SANE 2000 Programme Announced

Brad Knowles has sent in the details for SANE 2000, an international conference on System Administration and Networking, focused on Unix and IP networks. Read on for a a few choice recommendations from Brad.

Brad writes: FreeBSD's Poul-Henning Kamp is giving a presentation entitled "Confining the Omnipotent Root", and you can read more about the presentation Joe Greco (no stranger to those of you at the cross-roads of USENET news administration and FreeBSD) is giving on the subject of how he has built a large (and highly scalable) USENET news server system on relatively inexpensive commodity components.

For the security-minded folks in the crowd who might be willing to look a bit further afield, you might be interested in the presentation Jon Lasser is giving on Bastille Linux (a ruggedized Red Hat, or the presentation that Guido van Rooij is doing on "Real Stateful TCP Packet Filtering in IP-filter".

SANE is running from May 22 to the 25th, at Maastrict in the Netherlands. Full program details, on-line registration, hotel information, reservation forms, and travel information can be found at the SANE Web site.

Comments

InSane Quiz Question?

[SuperG]

I noticed the SANE 2000 totally InSane quiz sample questions, one of which is the following:

What is the maximum airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

To which I can only reply:

African of European?

Cheers,
SuperG

sudo (was Re:Root access...)

[BetaJim]

The sudo utility is great. With it you can give root access to users only for certain commands.
Certainly, using groups is very useful but, if you need more fine grained control sudo is the best way to go.

Right

[kwsNI]

System Administration and SANE. Aren't they like, opposites???

kwsNI

Is online better?

[noeld]

So I ask the question: Is online better?

Here online we can have a 24x365 system admin conference. All without going out into the big blue room.

So what does flying to far off places give you, (other than fun/travel)? Is there any point/value to these things?

Noel

RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix

Re:Is online better?

[rde]

So I ask the question: Is online better?
"Hey, boss. There's a sysadmin conference on, and it's vital for the security of our network that I attend."

"Sure thing. We'll spring for expenses and we'll just struggle on for the week that you're away."

"no need. It's online. I'll just have to stay in work for an extra couple of hours each day while it's on."

"Gosh, the internet's great."

"Yeah."

Interesting program

[jd]

But a bit short on useful subject matter.

Some of the stuff seemed overly OS/Implementation dependent. eg: The stuff on tamper-resistant IPSec could be applied to NRL's IPSec code for BSD4.4. The chances are, though, it'll be specific to FreeS/WAN, and won't even apply to NIST's IPSec implementation for Linux.

Then, there's the flip-side - areas noticably absent from the programme. Nothing on IPv6. Nothing on QoS. Nothing on Mobile IP and how it impacts security. With Linux supporting many different protocols, it's about time there was something on Native Protocol Translation (ie: sending data across networks not supporting the primary protocol, without the use of tunnels). Nope! Nothing on such matters.

I'm not faulting the people running this event - there's only a finite amount of time, only a finite amount of space, finite resources and only a finite number of people to run the programs. That means they will obviously have to pick and choose what they run, and it's just too bad for me if I would have liked a completely different line-up of events.

SAGE-AU'2000 Conference: Gold Coast, Australia

[psyke]

This is a blatant plug, but it is at least on topic :)

SAGE-AU is holding Australasia's premier System Administration Conference on the Gold Coast, Australia, from Mon 3rd to Fri 7th of July, 2000. Details are available online at www.sage-au.org.au/conf. Mon-Wed is 3 days of tutorials, with the conference proper Thu-Fri. Thursday evening is the conference dinner which is always a great night.

Having been to a number of sysadmin conferences I have to say I think they are a damn fine idea. It's a great chance to see what other people are doing and see how other organisations are solving the same problems you are facing.

Cheers,
Russell.