Grex Board of Directors Meeting Minutes: July 29, 2003

Aug 1 17:54 UTC 2003

(Beginning of meeting minutes taken by other)

present: other, aruba, gelinas, cindy, kip, remmers, mary, flem, i, 
7:12 (mooncat, bhelliom), mdw, janc

opening gavel: 7:05

item 2:
   new computer stuff, auction stuff, scsi disks, refund.  $100 behind 
in june.
   krj had an idea to have us in the AAnews computer guide.  got $40 in 
donations.
   Grex paid to get tax deduction and donations reimbursed.
   july:  in $398, 80 members, 76 current
   in general fund $4190 as of end of june.
   $22 remain in infrastructure fund.
   
   see treasurer's report for details.

3. Auction update: More items sold, one or two more to add to the 
auction, and 2 closed the date of the meeting.

4.      Staff Update: UPS batteries were purchased, and then it was 
found that we needed 6 not 4. The purchase of two additional batteries 
made the cost go over the original allocation the board voted on. The 
new batteries (now 6) have been placed in the UPS and it is charging, 
as of meeting the UPS had not been hooked back up to Grex.
Aruba moved: Authorize extra $40 for batteries for the UPS bringing the 
total allocation to $160. Seconded by Gelinas. Aye: 6, Nay: 0 
Abstaining: 0

Question on whether we need to authorize Walter (i) to have a key to 
the Pumpkin as he is not root staff. Tabled for a moment.

6. Four people were presented by staff to the board for authorization 
of root status.

Mary moved: Pursuant to suggestion from staff to move i from non-root 
group to root group. Gelinas seconded. Aye- 6, Nay- 0, Abstain- 0

Aruba moved: To add kip to root staff, pursuant to recommendation from 
staff. Other seconded. Aye- 6, Nay- 0, Abstain- 0

Gelinas moved: To add cross to root staff, pursuant to recommendation 
from staff. Other seconded. 

Discussion followed in regards to general staff issues, comments 
regarding the Next Grex and designs and potential disputes between 
staffers. Kip volunteered to help with mail design, working with both 
mdw and cross.

Vote on Cross: Ayes- 6, Nay- 0, Abstain- 0

Other moved: The gelinas b e added to root staff with all privileges 
therein. Mary seconded. Ayes- 5, Nay- 0, Abstain 1

Question of Keys: Who all is going to get Pumpkin keys? Staff will 
figure that out in more detail at the meeting on the 11th. Aruba has 
volunteered to be Keeper of the Keys (for all extras).

4. (4.02)- Next Grex Update: Bhelliom asked about what documentation 
has been done so far. It was reported that Janc is documenting 
everything he is doing as he goes. The development team has access to 
it.

Gelinas reported that the Next Grex machine is up and running. Dan 
Cross has installed his version of Grex hash to login, and has tested 
it.

Jan has turned on soft updates. PF aren t working right (packet 
filtering- which replaced kernel blocks).

Issues/Conversation about which version of OpenBSD we should use.  
Arrival of MDW

Back to Item 6- Remmers will add the four new staffers to list. Mary 
will e-mail Dan Cross and let him know (three other new staffers 
present at meeting)

Enter Janc

Back to 4 (4.00) MDW reports that the new batteries are black and shiny.

4. (4.02)- Jan coerced Dan s installation. Jan more or less waiting on 
Kerebos, which is waiting for MDW s life to allow time for working on 
it. Could rush (not a good idea) and could also take short-cuts (see 
last parenthetical response). Discussion about creating a list of what 
needs to be done, and what order they should be done in.

8. Schedule Next Meeting: Much discussion, dates, originally attempted 
either Sept. 9th or 16th. Via e-mail after the meeting the date was set 
for: Tuesday, September 23rd, 7:00 pm Zing s Kid s Room Next Door.

9. New Business: In response to e-mail from Steve in regards to the 
safety of the Leibert UPS and fire potential, the idea of getting a 
fire extinguisher was proposed, or perhaps putting the UPS into a metal 
tub of some kind. Basic conversation melted down into- we ve made the 
UPS as safe as we can make it- although perhaps putting it on some sort 
of pallet for ventilation purposes would be a good idea.

Mary- also had some questions regarding co-location so that she could 
perform additional research.

Jan offered to give a tour that evening to new staff members, also 
offered to put the charged UPS back in the power loop.

Board went into executive session.

10: End gavel: 8:55 pm.

response 2 of 29:

Aug 1 18:40 UTC 2003

Re: The Pumpkin and fires, originating from an UPS or any other source:
My stupid question is are the tape backups stored at another site?

response 4 of 29:

Aug 2 04:28 UTC 2003

Nope; lhbunkie, who joined grex at the meeting, and actually created her
login later on.

response 6 of 29:

Aug 4 10:41 UTC 2003

It was Joe who abstained on the vote he be added to root staff.

The executive session was to discuss issues concerning
a specific staff member.  As we went into this session
Kip mentioned we might want to make note of the reason too.
I think that sounds like a good idea.

response 8 of 29:

Aug 4 17:13 UTC 2003

At times?

response 10 of 29:

Aug 4 20:01 UTC 2003

I seem to always miss them

response 12 of 29:

Aug 4 22:01 UTC 2003

Are tape backups stored off site?

response 14 of 29:

Aug 5 00:15 UTC 2003

Thanks, Mary.

response 16 of 29:

Aug 5 02:40 UTC 2003

It looks like level zero dumps are done from single user modes; this
was always to prevent modifications to the filesystem state while the
dump(8) command was running, since dump dumped directories before
files.  It seems reasonable to me these days to use something like
GNU tar instead, as it overcomes the limitations of tar that made it
unsuitable for system backups in previous generations, and doesn't
suffer from the `directories before files' problem.

response 18 of 29:

Aug 5 03:34 UTC 2003

Bah!

response 20 of 29:

Sep 9 06:23 UTC 2003

Confirming:  Is the next board meeting Tuesday 9/22 as suggested above?

response 22 of 29:

Sep 9 16:38 UTC 2003

Er, the 22nd is a Monday.  The minutes say Tuesday the 23rd - is that what
you mean, Mary & Eric?

response 24 of 29:

Sep 10 02:26 UTC 2003

It is indeed Tuesday, the 23rd.