A conference on UNIX and Open Systems for the Canberra Region brought to you by AUUG Inc. Lunch is sponsored by The Advanced Computational Systems Cooperative Research Centre. Morning refreshments are sponsored by IBM. The conference will be held in the Manning Clark Centre, ANU.
How can IT people make the Internet be useful in Government? Much has been said about the role of the "Information Superhighway" and how it could transform our culture, business and Government. But how and how much of this hype can be turned into reality? Can a traditional bureaucratic culture accept the anarchic ways of the Internet? Tom relates his experience in using public data networking in Government agencies over the last three years. He provides tips on avoiding a clash of cultures. The presentation concentrates on social and administrative rather than technical issues.
One of the major selling points of UNIX systems is the claim that UNIX is a lower cost technology than proprietary technologies. This is achieved through commodity-like hardware, portability of applications and portability of skills investments. When one examines studies of costs of UNIX systems ownership, the costs of hardware, software and applications are low. The flip side of the coin is that systems management costs account for half the cost of UNIX systems ownership. This paper looks at the costs of UNIX systems ownership, the role of systems management in these costs, and offers some approaches that UNIX professionals can employ to better manage their UNIX systems investments.
The evolution of Laptop PCs has been rapid and impressive. New hardware features have increased power and functionality significantly. One such development has been the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) card. PCMCIA cards are designed around a 'Plug and Play' concept, whereby the card itself contains enough information to allow configuration without any user entered data and furthermore allowing 'hot-swapping', whereby cards can be inserted and removed without powering down. This paper presents the design and implementation of a PCMCIA Plug and Play system for FreeBSD, a freely available version of BSD Unix. It describes the internal workings of card recognition, and the automatic installation and configuration of the cards into the Unix kernel, and how this affects system configuration and setup. A live demonstration will be given.
The information system (IS) supporting a large workplace survey is described and reviewed. A brief introduction to the survey background and mechanisms is presented. The IS tasks are divided into those before, during and after the survey. The major tasks of each group and computing resources used will be described. Software engineering issues, including the use of a 'prototype and evolve' model for the development of small software modules, are discussed. The use of high-level languages and the importance of user feedback in software development are considered. This experience shows that UNIX, with its range of general-purpose software tools, combined with a flexible database package provides an effective IS platform for survey support.
The PASTIME (PArliament Sound Text and IMage Environment) Project is part of the ACSys CRC, and involves the Australian Parliament, ANU, CSIRO, and Sun Microsystems. It aims to demonstrate advanced techniques for the management of large, partially-structured multimedia information repositories and associated browsing and thematic-retrieval tool sets. The demonstrator is based on text, video and sound records of Parliamentary processes of the Australian Parliament. Technologies employed include: MJPEG and MPEG video codecs, WAIS-compliant access to ANU's text storage and retrieval system on the AP1000, HTML converters, hypermedia authoring systems, and hyperlink management.
A discussion of some of the issues raised in the establishment of the PCUG/AUUG Internet project.
Managing a World Wide Web server can be a daunting task, and keeping documents up to date is a never ending chore. Discover some tools and authoring software that can make this task a little more bearable, and make your Web site stand out from the crowd.
While experience, intuition, and seat-of-the-pants hacking are essential to the work of systems administrators and programmers - and they know it - what is also needed for professional-quality work is attention to detail. Whether it is producing bug-free, maintainable code, securing networks, preventing crises, or troubleshooting complicated systems, sites need workable documentation, procedures and standards that ensure consistency without stifling innovation. Some ideas on how to do this sort of thing well, based on experience, and with examples from a wide range of real-life situations will be discussed.