[kwlug-announce] Meeting Monday: High-Availability Linux

[Paul Nijjar]

Ah February, midpoint of the 10 month Canadian winter. Lots of slush!
Lots of dark! Lots of cold! And let's not forget Lonely Singles Day on
the 14th, followed by "Family Day" just to rub it in. Is it any wonder
so many of us are down?

Thank goodness for Big Pharma. Thanks to them, we can take drugs to
get out of the dumps. But it's February for our computers too, and
they don't have antidepressants to help them. When computers go down,
everybody suffers. Is there any hope?

Aden Seaman thinks so. He has taken measures to keep his computer
servers bright and bubbly at his house, using an alphabet soup of
high-availability technology such including DRBD, OCFS2, GlusterFS,
Pacemaker and Corosync. He will show us how this toolkit can be used
to keep services up even when his hardware feels down. 

February is not the only cause of computer-related depression, of
course. It does not take much reading of eroding privacy rights,
online censorship, or DRM. Fortunately the Electronic Frontier
Foundation is around to help defend digital rights. In addition to
producing helpful software like the "HTTPS Everywhere" Firefox
extension, they publicize bad behaviour and fight court cases. This
month, they are our FLOSS Fund nominee. If you are so inclined, you
can contribute to the KWLUG donation at the meeting, or get in touch
with me and we'll figure out a way for you to contribute.

In other cheery news: snakes! Specifically: Python. A new Python group
named WatPy (http://watpy.ca) is holding its first meeting on
Thursday, Feb 9, at the Death Valley's Little Brother Espresso/Whiskey
Bar. You can sign up for their low-volume mailing list on their
website, or contact the organizer directly: albert at albertoconnor.ca

There's a new Ubuntu Long-Term Release planned for this April, and the
local Ubuntu Canada LoCo wants you to help test it out and squish bugs
on March 3, during the Ubuntu Global Jam. 
See http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/ubuntu-ca/1498/detail/
for more information. 

The Ubuntu people also want you to know about local Ubuntu Hours:
the first Friday of the month at Misty Mountain Coffee Bar in
Kitchener, and the third Wednesday of the month at the Duke of
Wellington. I bet you can find more information about these (and many
other) events at the http://www.watcamp.com/calendar site. 

As usual, our meeting will be held at St John's Kitchen: 

St John's Kitchen
97 Victoria Street North
(Corner of Victoria and Weber)
Kitchener

There is some car parking in the thrift store parking lot, and you can
chain your Nardils and Concertas to the side of the building.

- Paul

-- 
http://pnijjar.freeshell.org