The meeting was attended by members;  Craig Carignan, Richard Foerster, Isaac Saldana, Alan Shoemaker.   Members Jeff Bartley, Ken Howells, and Tad Peters had intended to be present but had conflicts before the meeting.  Prospective members George Schoelles and Daniel Papp had planned to attend but were also unable to be there.

Alan Shoemaker reported that he had discovered a program was designed to allow a beginner to build a custom firewall with little or no ipchains experience.   The program PMFirewall is an Ipchains Firewall and Masquerading Configuration Utility for Linux that can be found at:  http://www.pointman.org/PMFirewall/    Several members at the last meeting had expressed interest in setting up a firewall and additional security features.  The program {tar.gz} is only 56k, so downloading is quick.

Alan also mentioned a new magazine that he has found useful, called Maximum LINUX, which is available at most supermarkets.  The current issue features a table of familiar dos commands with their Linux counterparts, that may help new Linux users get a quick start.  One disadvantage is that the magazine is expensive because it includes one or more CD-ROMS.

Isaac Saldana, provided a brief description of his job as a Systems Administrator at the School of Engineering at UCR.  Isaac has been working  on several programming projects that involve modifying the kernel.  One such project was to write a modified double queue scheduler to replace the single queue version in the standard Linux kernel.   The idea of his project was to place realtime processes on one queue and use the other for only non-realtime processes.  In testing he found that the double queue scheduler was more efficient under higher process loads, but under light loads the extra over head to manage the queues resulted in slightly poorer performance.  Another project, not yet complete was a modified file system to replace the current Linux file system.  Both of these experiments provide valuable insight into the inner workings of Linux, and provide practice in compiling a new kernel

Craig Carignan reported that he has still been unsuccessful getting PPC 2000 Linux to run on his Mac clone.  Alan suggested he try Yellow Dog, but in Craig’s research, that doesn’t appear to be a good solution.  It appears that a workstation only version of Yellow Dog is not currently available.  

Craig also talked about a program called Napster  found at: http://www.napster.com   which allows online users to search  for music stored in MP3 format.  There is a report that the Recording Industry Association of America {RIAA}  http://raii.com has filed a suit in Federal court to shut down Napster. 

A similar program called gnutella  http://gnutella.netherd.net   allows a gnutella user to buy a CD, DVD, or software program and place it in a shared hard drive folder, where it can be accessed any other gnutella user.  Unlike Napster, gnutella searches don’t go through a central server, creating an ever changing network of people.

Richard Foerster demonstrated the Mandrake 7.0 distribution provided by Eugene Clements at the last meeting.  The disrot was running on a e-machines Celeron 500mhz system with a 10gb hard disk running only Linux.   Lothar reports that the soundcard is a *special* card and can not be configured at this time.  During the meeting Isaac ran sndconfig  which suggested a web site where a driver to support the card could be found.   The e-machine also comes  with a 56k *Win* modem  which is also not configured.  The integrated ATI graphics card {4mb video ram} worked fine with 3 levels of resolution.   Otherwise without any special tweeking the distro runs well and the install was a snap.  This is the second e-machine Richard has set up with Linux.  The other is a 366mhz AMD K6 set up to dual boot windows and Caldera Open Linux 2.2, which has been use for about one year.  Other than the 120 watt power supply and limited drive bays, the e-machine has been a reliable and inexpensive vehicle for software development and testing.   

Members also examined the softbound Linux World Conference Proceedings and a 4 CD-ROM set called Linux Off Line which will be placed in the LUGIE Library.  Both were provided by Red Hat.  The Off-Line CD’s are archives of popular Linux sites and include: sunsite.unc.edu ,   ftp.gnu.org, ftp.mozilla.org , ftp.xfree86.org  and ftp.x,org.  We may split up the volumes and ask members to review the programs and utilities provided that may be of specific interest to members.   The value of the CD’s is that no downloading is required.  We will discuss this more at the next meeting.

 After some key pressing and exploring of the features included in mandrake, members drew numbers for the door prize which was provided by Red Hat.   Isaac drew the lucky number, and took home the  "Revolution Tour" T-Shirt.  The others present all received Red Hat bumper stickers and small cpu logos "Powered by Red Hat".

The meeting adjourned at 12:00.