Targetcli Screencast series

Link
These are three screencasts I made recently to better explain how to use targetcli to configure the Linux kernel target subsystem. Doing them uncovered a number of usability issues in targetcli, so they’ve already been of use to me, and hopefully will be of use for potential users of targetcli and LIO as well.

  1. Overview and backstores
  2. Fabrics and ISCSI
  3. The configuration file and Python API

I’ve also been dogfooding screencast software on RHEL 6, which works only with effort. I ended up using gtk-recordmydesktop (in EPEL) and then converting the .ogv to VP8 with oggconvert (will be getting into EPEL), before I could successfully upload to YouTube with good results.

Fedora and Open Source at Grace Hopper 2011

Me wearing my flairI was at the Open Source booth at this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, last Thursday. We had Fedora media and swag also available Wed and Fri as well. The booth was shared with Mozilla, Kids on Computers. Wikimedia, OSU OSL, the Ada Initiative, and assorted other FOSS projects. While I talked about Fedora and handed out media and stickers, many attendees were students and new to tech as a whole, so “what is open source” was the first, most important, question.

I also attended the Codeathon for Humanity on Saturday, with about 200 attendees working on various open source philanthropic projects: Sahana, Systers, Mailman, peer-to-peer Haitian Women’s network, to name a few. The Mayor of Portland, Sam Adams, stopped by and spoke. I wasn’t expecting this, but was pretty nice to hear about the importance of open source to the city government, as well as the Portland tech scene as a whole!

Ada Lovelace Day – Jen Redman

Today I would like to talk about a woman in computing that inspires me every day, in the spirit of Ada Lovelace — Jennifer Redman.

First, let me say that being in a relationship with someone else who knows tech is really great. She knows how things work, so if I’m having an issue, she can listen and offer helpful technical advice to get me going again. This is very important for me, as someone who works without actual co-workers in close proximity. She is a voracious reader, and not only has opinions, but can argue for them persuasively!

Jen is a fountain of new ideas. She is involved in the Portland tech scene as a mentor for PIE (Portland Incubator Experiment) and threatens me she will found her own tech startup at any moment. 🙂 Her background in infrastructure and management has helped the success of our co-location cooperative, as well.

Jen has done so much work over the past few years to promote women in computing. She has had a significant role in administering the Systers mailing list for technical women for many years. She was instrumental in getting Systers accepted in the Google Summer of Code, and being an administrator and mentor for students participating in that. She also worked hard to establish an Open Source track at the Grace Hopper conference, and this year’s Codeathon for Humanity at GHC, which will introduce two hundred technical women to contributing to worthy F/OSS projects!

Happy Ada Lovelace Day, Jen!

Hacker space, sounds good!

Open source conference prerequisite #1: Space for hacking – Open Source Bridge

I just found out about the conference and its hackerspace element via Reddit. How did I miss this up until now?

The hackerspace idea is obviously one I’m interested in. I have my own proposal for one, but tailored less of a 24-hour space for random hacking encounters, and more as an un-office to give remote-working people an in-person community of peers.

Definitely we have all realized that as great as online interaction can be, being in a room still cannot be duplicated.