Minutes of the Grex Board of Directors Meeting of July 5, 2005

Jul 12 15:29 UTC 2005

Attending Board Members:  slynne, mary, gelinas, dpc, polygon

Non-Attending Board Members:  vanloons, bhoward

Attending Non-Board Members:  aruba, non-Grexer Carol Moore, keesan, 
jdeigert

The July 5, 2005 meeting of the Grex Board of Directors was called to 
order at 8:05 p.m. by President Slynne at Zingerman's Next Door.

Treasurer's Report:
Assistant Treasurer aruba reported that the expenses for June were 
about $150 and income was over $400.  We received a property tax bill 
from the city of Ann Arbor as of December 31,2004.  There are 66 
members, with 55 paid up.  The financial situation is pretty stable.  

Staff Report:
Newuser is down on the Web; it is up on telnet.  Polygon moved that we 
ratify the decision to add mcnally to the root staff.  Dpc seconded, 
and the motion was carried unanimously.  Jdeigert suggested a note in 
the Web message of the day suggesting that new users telnet in.  
Gelinas suggested reviving the Grim File Reaper, since it has been 3 
months.

The spam filter is still on the staff list of things to do; it is next 
on the list.  Gelinas said it will take 2 or 3 more mcnallys.  Other 
staff have limited time or are not active.  He noted that, according to 
Rhett Butler, "Love has its limits."

Slynne asked about giving volunteers non-root access.  Gelinas said we 
would still have to vet their work.  Aruba and slynne had their arms 
twisted to do some small tasks on a spam filter.  Polygon said he was 
on the edge of despair about the spam problem at the University of 
Michigan.  However, at the County, where he works, he has had only 4 
spans to his account in 6 months.  Dpc asked if polygon would check 
with the County to see what they use, and we might buy it.  Polygon 
said he would check.  Keesan said procmail works for her.  Polygon said 
the volume of viruses is down.  Aruba said we should have someone read 
about the various packages and post the evaluation in Cop.  Aruba said 
he would do something about this in July.

Keesan said she was getting large e-mails from newusers and wondered 
if a size limit of 100k could be wet, with notice to the senders of 
bounces.  Gelinas said maybe something could be done.  Polygon wanted 
to know what had happened to mdw's spam filters.  Aruba and gelinas 
said that they had not been ported over.

Aruba said we have an offer of a donation to buy a PC Weasel if we 
want.  Gelinas felt it would not be as useful as has been claimed.  
Mary said it might be good if there was no extra cost.  But it needs an 
extra phone line, which would be a down side.  Keesan reported modem 
problems on the dialins.  Gelinas will check this out.  Mary asked if 
the dialin users could exist on one line.  Keesan said the first line 
is busy about once a week.  Mary thought the second line might b used 
for the PC Weasel.  Dpc reported frequent garble on the first line.  
Polygon said he tends to favor he PC Weasel to maximize the use of 
staff time.

Old Business:
The issue of an open or closed newuser was postponed until newuser is 
available again.

Schedule Next Meeting:
The next meeting will be on Wednesday, September 14, at 7:30 p.m., at 
Zingerman's Next Door.

New Business:
The Board discussed the absence of bhoward and vanloons.  Slynne will 
contact them about their attendance.

Keesan asked what happens to e-mail on the System if someone dies.  Dpc 
suggested that this should be handled in a will.  The Board recognized 
that we do not have access to users' passwords in any event.  The Board 
decided not to pursue this matter further because of privacy concerns.  
We will handle future matters of this nature on a case by case basis.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 p.m.

response 2 of 19:

Jul 12 21:08 UTC 2005

 Did he try looking in /usr/local/bin first?

 >  Ok: !which spamassassin
 >  /usr/local/bin/spamassassin

response 4 of 19:

Jul 12 23:10 UTC 2005

THanks for the (as always) copious minutes, Dave.  One correction: Carol 
spells her last name "Mohr".

response 6 of 19:

Jul 13 15:01 UTC 2005

Today it caught 9 real spams and let through several real mails, with no
mistakes.  I don't even know how to use the Bayesian filtering - how do I tell
if it is on?  I presume a system-wide filter would use a lot less space than
a separate one for each user, to which users could add whitelists in
.procmailrc.  

response 8 of 19:

Jul 13 15:08 UTC 2005

I am running without the autowhitelist option (no -a) so the autowhitelist
file at least will not grow larger.  I don't have any options enabled except
what is default.  

response 10 of 19:

Jul 14 01:51 UTC 2005

YEAH< I HEARD HE"S GAY

response 12 of 19:

Jul 15 23:35 UTC 2005

I suggest putting the choice in newuser, after explaining that there is a
limited-size mailbox.  Maybe offering size limits of infinite, 100K, 50K.

response 14 of 19:

Jul 16 18:41 UTC 2005

How does this growth occur?  Can I stop it?  I am satisfied with the way
spamassassin is doing things now, and if it misses something, I can add my
own little filter in .procmailrc.  I just put back all the To:  filters
(makji, webmaster - any mail sent to them is spam).  

response 16 of 19:

Jul 18 01:05 UTC 2005

I am now up to about 600K in the .spamassassin directory.  Can I periodically
just delete all the files in there so they don't take up all my space?  Only
the 'tok' file is expanding - can I at least delete the other three (one is
autowhitelist).

response 18 of 19:

Jul 25 20:18 UTC 2005

I don't mind a bit of spam getting through if it keeps me from using up all
the space allotted me.  I have added my own filters anyway, and changed from
five to three asterisks when a lot of 3.4's got through, all spam.  I keep
a log and can catch false positives that way.