The only conference by and for programmers, developers, and system administrators
1996 has been one of the most exciting years for those of us involved in advanced computing. The Web is attracting tremendous interest in the business world corporate America is rushing to embrace emerging technologies. New products are being developed and introduced at breakneck-speed. And you the programmers, developers, and system administrators are the ones being charged to make it happen and make sure it works.
How can you figure out which technologies and products are worth your time and money for 1997 and beyond? If its your job to know, plan to be in Anaheim in January!
You can choose from 20 tutorials. There will be new topics such as secure Java programming and applets, Windows NT and Windows 95, CGI and WWW programming in perl, Web security, setting up a Web server, Solaris system administration, and Linux device drivers. Or you can attend tried-and-true tutorials which have proven their worth on topics such as UNIX Network Programming, IPv6, UNIX security tools, and Perl.
You will hear talks on state-of-the-art practice in the refereed papers track on topics you can use in your daily work, such as Web tools, file system advances, distributed computing, and high-speed networking. Invited speakers share their experiences on topics such as cryptography, programming hints, and WWW server techniques. You can form a BoF (Birds-of-a-Feather) session with other attendees based on a topic of common interest. And you can talk seriously with the manufacturers at our informal trade show.
Co-located with the USENIX Technical Conference is USELINUX, the first Linux Applications Development and Deployment Conference. Co-sponsored by Linux International and USENIX, this conference will offer a technical track and a business track, as well as presentations and case studies. Anything you wanted to know about Linux, you can find out here. Your registration fee allows you to attend USENIX and USELINUX for the same price.
You need practical tools and information. We are gathering the best experts to present it. In one place. In one week.
We hope this program will help you to make the best use of your time at the Conference. I look forward to seeing you in Anaheim from January 6th to 10th.
Sincerely,
John Kohl, Pure Atria Corporation
Program Chair
P.S.: Remember to sign up for tutorials early. Space is limited and demand is high. You'll get your first choice and you'll save money.
Early Registration Savings Deadline: November 22, 1996
Hotel Discount Deadline: December 20, 1996
If you are:
Program Committee:
Matt Blaze, AT&T Research
Bill Bolosky, Microsoft Research
Nathaniel Borenstein, First Virtual Holdings
Charlie Briggs, Digital Equipment Corp.
Clem Cole, Digital Equipment Corp.
Fred Douglis, AT&T Research
Rob Gingell, Sun Microsystems
Mike Karels, Berkeley Software Design, Inc.
John Schimmel, Silicon Graphics
Carl Staelin, Hewlett-Packard Labs
Invited Talks Coordinators:
Mary Baker, Stanford University
Berry Kercheval, Xerox PARC
Monday, January 6
Registration 7:30am - 5:00pm
Tutorials 9:00am - 5:00pm
Tuesday, January 7
Registration 7:30am - 5:00pm
Tutorials 9:00am - 5:00pm
Birds-of-a-Feather Sessions 6:00pm - 10:00pm
Wednesday, January 8
Registration 7:30am - 6:00pm
Keynote Address 9:00am - 10:30pm Technical Sessions 11:00am - 5:00pm
USELINUX Developers 9:00am - 5:30pm
Vendor Display Noon - 7:00pm
USELINUX Case Studies 7:30pm - 11:00pm
Birds-of-a-Feather Sessions 7:30pm - 11:00pm
Thursday, January 9
Registration 7:30am - 6:00pm
Technical Sessions 9:00am - 6:00pm
USELINUX Developers 9:00am - 5:30pm
Vendor Display 10:00am - 4:00pm
Birds-of-a-Feather Sessions 6:00pm - 10:00pm
USELINUX Case Studies 6:00pm - 10:00pm
Friday, January 10
Technical Sessions 9:00am - 5:45pm
USELINUX Business 9:00am - 4:00pm
Monday and Tuesday, January 6-7, 1997
Technology is changing more rapidly than ever before. Whether you are a programmer, developer or system administrator, you are expected to stay on top of the latest improvements and do your job. Sign up for tutorials and youll get an immediate payoff from gaining command of the newest developments and putting them to work in your organization.USENIX tutorials aim to provide the critical information you need. Delivered by experts, tutorials are practical, intensive, and essential to your professional development.
Our guarantee: If youre not happy, were not happy. If you feel a tutorial does not meet the high standards you have come to expect from USENIX, let us know by the morning break and we will either change you to any available tutorial immediately or arrange for you to attend another tutorial at another USENIX event without paying another fee.
Register now to guarantee your first choice - seating is limited.
Tutorial fees include printed and bound tutorial materials from your sessions, lunch, CD-ROM with Tutorials, Referreed Papers, and Invited Talks, Admission to the Vendor Exhibits
Continuing Education Units
USENIX provides Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for a small additional administrative fee. The CEU is a nationally recognized standard unit of measure for continuing education and training, and is used by thousands of organizations across the United States. Each full-day USENIX tutorial qualifies for 0.6 CEUs. You can request CEU credit by completing the CEU section on the registration form. USENIX provides a certificate for each attendee taking a tutorial for CEU credit, and maintains transcripts for all CEU students.
M1: Beginning Perl Programming for UNIX Programmers (Updated
for Perl 5)
M2: The Kerberos Approach to Network Security (Updated).
M3: An Introduction to Java
M4: Secure Java Programming
M5: Windows NT and Windows 95 - The Win32 API
M6: UNIX Network Programming
M7: Selected Topics in System Administration (New)
M8: How Networks Work - The Limits of Modern Internetworking (Updated)
M9: System and Network Performance Tuning (New)
M10: Inside the Linux 2.0 Kernel (New)
Tuesday, January 7
T1: UNIX Security Tools: Use and Comparison.
T2: CGI and WWW Programming in Perl (New)
T3: Security on the World Wide Web (New)
T4: Creating Effective User Interfaces (New)
T5: Java Applets and the AWT (New)
T6: Setting Up And Administering A Web Server (New)
T7: Security for Software Developers: How to Write Code that Withstands
Hostile Environments (New)
T8: Solaris System Administration (New)
T9: IP version 6: An Introduction
T10: Writing Device Drivers Under Linux (New)
M1: Beginning Perl Programming for UNIX Programmers (Updated
for Perl 5)
Tom Christiansen, Consultant
Who should attend: System administrators and toolsmiths, database managers, software test and support engineers, GUI and World Wide Web programmers unfamiliar with Perl or those with little programming experience. You should have a background in UNIX shell programming with a good working knowledge of regular expressions. A background in sed, awk, and/or C programming will prove useful.
What you will learn: Perl syntax and semantics. More importantly, you will learn how to read Perl (and thus learn from other peoples programming experiences).
Have you been spending a lot of time trying to solve problems in the shell or C? Perl is an extremely powerful and robust scripting language that can help you solve problems in less time. Now ten years old, Perl is the tool of choice because of its power, plus, it works on nearly every conceivable platform. Because it incorporates aspects of more than a dozen well-known UNIX tools, experienced UNIX users will come up to speed on Perl rapidly, and even programmers inexperienced at UNIX will learn UNIX through learning Perl.
You will learn about these topics: detailed descriptions and numerous examples of the syntax and semantics of the language; its data types and data structures; operators and control flow; regular expressions; I/O facilities; database access; user-defined functions; writing and using library modules; and an easy intro to Perls object-oriented programming mechanisms.
You will also hear about some of the new Perl 5 modules, including examples of full applications for Tk-based graphical programming, CGI programs, and client/server programming.
NOTE: This course is based on the current release of Perl (version 5.002,) but is not intended to be a detailed discourse on all advanced programming constructs of that release. It is a jump-start course on Perl for experienced UNIX programmers, not an advanced course for previous Perl programmers.
Tom Christiansen is a consultant specializing in Perl applications, optimizations, and training. He is a frequent instructor at USENIX and other conferences. He earned an MS degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
M2: The Kerberos Approach to Network Security (Updated) Daniel Geer, Open Market, Inc., Jon A. Rochlis, BBN Planet
Who should attend:
No matter what your position isdeveloper, system administrator, or managersecurity is one of the most urgent issues facing you today. In this course, you will learn how the Kerberos approach might solve the practical challenges of providing security for the cooperative electronic workplace, workplaces that aspire to location and scale independence in the client-server idiom or which need to provide the kind of security services that enable external access to enterprise data.
You will learn about these topics:
Daniel E. Geer, Jr. is director of engineering at Open Market, Inc. Formerly he was chief scientist, vice president of technology, and managing director of security consulting services for OpenVision Technologies. He is a consultant to major Wall Street financial institutions, and a frequent speaker at many technology conferences. He holds a Doctor of Science from Harvard.
Jon Rochlis is an engineering manager with BBN Planet where he leads groups developing managed connectivity and security services. Previously he was with OpenVision Technologies, responsible for systems and security management products.
M3: An Introduction to Java Ken Arnold, Sun Microsystems Labs.
Who should attend: Experienced programmers and technical contributors familiar with the C and C++ programming languages, the basics of object-oriented programming, and the basics of how the World Wide Web operates and is organized.
What you will learn: An understanding of the structure and features of the Java language.
No matter what your programming background is, programming in Java has become an important skill. Java is one of the most talked-about programming languages because it makes the Web interactive, rather than just a passive medium. Learn about Java and how it enables live content programming. This live content consists of full programs that can be placed into HTML documents. When such a document is loaded into a Java-enabled HTML viewer such as HotJava, the program is run, creating a page with active or even interactive elements.
You will also learn about Java features that allow you to write secure, robust programs that can be relied upon to run in a finite amount of space without crashing into a pile of bits. These features include garbage collection, exceptions, strong typing, and a clean separation between classes and interfaces. You will also examine the set of class and interface libraries which are defined as part of any compliant Java implementation.
You will find out how to create applets, programs that can be included as part of a standard HTML document, including how to write applets, what resources are available to them, and what features of the language and runtime environment allow these applets to be run securely by anyone on the Internet.
If time permits, the day will end in wild speculation and discussion of the possible technological and social impacts of the kind of computing that Java allows.
Ken Arnold is part of the team developing the JavaSoft Remote Messaging Interface for communication between Java code running on different machines. He is co-author, with James Gosling, ofThe Java Programming Language. He is a leading expert in object-oriented design and implementation, and has written extensively on C and C++ topics for UNIX Review, and is also co-author, with John Peyton, of A C Users Guide to ANSI C.
M4: Secure Java Programming (New)
Marianne Mueller and David Brownell, JavaSoft
Who should attend: Java developers who want to learn more about how Java security works.
What you will learn: The basics of Java security and the default applet security policy, as well as new features such as Java code signing and Java APIs for access control lists and certificate management.
Topics will include:
M5: Windows NT and Windows 95 The Win32 API (New)
Joseph M. Newcomer, Consultant
Who should attend: Programmers who expect to be involved in the implementation of a Win32-based product, or the porting of a UNIX product to Win32. You should be versed in C. Knowledge of X11 or C++ is helpful, but not required. You do not need to have worked in a windowing system.
What you will learn: A basic understanding of the issues and paradigms of Windows programming techniques, in particular, Windows 32 (Windows 95 and Windows/NT).
Topics include:
M6: UNIX Network Programming
Richard Stevens, Consultant
Who should attend: UNIX/C programmers interested in learning how to write programs that communicate across a network. You should have a basic familiarity with networking concepts and the TCP/IP protocols.
What you will learn: The knowledge required to write network programs and to develop and examine actual examples. Although the tutorial primarily focuses on the Berkeley sockets interface, the course covers UNIX network programming concepts using TCP/IP that are applicable to both sockets and TLI.
You will hear about these topics:
Richard Stevens is an independent consultant and author of the books TCP/IP Illustrated, Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment and UNIX Network Programming.
M7: Selected Topics in System Administration (New)
Trent Hein, XOR Network Engineering
Evi Nemeth, University of Colorado, Boulder
Who should attend: System and network administrators
What you will learn: Insights into real-world, common network problems from all-new, crisis case studies.
Topics include:
Trent Hein is chief network architect at XOR Network Engineering. He worked on the 4.4 BSD port to the MIPS architecture at Berkeley, and is co-author of the UNIX System Administration Handbook.
Evi Nemeth, a faculty member in Computer Science at the University of Colorado, has managed UNIX systems for the past 19 years, both from the front lines and from the ivory tower. She is co-author of the best-sellingUNIX System Administration Handbook.
M8: How Networks Work - The Limits of Modern Internetworking
(Updated)
Vincent C. Jones, PE
Who should attend: Technical individuals, regardless of title, who are responsible for the design and upkeep of extended LAN and LAN/WAN networks supporting multiple protocol architectures. A working knowledge of TCP/IP, Ethernet, and the OSI reference model is assumed.
What you will learn: Practical knowledge: how to benefit from emerging technologies without getting burnt and how to take advantage of mature technologies without getting locked in. You will gain an understanding of the theory behind the rules so you will know which rules must be strictly obeyed, which can be safely stretched, and under what conditions.
Technology is getting more complex every day, but how do you evaluate emerging technologies? In this course, you will gain an understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of modern network technology, probing the current limits of performance and distinguishing between those limits which are fundamental and those which are temporary. You will learn whats the hype and whats the reality on a wide range of critical technologies, from cell relay (ATM) and virtual LANs to IP version 6 and link state routing.
The bottom line is that every networking protocol and technology is a compromise among competing needs. The better you understand the underlying theory, the better able you are to make appropriate choices that best meet the needs of your users and their applications.
Topics include:
Vincent C. Jones is an independent consultant on network planning, design, and analysis of integrated local and wide area networks for cooperative, distributed processing in multivendor environments. Dr. Jones has over twenty five years of experience finding practical, cost-effective solutions to complex networking issues.
M9: System and Network Performance Tuning (New)
Hal Stern, Sun Microsystems
Who should attend: Novice and advanced UNIX system and network administrators, UNIX developers concerned about network performance impacts. You should have a basic understanding of the UNIX system facilities and network environments.
What you will learn: Procedures and techniques for tuning systems, networks, and application code.
More measurement and performance evaluation is being demanded of systems and networks than ever before. In this course you will learn about procedures and techniques for tuning systems, networks, and application code. Starting from the single system view, you will examine how the virtual memory system, the I/O system, and filesystem can be measured and optimized. The single host view will expand to include Network File System tuning and performance strategies.
A detailed treatment of networking performance problems, including network design and media choices, will lead to examples of network capacity planning. Youll learn about application issues, such as system call optimization, memory usage and monitoring, code profiling, real-time programming, and techniques for controlling response time. Many examples will be given, along with guidelines for capacity planning and customized monitoring, based on your workloads and traffic patterns.
Topics include:
M10: Inside the Linux 2.0 Kernel (New)
Stephen C. Tweedie, Digital Equipment Corporation
Who should attend: Application programmers and kernel developers. You should be reasonably familiar with C programming in the UNIX environment, but no prior experience of the UNIX or Linux kernel code will be assumed.
What you will learn: An introduction to the structure of the Linux kernel, the basic features it provides, and the most important algorithms it employs.
If you have always wanted to program in Linux or are considering switching to it because of its low cost, you will need to understand its kernel. The Linux kernel aims to achieve conformance with existing standards and compatibility with existing operating systems, however, it is not a reworking of existing UNIX kernel code. The Linux kernel was written from scratch to provide both standard and novel features, and take advantage of the best practice of existing UNIX kernel designs.
Topics will include:
T1: UNIX Security Tools: Use and Comparison
Matt Bishop, University of California at Davis
Who should attend: UNIX security administrators and other interested users.
What you will learn: How to use publicly-available programs to improve the security of your system. You will compare the uses and drawbacks of several different programs, with an emphasis on when to use which.
Topics will include:
T2: CGI and WWW Programming in Perl (New)
Tom Christiansen, Consultant
Who should attend: Programmers with a light background in Perl and HTML. No previous CGI experience is required. If you dont have any Perl background, read the Llama book first or take the M1 tutorial on Monday. This is not a for non-programmers course nor a for guru programmers course. Its for accidental programmers, folks other than UNIX systems gurus who need to deal with CGI and WWW programming.
What you will learn: CGI and other WWW programming using Perl. Special attention is given to system security issues.
All aspects of writing and processing fill-out forms are covered using the standard CGI.pm module. Some attention is also given to parsing of HTML documents and writing spiderbots, automata that navigate the Web on their own.
Specific topics include:
T3: Security on the World Wide Web (New)
Daniel Geer, OpenMarket, Inc., and Jon Rochlis, BBN Planet
Who should attend: Anyone responsible for running a Web site who wants to understand the tradeoffs in making it secure and how it is likely to be secured.
What you will learn: A comparison of available methods of Web security.
The World Wide Web is perhaps the most important enabler (so far) of electronic commerce. It has grabbed the popular imagination and the engineering and marketing efforts of a generation of on-line entrepreneurs and consumers. But it was initially designed with little thought to industrial strength security. Over the past several years numerous proposals have surfaced to secure the Web. This course will survey them with the goal of understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each.
The topics will include:
Jon Rochlis is an engineering manager with BBN Planet where he leads groups developing managed connectivity and security services. Previously he was with OpenVision Technologies, responsible for systems and security management products.
T4: Creating Effective User Interfaces (New)
Joseph A. Konstan, University of Minnesota
Who should attend: People involved in the process of designing, implementing, evaluating, and managing the development of interactive graphical user interfaces. You need not have programming experience, but experience using interactive applications is required.
What you will learn: How to design a good user interface, and also how to constructively (and authoritatively) criticize a bad user interface.
With the advent of readily available, easy-to-use packages for building GUI-based systems, GUI-based systems have moved from the realm of specialty to almost mundane. But along with the widespread accessibility of GUI-builders has arisen a glut of poorly conceived user interfaces, which are hard to use, difficult to understand, or simply hard on the eyes.
You will get a broad introduction to user interface design and evaluation, introducing the task-centered interface design method, and covering principles behind UI design and techniques for UI evaluation. These techniques are pulled together at the end with a set of examples from visualization and Web page design.
Topics include:
Joseph A. Konstan is an award-winning teacher and directs a research program in user interfaces and multimedia systems. He regularly teaches short courses on user interface design and evaluation at the University of Minnesota.
T5: Java Applets and the AWT (New)
Nataraj Nagaratnam, Syracuse Univ.
Who should attend: Developers interested in developing interactive, animated GUI Java applications by exploring the capabilities of the Java Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT). Participants should be familiar with Java. Tutorial M3 will provide a good introduction.
What you will learn: You will become familiar with applet construction using the classes in the Java Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) package, and the techniques to build a GUI in Java.
Topics include:
Nataraj Nagaratnam is a PhD candidate in Computer Engineering at Syracuse University. He is the lead author of the upcoming book titled Waite Groups Java Networking and Windowing API SuperBible. He is a part of the Diamonds research group working in the areas of object-oriented languages and systems.
T6: Setting Up And Administering A Web Server (New)
Bryan Buus, XOR Network Engineering
Who should attend: Webmasters and administrators charged with creating a World Wide Web service for their company. You should have some knowledge of UNIX system administration.
What you will learn: An in-depth understanding of your server environment and the critical issues surrounding ongoing maintenance.
The World Wide Web is the most widely used Internet service. Companies are quickly discovering that they need to be on the Web to provide information to customers and to keep up with the competition. This course describes how to set up and maintain a World Wide Web server on a UNIX platform. The servers covered in the course include the popular and freely-available Apache and NCSA Web servers.
Setting up the Web server is only half of the battle. Understanding exactly how the protocol works, what performance issues are critical, what the security implications are, and other nuances are just some of the important issues that all webmasters need to thoroughly understand.
Topics include:
T7: Security for Software Developers: How to Write Code that
Withstands Hostile Environments (New)
Marcus J. Ranum, V-ONE Corp.
Who should attend: System managers and software engineers developing client/server applications to be used over the Internet. A strong background in UNIX and UNIX programming is recommended. Many examples will refer to C programming constructs though familiarity with C is not a prerequisite.
What you will learn: Increasingly, client/ server software is being deployed in hostile environments that it may not have been designed to withstand. You will learn how to spot and avoid making typical flaws in security programming, using examples and case studies from existing applications.
Topics will include:
Marcus J. Ranum is a network and computer security consultant. He is the principal author of several major Internet firewall products, including the DEC SEAL, the TIS Gauntlet, and the TIS Internet Firewall Toolkit. Marcus has been managing UNIX systems and network security for over 13 years, including configuring and managingwhitehouse.gov. Marcus is a popular lecturer and conference speaker on computer security topics.
T8: Solaris System Administration (New)
Marc Staveley, Consultant
Who should attend: System administrators who need to know the differences between SunOS 4.x and Solaris 2.x administration. Portions of this course will also be useful from a BSD to SysV.4 perspective. It will be most meaningful to system administrators who have some experience setting up and maintaining a network of SunOS 4.x workstations and servers.
What you will learn: New methods in Solaris to accomplish the same task as in SunOS (for example, the new NFS filesystem administration commands) and new features in Solaris (for example, the CacheFS filesystem). The course will concentrate on the Solaris 2.5 release.
Topics will include:
T9: IP version 6: An Introduction
Richard Stevens, Consultant
Who should attend: Network programmers and system administrators who will be converting applications and networks from IPv4 to IPv6, and implementors of IPv6. You should have a basic understanding of TCP/IP.
What you will learn: How to transition from IPv4 to IPv6 from the administration and programming standpoints.
Over the past few years, proposals have been made to replace IPv4 with a new version, mainly to overcome the addressing limitations of IPv4. In July 1994 the successor was chosen and named IPv6. Since that time numerous working groups have been busy completing the specifications for all facets of IPv6, and implementations are starting to appear. It is expected that vendor-supplied implementations of IPv6 will appear in the coming years and there will be a gradual transition of the Internet to IPv6.
You will get an overview of all aspects of IPv6, from the perspectives of a system administrator who needs to transition a network from pure-IPv4 hosts and routers to a mixture of IPv4 and IPv6 nodes and a programmer who needs to convert applications from IPv4 to IPv6 .
Topics include DNS support, new socket address structure, address conversion functions, transition mechanisms, automatic tunneling, header fields and extension headers, source routing, path MTU discovery, upper-layer issues, ICMPv6, multicasting, neighbor discovery, CIDR, anycasting, and mobility.
W. Richard Stevens is an independent consultant and author of the booksTCP/IP Illustrated, Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, andUNIX Network Programming.
T10: Writing Device Drivers Under Linux (New)
Theodore Tso, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Who should attend: System programmers who need to write, modify, or maintain device drivers for the Linux operating system. You should know the C programming language. Some knowledge of general UNIX or Linux kernel design principals is desirable but not necessary.
Linux is becoming more and more popular, particularly because of the wide variety of device drivers which are available in the Linux kernel. You will learn about the several basic classes of Linux device drivers character devices, block devices, and network devices and the abstract device driver layers which simplify the task of writing tty devices and SCSI devices.
You will also hear about general kernel-level design and programming issues and the basic Linux kernel services needed by device drivers. Examples in the tutorial will be based on actual device drivers taken from the Linux 2.0 kernel and will include a tty-based device driver, a hard-disk device driver, and a Ethernet device driver.
Theodore Tso has been a Linux kernel developer since almost the very beginning of Linux. He implemented POSIX job control in the 0.10 Linux kernel. He is the maintainer and author for the Linux COM serial port driver, and the Comtrol Rocketport driver. He also architected and implemented Linuxs tty layer. Outside of the kernel, he is the maintainer of the e2fsck filesystem consistency checker. Theodore is the project manager for the Kerberos V5 development team at MIT. He participates in the Internet Engineering Task Force where he serves on the Security Area Directorate.
TECHNICAL PROGRAM
Wednesday-Friday, January 8-10, 1997
Keynote Address: Developing on "Internet Time"
James Gosling, Sun Microsystems
The development of the WWW and its attendant phenomena have led to the notion of Internet Time in which things seem to just happen faster. To avoid running into the sorts of nonsense results expressed by people such as Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man Month, you cant simply work faster you have to change the way you work. One such change has been the development and deployment of the Java language and the write once, run anywhere applications it enables. Such technological developments are not usually, by themselves, sufficient to accomplish the necessary changes often the skills and knowledge of the people using the technology have to change as well. This talk will discuss the changes in practice and perspective that such technologies have required of those creating and using Java and its associated tools.
James Gosling is a vice president and Fellow at Sun Microsystems where he has been the lead engineer for the Java/HotJava system. He has built satellite data acquisition systems, a multiprocessor version of UNIX, several compilers, mail systems, and window managers. He has also built a WYSIWYG text editor, a constraint-based drawing editor, and a text editor called Emacs for UNIX systems. Early in his career at Sun, he was lead engineer of the NeWS window system. James Gosling received a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon University.
Embedded Inodes and Explicit Grouping: Exploiting Disk Bandwidth for Small
Files
Gregory R. Ganger and M. Frans Kaashoek, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Observing the Effects of Multi-Zone Disks
Rodney Van Meter, Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern
California
A Revisitation of Kernel Synchronization Schemes
Christopher Small and Stephen Manley, Harvard University
Protected Shared Libraries - A New Approach to Modularity and Sharing
Arindam Banerji, John M. Tracey, and David L. Cohn, University of Notre Dame
Extending the Operating System at the User-Level: the Ufo Global File System
Albert D. Alexandrov, Maximilian Ibel, Klaus E. Schauser, and Chris J. Scheiman,
University of California, Santa Barbara
Using Smart Clients to Build Scalable Services
Chad Yoshikawa, Brent Chun, Paul Eastham, Amin Vahdat, Thomas Anderson, and David
Culler, University of California, Berkeley
Adaptive and Reliable Parallel Computing on Networks of Workstations
Robert D. Blumofe, University of Texas, Austin
Philip A. Lisiecki, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A Distributed Shared Memory Facility for FreeBSD
Pedro A. Souto and Eugene W. Stark, State University of New York, Stony Brook
A Simple and Extensible Graphical Debugger
David R. Hanson and Jeffrey L. Korn, Princeton University
Cget, Cput, and Stage Safe File Transport Tools for the Internet
Bill Cheswick, Bell Laboratories
As telecommunications, entertainment, and computing networks merge, a wide variety of services will be offered on a diverse array of hardware, software, and networks. Inferno provides a uniform execution environment for applications and services in this chaotic world. Inferno comprises a networked operating system that can run native or above a commercial operating system, a virtual machine, a programming language, protocols, and standard interfaces for networks, graphics, and other system services. This architecture offers unprecendented portability for applications and services.
Mailing List Archive Tools
Sam Leffler and Melange Tortuba, Silicon Graphics
Experience with GroupLens: Making Usenet Useful Again
Bradley N. Miller, John T. Riedl, and Joseph A. Konstan, University of Minnesota
On Designing Lightweight Threads for Substrate Software
Matthew Haines, University of Wyoming
High-Performance Local-Area Communication With Fast Sockets
Steven H. Rodrigues, Thomas E. Anderson, and David E. Culler, University
of California, Berkeley
An Analytical Approach to File Prefetching
Hui Lei and Dan Duchamp, Columbia University
Optimistic Deltas for WWW Latency Reduction
Gaurav Banga, Fred Douglis, and Michael Rabinovich, AT&T Research
A Toolkit Approach to Partially Connected Operation
Dan Duchamp, Columbia University
Severe Tire Damage is the first band on the Internet, the first band on the MBone, and hosts the first live video worldwide interactive multimedia show on the information superhighway. Members of STD will describe how it all works and show off their chops in a live show for USENIX.
AltaVista is the result of a research project started in the summer of 1995 at Digitals Research Laboratories in Palo Alto, California, that combined a fast Web crawler with scalable indexing software. Within three weeks of launch, the AltaVista site was handling over two million HTTP requests per day. By May 1996, the index had grown to more than 30,000,000 pages, and the site was receiving twelve million daily HTTP requests. This talk will describe the software and hardware technology behind this popular and successful Web search engine.
This session will present highlights from some of USENIXs 1996 events: Conference on Object-Oriented Technologies and Systems (COOTS); LISA, the 10th Systems Administration Conference; the Second Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI); Sixth USENIX Security Symposium; and the Second USENIX Workshop on Electronic Commerce.
If benchmarks shape a field, then computer science is in bad shape. Our field is characterized by a few examples of excellent benchmarks, and a large number of poorly conceived measurements. We will examine the current practice in computer system measurement, citing both surpisingly good and embarrassingly bad real-world examples that illustrate common benchmarking pitfalls. Through this we will offer some benchmarking tips and guidelines.
This new Place is a rich source of new experiments, new tricks, and new troubles. It is subject to clever and annoying hacking tricks, an arms race that the hackers seem to be winning at the moment. They are even putting the network infrastructure at risk, though benign administrative problems may well beat them to the punch. Netnews has evolved horizontal and vertical spamming and cancelbots. The Web offers new publishing opportunities. Marketers can game search engines by, for example salting their pages with extra keywords, causing an arms spiral with the engine designers. Now Javas designers would have us execute safe programs in unsafe containers. When all the security stupid tricks are fixed, denial-of-service attacks will remain.
SPIN is a popular verification system for concurrent software. In this talk Ill show how SPIN works, and give some examples of some of the more remarkable applications.
Bill Gates said at its introduction that Windows NT will be a better UNIX than UNIX. We say, Why wait, Linux already is!. We will demonstrate that Linux is not only significant, but the next generation heir of UNIX and what Linux will be in the near future and why. There will be case histories from a user perspective on Why Linux.
11:00-12:30: The Sparc Port of Linux
David S. Miller, Rutgers CAIP
Miguel de Icaza, Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Ciudad Universitaria, Universidad
Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
Regardless of the many barriers the port of Linux to Sparc-based workstations and servers had to overcome, it was very successful. This talk will emphasize performance, stability, and how Linux became more portable as a result of the port.
2:00-3:30: Advanced Device Drivers
Alessandro Rubini, Universita di Pavia
This presentation will go slightly deeper than the usual overview of the programming interface for Linux device drivers. Youll learn details of asynchronous events (select and fasync), as well as using kernel timers and task queues. Youll hear about kernel threads and how they can help you design unusual device driver features. The kmouse virtual device will be used as sample code showing how to take advantage of such software technologies.
4:00-5:00: Future of the Linux Kernel
Linus Torvalds, Helsinki University
The future of Linux! The lead developer of Linux talks about the future of Linux kernel development, including topics such as advanced memory management techniques, high-speed networking, and portability.
Real-time Linux is a premptable version of the Linux kernel that can run tasks with hard real-time deadlines. Our primary goal is to make it convenient to use a PC to control lab equipment, robotics, or other devices that need precise timing and limited response times. This talk will focus on how to use real-time Linux, how to write tasks as loadable kernel modules, and how to adjust the scheduler to different problems.
11:00-12:30 (Shared Session): /proc
Stephen Tweedie, Digital Equipment Corporation
Linux provides several interfaces for programs to access system data. This talk explains how system administrators and integrators can use the two main interfacesthe /proc filesystem and the "sysctl" interfaceto tune system performance.
11:00-12:30 (Shared Session): The Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) Framework
Ted Tso, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Authentication systems are constantly evolving, and it is important to shield the system administrator and application programmers from such changes. The Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) framework allows a system administrator to dynamically change the authentication schemes used by programs such as login, ftpd and passwd. This talk will discuss how the PAM system uses dynamically linked shared libraries to provide plugability for the functions of system authentication and account, session, and password management.
2:00-3:30: Standards
Heiko Eissfeldt, Unifix Software
An introduction to POSIX.1-related standards, starting with a survey of the evolution of the most relevant related standardsANSI C, XPG4, and the POSIX.1* extensionsfollowed by a closer look at POSIX.1. A standard can be thought of as a protocol defining an interface between a system and applictions; I will primarily focus on the perspective of application programs, but also discuss some POSIX.1 implementation issues.
4:00-5:30: Connecting Legacy and Open Systems
Michael Callahan, Stelias Computing, Inc.
While Linuxs abilities as an Internet platform are well-known, it also makes a capable server for microcomputer LANs running legacy protocols. This talk will describe how to use Linux in Microsoft, Apple, and Novell networks in a way which complements its capabilities as a TCP/IP server.
Linux is a freely-distributable operating system being implemented by an international team of highly-skilled programmers over the Internet. The history and philosophy of on-going development used in Linux guarantee a platform on which you can grow your business.
This talk will demonstrate the philosophical and concrete reasons why Linux is becoming a force in the commercial marketplace.
9:30-10:30: Linux and Distribution Channels: Ways to Enter the Commercial
Market
Don Rosenberg, Stromian Technologies
While the Linux operating system and improvements to it will remain free, a commercial marketplace is growing up around the distribution of the system with added-value installation aids, utilities, and help and maintenance. With the arrival of full-featured applications, Linux developers and vendors are entering a growing market with developing channels: direct sales, catalogs, OEM, integrators, resellers, distributors, and VARs. Learn the benefits and drawbacks of these channels, and how to enter them.
11:00-12:30: Using Linux in Your Business: A Business Justification
Presented by Linux International
How and why to justify to your or your customers management the use of Linux as an operating system. Pitfalls to avoid, arguments to use.
After this session, you will know where to go to get software and hardware support and applications. You will also see a price comparison between systems using Linux and systems using proprietary operating system code.
This talk is for the end user who is trying to convince their management to use Linux, or for the OEM, VAR, or reseller trying to convince their customer that Linux is the operating system to use.
2:00-4:00: The Linux Market: Who, What, Where, When and Why?
Presented by Linux International
Everything that a marketing manager needs to put together a marketing plan utilizing Linux as a base operating system. Whether you are the marketing manager for an ISV, a VAR, or a reseller, you will walk away with a skeleton marketing plan that can easily be adapted to fit your product or service. NOTE: This talk is not directed at the end user for Linux, but may contain useful information for them also.
Included in the plan will be: current status, market size and growth, market demographics and customer profiles; status of ports to different architectures; different distributions and their market focus; vertical vs. horizontal markets; differentiations between Linux and UNIX systems; applications currently available on Linux; pricing your Linux application or service for maximum revenue, and much, much more.
Using a distributed environment with dedicated servers for well-defined tasks enables us to reduce the costs of administration and maintenance if the task is well isolated. Find out how using an inexpensive OS such as Linux or inexpensive hardware will enable you to isolate tasks in a cost-effective manner.
Perceptions: A Strategic Deployment of Linux in the Health Care Environment
Greg Wettstein, Velocity LLC
Is your company one of the many seeking to leverage the power of internetworking tools and protocols through the deployment of corporate Intranets? The ability of Linux to effectively platform applications in this marketplace is the focus of this talk. You will hear about the issues involved when Linux is selected as a deployment base. You will learn about the advantages of selecting Linux and the corporate challenges experienced when freely distributable tool sets are chosen.
The Future of the Linux Desktop
Ken Apa, Governors State University; Jim Fetters, Chicago Mercantile
Exchange; Joe Sloan, Toyota Motor Sales USA
An overview of present desktop and user-interface requirements for the 90s and beyond. Join a discussion of file managers, Motif, Tk and ease-of-use issues, as well as a comparison with other directions for desktops and how Linux can meet the challenge. Integrating Linux with other systems such as NT, the Web, and the 3D graphics capabilities of Linux will also be explored.
The Classroom of the Future
Karl Jeacle, Broadcom Eireann Research Ltd.
The Linux operating system has been used as the basis for a low cost computing solution connecting primary (K-12) and secondary (junior/senior high) schools in Ireland to the Internet. A pilot network has been set up between six schools in the Dublin area, three of which have been interconnected using ISDN. Each of these three schools have used Linux to provide services such as Email, Usenet, IRC and the World Wide Web to both students and staff.
Learn how this was done, and explore the possibilities of doing this in your own community.
GNUstep is a set of free software libraries and applications that can be used to create portable, graphical user applications. GNUstep is known to run on many versions of UNIX and Windows NT/95. You will hear historical information, a technical overview, the current state of development, future development, and available third party software and support organizations.
Embedded, Turnkey and Real Time
Phil Hughes, Linux Journal
Linux is well established as a good development platform and is now coming into its own as a base system for business applications. Linux can also excel as an environment for embedded systems from small communications controllers and routers through Raster Image Processors and workgroup servers.
You will have a chance to hear how Linux is being used in these areas, possible problems and its potential.
Developing Linux-based Electronic Markets for Internet Trading Experiments
Paul J. Brewer, Georgia State University
Linux is currently playing a very important role in the development of Internet-accessible, world-wide, real-time electronic markets for use in laboratory research experiments. These markets are full-featured electronic markets without the high-tech security and encryption functions required for handling high value transactions. Learn how using Linux as a central server enabled us to make architectural decisions not possible under other operating systems.
Linux in the Radio Amateur and Electronic Engineering Market
Bruce Perens, Pixar
Linux is currently enjoying growing popularity in the electronic and radio amateur market. Technical organizations are centering on using Linux as well as the large market for electronic hobbyists. Learn the size of these markets, what their needs are, how to reach them.
Technical Track Committee:
Michael K. Johnson, Chair, Red Hat Software
Mark Bolzern, WorkGroup Solutions
Alan Cox, 3Com, Remote Access Products
Jon maddog Hall, Esq., Digital Equipment Corporation
Lorrie LeJeune, O'Reilly and Associates
Dr. Tom Miller, North Carolina State University
Erik Troan, Red Hat Software
Business Track Committee:
Jon maddog Hall, Esq., Chair, Digital Equipment Corporation
Jonathan Eunice, President, Founder, Research Director, Illuminata, Inc.
Michael K. Johnson, Red Hat Software
Lorrie LeJeune, Product Manager of Internet and Linux, OReilly and Associates
Bryan Sparks, President, Caldera, Inc.
Paul Winbauer, Director of Technical Programs, Avnet Computing
Bob Young, President, Red Hat Software
We are focused on these areas at the moment:
So now you know about Linux International. The rest is up to you. To volunteer some skill you have, make a cash donation, or even pass on some still-useful piece of hardware, please contact us at our website:
Wednesday, January 8, Noon - 7:00pm
Thursday, January 9 10:00am - 4:00pm
The emphasis is on serious questions and feedback at the USENIX 97 Exhibition. In the relaxed environment, attendees have time for in-depth discussions with technical representatives. You will find the products and services of some 60 vendors on display.
If you cannot make it to the conference but would like to visit the exhibition, please contact Cynthia Deno, Exhibit Coordinator, at 408.335.9445 or cynthia@usenix.org.
The Welcome Reception offers you a chance to say hello over soft drinks and snacks. The Kickoff introduces attendees to conference events and to Anaheim. The Kickoff follows the Welcome Reception at 8:00pm.
Soft Drinks and Snacks
Enjoy light food and beverages Tuesday Thursday evenings in the Foyer.
first_lastname@conference.usenix.org. Telephone messages may be left by telephoning the Marriott Hotel at 714.750.8000 and asking for the USENIX Message Desk extension. The Message Desk will be open Sunday, January 5, 4:00 pm 9:00 pm, and during conference hours until Friday, January 10 at 3:00 pm.
Since 1975 the USENIX Association has brought together the community of engineers, system administrators, scientists, and technicians working on the cutting edge of the computing world.
The USENIX Conferences have become the essential meeting grounds for the presentation and discussion of the most advanced information on new developments in all aspects of advanced computing systems.
The USENIX Association and its members are dedicated to:
If you are a system administrator and would like to join SAGE or renew your membership, just check the box on the registration form. For only $25, you can be a part of the only organization devoted to system administrators.
For more information about USENIX and SAGE, please contact:
USENIX Association
2560 Ninth St, Ste. 215
Berkeley, CA 94710
Phone: 510.528.8649
Fax: 510.548.5738
Email: office@usenix.org
USENIX has negotiated special rates for conference attendees at the Anaheim Marriott. Contact the hotel directly to make your reservation. You must mention USENIX to get the special rate. A one-night room deposit must be guaranteed to a major credit card. To cancel your reservation, you must notify the hotel at least 24 hours before your planned arrival date.
TheAnaheim Marriott
700 West Convention Way
Anaheim, CA 92802
Toll Free: 800.228.9290
Phone: 714.750.8000
Reservation Fax: 714.750.9100
Room Rates: $107/Single, $117/Double
(plus local taxes, currently at 15%)
Special Note: This conference places a heavy demand on meeting space. To get meeting space and other services free and keep your conference fees low, USENIX guarantees to use a number of sleeping rooms. Contracts are signed long in advance. The penalty for not meeting the guarantee may exceed $100,000. You must mention USENIX when reserving your room to ensure that it counts against our room guarantee. If you use a corporate rate, it will not count against our commitment.
Need a Roommate?
Usenet facilitates room sharing. If you wish to share a room, post to and check comp.org.usenix.roomshare.
Discount Airfares and Car Rentals
Special discounted air fares and car rentals are available only through JNR, Inc., a full service travel agency. All restrictions apply. Please call JNR for details. Call toll free 800.343.4546 in the USA and Canada or telephone 714.476.2788.
Transportation to the Hotel
The Anaheim Marriott is located 31 miles, about 50 minutes, from the Los Angeles International Airport and 16 miles or 25 minutes from the John Wayne Airport-Orange County.
Shuttle ServiceSuper
Shuttle offers transportation to and from both LAX and John Wayne Airports. Advanced reservations are required for John Wayne pick ups and to avoid delays at LAX. Call 714.517.6600. One way fare from LAX is $13 and $10 from John Wayne.
Taxis are available, and cost approximately $65 one way from LAX and $28 from John Wayne.
Anaheim may be best known as the home of Disneyland (just steps from the hotel), but it is also well located for exploring some of the hot spots of Southern California. Most of these are within an hours drive of Anaheim. Southern California is car country. You may want to rent a car since attractions and restaurants are spread out and public transportation is not convenient. When in Rome
Disneyland: The original Disneyland is just steps from the hotel. Besides Disneyland, theres Knotts Berry Farm and Universal Studios.
Beaches: Orange County has a 42 mile coastline, comprised of public and state beaches.
Museums/Galleries: Orange County has over 300 museums and galleries. LA offers the County Museum and the Getty.
USENIX Conference Office, 22672 Lambert St., Suite 613, Lake Forest, CA USA 92630 Phone: 714-588-8649 Fax: 714-588-9706 Email: conference@usenix.org Hours: M-F, 8:30am-5:00pm Pacific Time