NYCBUG Goes To BSDCan

George Rosamond

Off We Go

Four of us left Brooklyn at 7:30 am on Thursday morning to avoid the traffic on Canal Street in downtown Manhattan. Well, there's no way to totally avoid it; but there's a better chance of getting through Manhattan at that hour to the Holland Tunnel than 30 minutes later. Remember, we're leaving from a city where you can be stuck in traffic at 2 am early on a Tuesday on the Brooklyn Bridge.

We know that there will be two additional NYCBUG members in Ottawa who arrive by plane. But since we only started up the group in January, we are all basically strangers to each other, especially in the context of a long drive to the Great White North.

Our trip was hardly uneventful. Some where on Interstate 81 in Pennsylvania, the other NYCBUG attendees in the car, Ike, Michael and Bob, had an internal network up and running. Then by the time we hit Syracuse, they were using Michael's GPRS-capable cell phone to surf the web, create SSH sessions and download mail.

They even managed to post to the NYCBUG talk list.

It was also interesting to scan the various wireless networks along the way. As we had KisMAC running with an Airport Extreme card on OS X, we were unable to crack any WEP-encrypted networks, but that wasn't necessary in rural western New York state. But oddly enough, the entire city of Syracuse accessible from Interstate 81 had less wireless-coverage than a single block in Manhattan.

Border Crossing

When we arrived at the Ontario, Canada and New York, US border, we thought "no sweat". We had no drugs or identifiable weapons, and the Canadian government doesn't seem to be controlled by Redmond.

We handed our US passports to the young woman at Canadian customs and explained we were going to Ottawa for a UNIX conference. She took my attempted innocent grin and half-flirtatious eyelash batting and gave me a disproportionate smile in response. I said, "I know, we don't look like geeks, but we are."

We drove a few more feet to take tourist pictures of the "Welcome to Ontario" sign, when Bob revealed what he thinks she really thought I meant by "UNIX." "Oh, harmless boys, going off to a eunuchs conference. How cute."

This joke continued through the weekend, with everyone quick to get it.

Arrival

Dan Langille told us to arrive at 5:30 pm. We arrived at exactly 5:30, with our throats thirsting for a malty beverage and our legs ready to get some activity, other than the earlier parking lot football game at "Thee Diner" (sic) outside of Syracuse.

Dan Langille coyly admonishing a conference attendee for arriving late.

We refreshed ourselves and began meeting BSDCan attendees from around the world.

Personally, I had my own mission. For years, I've worked with BSDMall and Daemon News. I needed to hook up with Chris Coleman. I knew him as a close collaborator in the digital world, but didn't know if he had a hunch back, Coke-bottle-thick glasses, or an extra leg.

Dan told me he hadn't arrived yet, so I meandered around BSDCan the night of our arrival, and the next morning I looked like the little duck searching for his mother: "Are you Chris Coleman?" "Have you seen Chris Coleman?"

The quest was fruitless until lunch time on the first full day of the conference. This tall, lanky, Midwestern-type was attempting to balance a cart of boxes. On a hunch I called out "Chris" and was surprised to actually have it be him. Our introductions were brief, and off to work we went.

Other than the registration table, BSD Mall/Daemon News had the only table at BSDCan. There was a ton of software, shirts and books. We had to setup an extra table just to house the give-away items we brought.

The BSDMall/Daemon News table.

As the technical level of the conference was quite high, it was a pleasure not having to answer questions like "How many distros are there of BSD?" and "Why did BSD branch off from Linux?" That's generally the type of queries we faced for years at LinuxWorld Expo and even MacWorld in New York City.

The sessions NYCBUG attendees went to were amazing. I attended the sessions by Dan, Ryan McBride, Poul-Henning Kamp, Robert Watson and Theo de Raadt.

Poul-Henning Kamp's session on GBDE.

It was great to meet a variety of BSDer's from around Canada, the US and a small but good section of the rest of the world. It's even better when the sessions cause ideas to flow and plans to brew, and to have so many others to discuss it with at the bar afterwards.

The bar. Oh yeah, I mean the bars.

Pete's drinking arm, Ike, Jesse and Bob from NYCBUG dream about New York pizza and bagels.

Our NYCBUG meetings are monthly the first Wednesday of the month, usually at 6 pm or so, and we are in the habit of the meetings ending in the wee hours of the morning. I know the last "meeting" at BSDCan ended for me at 3:30 am or so, in some bar on Houston Street.

So when you're out with BSD hackers from all over, who attended the same brilliant meetings with you, what do you think will happen then?

A hot topic among some of us was Dan's Bacula meeting. It was great, and there are some interesting implementations to do with a consulting business, regardless of the clients' server and desktop operating systems.

More pressingly, we also proposed to some of our newly acquired Canadian friends a unique idea for spreading their way of life south of the border. We asked a series of questions leading to our main point: "What is your healthcare system like?" "How big is your military?" and finally, "Have you considered invading the US, or at least New York state, to spread this universal healthcare thing?"

We Make Some Friends

Of course some of the NYCBUG attendees made some better "friends" than others. Those pictures will remain among NYCBUG-BSDCan participants to protect the innocent and the guilty.

I met a number of people who I enjoyed discussions with. Wayne from London explained the draconian laws in Britain which allow any police officer above the rank of sergeant to ask for your password, electronic keys, etc., for access to the data you're serving. Not immediately fulfilling this request means an automatic two years in jail. But how you perform logging isn't detailed, as long as you have consistent logging policies throughout your organization. Well, there's no more resourceful response to this than having your /etc/newsyslog.conf file rotate your logs every ten minutes.

I also spoke to Dru Lavigne for the first time face-to-face. Dru's contribution to BSD documentation and advocacy, particularly on O'Reilly's OnLamp.com, is equalled by few. We've discussed a number of things, including the impending release of her BSD Hacks book. There's no question to me that the increase in BSD popularity is significant, and that this book could move beyond the expectations of the author, publisher and distributors.

There are many, many other discussions I could mention, but I would just have to say I enjoyed each one. We were up for around 19 hours a day and talked non-stop, so this article could continue for days.

Chris Coleman of BSDMall/Daemon News hopelessly searches the table for a book on Visual Basic.

Of honorable mention is Chris Coleman. Chris and his wife Susannah trucked out the entire contents of the BSDMall/DN table in their minivan from rural Illinois, along with their three young and remarkably well-behaved children. Chris' contribution to the BSD family doesn't get a fraction of the recognition it deserves. He is tirelessly thinking up new ways of building the BSD family, while he and his own family subsist on a meager salary. Without Chris making the two day drive each way to Ottawa, the conference wouldn't have been quite the same.

Dan Langille's Final speech.

And then there's Dan Langille, of course. Dan, who crashed at my apartment during LinuxWorld Expo this past January, has contributed enormous amounts to the BSD community for years. How many FreeBSD users haven't used FreeBSDDiary.org? How many people don't quickly query FreshPorts.org when they are looking for a particular port?

The effort Dan expended to create BSDCan is amazing. He took a pretty atomized BSD community in the east wing of Canada and the US and provided it a tremendous outlet for its energy and focus.

Montreal for Sunday Night

But of course, as techs, our main quest in Montreal was for bandwidth. It was Monday now, and the work week had begun. The pictures in this article provide some insight into our fun.

It was amazing how sparse wireless networks were in Montreal. We didn't expect the concentrations of Manhattan, but we did expect to get decent connectivity here and there.

We wandered down the cafe-lined street of Saint Denis, to the old port district of Montreal, through the office buildings of downtown Montreal, up through Chinatown. No strong signals, according to our wireless detection devices. Finally, we found a very strong signal next to a sidestreet bed and breakfast, just north of Chinatown.

Bob gives the thumbs up to this Montreal bed and breakfast for providing free wireless access. To make the trip more vacation-like, we stopped in Montreal for Sunday evening. The bars, sights and restaurants were great. It was a big step up from Ottawa, which seemed as if it was administered a strong tranquilizer some years back.

Ike and Bob investigated a nearby window to find a D-Link router and cable modem sitting there clear in the window. As I took a picture of Bob next to the sign, the proprietor opened the door and asked if we need any assistance. Now in New York City this might have been a not-so-veiled threat, but we just responded with smiles, and "non, merci."

Bob and Ike smuggly express their accomplishment at finding an open AP in Montreal, BSDCan finale +1.

We spent the good part of an hour sitting on the sidewalk next to our brilliant access point, while passers-by gawked at us.

Sometimes you don't need any electronic wireless tools to find the best access points. . .

We got our bandwidth, and some of us even managed to get some work done.

We arrived back in Brooklyn at 11 pm Monday evening. We had spent the last few hours in the car arguing fervently about technology, from broad issues to the details of testing network protocols.

For days after, we are still all exhausted physically, and our brains were clearly on overload from the trip.

We are clear on one thing: even though our NYCBUG talk list was down for most of BSDCan, our excitement means that Dan will have more NYCBUG attendees next year, and that means more people demanding decent pizza, bagels, and a vodka other than Smirnoff. But we know they won't--can't--demand a better conference.

A quiet moment between sessions.

Between sessions at BSDCan.

Late night in front of the dorms with Jesse, Ike, Hugo, Bob and Pete.

Working on a crack for Twofish?

Between sessions again at BSDCan.

End of the conference bustle.

More end of the conference bustle.