BIRDS-OF-A-FEATHER SESSIONS (BOFS)

Lead or attend a BoF! Meet with your peers! Present new work! Don't miss these special activities designed to maximize the value of your time at the conference. The always popular evening Birds-of-a-Feather sessions are very informal gatherings of persons interested in a particular topic. BoFs may be scheduled during the conference at the registration desk or in advance by contacting bofs@usenix.org. Please put "LISA '04 BoF" in the subject line and include the following information in the body of your email:

1. What is the title of your BoF?
2. What is the name & affiliation of the BoF presenter?
3. What is your room, date, and time preference?

BoF Schedule (Current as of November 18, 2004)

Tuesday, November 16
ROOM	# of Seats	7:00 p.m.–8:00 p.m.	8:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m.	9:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m.	10:00 p.m.–11:00 p.m.
Sydney	70 Classroom	Cfengine Developers BoF Mark Burgess	State of Configuration Management Luke Kanies, Bladelogic, Inc.
Zurich/London	125 Theatre	7:30 p.m.–9:00 p.m. Annual Backup Technology BoF: The State of Data Protection Industry Jacob Farmer, CTO, Cambridge Computing Services, Inc.		Beerfest! Cambridge Computer
Consulate	70 Classroom		Bisexual, Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, and Friends BoF Trey Harris
Bonn	70 Classroom			Parents Telecommuting BoF (or Where's That Good Scheduling Program?) Chan Wilson
Amsterdam/ Stockholm/ Copenhagen	160 Classroom
Yukon/ Mackenzie/ Rio Grande	90 Classroom
Marquis III	350 Classroom
Wednesday, November 17
ROOM	# of Seats	7:00 p.m.–8:00 p.m.	8:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m.	9:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m.	10:00 p.m.–11:00 p.m.
Danube/Tigris	35 Classroom	Planetlab: Benefits and Issues of Hosting Nodes Jeff Sedayao, Corporate Technologies Group, Intel Corporation	NOCs: Helping System Administors Sleep More Soundly Kim Malat	Sysadmin Interviewing: How to Hire Great Sysadmins Joe Gross & Jim Barbour, Google	Windows Administrator Forum Scott McDermott
Thames	63 Theatre	Dance Dance Revolution
Sydney	70 Classroom	EMC (Legato) Vendor BoF Backup-to-Disk and Virtual Tape: Meeting Your Data Protection Challenges with Disk-based Backup Eric Carter, Product Marketing Manager; Patrick Terry, Principal Corporate Systems Engineer	Solaris & Small Footprint Computing Eric Nielsen, Brandon Taylor, Eric Boutilier, and Alan Duboff, Integrated Systems, Sun Microsystems 8:30 p.m.–9:30 p.m.
Zurich/London	50 Classroom	Fedora Core Linux in Production— Are We All Crazy? Steve Hanson, University of Wisconsin, River Falls		DragonFlyBSD in Production: You're Crazy Not To David Rhodus, Crescent Anchor	IPv6 BoF Nicolas Sayer, INRIA
Bonn	70 Classroom	Barracuda Networks Vendor BoF Build Your Own Spam Firewall Zach Levow, Co-Founder and Vice President of Engineering, Barracuda Networks	CAcert BoF Brian Gallew, Carnegie Mellon University; Teus Hagen; Rudi van Drunen, Leiden Pathology and Cytology Labs, Leiden, The Netherlands	GPG Key Signing BoF Ken Schumacher, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory	Inventory & Asset Management: Are You Doing Anything That Actually Works? Scott Carlson
Yukon/ Mackenzie/ Rio Grande	100 Classroom	Promoting Linux in the Atlanta Area Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts	An Update on Standards Nick Stoughton	Spam as Poetry Marcus Ranum
Champagne	50 Classroom	Improv for SysAdmins (or How I Stopped Scowling and Learned to Love My Users) Bob Apthorpe, St. Edward's University (also of Heroes of Comedy & Foolish Mortals)	Leveraging the SAN for Your Backups David Hicehel, President & CEO, Eagle Software	Veritas BoF Doug Hughes	SAN & Storage BoF Blayne Puklich
Marquis III		Room Not Available		USENIX: Meet the Board and Staff and Have Your Say	Room Not Available
Thursday, November 18
ROOM	# of Seats	8:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m.		9:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m.	10:00 p.m.–11:00 p.m.
Danube/Tigris	35 Classroom	Higher Ed Sysadmin Powwow (i.e., People w/No Money and Big Challenges) Fran Fabrizio, Computer & Information Sciences, U. of Alabama at Birmingham		Chi-SAGE: Chicago Folks Some Random Folks at the University of Chicago	Automated Systems Management: Does It Work? Joe Morris, UNC Chapel Hill
Thames	63 Theatre	Spam (Open Discussion) J. Blosser & D. Josephson		Disk-based Backup: An Independent, Non-Vendor Discussion W. Curtis Preston, Author of UNIX Backup & Recovery	Howard Dean & Online Political Campaigns Brian Sebby
Sydney	70 Classroom	Google Social Hour			Sarbanes-Oxley...
Zurich/London	50 Classroom	How Can Apple Improve Mac OS X Server Documentation? Lon Poole and Nate Pomeroy, Apple Product Documentation, Apple Computer, Inc.		FreeBSD Community: Say "Hello" to 5.3!	Establishing a Standard for System and User Documentation
Bonn	70 Classroom	Debian BoF Jimmy Kaplowitz and Bdale Garbee, Debian Developers		Thawte Web of Trust FREE Email Certificates vs. CAcert FREE Email Certificates Jeff D'Angelo, Information Technology Services, Pennsylvania State University
Marquis I		Room Not Available		SAGE Open Meeting
Champagne	50 Classroom	System Administrators Handbook BoF Mark Burgess		How to Install a Computer Completely Automatically Thomas Lange, Debian Developer, Author of FAI, University of Cologne	If You Really Want to Talk About NetBackup (at 10:00 at Night), Then Let's Do It! W. Curtis Preston, Author of UNIX Backup & Recovery
Yukon/ Mackenzie/ Rio Grande	100 Classroom	Sun Vendor BoF Solaris 10: Where We Are, Where We Are Headed Andy Tucker and Dan Price, Sun Microsystems			Room Not Available

Beerfest!
Cambridge Computer
Tuesday, November 16, 9:00 p.m.–11:00 p.m., Zurich/London

Join Cambridge Computer for a free night of fun. Free beer, soda, & snacks will be provided. Stay for the whole time or come & go as you please. The goal is to relax, unwind, and have some fun with your LISA colleagues! Network with your peers, chat about the day's sessions, or simply kick back & relax. While you're here, enter to win one of several Amazon $100 gift certificates.

Parents Telecommuting BoF (or Where's That Good Scheduling Program?)
Chan Wilson
Tuesday, November 16, 9:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m., Bonn

General discussion about being a parent who telecommutes, and the trials of managing work, personal, and personnel schedules in a cross platform "multi talented" user base. Bring your juggling equipment too!

EMC (Legato) Vendor BoF: Backup-to-Disk and Virtual Tape: Meeting Your Data Protection Challenges with Disk-based Backup
Presenters: Eric Carter, Product Marketing Manager; Patrick Terry, Principal Corporate Systems Engineer
Wednesday, November 17, 7:00 p.m.–8:00 p.m., Sydney

This session features a discussion of the changing landscape of disk-based backup and the advantages of using a dedicated backup and restore device. It will examine the challenges with today's backup/recovery methodologies and compares the tradeoffs between tape, virtual tape and backup-to-disk.

Traditional tape backup systems are being pushed to the limits as data grows to near exponential volumes. Failed backup jobs, tape drive failures, and media errors account for a large percentage of a storage manager's time. Disk-based backup can be shown to cost-effectively complement existing tape-based solutions and address the limitations of tape in service levels and data reliability. These new technology options help maintain and improve service levels under the pressure of shorter backup and recovery time objectives.

Solaris & Small Footprint Computing
Presenters: Eric Nielsen, Brandon Taylor, Eric Boutilier, and Alan Duboff, Integrated Systems, Sun Microsystems
Wednesday, November 17, 8:30 p.m.–9:30 p.m., Sydney

This BigAdmin-sponsored BoF focuses on Sun's approach to rack-based computing utilizing AMD/Intel/SPARC-based small footprint compute nodes. Talks focus on:

Sun's AMD hardware products and plans
Sun's SPARC small footprint plans
Solaris and Linux OS support
Rack system control, bare metal control, monitoring, management
Rack provision, including Solaris/LINUX, Windows

Attend this BOF and engage with experts on horizontally scaled compute environments from Sun.

Barracuda Networks Vendor BoF: Build Your Own Spam Firewall
Speaker: Zach Levow, Co-Founder and Vice President of Engineering, Barracuda Networks
Wednesday, November 17, 7:00 p.m.–8:00 p.m., Bonn

Is it possible to create your dedicated Spam filtering system using open-source and free packages? The answer is yes. This session will provide attendees with a cookbook solution, including all of the software, scripts, and configuration files required to deploy and an anti-spam email relay system in less than one day using a standard Linux system, Postfix, and SpamAssassin.

An Update on Standards
Nick Stoughton
Wednesday, November 17, 8:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m., Yukon/Mackenzie/Rio Grande

Nick is the USENIX and SAGE Standards Liaison, and will discuss recent developments in the formal Standards world, including the latest news from the Linux Standard Base project (LSB), POSIX and ISO-C language. Will there be an ISO-Linux?

Spam as Poetry
Marcus Ranum
Wednesday, November 17, 9:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m., Yukon/McKenzie/Rio Grande

Come swill Chablis and eat pate and read your favorite spamagram aloud!

CAcert BoF
Brian Gallew, Carnegie Mellon University; Teus Hagen; Rudi van Drunen, Leiden Pathology and Cytology Labs, Leiden, The Netherlands
Wednesday, November 17, 8:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m., Bonn

The purpose of this BoF would be to provide identity verification for expansion of the web of trust. For this work there will be enough Assurers who can do the assurance for you to enable you to put your name on the certificate, and even to achieve the Assurer status in order to assure other persons already at the conference. Please register beforehand at https://www.cacert.org and complete the Assurer Forms (for every assurance you need one), as this will speed up the assurance process.

Improv for SysAdmins (or How I Stopped Scowling and Learned to Love My Users)
Bob Apthorpe, St. Edward's University (also of Heroes of Comedy & Foolish Mortals)
Wednesday, November 17, 7:00 p.m.–8:00 p.m., Champagne

Use your amazing powers of improvisation beyond the command line to enrich your personal and professional life. Improv is more about paying attention, accepting new ideas, taking bold risks, and making things happen than about being wakka-wakka funny. The same skills that make a good improv scene also help you pay better attention, become more confident, keep your cool, avoid becoming a doormat or a roadblock, and generally get along way better with people without selling out. For no extra charge I'll throw in the five habits you absolutely must break in order for people to take you seriously. If there's time left over, I'll talk about comedy. Wakka-wakka.

The field trip to Dad's Garage (https://www.dadsgarage.com) is optional...

P.S.: Wear comfortable clothes.

Google Social Hour(s)
Thursday, November 18, 8:00 p.m.–11:00 p.m., Sydney

Think there aren't any challenges left at Google? Wrong! We're still growing rapidly and have a huge need for great system, network, security, and even manager types.

Come chat with Google sysadmins, learn about our challenges, enjoy tasty deserts and beverages, snag schwag, and sign up for a raffle for great goodies like jackets, backpacks, lava lamps, and an iPod!

Thawte Web of Trust FREE Email Certificates vs. CAcert FREE Email Certificates
Jeff D'Angelo, Information Technology Services, Pennsylvania State University
Thursday, November 18, 9:00 p.m.–11:00 p.m., Bonn

• Which is better? When?
• What is FREE? What is supported by most clients?
• What does it take to get started?
• What about PGP/GPG?

How to Install a Computer Completely Automatically
Thomas Lange, Debian Developer, Author of FAI, University of Cologne
Thursday, November 18, 9:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m., Danube/Tigris

How do you install an OS and your applications on your brand-new computers? Fully automatically? We will discuss user experiences with different methods for automated installations like Jumpstart, Kickstart, and image-based installation, and I will tell something about the project FAI. Which features do we miss in those tools? What are the pros & cons?

Howard Dean & Online Political Campaigns
Brian Sebby
Thursday, November 19, 10:00 p.m.–11:00 p.m.

The 2004 campaign season has come and gone, but if you were affiliated with the Howard Dean campaign, MoveOn, or other online political movements, join us to reminisce and discuss what we've achieved and where we go from here.

NOCs: Helping System Administors Sleep More Soundly
Kim Malat
Wednesday, November 17, 8:00 p.m.–9:00 p.m., Danube/Tigris

General discussion regarding Network Operations Centers (NOCs). Bring past experiences with NOCs and current issues. Let's discuss boosting efficiency through process, documentation and training.

Sun Vendor BoF: Solaris 10: Where We Are, Where We Are Headed
Andy Tucker and Dan Price, Sun Microsystems
Thursday, November 18, 8:00 p.m.–10:00 p.m., Yukon/ Mackenzie/ Rio Grande

Join Dan Price, senior kernel engineer, and Andrew Tucker, Sun distinguished engineer, and other members of the Solaris kernel team for a discussion on the latest features in the Solaris platform, such as Solaris Containers (Zones), DTrace, and Predictive Self Healing (Service Management Facility (SMF) and Fault Management Architecture (FMA)). Solaris 10 represents Sun's most significant operating system update ever with hundreds of new features and critical performance, interoperability, and scalability enhancements. Additionally, Sun is moving Solaris to an open source development model and has implemented an early pilot program for the project. Meet the team that's making it all happen, ask your questions, and offer your feedback. There will be plenty of food, T-shirts, demos, and conversation.