Entries by Solomon K. Chang

By Solomon Chang

Synergy is a software application for sharing a keyboard and mouse between multiple computers. It is used in situations where several PCs are used together, with a monitor connected to each, but are to be controlled by one user. The user needs only one keyboard and mouse on the desk — similar to a KVM switch without the Video.
Once the program is installed, users can move the mouse "off" the side of their desktop on one computer, and the mouse-pointer will appear on the desktop of another computer. Key presses will be delivered to whichever computer the mouse-pointer is located in. This makes it possible to control several machines as easily as if they were a single multi-monitor computer.

Synergy is able to integrate Unix, Linux, Macintosh and Windows machines, even down to the clipboard and synchronization of screensavers. Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Synergy is free software.

By David Rolston

In this session, Dave will walk through everything needed to create a self contained Centos based LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server which you can run on your development workstation or notebook computer. This allows you to develop for your target server platform (assuming that’s a RHEL or Centos based server) whenever you want, with or without an active Internet connection. Another advantage of virtualization is that you can set up multiple virtual servers to test out clustering and configurations that would difficult if not impossible to simulate using one server. Dave will cover prerequisites, gotchas, and walk through the building and setup of the VM.

David Rolston is a Los Angeles based system developer who has worked for a variety of entertainment and game companies including Paramount Pictures, Broderbund software, and Vivendi Universal Games. He has focused most of his recent efforts on LAMP and is one of the founders of LampSIG. He contributes to a number of open source projects including Joomla, and is the project lead of a popular Joomla gallery component called PonyGallery.

This meeting will be for the discussion of booth topics for SCALE 8x.

By Solomon Chang

MySQL Replication has been a standard practice of scaling and failover for a long time, but what happens when you need to set up replication that routes through an insecure network? You have two options: you can either eliminate everyone you do not trust on that insecure network in the messiest way possible, or you create your own home grown SSL certificate and use that to encrypt all database traffic. In this talk, Solomon will teach the boring way that doesn't send you to jail, while providing an overview of setting database replication for those who may have missed it in earlier LAMPSIG meetings.

When he is not deliberately scheduling LAMPSIG meetings to conflict with Rosh Hashanah *and* Shabbat, Solomon is a professional DBA in Glendale and bears the guilt of being a co-author of the MySQL Cluster Certification Study Guide. He is MySQL-certified, although his mother really wishes he would have become a doctor or a lawyer instead, and settle down with a nice Jewish girl.

By Solomon Chang

Nessus is a vulnerability scannner. Despite being proprietary, it is free of charge for personal use in a non-enterprise environment. Its goal is to detect potential vulnerabilities on the tested systems. It accomplishes this by maintaining its own database of every vulnerability known to its contributors (for specific mainstream Operating Systems), with each vulnerability rendered into executable scripts. After selecting the vulnerabilities you want to test for, you simply launch... and wait. Nessus then returns a report of any backdoors, admin passwords, etc. that it has found, as well as helpful links to instructions on how to patch them.

Nessus is meant to be a security-testing tool that you deploy against your own machines before you put them on the public internet. It is not meant to probe other people's machines, although this is very commonly the case. Solomon will briefly discuss other security tools and common probing techniques, as well as protecting yourself against probes.

When he is not teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts 101 at Hogwarts, Solomon Chang is a MySQL certified DBA and the current acting director of LAMPSIG. He works as a professional Database Administrator four stories underground in an organization he is not allowed to talk about, and is a co-author of the MySQL Cluster Certification Study Guide.