tlug: August Meeting Summary

[Craig Oda <craig@example.com>]

--------------------------------------------------------
tlug note from Craig Oda <craig@example.com>
--------------------------------------------------------

 Tokyo Linux Users Group
 August Meeting
 Craig
  Sun Aug  3 13:42:28 JST 1997

  1.  Summary of Meeting

  Although there was a strong showing at the Tokyo Linux Users Group and
  many of the members went home with lottery prizes, I realize that a
  few of the members could not make the trip into Tokyo. The August
  meeting was held close to Tokyo station at the Joe Marchak's office
  (HSBC).  Three machines were demonstrated: Sparc hardware, Pentium Pro
  266 mhz, and Pentium.

  Following the meeting there was an excursion to Akihabara where John
  Little led a tour of the electric city's best bargains for used Sparc
  hardware.  It was hot and muggy as we snaked through narrow corridors
  that forced men to walk single file.	The stairs were high and looked
  shaky.  The floors were grimy.  The hardware was all that mattered and
  there were some gems among the battered cases blackened with dust.  We
  were all mulling over a Sparc 10 with 32 megs RAM, 19 inch color
  monitor, and 500 meg SCSI disk that was selling for 170,000 yen.

  2.  Guest of Honor from SLLUG

  The guest of honor was Mark, president of the Salt Lake Linux Users
  Group.  He showed up as part of TLUG's International Friendship
  Promotion Program (TIFPP).  His keynote speech focused on the
  international aspect of Linux and the importance of international
  cooperation to develop and deploy this fine operating system.	In his
  closing remarks, Mark cited a recent article on Linux in Wired
  Magazine  speculated on the emergence of Linux as the dominant OS for
  servers in the networked age.

  3.  Quick Review of Topics

  3.1.	XLinCity Tricks

  Joe Marchak, "Mr. Xlincity," announced that he had moved all his
  population offworld safely and had won the game.  Joe had a tech level
  of over 105 and a fully solar powered society.  Joe used an
  inspirational technique of exporting only manufactured goods and
  importing only raw materials.	For the health of his people, Joe moved
  straight to solar power, leap-frogging the coal-fired power plants
  that causes health problems among inner-city children.  He also spoke
  on the merits of spacing your rocket launching centers at least two
  blocks apart in the event of a crash that might wipe out a section of
  the city.

  3.2.	Msql versus Mysql

  Mark compared msql http://www.hughes.com.au and mysql
  http://www.tcx.se.  Mark recommended MySQL due to its greater power
  and stability.  Mini SQL (msql) has problems with larger data sets.

  I had heard a lot about msql, but not much about mysql.  After the
  meeting, I went on the Internet to look at both msql and mysql.  MSql
  is probably more popular due to its small size and interfaces with the
  web.	However, Mysql might be more popular in business environments.
  (This is just speculation).  During the great Akihabara excursion, I
  did buy a copy of Database Programming with JDBC and Java (O' Reilly).
  The author, George Reese, is also the author of the JDBC driver for
  msql.

  Copies of ADABAS D were distributed at the TLUG meeting.
  Unfortunately, we didn't have time to install and demonstrate it.
  Perhaps Yuri can demonstrate it at the next meeting?

  3.3.	Lilo Loader Hints

  We discussed lilo chaining onto another lilo.	This overcomes the
  limitation of 16 physical disks that can be booted.  Although we
  didn't try this, it appears that the files in /boot/ have some
  significance. In the /etc/lilo.conf file there is a keyword, loader.

    loader=/boot/any_b.b      chain loader to swap floppy A and B
    loader=/boot/any_d.b      chain loader to swap hda and hdb
    loader=/boot/chain.b      chain loader, generic.

  Since most PC hardware has a limitation of two bootable physical
  drives, there are some tricks needed to first load lilo than have lilo
  call the rest of the drives for boot.	Still searching for a solution.

  3.4.	Calderra StarOffice

  We did an install from scratch and did a full demo of the office
  suite.  It looked good.

  3.5.	RedHat CDE

  We demoed CDE and I showed some of my favorite keystroke combinations
  to avoid using the mouse.

  3.6.	RedHat Sparc Linux Install

  We did an install from scratch.

  3.7.	ePerl

  Mark spoke on ePerl.	From the ePerl web site: Description ePerl
  interprets an ASCII file bristled with Perl 5 program statements by
  evaluating the Perl 5 code while passing through the plain ASCII data.
  It can operate in various ways: As a stand-alone Unix filter or
  integrated Perl 5 module for general file generation tasks and as a
  powerful Webserver scripting language for dynamic HTML page
  programming.



-----------------------------------------------------------------
a word from the sponsor will appear below
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The TLUG mailing list is proudly sponsored by TWICS - Japan's First
Public-Access Internet System.  Now offering 20,000 yen/year flat
rate Internet access with no time charges.  Full line of corporate
Internet and intranet products are available.   info@example.com
Tel: 03-3351-5977   Fax: 03-3353-6096