[aclug-L] 7-2-98 ACLUG meeting Networking

[Cheez-Czar <cabrubak@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

ACLUG 7-2-98 Meeting Notes and Links


The meeting started with some pictures of Launch Win98, an event by
the Silicon Valley LUG in which rockets with fins made from Win98 and
Internet Explorer cd's were launched as a protest/ parody of
Microsoft's Windows 98 Launch.

Then we had our featured presentation: networking with Linux.


The networking protocol used by Linux is the same one used by the
internet: TCP/IP.

Linux also is able to use various other protocols including :
        IPX (Novel Netware)
        Ethernet 
        PPP 
        AppleTalk       
        
network services include :
        ftp (transfer files from across a network)
        telnet (remotely log into another computer)
        webservers (what serves web pages to browsers)
        X (run graphical programs remotely or locally such as Metro-X
                (commercial) or Xfree86)

        and games such as :

        netmaze (multi-player (mp) maze combat between giant Smiley Faces)
        netrek (mp graphical realtime battle simulation with a Star Trek theme)
        freeciv (free version of the Civilization game )
        quake (multi-player maze combat with guys with lots of big guns) 
        tetris (puzzle strategy real time game)
        gnuchess (chess networked)
        muds  (text based role-playing games ("multi-user dungeons"))
        moos ("Mud Object Oriented" let you create objects in the game)
                 
We discussed inetd, the internet ``super-server'' is the program that
listens for all network requests (except for the mailserver and
webserver which both listen on their own.) /etc/inetd.conf is the
configuration file that tells inetd to do with each request.


He described some network utilities:

        ping - sends packets of data to a site to tell you how fast
               they are responding
        traceroute - traces the route between you and remote site. Shows you 
                     all the hops it took, and how much time between the hops.
        netstat - Display  network  connections and other network info
        
We also went over webservers. 
        Apache is the most popular webserver. Boa is another that has
        less features then Apache but is faster.
        
        John Goerzen described their differences - "Boa is better for some
        things, like the small server on gesundheit.[one of the aclug mirrors]
        Apache is better for other things, like our [computer science]
        departmental webserver.  However, a lot of people running Apache may
        be better off with boa anyway."

We also discussed Samba which allows you to do windows networking with Linux, 
it fools windows machines to think your Linux box is a NT box, and you can
access files using Windows networking.



Finally we went over NFS. The Networked File System, which treats other
computers as if they are on your local machine. This can be used as an
alternative to ftp for those of us with one machine try :
        mount -t nfs ftp.kernel.org:/pub /mnt
        cd /mnt
        ls 
        ...
when done:
        umount /mnt


Related Websites: (please note: many listed applications come with 
standard Linux distributions. If one isn't in yours, or you want
to see if there is a newer version check their website below (or if none is
listed check Sunsite's Linux Archive)

Unless noted otherwise software is free under GPL or similar license.

Launch 98 - http://www.svlug.org/events/launch98.shtml
Metro-X   - http://www.metrolink.com/ (commercial)
Xfree86   - http://www.xfree86.org/
Netrek   - http://continuum.real-time.com/index.ip.shtml
Freeciv   - http://freeciv.ultraviolet.org/
Gnuchess  - http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/personal/Tim_Mann/chess.html 
Apache    - http://www.apache.org/
Boa       - http://www.boa.org/
Samba     - http://www.samba.bst.tj/samba/samba.html
Sunsite   - http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/
M0O's     - http://www.moo.mud.org
          - http://www.rivermoo.com:8889





        
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