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T1 Windows NT and UNIX Integration: Problems and Solutions
NEW Who should attend: System administrators who are responsible for heterogeneous Windows NT and UNIX-based systems. Attendees should have user-level knowledge of both UNIX and Windows NT, and it's recommended they have systems administration experience in at least one. Today's organizations choose computing solutions from a variety of vendors. Often, integration of the solutions into a seamless, manageable enterprise is an afterthought, left up to system administrators. This class covers specific problem areas and practical solutions for administering a mixture of UNIX and Windows NT systems. The focus will be on solutions that can be applied today to real-world administration problems in heterogeneous UNIX and Windows NT-based networks. Topics include:
Phil Cox (M1, T1) is a consultant for SystemExperts
Corporation. Phil frequently writes and lectures on issues bridging the gap
between UNIX and Windows NT. He is a featured columnist in ;login;, the
USENIX Association Magazine, and has served on numerous USENIX program
committees. Phil holds a B.S. in computer science from the College of Charleston, South Carolina.
Who should attend: System and network administrators who want to learn about real-life solutions to everyday problems. Topics include:
Ned McClain (M2, T2) is a lead engineer at XOR
Network Engineering. He is currently helping with the 3rd edition of the UNIX
System Administration Handbook (by Nemeth, Snyder, and Hein). He has a
degree in computer science from Cornell University and has done research with
both the CS and Engineering Physics departments at Cornell.
Who should attend: System administrators who are responsible for developing strategy for their sites, performing system reviews, planning improvements, or proposing expenditures to improve practices, and consultants wishing to develop their skills in planning work and communicating with clients. As a system administrator, you know when there is a problem. But how can you convince the higher-ups that something needs to be done? The audit is the most valuable tool in your arsenal when it comes to dealing with management, because it forces a rigorous assessment of the current situation, evaluates alternatives, and results in a document that cogently addresses the problems. Audits also have the side effect of uncovering problems you didn't even know existed! An audit enables you to prove your point and also cover your back. It should be your primary tool for:
Audits come in many shapes and sizes. They are a basic mechanism for system review and control over entropy. This workshop will introduce the concepts and principles of audits and will examine in detail how to conduct an audit, including interviews and system inspections, and how to present the results of that work to management in the form of a formal audit report. Topics include:
Geoff Halprin (M13pm, T3) is the principal consultant
at The SysAdmin Group. He has been a system administrator for the past 15 years
and a consulting system administrator for over 10. Geoff specializes in data
security and systems management disciplines and in the evaluation and
improvement of systems management practices. He has acted as consultant to a
wide variety of organizations, including government, large corporations, and
several major ISPs. Geoff is also the vice-president of the System
Administrators Guild of Australia (SAGE-AU) and is a member of the SAGE
Executive Committee.
Who should attend: System and network administrators who implement or maintain networks, and site managers charged with selecting and setting site security requirements. Familiarity with TCP/IP networking is a plus. Many classic security problems, such as perimeter and host security, have become well defined and are routinely addressed by a wide range of product offerings; however, computer and network attacks are still on the rise. Effectively combating these attacks is a network and security management discipline with emerging strategies and solutions. This tutorial will cover the latest trends in computer attacks and the security precautions you can take against them, including defensive penetration analysis, host auditing, network logging solutions, and intrusion detection. After taking this tutorial, attendees will understand the important areas of security management. They will be able to defensively assess their system and network security. Additionally, they will have an appreciation for auditing and monitoring hosts and networks for intrusions, and for storing critical information required for network forensics. Topics include:
Tina Darmohray (T4) is a network and security consult
ant with over a decade of experience in administration and programming
UNIX/TCP-based computers. She specializes in firewalls, Internet connections,
sendmail/DNS configurations, and defensive intrusion management. Previously Tina
was the lead for the UNIX support team at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory. She was a founding board member of SAGE. She is the author of the
popular SAGE jobs booklet Job Descriptions for System Administrators,
she's the editor of SAGE News and Features for ;login:, the USENIX
Association magazine, and she co-chaired the USENIX LISA IX conference. Tina
holds a B.S. and an M.S. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Who should attend: UNIX system, network, and security administrators who need to understand better the various security tools currently available. The goal of this course is to assist UNIX security administrators, and other interested users, in locating and using publicly available programs to improve the security of their systems. This course will compare the uses and drawbacks of several different programs, with an emphasis on when to use which. Topics include:
Matt Bishop (T5) began working on problems of security
in computer systems, and UNIX systems in particular, at Purdue, where he earned
his doctorate. He subsequently worked at the Research Institute for Advanced
Computer Science at NASA and taught courses in operating systems, computer
security, and software engineering at Dartmouth College. Matt chaired the first
USENIX Security Workshop and plays an active role in identifying and thwarting
security threats. Matt has been on the faculty at UC Davis since 1993.
Who should attend: Name-server administrators and software developers who need a deeper understanding of the DNS protocol and of the internals of BIND. Participants should already be responsible for the operation of at least one name server, should be familiar with Internet protocols such as TCP and UDP, and should be able to recognize C source code when they see it (which they will). This tutorial will survey the DNS protocol and describe upcoming extensions to it, as well as implementation considerations in BIND. Topics include:
After completing this tutorial, participants will know what the IETF has been up to lately, and what to expect in upcoming BIND releases. A note to those who have taken Paul's tutorials before: this tutorial will not be a rehash of prior material--new subjects will be covered.
Paul Vixie (T6) is the current maintainer of the BIND
software system. BIND, the Berkeley Internet Name Domain, includes the name
server ("named") used every-where on the Internet. Paul is also a coauthor of
Sendmail: Theory and Practice (Digital Press, 1995) and serves as
moderator of the comp.sources.unix newsgroup.
Who should attend: UNIX administrators who need more knowledge of Solaris administration. This course covers a variety of topics that matter to Solaris system administrators. We will discuss the major new features of recent Solaris releases, including which to use and how to use them, and which to avoid. This in-depth course will provide the information a system manager/administrator needs to run a Solaris installation effectively. Topics include:
Peter Baer Galvin (T7) is the chief technologist for
Corporate Technologies, Inc., and was the systems manager for Brown University's
Computer Science Department. He has written articles for Byte and other
magazines, is security columnist for SunWorld, and is co-author of the
Operating Systems Concepts textbook. As a consultant and trainer, Peter
has taught tutorials on security and system administration and has given talks
at many conferences.
Who should attend: Programmers and managers involved in the development of CGI programs and other applications designed to deliver dynamic or interactive content on the Web, and system administrators of Web servers. Participants should have some experience in developing these applications. Interactive content on the Web is the world's biggest computer security hole. Before the WWW was invented, sane system administrators would never have considered setting up a network service that allowed an anonymous user to execute a complex program on their systems. Nevertheless, this is exactly what the Web does. Programs of formidable complexity and power are executed thousands of times every day on your systems, by unknown users in unknown locations with no supervision. If these programs are not written with great care, they can be subverted and used to steal your information or vandalize your machine.
The tutorial will include a number of case studies of programs that appear safe
but aren't, and will show why "eyeball" methods of program verification are
ineffective. We will spend some time discussing common problems and oversights
and will show how they can be avoided. The examples will be in the Perl
programming language, but the problems are not language- We will examine the common programming error of trusting the browser, including improper use of cookies and client-side data validation. Additionally, we will take a close look at the strengths and weaknesses of authentication systems commonly used on the Web. Along the way, the tutorial will present important basic principles of security, with an emphasis on developing a sound security policy that is effective for your situation.
Mark-Jason Dominus (M7, T8am) has been involved in
computer security since 1988 and has been developing interactive Web
applications since 1994. He was a system administrator and the first Webmaster
at the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Computer and Information
Sciences, and then became a founding staff member of Pathfinder, Time-Warner's
Internet Web service, where he was the leader of the system administration and
network security group. He is now an independent consultant working in the area
of dynamic application development and systems and security analysis. He writes
a regular column for The Perl Journal.
Who should attend: Newer administrators of AFS, a distributed filesystem product of the Transarc corporation, who wish to further their knowledge. Working knowledge of AFS administration is required. This is not an advanced class; programming knowledge is not required, nor is access to AFS source. This tutorial will offer both information and methods for a more efficient Cell. Participants will be walked through various parts of AFS and shown some of the internal workings. Topics include:
After completing this tutorial, participants will be aware of a number of ways to make their AFS administration tasks more trouble-free and efficient.
Esther Filderman (T9am) has been administrating AFS
since its first incarnation as the file system behind the Andrew system, which
was originally designed as part of an experiment by Carnegie Mellon University
and IBM. She has been a system administrator for nearly 10 years. Once the 24x7
on-call person for the Andrew system, Esther is currently the senior operations
specialist for the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, the site that, in a moment
of insanity, ported AFS to Unicos.
Who should attend: Anyone who needs to deal with difficult people on the job; it will be especially useful to manager, and those who deal with difficult clients. Do you work with some difficult people? They may be clients, employees, peers, or managers. This tutorial will discuss what makes people difficult, and how you can deal more easily with them without knuckling under. Topics include:
Steve Johnson (T10am, T13pm) has been a technical manager on and off for nearly two decades, in both large and small companies. At AT&T, he is best known for writing Yacc, Lint, and the Portable C Compiler. He served as the head of the UNIX Languages Department at AT&T's Summit Labs. He has also been involved in a number of Silicon Valley startup companies. He served for ten years on the USENIX Board of Directors, four of them as president. He presented an invited talk on management at LISA two years ago, he has taught USENIX tutorials on technical subjects, and he has led management training seminars at Transmeta.
Dusty White (T10am, T13pm) was an early employee of
Adobe, where she served in a variety of managerial positions. She now works as a
management consultant in Silicon Valley, where she acts as a trainer, coach, and
troubleshooter for technical companies.
Who should attend: System administrators and managers responsible for multiple machines, who are charged with performing consistent and reliable operating system installs. Installing the "MIS approved" operating system on lots of incoming hardware can become a chore at any site. It's boring for one person to do all the installs, but if you farm it out to lots of staff, how do you guarantee that all machines have identical set-ups? Using an automated system can solve both these problems at once. We will cover the most popular methods vendors provide to automate this process, and we'll mention some home-grown and free solutions. Topics include:
Greg Kulosa (M11pm, T11pm) has been a UNIX system
administrator for over eight years. He is currently a senior consultant, solving
a myriad of host and networking problems for a variety of clients. In his spare
time, he trains and grooms his American Quarter Horse, Jane, and goes on regular
trail rides in the hills around San Francisco Bay.
Who should attend: System administrators involved in the design, implementation, and administration of Legato NetWorker. Participants should be familiar with basic NetWorker installation and administration. Participants who are planning to use, but are not yet using, NetWorker should review the NetWorker documentation before attending this session. Anyone who has implemented a medium to large installation of any commercial backup software package understands the challenges such a project will face. This tutorial will focus on the challenges unique to Legato NetWorker, with a heavy emphasis on automation, monitoring, and reporting. The tutorial will also answer questions all NetWorker administrators find themselves asking, and it will provide scripts that can be used to automate NetWorker. Topics include:
After completing this tutorial, participants will be able to answer all of these questions and will have the tools necessary to completely automate their NetWorker installation. They will also be aware of common pitfalls and how to avoid them.
W. Curtis Preston (T12pm), a principal consultant for
Collective Technologies, has been specializing in backup and recovery for over
six years. He has designed and implemented many large Legato NetWorker
installations and is also an accomplished author and speaker. (This will be his
third time speaking at LISA.) Curtis has just completed work on his upcoming
O'Reilly & Associates book, UNIX Backup & Recovery, which will be
on the shelves this fall. Curtis's Web site is https://www.backupcentral.com/,
and he can be reached at curtis@colltech.com.
Who should attend: Anyone who wants to feel more in control of the "uncontrollable" part of their job, or who manages people with interrupt-driven jobs. How can you have an interrupt-driven job and still feel in control? The source of interruption may be your manager, or customer needs. Most people try some kind of time management, and this is surely part of the answer. However, time management alone will not allow you to avoid stress and overload. We will teach you some additional techniques. Topics include:
Many examples will be taken from systems administration, but they can be applied much more broadly. Steve Johnson (T10am, T13pm) has been a technical manager on and off for nearly two decades, in both large and small companies. At AT&T, he is best known for writing Yacc, Lint, and the Portable C Compiler. He served as the head of the UNIX Languages Department at AT&T's Summit Labs. He has also been involved in a number of Silicon Valley startup companies. He served for ten years on the USENIX Board of Directors, four of them as president. He presented an invited talk on management at LISA two years ago, he has taught USENIX tutorials on technical subjects, and he has led management training seminars at Transmeta.
Dusty White (T10am, T13pm) was an early employee of
Adobe, where she served in a variety of managerial positions. She now works as a
management consultant in Silicon Valley, where she acts as a trainer, coach, and
troubleshooter for technical companies.
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Last changed: 11 Aug. 1999 mc |
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