Linux Users of Victoria, Inc.

Talks

• Use of Linux at the Australian Astronomical Observatory — Tim Connors
• OpenWRT: A GNU/Linux based firmware program for embedded devices such as residential gateways and routers — Bernie Schelberg

Use of Linux at the Australian Astronomical Observatory — Tim Connors

Tim Connors worked at the Australian Astronomical Observatory (nee Anglo-Australian Observatory) in Coonabarabran as a telescope operator while finishing his PhD in astrophysics at the Swinburne centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing. He never could quite let go of wanting the systems to work just right, so was given the keys to the observatory computers, ands lowly brought the systems kicking and screaming, into the modern age.

Machines running Linux came to represent a far more sensible way of managing a heterogeneous network of custom controllers and hardware. And he's not joking about the modernising: halfway through his tenure, he took part in a project to replace what was almost certainly Australia's oldest continually operating production computer — the telescope control computer that had been faithfully reading and controlling the telescope's position 10 times a second for the past 35 years (and acting as a 10kW room heater), with an industrial Linux machine that only took up half a rack. This talk is a summary of that journey through time (but not space).

Tim has since left the dizzying heights of the observatory, and helps ensure the Bureau of Meteorology keep the data flowing. When he's not busy failing over www.bom, he likes to hoon around on bikes that don't crash because of proprietary kernel drivers.

OpenWRT: A GNU/Linux based firmware program for embedded devices such as residential gateways and routers. — Bernie Schelberg

OpenWRT is a GNU/Linux distribution for your wireless router, particularly common residential networking devices. It is a highly configurable system that enables you to do many things that normally require expensive equipment to do effectively.

Bernie Schelberg has a Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology, and works as a computer programmer by day (and night!). He is passionate about free (libre) software, and enjoys tinkering with various distributions, virtualization, and embedded devices such as phones.

Note: the previously announced talk on BTRFS unfortunately had to be cancelled / postponed.