Minutes of Board of Directors Meeting, January 16, 2006

Jan 21 16:46 UTC 2006

Grex Board of Directors Meeting
Monday, January 16, 2006

Board members in attendance:
Mark Conger (aruba), Lynne Fremont (slynne), Joe Gelinas (gelinas),
Bruce Howard (bhoward), Larry Kestenbaum (polygon).

Non Board members in attendance:
Steve Andre (steve), Marcus Watts (mdw)

Staff Report:
Steve said that he is going to return the memory in exchange for more
memory. He wants to put the new memory into grex

Steve said that he found a box at home with manuals and everything we
need for our new box. 

The problem with new motherboard is that it has a bad connector between
the p/s2 keyboard and motherboard. The PC has USB ports but they are
turned off in the BIOS so it currently cannot be booted into single user
mode. We can fix this by changing settings in BIOS. Mark says that there
is a USB port on the front that is turned on which we may be able to
plug a USB keyboard into. This presents a challenge for putting in the
memory. However, since this is the only problem with the motherboard,
Steve doesnt think we should change the motherboard unless we have
crashes after we swap out the memory. 

Bruce says Robocop has gone live and is packing real ammunition. It is
getting rid of unused processes which is good. Spammers have been
sending email from grex: Sometimes thousands per account per day.
Outbound mail restricted list has been implemented. Bruce has been
monitoring mail and has a script that monitors how much mail gets sent
so that we can monitor people who send more than a certain number of
outgoing messages. There is a restricted list and we need to decide what
to do about the list and how people get off of the list. There are a
number of options. Bruce would like to have a formal statement from the
Board about how we will do this. We can:
1.      Put people from certain sites onto the list automatically or put
all newusers on it. 2.      Require people on the list to enter a
capture(figlets) before sending mail 3.      Restrict the amount of mail
they can send 4.      Have accounts move off the list automatically
after 48 hours 5.      Limit the amount of mail any particular account
can send per day to 50 (Bruce recommends) 6.      Have two lists: the
kind of naughty list and the really bad spammer list and have different
restrictions

Re: Idle Daemon. Steve says we don t have a pty limitation so that isnt
a reason to keep the idle daemon. There is an ok.sh script that people
run that keeps people from idling. The people who seem to want not to
idle out seem to already be doing that. 

PC Weasel. Orphaned hardware. We cant buy one because the link is
broken.  Steve says everyone he has talked to who all say it is great.
As a company, they are not well structured. Steve says that the PC
Weasel people are good technical people but terrible business people.
Steve is going to send mail to get us this item. We need this because we
are a running a server on a PC machine. We are running on a PC because
an actual server would have cost a lot of money. 

Election of Officers
Mark - Treasurer
Larry - President
Lynne - Secretary. 

Vote = Sense of the board is that we will keep mail as open as possible
but give staff authority to limit or deny access  on an emergency basis
which will be reviewed at the next board meeting. All in favor

Next Meeting = Feb 23, Thursday. 3255 Cardinal. 7p

Another week for nominations
Vote = Election starts on 1/23 - all in favor. 

Discussion of sysadmin performance - Bruce is uncomfortable with a call
for review by a single member for a situation that isnt a pattern of
review. It might be impractical to have staff reviews every time a user
asks for one. 

Board when into executive session. 

Re Staff - As a board, we need to identify people who would be potential
good staff and actively identify them. 


Treasurer s Report

In November, we took in $219 and paid out $148. In December we took in
$263 and paid out $212

Mark renewed domain names and payed personal property tax. He notified
Ann Arbor that we have moved so they have removed us from their tax
rules. We might have to pay Ypsilanti Twp. We may not because there is
often a tax floor. Before the value of Grex s stuff was around $6000 but
now it is much less. 

We currently have 46 members which is less than we have had for a long
time. 

We stayed in the black because we cut expenses.

Meeting adjourned 

response 2 of 59:

Jan 21 18:38 UTC 2006

How long have we actually been using the latest new hardware?  I am happy with
its recent performance.  Was the board talking about the motherboard currently
in use having a bad keyboard port, or about the spare motherboard which had
been lost?  

response 4 of 59:

Jan 21 23:24 UTC 2006

Yup, from my understanding - it's the interface between the keyboard connector
and the motherboard connection which is  aloof.

response 6 of 59:

Jan 22 04:31 UTC 2006

Yes

response 8 of 59:

Jan 22 10:22 UTC 2006

Re #7: Yes, the spare motherboard was in the box STeve found in his house.

response 10 of 59:

Jan 22 20:38 UTC 2006

The problem with the motherboard does not directly affect Grex being up and
running.  While I agree that it needs to be taken care of, it ain't happening
next weekend if STeve has to be involved.  My birthday is next Friday and I
get first priority over Grex with STeve's time and attention for a change.

response 12 of 59:

Jan 24 01:04 UTC 2006

I'd just as soon see the system pass the milestone of having been
up for a month before bouncing it.

But maybe I'm being sentimental.

response 14 of 59:

Jan 26 02:51 UTC 2006

So what's up with the idle daemon?