🇺🇦Bay Area Linux Users Group (BALUG)

About BALUG

BALUG is the (San Francisco) Bay Area Linux Users Group.
We generally meet monthly. We also operate several mailing lists.

BALUG meetings

BALUG generally meets the third Tuesday of each month. We talk about Linux and related topics.

We commonly have a speaker/presentation for our meetings. In any case, with or without a speaker/presentation arranged and scheduled, our meetings include good people, and interesting conversations. And if we haven't announced/posted a speaker/presentation, don't let that fool you - sometimes we manage to score an excellent speaker/presentation (e.g. at the last minute) without our having managed to get it posted onto the web site and an announcement sent out in advance.

Meeting starts promptly at 6:00 P.M. - note this is new time. Punctual arrival recommended for optimal dining experience.
We dine, and following that (approximately 7:00 P.M.) have our presentation/talk, or more informal talk/discussion if we don't have a particularly presentation/talk/presenter or special guest arranged.
See also: venue.

Next meetings:

• 2025-09-16 DNS and BIND

  At least at the time of this update we don't have a specific speaker/presentation lined up for this meeting, however, do have at least one general discussion topic in mind:
  DNS and BIND
  So, our old friends (frenemies?), DNS and BIND. Will have at least one person present who's quite experienced with both, having much dealt with both for decades, and also including large scale critical environments (e.g. multi-million dollar+ companies entirely dependent upon such (high engagement web based business), financial institution with trillions of dollars in assets where DNS is highly critical), and has also recently been doing quite a bit of backwards and forwards compatibility testing and retesting of BIND 9, and with DDNS, DNSSEC, chroot, etc. and updating documentation thereof (see: https://wiki.debian.org/BIND9)

  So, have questions, comments, etc. regarding DNS and/or BIND? Or simultaneously running 9 VMs on a 10+ year old laptop for various regression and backward and forward compatibility testing? Or what's up with Debian's "old" wiki? Or most any other question or discussion topic you want to bring up? Well, bring it to the meeting!

• 2025-10-21
• 2025-11-18
• 2025-12-17 - No December meeting! (we typically skip December - watch our "announce" list and/or check back here for details/updates)
• (...)
• BALUG generally meets the third Tuesday of each month. Subscribe to our "announce" list to learn of upcoming meetings and speakers/presentations.

In Person:
Henry's Hunan Restaurant
110 Natoma St. (between 2nd & New Montgomery, not to be confused with their other location(s))
San Francisco, CA 94105-3704
1-415-546-4999
https://www.hhunan.com/ https://www.hhunannatoma.com/

Virtual:
https://meet.jit.si/BALUG.org Dial-in numbers also available at the URL.
Please use earbud(s)/headphone(s) or mute yourself to avoid audio feedback issues, also please if you have background sound/noise issues mute yourself when not talking.
Generally works quite fine with reasonably modern Firefox Chrome/Chromium, Microsoft Edge, possibly others (requires WebRTC (Wikipedia: WebRTC) (can also do some testing here: https://test.webrtc.org/ Probably don't worry about minor items like "Reflexive connectivity" )), from desktop, laptop, tablet, smart phone, etc.

BALUG Mailing Lists

BALUG Mailing Lists:

• BALUG-Announce ("announce") - low-volume announce-only (non-discussion) mailing list (e.g. important announcements about meeting programs and other BALUG newsy/noteworthy items; if you subscribe to our "talk" and/or "admin" lists, you'll want to include this one)
• BALUG-Talk ("talk") - general public BALUG, Linux and related discussion (see the URL for policies)
• BALUG-Admin ("admin") - administrivia (for those interested in the inner workings of the BALUG group)
• BALUG-Test ("test") - for testing purposes

CABAL

• Need details?
• Let us know if you're bringing a computer and monitor (what kinds?) or joining as a helper.
• Check out the CABAL InstallFest Schedule.

Volunteering and helping BALUG

We could also always use more volunteers to make BALUG even better! You can do useful and cool stuff volunteering to help BALUG! Quite a variety of opportunities to help BALUG, e.g.:

• assist or lead on speaker coordination/procurement, etc. (help arrange, refer to us, coordinate schedules, etc.)
• venue arrangement (e.g. followup on potential leads, on-site coordination/preparations) and the like, for now and/or in future
• publicity (e.g. helping us get information out in as timely a manner as feasible, and in as many places as appropriate)
• website: webmaster and/or assistance with routine updates/additions designer, graphic artist
• Linux Systems Administration (e.g. do/assist/learn, with/under some quite experienced and skilled Linux systems administrator(s)).
• archivist/history/retrieval/etc.
• writing up meeting "minutes" (brief summaries of meeting highlights - e.g. information on presentations, interesting/noteworthy discussions/topics, etc.; suitable for web use, or even just rough notes on the relevant items)
• mailing list maintenance
• chief/assistant cat herder
• and other various/miscellaneous tasks BALUG would like to be doing (also feel free to suggest ideas!)

If you're at all interested in helping with any and/or all of the above, or more, or looking for more information, please drop us a note at:BALUG contact and/or talk to us at a meeting.