Perhaps we should decide on what the expectations we should have from a meeting, which should include some craft beer drinking. There is knowledge to spread, help to give, and interest to know what people are doing (I think). Here are some topics to ponder: 1. software/distribution setup and management - environment modules and why people should use them (host multiple versions of software with no conflicts) - hosting multiple kernels - do you keep notes for everything like I do? 2. networking - the power of SSH and reverse tunnels (it will change your life) - pushing protocols through tunnels (e.g. VNC in your box behind firewalls or NATed and non-static addresses) - IPv6 (I have never done anything with this) -- IPtables and advanced routing with the Linux TCP stack (I am always interested) - networking and virtualization (huge and interesting rabbit-hole) 3. hardware - do you have hardware that gives you issues? do you have solutions? - interfacing with strange devices 4. storage - Linux MD RAID, mdadm and why everybody should be at least RAID1 - cryptsetup, LUKS, and keeping hardware theft from being an issue (being paranoid is a good thing sometimes) - RAID over networks (I really want to know more about this) - extN/XFS/ZFS and why the choice of filesystem is sometimes life-or-death 5. virtualization - I am still trying to properly virtualize a Macintosh/Hackintosh - on demand server management in computing facilities and cloud style computing of your own (I have a huge interest in this) 6. Programming with the system API and advanced topics - who here uses select()/ioctl() and for what reason? - Infiniband and high-performance computing / storage / LUSTRE - RDMA over Infiniband for virtualization (is it possible?) - process/memory affinity for process and threads (topic for HPC people like me) You sure can spend endless hours searching with a search-engine and reading, but nothing beats knowing your local expert and discussing things over a beer. IN