St. Louis Unix Users Group St. Louis UNIX Users Group   Your Forum for exchanging information about open standards, open systems, open source, products, services and architectures
 

Saint Louis Unix Users Group

The Saint Louis Unix Users Group (SLUUG) is an IRS 501c(6) designated not-for-profit professional association dedicated to education and communication among computer users. SLUUG members include many Linux and UNIX professionals, Networking experts, System experts, hobbyists, and students. Also, many who are interested in Unix, Unix-like Operating Systems, Linux, BSD and other Free Open Source Software (FOSS) applications, products, projects and services.
We have met continuously since we incorporated in July 1992. All of our meetings are free and open to the public. There is no individual membership fee.

Monthly Technical Presentations

We will open the remote session at about 6:00 PM, Central Time, so that you can join early to test your microphone, screen sharing and video camera .
Then we start at 6:30 PM with our BASE introductory level session ( often focused on personal computing ); which may include either amazing graphical packages, blinking lights, command line wonders, demonstrations of useful applications, displays of newly discovered web sites, major resolution of long standing anomalies, quantum discoveries, smoke and mirrors, superb tutorials, or shifts in both time and space.
Sometime after 7:00 PM we attempt a quick welcome, introductions, announcements, current events of interest, and a general CALL FOR HELP (Questions and Answers) segment.
Sometime after 7:15 PM, we may take a short break before our MAIN topic ( often focused on enterprise computing ).
NEW In what order or sequence are the meeting events held? SLUUG_Meeting

What!

  • ONLINE sessions only. No physical meetings until further notice.
  • ONLINE session by a remote video meeting service, next on 11 February 2026.
  • Connection instructions will first be sent to our mailing lists and then linked here. .

    • Something fundamental, introductory, instructive, short, simple or small.

    BASE Topic: The life of a DNS request

    Presenter: Grant Taylor and volunteers

    This will be a high level walk through of "a DNS request" demonstrated by five humans including Grant Taylor.
    All those funny names like: "sluug.org", "google.com", "doj.gov", "army.mil", "slu.edu"... How does your computer know "how to transmit & receive from THAT name?
    ~7:00pm Announcements! "The annual meeting of the corporation" Election this month! Your requests for future talks, presentation topics, presenters,...
    ~7:20pm then on to our main topic...

    Then something more advanced, detailed, important, new, profound, significant, timely or useful.

    MAIN Topic: What is DNS

    Presenter: Grant Taylor

    Distributed Name Service (DNS) is a distributed (eventually consistent) database.
    DNS: The plan, and your questions.
    ~ We will describe the new DNS themed series of presentations and speak to the scheduling.
    ~ Bring your DNS questions so that we can be sure to cover them in future presentations.
    ~ Questions and Proposed schedule, will be adjusted as necessary.

    Time line: The idea is to rotate through each of the meeting sessions; SLUUG Base, SLUUG Main, and STL Linux so that we don't monopolize any given meeting and to spread the theme across multiple meetings encouraging people to cross pollinate.
    ~ February SLUUG Main - What is DNS - a distributed (eventually consistent) database supporting looking up many different types of information about names and IPs.
    ~ March STL Linux - Install dnsmasq on your Linux server and make it answer queries about your network.
    ~ April SLUUG Base - Overview of DNS protocols; Do53, DoT, DoH, DNSCrypt...
    ~ May SLUUG Main - PiHole
    ~ June STL Linux ~ TBD

    Questions that have been asked thus far:
    Q: Who should be most authoritative source of where DNS service comes from? Local router, ISP, regional provider, government?
    Q: Who is the safest source for DNS?
    Q: How does a DNS server know where to find information?
    Q: Do I run a DNS server at home? As a service? As a podman / docker? As a VM / LXC?
    Q: What do I put in the /etc/resolv.conf file?
    Q: "Split DNS"?
    Q: How does DNS play into overall services; Zoom, YouTube, etc.?

    Talking points:
    ~ Similarities across languages / protocols.
    ~ Phone calls usually start with some sort of greeting and identification, contain the purpose of the phone call, possibly contain small talk, and usually contain closing goodbyes. This seems to be largely true across spoken languages.
    ~ DNS is effectively the same across protocols; IPv4 and IPv6. Both protocols can answer the same queries, even about the other protocol; as IPv4 query about IPv6 and IPv6 query about IPv4.
    ~ DNS is about a LOT more than just IPs.
    ~ DNS does not propagate across the Internet as many people say.
    ~ Distributed cache expiration.

    When!

    Wednesday, February 11th, 2026

    From 6:30PM till 9:00PM Central Standard Time (CST) UTC-6

    We will open the remote session at about 6:00 PM CST, so that you can join early to test your microphone, screen and video sharing.

    Next scheduled meeting dates

    Possible Future Topics

    SLUUG Annual Meeting and Elections

    As directed by SLUUG By-Laws, the next required annual meeting will be held 11 February 2026.

    Attending any two SLUUG sponsored meetings in calendar year 2025 qualifies as voting membership. Ballots for February 2026 elections are now available for secret balloting. An absentee ballot could be printed for mailing to us. You might be able to use a LibreOffice Writer ballot file that could be printed and mailed to us.

    Mail in balloting can be done thru out February 2026.
    Your ballot must reach us for counting by our BOARD well before 2 March 2026 (the next STEERCOM meeting).
    Incumbents Lee Lammert and Grant Taylor for BOARD, and James Conroy for STLLINUX.

    As directed by SLUUG By-Laws, the following required annual meeting will be held 10 February 2027.

    Where!

    • Online Sessions only.
    • NO PHYSICAL MEETINGS until further notice.
    • These sessions will use ZOOM remote video service.

    Other independent, loosely affiliated SLUUG sponsored Special Interest Groups:

    Past Meetings.

    Click here if you do not see past presentations listing below

    Contact SLUUG if you have a presentation you would like to have considered for selection.

    This site hosted by the Saint Louis Unix Users Group
     

    As directed by SLUUG By-Laws, a required annual meeting was last held 12 February 2025.

    Attending any two SLUUG sponsored meetings in calendar year 2024 qualified members to vote. Mail in balloting was held thru out February 2025. Board of Governors approved Steve Stegman retaining his seat for 3 years and appointing Grant Taylor to fill a remaining one year term on the 3 year seat vacated by Stanford Baldwin. James Conroy continued as Chairman of the Saint Louis Linux Users Group.

    As directed by SLUUG By-Laws, the next required annual meeting will be held 11 February 2026.

    Attending any two SLUUG sponsored meetings in calendar year 2025 qualifies you as a voting member.

    Ballots for 2026 elections will soon be available for secret mail in balloting thru out February. Ballots sent by electronic mail will not be secret.

     
      Home | About Us | Resources | Other Groups | Sponsors | Contacts 
    Copyright ©  St. Louis UNIX Users Group  1992-2025 |  webmaster@sluug.org