Okay, ... for meeting announcement and web link(s), etc.
Hopefully what I've included below can be used quite directly (I also
include suggested subject for the announcement e-mail). Anyway,
hopefully someone can grab these tasks and do them fairly soon:
* send e-mail to balug-admin-balug.org(a)lists.balug.org that you will
send the announcement to balug-announce-balug.org(a)lists.balug.org
(that way we hopefully avoid multiple folks sending the same
announcement to balug-announce-balug.org(a)lists.balug.org)
* check the balug-admin-balug.org(a)lists.balug.org archives that you're
first to claim the above task (avoid race conditions)
* send the item out to balug-announce-balug.org(a)lists.balug.org
* once the item has been sent to
balug-announce-balug.org(a)lists.balug.org and appears in the archives,
create link(s) where appropriate (key references to the presentation)
on the http://www.balug.org/ page to the archived
balug-announce-balug.org(a)lists.balug.org announcement.
========================================================================
Subject:
BALUG May 17th presentation: LVM (Logical Volume Manager)
========================================================================
For the BALUG May 17th meeting, we will feature a presentation on
Logical Volume Manager (LVM) on LINUX by Michael Paoli.
BALUG and meeting general information (location, time, dinner cost,
etc.) can be found on the BALUG web site:
http://www.balug.org/
About Logical Volume Manager (LVM) and the presentation:
LVM allows for rather powerful and flexible management of hard drive
space. Rather than mostly having to deal with physical disks and
partitions, with LVM, one creates logical volumes, which can then be
used to contain filesystems or other data.
With logical volumes, one can relocate and resize logical volumes
while the data they contain is in use, and in general, without regard to
partition boundaries or disk sizes - as logical volumes can also span
multiple disks. This can make LVM a very power tool, for example
allowing one to:
* grow a filesystem while it's in use (if the filesystem type supports
growing it on-line)
* relocate in-use data (filesystem or whatever) to different physical
device or type of storage (for example, take a filesystem that is in
use and move it between different types of storage (e.g. among
non-RAID, RAID-5, RAID-1 or RAID-0+1 devices))
* more efficiently manage multiple filesystems on systems from those
with large numbers of disk storage arrays through those with as little
as a single hard drive
The presentation also promises to include a live demonstration of use of
LVM on LINUX, and also a bit of information about volume management
software in general on LINUX and UNIX platforms.
About Michael Paoli, our presenter for this event:
Michael Paoli has been doing UNIX systems administration for well over a
decade, has been using volume management software for about 9 years, has
been using doing LINUX systems administration for almost 7 years, and
has been using LVM on LINUX for about 2 years.
========================================================================
Wouldn't it be more appropriate (presuming it's feasible) to have a
"Beta" test area, on the same system, but, for example, using a
different port (e.g.:
http://www.balug.org:8080/
)
Key advantages:
one could test on the same system, and when things were found to be
sufficiently "better", they could be migrated from test ("Beta") to
"Production" (primary web site area and related URLs).
The process could be repeated as necessary to make incremental
improvements (and possibly even rather to quite large changes too).
Avoids most of the issues of having to shift between different systems and
issues of accounting for inherent differences between systems (e.g. hardware).
Isn't it also more appropriate for most of these discussions to be on
balug-admin-balug.org(a)lists.balug.org
rather than
balug-talk-balug.org(a)lists.balug.org
... after all, I'd think most subscribers to balug-talk probably aren't
so interested in these administrivia e-mails being on balug-talk,
particularly if they aren't fairly interesting/topical in a general
LINUX or BALUG (as in meetings, presentation, general discussions of
things LINUX and/or BALUG) context.
Quoting Michael Hubbard <michael(a)offroadgeek.com>:
> > (There doesn't seem to be alot I can do against the small font and
> > cluttered layout.
>
> That's because you don't know how to properly manipulate postnuke.
>
> > Every time I work with postnuke I imagine how much
> > nicer it'd be to open kedit to an .html file across (s)ftp and be done
> > with it.)
> >
> Why don't you just create a new balug website with similar functionality
> and find a new host for the site, then I'd be happy to help with getting
> dns changed over to the new server.
>
> By the way, all of the data in the current wiki (phpwiki) would need to
> be moved to the new site too.
And yes, I'm confirming for the presentation for the BALUG 2005-05-17 meeting.
For the web site ... hmmmm, might first want to correct the presently
self-contradictory text (or whatever/however it was generated):
"The next meeting is today (Tuesday, May 17th) at 7pm"
Anyway, for at least a short(?) little blurb to update the web site, at
the moment, you can add this on there (or if this is way too long, see
the shorter alternative version further below):
"
For our May 17th meeting, we will have a presentation by Michael Paoli
on Logical Volume Manager (LVM) on LINUX. LVM allows for rather
powerful and flexible management of hard drive space. Rather than
mostly having to deal with physical disks and partitions, with LVM, one
creates logical volumes, which can then be used to contain filesystems
or other data. Unlike physical hard drives or partitions, however,
logical volumes can be relocated - including to other physical disks -
while the data is in use, and logical volumes can also be resized,
again, while their data is in use (provided whatever is using the data
can handle that - e.g. this can be very powerful for filesystem types
that can be grown with the filesystem mounted). Also, unlike
partitions on physical hard drives, when one grows a logical volume,
one generally only needs available space in the volume group (which is
composed of whole disks devices and/or partitions), and avoids all the
typical issues of resizing a partition (with partitions, one needs
contiguous available space after a partition to grow a partition). One
can also span multiple physical disks with a logical volume, and thus
have filesystems that are larger than the physical disk size. These
are some of LVM's powerful capabilities. The meeting presentation also
promises to include live demonstration of some of LVM's capabilities.
"
Anyway, ... that should do for a, ... uhm, ... "short" blurb on the web
site. If it's quite too big to be feasible to go there, perhaps
alternatively, this would do:
"
For our May 17th meeting, we will have a presentation by Michael Paoli
on Logical Volume Manager (LVM) on LINUX. LVM allows for rather
powerful and flexible management of hard drive space (e.g. relocating
mounted filesystem to another hard drive or growing it without
particular regard to partition boundaries, etc.). The meeting
presentation also promises to include live demonstration of some of
LVM's capabilities.
"
I'll also put together a bit more polished text that can be used for
BALUG-announce, etc. Expect that within a week (holler if you need it
sooner).
references/excerpts:
http://lists.balug.org/private.cgi/balug-admin-balug.org/2005-March/000017.…
I'll bring laptop for the 2004-04-19 meeting.
If we have there whatever we need to hook it up for video/projector,
I should be set to run some tests - checking on optimal resolution for
whatever we'd be using for presentation. If that works reasonably well,
I could then put together presentation materials for 2004-05-17 meeting
(or a later date if there's something else we'd rather do for the
2004-05-17 meeting). That would also allow us to know what resolution(s)
are optimal for our setup, so we could pass that information on along to
future presenters and potential presenters.
For video output ports, my laptop has:
VGA (SXGA+)
SVHS (I've not tested that, and not planning to anytime soon)
DVI - but only via docking station (which I haven't obtained)
Anyway, VGA type output is probably least common denominator in terms of what
most folks coming in with a laptop (or other computer) would have for doing
a presentation, so it's probably most useful to test against that anyway.
references/excerpts:
http://lists.balug.org/private.cgi/balug-admin-balug.org/2005-March/000017.…http://lists.balug.org/private.cgi/balug-admin-balug.org/2005-March/000020.…
I'd be glad to help with the mailing list and Web site. I've been with
BALUG since the beginning, and am an experienced Mailman listadmin and
Linux sysadmin.
(One thing I'm bad at, so please don't ask: Lining up speakers.)
I've taken out an account on the wiki, and joined this list and the new
incarnation of balug-talk on the "lists.balug.org" host. I'm reading
docs on Postnuke.
Some concerns:
1. balug-talk's archive has always been publicly accessible. Suddenly,
the new one isn't. Problems: (1) It's not what the membership
has always wanted and expected, and (more primarily because) (2) a big
part of the point of answering questions publicly is to advance the
state of collective knowledge, e.g., by people finding the questions &
answers via Web search.
My 2 cents: This change really shoots BALUG in the foot. Please un-do
it ASAP.
2. Host "lists.balug.org" doesn't accept mail to the postmaster account
as required by RFC2821 and numerous other SMTP standards.
(Specifically, it 550-rejects such mail with a "user unknown" message.)
This ensures that mail from BALUG will be (needlessly and avoidably)
discarded or rejected as probable spam, _and_ denies members of the
public to use of a required administrative contact in case there's
something wrong.
(If this is something "dreamhost" screws up globally and is not under
Michael's control, please just say so.)
3. http://lists.balug.org/private.cgi/balug-talk-balug.org/2005-March/
has some mis-parsed entries in it, that appear to be fragments of prior
years' mails to balug-talk. This is almost certainly fixable, but will
require command-line access (to edit the mbox file) and ability to
regenerate the Pipermail archive.
To see what I'm talking about, look at the 15 entries marked "No
subject".
4 As always, CABAL appreciates the calendar link from the BALUG front
page to CABAL events. However, there's no "Sat, March 26 2005" CABAL
event. Because of the desire to help out SVLUG and to avoid Easter
weekend, CABAL's second meeting of the month was this _past_ Saturday,
the 19th.
5. Attempting to bring up the BALUG calendar
(http://www.balug.org/index.php?module=PostCalendar&func=view&tplview=&viewt…)
shows this at the top of the page:
Warning: Smarty error: problem creating directory "modules/PostCalendar/pntemplates/cache/dad8523a2e18f1929871d45a6df8aac5/%%164/%%1643473877" in /home/.bluebellblender/miamlh1/balug.org/modules/PostCalendar/pnincludes/Smarty/Smarty.class.php on line 589
6. BALUG's "next meeting" information's out of date. I'd fix it if I
had access! ;->
Yes, I'm very much inclined to agree. I'd think the "announce" list
should be moderated, so that typically about one to a few messages per
month come out on that list (e.g. information about upcoming meetings
and other key BALUG events or particularly important items of note).
I think generally, folks expect the "announce" list to be quite low
volume (zero to a few e-mails per month), and highly specific and relvant
to BALUG itself.
Now that we've got an admin list together :-) and hopefully folks
working on it too, perhaps the "announce" list can appropriately be
set as "moderated", and relevant policy set and made reasonably
clear (if it isn't already).
Also, regarding "job postings" in general, not sure what BALUG
policy is (I don't think there's a "jobs" list, but there is a "talk"
list), but I know other user groups have a policy which is roughly:
it's okay if and only if you have an "inside" track on the position,
i.e. you work there or have worked there, or have some other quite
direct familiarity with the environment. Anything less (e.g.
recruiter/agency, or more general postings), tends to be frowned upon.
Also considered "okay" (again, "inside track" type rule) is personal
(preferably brief, with link to or "available on request" for more
details, resume, etc.) posting on one's availability or upcoming
availability. Not saying that such is or ought to precisely be
BALUGs general policy on job posting and such, but something like that seems
to work rather well for other user groups. "Rules" could also be looser
for a separate "jobs" list, ... but then that may not be as useful,
as those then tend to be "just another jobs list" with not much that's
highly specific/relevant to the user group.
It's also quite appropriate for folks to show up at meeting and mention
openings they have or have "inside track" knowledge of, ... and also for
folks to mention their present or upcoming availability.
Hmmm, I also didn't see LINUX anywhere in that original posting!
references/excerpts:
> Is this really an acceptable use of the balug-announce list?
> Shouldn't it be limited to balug-talk or is there a balug-jobs?
> Roberts, La Rohnda writes:
> >Duration: Direct Hire
> >Location: Richmond, CA
http://lists.balug.org/private.cgi/balug-announce-balug.org/2005-March/0000…
Hello Larry and Dick,
As we spoke of before, I am available to help with maintenance of email
addresses on BALUG. Let me know.
Jerry McGovern
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