need some scrutiny here

hi everyone,
i teach linux networking at an institute..i would rate myself a little above average when in comes to networking concepts and linux internals..well those of you who have seen most of my previous posts will wonder how this guy who made a classic "teach me to hack" post (that had me nearly barbecued) and a host of other silly posts come to this rate..
my institute is going to host a linux conference and they want me to present a paper...i am lost for a good idea...at first i thought i will come up with something like a distributed filesystem for linux (like the DFS in windows2000)..but i came to know later that it can be done with SAMBA...so i gave up that plan..later i tried to find out whether there is any inherent ACLs for files in linux and any mechanism for auditing , like in windows2000..as far as i know i dont think there is any...so i plan to to create an ACL for linux that willl allow more than just the rwx permission for owner,group and world for files...and if all goes well i plan to build some auditing mechanism aswell to keep track of file access,deletion etc...
i would like to know if there are any inherent mechanism in linux that will help it to achieve the above...if so i have to work on something else...along with this , ideas and suggestions are also welcome...there are plenty of administrators here and i am sure you all would have found linux lacking somewhere..if so tell me ..maybe i could try to even out that lacking :-)in the mean time i will do my home work...
thank you very much every one

with regards
scorpion

Hrmmm.. I've always pondered what I would "lecture" on if I was asked to present at a conference. Here are some ideas off the top of my head:

- how Linux will become more viable in the future
- Clustering
- the future of mySQL (mySQL 4 will be introducing new features including many found in the "BIG" RDBMS)
- CFS (Cryptographic File System - no one talks about this.. go figure.. here's a link to get started with: http://www.ensta.fr/internet/unix/sys_admin/CFS.html)
- could chattr and lsattr be of use for your ACL idea? You also might want to look at this: http://acl.bestbits.at/

Hope this helps. If I think of any others I will send you a note.

This might help ( Operating Systems Security Issues ) . I hope.