is intended for internet network managers who need to grasp the intricacies of managing the Domain Name System (DNS). The Domain Name System (DNS) is the primary method which the Internet uses to name and number machines. This course is an introduction to DNS for network administrators. It will describe the basic operation of DNS, and will provide instructions and guidelines for the installation and operation of DNS on various Unix machines. Vendor-specific differences are also described. Instructions for delegating subdomains will be presented. Troubleshooting techniques will be taught, and common problems (and solutions) will be explored. Outline: "The Domain Name System" * Introduction * Basics * Implementation * Message Format * Resource Records Translating numbers to names * Electronic mail When to use MX records * Unix Configuration * Abbreviating Resource Records * OS-specific considerations (Includes: HPUX; AIX; Ultrix; Irix (Silicon Graphics); SCO Unix; and details SunOS) * DNS Administration * Creating subdomains delegating a subdomain * Troubleshooting * Getting More Information * Getting registered William LeFebvre received his MS in Computer Science from Rice University. He is currently the manager and analyst for the computing facilities of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at Northwestern University. William served as a director for the Sun User Group. He is also well known in the network community for moderating the electronic digest Sun-Spots from 1987 to 1989, and for founding the electronic mailing list Sun-managers (which he still maintains). 5) "Threads and Threaded Applications" John Graham Description: ------------ Traditional UNIX processes consist of of a single thread of control. There is, for any given execution of a process a single entry point and a single exit point. From entry to exit there is exactly one path of control, or thread of execution through the process. This model has served well in the past, but with the advent of more accessible Multi-processor (MP) hardware, a new process model which can take advantage of MP and application concurrency is desired. The objective of this tutorial is - o Provide a description of the SunOS process model o Describe thread characteristics such as signal handling, thread stacks, shared memory thread synchronization and system call handling. o Describe how the SunOS kernel takes advantage of threads and different types of threads used by the kernel including unbound kernel threads, bound kernel threads, and interrupt threads o Provide a moderately detailed description of the user interface to threads programming (the thread library) o Provide description of thread synchronization techniques o Provide sample code and programming paradigms which exploit MP or programming concurrency or both. The new process model for SunOS is implemented using a two-level description that includes threads and lightweight processes (LWP's) The application threads are intended to be cheap in the sense of thread creation time versus the time needed to fork() an entire process. In this way, multiple tasks can be initiated in the same manner as the fork() and exec() mechanism, but at a much lower cost. For the programming tasks which can take advantage of multiple processors, the LWP interface is provided. The LWP entities comes at a higher price than a thread since the kernel must do the allocation of hardware. The ability to do this from the user level makes tasks such as matrix-multiply possible in a parallel fashion. The SunOS kernel has been restructured to take advantage of the thread process model. Different pieces of the kernel now simply run as threads which are synchronized using locking primitives as mutexes, condition variables, reader/writer locks and semaphores. Interrupt routines are now run as threads as well as some daemon processes. By restructuring the kernel using threads, the SUnOS kernel becomes fully pre-emptible. This feature, along with the ability to lock pages in memory, provides the capability of starting processes with a bounded-dispatch latency, more commonly known as real-time. Finally, real program examples and code walk-throughs will demonstrate thread programming techniques and possible pitfalls when using threads such as debugging, deadlock and synchronization issues. John Graham is president of Catalina Consulting Group, which provides instructional design and delivery on a variety of SunOS /Solaris topics. Currently being delivered is a set of seminars detailing the differences and transition strategies for SunOS 4.X to SunOS 5.x migration. He is the co-author, with S.Lee Henry of "Solaris 2.X: A System Administrator's Resource" which will be published by McGraw-Hill this summer. 6) "Introduction to Motif Programming" David Shaffer Prerequisites: -------------- A familiarity with the UNIX system, windowing systems in general, and Motif in specific. Description: ------------ This course takes a detailed look at using the OSF/Motif 1.2 toolkit for application development. Topics covered include: o application keyboard traversal o menus o dialogs Additionally we will discuss Motif style guide considerations and lay a foundation of the skills necessary to use a combination of OSF/Motif User Interface Language (UIL) and C to build Motif applications. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is a partial list of the talks that will be presented at SUG-East: "Large Site Administration with SYSTEMWatch AI-L" Lars Graf, OPENService SJI, Inc. This talk is a discussion of how to automate many system and network administration tasks using OPENService SJI's software package, SYSTEMWatch AI-L. The talk will focus on SYSTEMWatch AI-L's expert system technology, which replicates the "knowledge base" and experience of a system administrator in simple rules or directives. SYSTEMWatch AI-L is able to make intelligent decisions and take action in much the same manner a human system administrator would. Many routine and day-to-day tasks can be automated, allowing individual system administrators to manage many more systems at once. "Developing and Implementing Enterprise-wide Client/Server Data Management Solutions for Sun-based Computer Networks" Ross Garber, Epoch Systems, Inc. As more organizations move to client/server computing, there is an increasing need to guarantee the availabilty, accessibility, and reliability of their mission critical data. This is a requirement in successful rightsizing programs. This session will focus on an intergrated, enterprise-wide approach to: backup and recovery; file migration; on-line archiving; volume and library management; and disaster recovery. It will also provide an in-depth look at the issues, strategies, and solutions to centrally managing distributed data in enterprise-wide client/server environments. "Desktop Development Tools" Jay Goyal, SunPro Many new tools are now available to increase programmer productivity in UNIX environment on both PCs and workstations. These tools are being used to solve real-life computing challenges in many business, including the ability to surmount the problems of developing large advanced applications on PCs - a capability that PC development tools could not provide until recently. This session will examine the various programming languages available to the desktop today. It will also address the criteria a software developer must consider when evaluating desktop development tools. "GNU Software Status" Richard Stallman, Free Software Foundation An hour-long talk focusing on Emacs 19 and GCC, plus info about the GNU project as a whole -- its goals, its methods, and where in general the project has got to go. "Software Patents: The Unseen Threat" Tim McNerny, Harlequin, Inc. Representing the League for Programming Freedom Software patents threaten to devastate America's computer industry. Patents granted in the past decade are now being used to attack companies such as Lotus Development Corporation for selling programs that they have independently developed. Soon many small companies, the mainstay of the software industry, will be effectively barred from the software arena. The cost of licensing dozens of patents will make writing and distributing major programs infeasible. This talk will introduce the problem and suggest possible solutions. "Role-based System Administration" Dinah McNutt, Tivoli Systems This talk will describe traditional methods of performing system administration tasks: restricted shells, setuid programs, etc. It will describe the pros and cons of these methods. It will also discuss the problem with the "all or nothing" access of the root account and why a role-based administration methodology is useful. Finally, this new methodology will be discussed in the context of POSIX 10003.7 and the Tivoli Management Environment (TME.) TME will be used as an implementation example only as this is a technical presentation, not a product description. "Utilizing Existing Ethernet Networks" Yancy Lind, Atlantec What is an administrator to do when an Ethernet network begins to buckle from bandwidth intensive applications such as CAD/CAM or multimedia? There's an enormous investment in conventional Ethernet networks, that makes it almost imperative that network administrators continue to utilize this equipment. Do you replace the system with a FDDI network, and trade in old headaches for new ones, or wait for ATM products to hit the market? This talk focuses on a new breed of hubs, called 'switching hubs', address the need for increased bandwidth while utilizing the current Ethernet network. Switching hubs feature support for multiple Ethernets and provide a migration path to technologies such as FDDI and ATM. "C++ Templates: Reuse With and Without Inheritance" Hank Shiffman, SunPro The template mechanism is a recent addition to the C++ language that permits functions and entire class definitions to be applied to many different kinds of data. Templetes offer an effiecient and easy-to-use alternative to class inheritance as a way of reusing code. This session will look at the way templates extend C++'s functions and class definitions. We will examine examples of both template functions and classes, and consider ways that templates and inheritance can be combined to make programmers more productive. "Introduction to Multithreaded Technology" Denis Lahey, SunPro Multithreading is parallel software technology for unlocking the power of MP hardware, by optimizing overall system throughput and application response time, and by harnessing inherent parallelism that many algorithms afford. MT technology will be used in Sun software, such as the operating system, compilers, and tools. Single applications can take advantage of MT systems by dividing tasks into smaller tasks (called threads) and running those tasks (threads) simultaneously on different CPUs. This type of application is called multithreaded. "You and Your Compiler" Keith Bierman, SunPro A discussion of how to get your application to go faster via compilation environment features (options, profiling tools and etc.). Part of the discussion is tutorial. Part is topical. Audiance reaction determines how much of each. "The New Computer Graphics Metafile Standard" Dr. John Gephardt, InterCap Graphics Well-designed graphics are powerful communications tools. Until now, manufacturers, customers, strategic partners, vendors, and suppliers have had to rely on multiple industry standards to store and exchange their graphics data. In 1992, ISO approved the new CGM standard, which will make it possible to implement graphics intensive applications based entirely on the international data standards. The CGM standard is being used extensively in the commerical aerospace industry and in the CALS program and this talk will focus on these two areas. Other applications of the standard are discussed briefly. "Increasing Productivity with Tape Libraries" John Andrews, Exabyte Did you know that annual storage management costs for a typical Sun network exceed $100,000? Or that the average network disk capacity may contain more than 250,000 files, making it virtually impossible to manage manually? Considering that 87% of lost data is the result of human error, the argument for tape libraries becomes very strong. Helical Scan tape libraries are the next logical step beyond unattended backup. They automate backup, file restoration,archiving, and file migration. A variety of technologies and tape libraries are entering the market, and each offers a variety of benefits. "Monitoring and Analyzing Large Networks" Neeraj Sangal, Metrix Network Systems This presentation will focus on using your Sun to monitor and analyze traffic on your large network within the current network management framework. Topics include studying traffic patterns, analysis of network load, measuring NFS server performance, evaluating client-server load distribution, debugging protocol errors, determining subnet partitioning and performing long term trend analysis. It will discuss the remote monitoring MIB (RMON) and its possible future directions. The talk will also describe a new type of monitoring tool, called the internetwork monitor, which integrates data from several agents in a multi-segmented network and presents a unified view. "Sun System Maintenance: Implications of Sun's Open Systems and Service Strategies" Steve Geisel, Polaris Service The speaker will discuss the maintenance implications of Sun's open systems and service strategies, providing system administrators with timely, practical advice on how to evaluate alternatives and cost-effectively address their company's short- and long-term maintenance requirements. "Relational Database + Automated SysAdmin = SIMON" Jon Finke, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute A discussion of the RPI SIMON system, a set of programs based on a relational database that automate many aspects of Unix system administration. Ever growing, Simon currently manages automatic Unix userid mangement based on data feeds from Human Resources, the Registrar and Alumni development. This starts with userid creation, expiration, deadfiling and restoration, along with Unix group file management, and user maintainable email forwarding and mailing lists. In addition, Simon now manages disk accounting and billing, and provides tools for managing the host tables and DNS RR files. Future development will include printer management, accounting and billing, along with increased automation of system configuration. The combined user and host databases will provide a base for an integrated campus wide trouble reporting database. BASICS: "Using the UNIX Mail System" Shelli Meyers, Boston University Information Technology Learn the basics of BSD mail. You can never predict what environment or system you may be working on, but after taking this course, no matter what UNIX machine you go to, you can always use /usr/ucb/mail. "Introduction to the Internet" Shelli Meyers, Boston University Information Technology This talk is a user-driven overview of the internet, and covers the basics of navigating through utilities like telnet, information retrieval with ftp or gopher, as well as touching on news services like USENET. -------------------------------------------------------------------- REGISTRATION FORM: +-------------------------------------------------------+ | | | ***This form MUST be returned with your payment*** | | | +-------------------------------------------------------+ Regular SUG Member Price Tutorial Only $295 $245 (Includes box lunch. Please indicate tutorial selection below) Sessions Only $495 $445 Full Conference $695 $645 (Includes one tutorial. Please indicate selection below) +-------------------------------------------------------+ | REGISTER BEFORE JUNE 14, 1993 AND SAVE $100 OFF OF | | THE FULL-CONFERENCE FEES!! | | | | Early-bird $595 $545 | | | +-------------------------------------------------------+ Exhibit Only $40 $40 +-------------------------------------------------------+ | REGISTER BEFORE JUNE 14, 1993 AND SAVE $30 ON | | ADMISSION TO THE EXHIBIT HALL!! | +-------------------------------------------------------+ Please register me for: ___ T1) Solaris 2.x Systems Administration ___ T2) X Administration ___ T3) Advanced UNIX Security ___ T4) The Domain Name System ___ T5) Threads and Threaded Applications ___ T6) Introduction to Motif Programming [ ] Please apply $40 of my non-SUG membership fee to my membership dues and make me a Sun User Group member. Name:_________________________________________________________________ SUG member # (required for member price):_____________________________ Title:________________________________________________________________ Company Name:_________________________________________________________ Department:___________________________________________________________ Mail Stop/Suite:______________________________________________________ Street Address:_______________________________________________________ City:_________________________________________________________________ State:________________________________________________________________ Zip/Postal Code:______________________________________________________ Country:______________________________________________________________ Email Address:________________________________________________________ Phone:________________________________________________________________ [ ] Check Make checks payable to "Sun User Group East" [ ] MasterCard [ ] Visa [ ] American Express Credit Card Number:___________________________________________________ Expiration Date:______________________________________________________ Signature of cardholder:______________________________________________ [ ] I hereby authorize the Sun User Group to renew my membership and charge my credit card automatically on an annual basis. (MasterCard or Visa ONLY) [ ] I do not wish my name to be included in non-Sun User Group mailings. [ ] I do not wish my name to be published in the Sun User Group member directory. [ ] I wish to be added to the Sun User Group electronic mailing-list. Send payment to: Sun User Group Summer Conference 1330 Beacon St. Suite 315 Brookline, MA 02134 You may register over the telephone with your MasterCard, VISA, or American Express card by calling (617) 232-0514. Credit card applications may also be faxed to (617) 232-1347, or emailed to office@sug.org ********************************************************************** For information about SunFlash send mail to info-sunflash@Sun.COM. Subscription requests should be sent to sunflash-request@Sun.COM. Archives are on solar.nova.edu, ftp.uu.net, sunsite.unc.edu, src.doc.ic.ac.uk and ftp.adelaide.edu.au All prices, availability, and other statements relating to Sun or third party products are valid in the U.S. only. 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