Meeting Notes May 2008

by T.K.

6 people showed up for the meeting.

Topics Discussed:

Xen Virtual Servers. Xen is a virtual server project that has both free and commercially supported bundle. Like Vmware multiple virtual servers can run on it. However, Xen does not appear to offer clustering or Disaster Recovery clusters like VMware does.

Phishing emails. I explained a problem with how some users were sending back replies to phishing emails. For example, recently there was a phishing mail that pretended to be the isp asking for a password. A few people responded to this and the remote exploiter then used the mail accounts to send out spam through webmail.

Problems solved:

  • Mounting an encrypted home directory with pam mount.
    Although there are multiple ways to access encrypted file-systems under Linux, we were working with Pam Mount. Pam mount is one of the means that will allow you automatically mount the file system on boot.
  • We fixed an X problem on Brandon’s Dell laptop that was running Ubuntu. It appears that X was not running on his Dell because he had a corrupted file system that needed repairing.
  • I asked Marc, who uses Debian, what program he used for connecting to wireless network. At a previous meeting, he mentioned an application that allowed him to automatically connect to wireless networks as Windows does. Marc recommended the gnome based network-manager. If installed through Synaptic, it would get all the dependencies. Additionally, the newer versions allow the user to select a Wireless network access point to associate itself with. Previously, manually configurations were needed to access a wireless network.
    • Category: Info