Kalamazoo Linux Users Meeting -- Minutes for 1 March, 1998

[Robert <bob@xxxxxxx>]

The meeting started at 3 PM. were the group gathered in the lobby, having
brought in Tony's machine.  Tony and Bruce went up to the meeting room to
set up about 3:30, while Adam, Bob, and Scott remained downstairs, discus-
sing a number of topics.  About 25 minutes later, the lobby was vacated in
favor of the meeting room, where Tony and Bruce were picking through lists
of packages, selecting items to be installed. Bob joined in this activity,
up on the big screen in meeting room.

The install went rather smoothly, by far the majority of the time being
spent in browsing through packages and related configuration, which also
took us, as a group, onto new ground.

Tony's machine is the first one configured at a meeting to be destined for
local area network operation, and the installation included ethernet setup
and installation.  Once the machine was up, we got the X server running,
and everyone looked at the clock.  It was about 4:50, and someone (I really
don't recall who) suggested that we set up a network....

Bruce had a laptop with him, all set up to run on his corporate LAN, so he
took it and a bit of cabling out and --- voila! A bit of configuration and
ping was running in a couple of minutes. Someone came up with the idea of
running a web browser and server pair, and in minutes, we had a TWW (or
table-wide web) running! Tony's new Linux machine ran Apache, and the
laptop ran a browser (I think it was netscape, but I don't recall, things
were happening so quickly, with lots of jokes about ELANs (Extremely Local
Area Networks) and VLANs (Very Local Area Networks), and jibes about starting
email between these machines (someone quipped, "great, but where are we going
to get DNS?").

All the levity gave way to equipment packing, as by now it was getting on
towards 5:30, and Tony had to go.  We all hope he's having a good time with
his "new" Linux setup.

Tony Gettig is one of the prime movers behinds a new group, the West Michigan
Networking Professionals (or WMNP)... Next meeting will be March 10th, at the
Nazarene College campus.  Tony can certainly distribute (with his new Linux
system, please! :) more specific information on the upcoming WMNP event.



IMPORTANT NOTES
===============
Adam Williams has agreed to speak at our first monthly business/presentation
meeting, which is set for March 22nd. His talk will be on the topic of...

                         Getting Your Very Own Domain
                                       or
                    What I learned When I got my Own Domain

    Adam administers a network for his employer. This network covers three
states (last time we looked!) and has over a dozen servers, with hundreds of
workstations. He is also the proud owner of the domain "whitemice.org", which
is NOT affiliated with his full-time, professional responsibilities.

The other item on the agenda for that meeting will be nominations of officers
for the group, so be ready to place names in the ring.

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Our Web server/listserv is now running on a newer machine, thanks to Bruce
Smith and the advancing state of technology at Armstrong International. The
system was running on a 386 33 mHz machine, which "just seemed to give up"
according to Bruce.  After a short transition period, the system has been
upgraded to a 486 with "most of the same hardware" that it was running
before.  Bruce and Bob Brown continue to work a bit on the web site,
but the work is proceeding in a slow and jumpy fashion.  Anyone who wants
to critisize and/or contribute to this project is welcome! Just drop a
line to either of the pair of current webspinners.


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And that's about it for now, folks!  See you on Sunday, for another informal
working group meeting, topic To Be Announced!