srw
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Minutes of the Cyberspace Communication Board Meeting of Monday, Aug 26, 1996
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Sep 7 20:28 UTC 1996 |
Minutes of the Cyberspace Communication Board Meeting of Monday, Aug 26, 1996
Held in the basement food court of the Michigan Union.
1. The meeting was called to order by Scott Helmke at 7:38 PM
Board members present:
Scott Helmke (scott), President
Mark Conger (aruba), Treasurer
Steve Weiss (srw), Secretary
Valerie Mates (popcorn)
Misti Anslin Delaney (mta)
Steve Gibbard (scg)
absent: Rob Henderson (robh)
Others present:
Marcus Watts (mdw), STeve Andre' (steve), Jeffrey N.C.(coyote),
Jan Wolter (janc), Paul Southworth (pauls@locust.cic.net)
3. Computer Rehabilitation Committee
Scott reported that it was incredibly quiet if not totally silent.
Flem and dang are interested in holding stuff and working on PCs.
There was some discussion, instigated by srw, of changing the purpose to
providing computers primarily to make it possible for people who could not
otherwise access Grex to do so. Currently the purpose is to provide computers
to worthy causes, but with no specific purpose stated.
4. Publicity Committee
Misti reported that she has several fliers available but because of personal
commitments will not be distributing them until next month.
Misti expressed interest in taking rehabilitated computers to Ronald McDonald
House, and said she would be willing to head a committee to work on this.
5. Technical Committee
Hardware issues:
* The hardware has been relatively stable.
* The APC power supply was taken off-line because it failed.
* Grex's link check script is resetting Gryps too often, and needs work.
* Gryps still fails quite often, and may need a new power supply. It is
unknown if this is adding more failures to the software-induced ones.
* Last Thursday we had a brown-out. Steve reported frequency variations in
the power as well.
* Modems -- STeve will put 2 more modems on-line this week. We have phone
lines waiting for them.
Software issues:
* Marcus added a slightly better version of sendmail (better diagnostics).
* STeve re-linked elm with shadow libraries (newelm)
* There is a new bash shell, fixing a security hole.
* Srw noted that fewer occurrences of FTP are trying to list out
/home or /var/spool/mail. Perhaps our warning messages are having an effect.
* Marcus's Micropolis disk drive is expected back from the manufacturer. We
plan to borrow it to reorganize /home to be hierarchical once it is
available.
* Srw said plans are being finalized to install Backtalk on Grex. There were
some authentication and permission-related issues to be figured out. These
were holding up our plans. Now that we think we know how to install it
without compromising the security afforded by our shadow system, we will
be installing it soon. (Nothing has been installed yet, though.)
It will used for testing before it is given access to any live conferences.
6. Auction Committee
Valerie announced that $1164 has been bid. These amounts have been
partially collected. Most of those present thanked popcorn and robh for
the effort they put into making the auction a big success for Grex.
10 the first. Intro conference
This agenda item was entered to discuss the question of whether the intro
conference should become the default conference.
There was some discussion on this question.
Srw suggested that it should become the default conference.
Mta suggested that there should still be a choice.
The question was tabled until the next meeting with the idea that discussion
would continue in coop.
10 the second. Grex Needs to Move
Paul Southworth from CIC was present, and participated in discussions of the
possibility that Grex could be connected to the net through their equipment.
There is no firm offer, but it was understood that we need to put together a
document for CIC explaining the reasons that Grex should be connected. This
idea is combined with the idea that we could perhaps lease some space in the
ITI building. STeve Andre' will be following up on that question.
11. Centrex Phone Service
STeve Andre' said that his investigations showed that it will be cheaper
given our current phone line count.
MOTION: (scott,mta) Moved that we approve changing our phone service to
Centrex, pending STeve Andre's approval of the terms.
PASSED 6-0-0
12. New Business
No new business was brought up.
13. Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 9:58 PM.
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Respectfully submitted,
Steven R. Weiss, Secretary
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popcorn
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response 3 of 6:
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Sep 8 15:07 UTC 1996 |
Also noted during the Technical Committee report was the fact that we *have*
a link_check script to keep an eye on Gryps. Staff used to do this by hand,
which meant that a staffer would have to notice that gryps was down, manage
to dial in to Grex (the dial-ins become busier when the Internet link is
down), and then reset the link. It could take several hours for a staffer
to notice that the link is down and reset it. Since I wrote and installed
the link_check script, the usual crash of the net connection only lasts a few
minutes instead of several hours. I think the wait queue to get into Grex
has been shorter, too, since people can distribute their Grex usage over more
of the day.
(Also, I'm not entirely convinced that the link_check script was resetting
gryps much too often.)
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popcorn
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response 5 of 6:
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Sep 8 18:57 UTC 1996 |
I've seen some board e-mail about that. If we meet at the usual fourth
Monday, that's awfully close on the heels of Yom Kippur, the holiest holiday
of the Jewish year. Also we have a board member or two with a conflict with
Mondays. Last I heard, the most likely candidate was September 25, but that's
not at all definite yet. Also, I'd think we will need to have an emergency
board meeting before then, to discuss the move.
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