BLUG was started in 1998 by a small group of computer geeks in Bellingham, Washington who wanted to get off Windows and learn from local Unix gurus. Our focus is on Linux and all Open Source software.
We hold a presentation meeting the first Thursday of the month at Bellingham Technical College in Campus Center room 201 (CC201). On the third Wednesday, we hold an informal organization meeting with the time and location being Bellingham Makerspace (located in the Bellisfair Mall, next to Dicks Sporting Goods). We also put on special events including the regional LinuxFest Northwest in the Spring.
Next Meeting
Security in the modern Environment
08/20/2025 at 05:30 PM
Josh will be discussing (and demonstrating!!) security tools, software, and hardware for the modern environment. Expect HAK5 gadgets and anything Defcon had in their store in the last few years.
Past Meetings
BLUG meeting Tonight Aug 7
08/07/2008 at 12:00 AM
Our Thursday 7pm, tonight, at BTC BLUG meeting
will Not be in room D5,
instead it will be in Haskell 108a.
As John B previously posted,
“I will be doing the presentation this Thursday on the linux LVM.”
“Introduction to the Linux Logical Volume Manager
The logical volume manager (LVM) is a disk abstraction system for Linux.
It provides greater flexibility in managing storage space than the
traditional disk and disk partition approach.
With LVM physical disks are combined into storage pools from which
virtual disk volumes can be created. These virtual volumes can be made
bigger or smaller without needing to repartition the drives. LVM also
provides the ability to take snapshots of volumes while they are in use,
so consistent point in time backups can be made.
I will talk about the basics of the LVM and show examples of adding disk
space to a file system and doing a snapshot backup.”
Bill
Get down with Groovy. A Quick intro.
07/03/2008 at 12:00 AM
Henri will present at our next regular BLUG meeting at BTC, Thursday July 3rd from 7 pm till 9 pm.
Groovy is an agile, dynamic programming language for the Java Virtual
Machine. Groovy includes features found in Python, Ruby and SmallTalk,
but has a syntax similar to the Java programming language.
Groovy features full compatibility with Java code and existing
libraries. From simple scripts to easier Swing desktop apps to full
web applications Groovy is easy to use and easy to read.
Henri will cover the basics of Groovy, a few scripting examples and, if
time permits, a simple web application using the Grails framework.
http://groovy.codehaus.org/
BLUG meeting Thursday June 5th
06/05/2008 at 12:00 AM
Thursday June 5th will be our regular
BLUG meeting at BTC, in room D5, from 7pm til 9pm.
Mark Ashworth has volunteered to present on:
Title: Exporting data as Open Office spreadsheets using Java and Python.
Mark’s Description:
“Design a template doc in Open Office and save it as odt (word processor) or ods (spreadsheet). The result is a zip file that contains content.xml along with a bunch of formatting files, definitions, images etc. You can create new documents on the fly by extracting the contents of the zip file, modifying just content.xml and writing it all back to a new file or output stream.
I’ll show examples in both Java and Python that query a database and insert content to create a new OO spreadsheet or document and compare some of the code side by side. The Java example delivers from a web server and the Python example is a command line utility but the methods are very similar once you get past the difference in language syntax.
One of my motivations for this was to learn some Python so be prepared to look at some code.”
We’ll also have our regular Q&A and Linux in the news time.
BLUG Mtg post LFNW install fest
05/01/2008 at 12:00 AM
Install fest for people who were introduced to Linux at LFNW 2008 and want to put it on their machines. Pass out completed surveys in batches to volunteers for data entry.
2nd to last DotOrg meeting before LinuxFest!
04/17/2008 at 12:00 AM
Very important meeting of BLUG’s DotOrg Committee Thursday, April 17th, at our regular location, from 7 til 9pm. This is the 2nd to last meeting before LinuxFest Northwest! Watch the blug-list for other details.
BLUG Meeting Thursday Apr 3
04/03/2008 at 12:00 AM
The regular meeting of BLUG will be held Thursday Apr 3,from 7pm til 9pm, at BTC in room D5. For directions: http://www.btc.ctc.edu/welcome/CampusDirectory.html
We’ll have our regular Q&A discussion, so bring your questions as none go unanswered.
Adrian Klaver will present on DABO. See: http://dabodev.com/
We will also have some discussion about LFNW-08, which is happening the 26th and 27th of this month.
Blug mtg Feb 7 – OLPC/XO laptop
02/06/2008 at 12:00 AM
OLPC/XO laptop demo. Iain brought his XO laptop to the last org meeting and was asked to do a BTC presentation so other people could see it too. He is currently working with the laptop.org in some capacity. Find out more at the meeting. 7PM in room D5.
BLUG Meeting Dec 6th
12/06/2007 at 12:00 AM
Thursday Dec 6th, 7-9pm, in room D5 at BTC
will be the next regular monthly meeting of BLUG.
Wesley Taylor will facilitate this month’s meeting.
Bring your most useful system administration commands and your
questions about using them to the next BLUG meeting.
We will review the “ten most useful” sysadmin commands and
also look at some GUI’s for some sysadmin commands
and operations.
Much of the time is still open so if you have something you
want to discuss, or ask, or show off, we’ll do that too.
BLUG mtg Thursday, Nov 1
11/01/2007 at 12:00 AM
This coming Thursday, on Nov 1st, from 7pm til 9pm,
at BTC, in room D5, will be our regular meeting of BLUG.
This month we’ll have two presentations =8’0
As well as, our regular agenda of Q&A, Linux news, etc.
See the presentation descriptions below:
1) The IS team at Northwest Indian College
(our own Bob Potter and Carl Symons) will present on:
Meraki and wireless mesh networking
Meraki got its start in 2003 providing Internet access around MIT as
an experimental network called “Roofnet”. Currently, Meraki wireless
equipment and the associated open source software are used in more
than 25 countries around the world. Meraki has top venture funding;
its use has spread largely by word of mouth into dense urban areas, as
well as villages in India and Africa. Meraki’s mission is to bring
affordable Internet access to the next billion people.
The IS team at Northwest Indian College has installed a small Meraki
network. Their presentation will feature tiny equipment, slick
web-based management interface and big plans.
2) John Blanford will present on:
Countering SSH Brute Force Attacks with DenyHosts
SSH brute force break in attempts are the digital equivalent of trying
to break into houses by trying every door knob until finding one that is
unlocked. They try various user and password combinations looking for
easy to guess passwords.
John will talk about this annoying type of attack, show an attack script
harvested from a cracked system, and discuss one way of countering this
type of attack, a log monitoring script called DenyHosts
(http://denyhosts.sourceforge.net/)
BLUG mtg MythTV Presentation
10/04/2007 at 12:00 AM
Remember this Thursday, Oct 4th, from 7pm til 9pm,
in room D5, will be the regular meeting of BLUG.
We will have a presentation on MythTV by Henri,
as well as our general Q&A, Linux news and latest
LinuuxFest Northwest info.