What we’re about
Formerly the Silicon Valley Linux User Group (SVLUG), this is the oldest and one of the larger Linux user groups in the world. It's a group of Linux hobbyists, professionals, and enthusiasts in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our members share interests in Linux and free or low-cost implementations of Unix, as well as other open-source software. The group was originally formed in 1988, as the PC-Unix Special Interest Group of the Silicon Valley Computer Society. The group celebrated its 10th anniversary at the March 4, 1998 meeting, where Linus Torvalds addressed an audience of 500 people.
Upcoming events (1)
See all- Grep Killed My ServerSentry, San Francisco, CA
Grep Killed My Server
A talk by Kevin Dankwardt, Ph.D.
Date: October 14, 2025, 6:00 doors open, 6:00-6:30 Arrivals/Happy Hour. 6:30- ~7:15 Lecture, ~7:15-~8:00 Networking Talk
Location: Sentry, San Francisco (address given to sign-ups)When a customer support engineer crashed a customer's server with an Out Of Memory from grep, and I was the manager for the Linux kernel team, it got handed to me, and, thus it got me thinking.
How can Grep cause an OOM? How can an OOM cause a panic? What could be done to prevent this in the future? How does Grep manage memory? What about alternatives like the Silver Seeker?
Kevin Dankwardt talks through these questions and thus gives a tour through Linux user space and kernel space memory management and adds tangential topics like Linux control groups, kernel configuration, and swapping.
These are Linux fundamentals of interest to any Linux user.
