Reaper

I must admit, I chose this topic mainly because there wasn’t a lot left to chose from for the remaining half day of tutorials. I have only had a passing interaction with Kerberos previously, so I wasn’t totally unaware of it but could reasonably be described as a novice.

The tutorial was run by Paul Armstrong who currently works for a “small Mountain View based search engine” (as his description indicates in the program). Paul admitted from the start that this was the first time he had run the tutorial and also the longest tutorial he had run before. It was certainly noticable and he didn’t look the most comfortable presenting, but you have to give credit to admitting it up front.

I got a lot from the tutorial. I was a little lost due to the fact that it dealt only with a Solaris implementation of Kerberos (something I am not overly familiar with), but the material was well put together and will certainly be something I can refer back to.

Ok, now what is Kerberos the non-tech of you might ask? Check out http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/K/Kerberos.html

 

For a bit of a change of pace, a half day session today. Getting the most out of Group Policy was a bit of a refresher for me having worked with it previously for some time. It was certainly an gutsy effort to cover a topic like this with just a half day session. It could easily have gone for a full day and then some. The presenter, Pete Calvert, did a good job of covering what he did with the time available.

Day 2 consisted of the Security for Sysadmins tutorial. Having a background in the security field I suppose I was expecting a little more. The day covered a good overview of the basics. The tutor, Phil Kernick (http://www.cqrconsulting.com/people/kernick.htm) has an impressive background in the security field. The main problem I had with the material covered was that Phil seemed to ignore the aspect of defence-in-depth with the security facilities he covered. He dismissed security facilities that were minor and easily overcome, but however would play a part in the overall protection of a network or physical facility. He also described a vulnerability with tranporting a laptop through airport security that in my experience just doesn’t exist within domestic terminals within Australia.

Now some of you readers may be thinking “hmmm, the conference finished some time ago, why only now are we covering Day 2?”. In my defence I will answer only this, while an open bar supplied by Google didn’t do the entire job, it certainly made it easier to think “hang tapping away on a laptop, let’s continue the party!”

And they’re off and conferencing attending!

After registration and the usual administrivia starting off these sort of affairs, I settled into my first scheduled event; Problem Solving for Systems Administrators, presented by Elizabeth Zwicky.

Ok, so who is Elizabeth Zwicky? A quick Google will reveal a multitude of facts including a quote which I am sure is present in many programmers email signatures (http://www.softwarequotes.com/ShowQuotes.asp?ID=589&Name=Zwicky,_Elizabeth&Type=Q).

The presentation dealt mostly with the psychology behind learning and problem solving; specifically as it applies to the practice of system administration. On the whole, a good presentation with some valuable insights. The only thing I found was possibly a little cultural clash. At a basic level, there is a difference between an American approach to learning and an Australian approach. Addressing those differences might have made the presentation a little more suitable for the audience.

As for the venue, hats off to the Chiefly on Northbourne - very classy.

Stay tuned for more SAGE’ness tomorrow!

Well, I am here in the great nations capital (hmmmm). I have checked into my Motel, Comfort Inn Downtown. Can’t say it is a great place, well appointed, new fixtures etc. But it is a shoebox! Oh well.

So I have unpacked and checked all the important things; how far am I from a decent coffee shop and/or bar, can I get decent internet connection etc (you know, the important stuff). Now I am just basically killing time watching some rather strange inhouse movie (not quite sure what it is, but glad I didn’t pay to see it at the cinema!).

The fun stuff that awaits me over the coming week at SAGE (you can check out the entire conference details at : http://conf.sage-au.org.au/):

Problem solving for system administrators (eliminate users…..no problem!)

Security for sysadmins (eliminate users….no problem!)

Getting the most out of group policy

Kerberos 101

What big sites can learn from little sites (Tom Limoncelli, Google)

Human Interfaces for Geeks (can you reboot users?)

Solving Sudoku with Python and Linux Clusters (now we are getting into geek territory!)

Wireless Network Security, The Enterprise Way

The ISP Within: Using ISP techniques to support internal customers (Zen and the art of Internet?)

Why Online Pornography is Bad for your Computer (so many blind computers all around the world…tsk!)

Virtual Infrastructure 3: Upgrade Paths to it and Main Admin Differences from 2.x

Supercomputing: the good the bad and the ugly (mostly ugly if you have ever seen a supercomputer)

Polyinstantiation of directories in an SE Linux system (did I mention geek territory?)

14,000 users, Limited Budget and Version 1 Software - Let’s Go Build a SAN

Windows Vista Security Overview (Michael Kleef, Microsoft) (this should be good!)

Designing an Enterprise Print Solution

Securing websites with hardened Apache configurations and mod-security

State of the Broadband Nation

Building the Australian Grid

What’s New in MySQL 5.0 and 5.1

So as you can see, some interesting days ahead of me. Stay tuned for more from SAGE 2006

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