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Grex > Coop13 > #280: Agenda: Grex Board of Directors Meeting on Wednesday, Sept 14 | |
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slynne
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Agenda: Grex Board of Directors Meeting on Wednesday, Sept 14
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Sep 12 23:28 UTC 2005 |
Agenda: Grex Board of Directors Meeting on Wed, Sept 14, 2005
1. arrivals 7:30p
2. Opening Gavel Tap 8:00p
3. Treasurer's Report
4. Staff Report
a. hardware needs
b. adding new staff
5. Old Business
- Open New User
7. Schedule Next Meeting
8. New Business
-consider hiring staff to repair grex during down times.
9. Closing Gavel Tap
The board meeting will be held upstairs at Zingerman's Next Door,
Detroit St, Ann Arbor. Anyone who needs directions can call me on my
cell phone (734)754-3773
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| 33 responses total. |
mary
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response 1 of 33:
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Sep 13 01:35 UTC 2005 |
Are we really starting the meeting at 8:00? I thought it was 7:30.
(Mary yawns)
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slynne
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response 2 of 33:
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Sep 13 02:25 UTC 2005 |
I guess I couldnt remember. Let's start at 7:30
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trh
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response 3 of 33:
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Sep 13 06:03 UTC 2005 |
Hello:
I love Grex, and what it offers became an indispensable set of tools
that I produce here in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Recent lengthy outages made me miss these tools that I rely so much on.
I hope on Wednesday's meeting these outages would be discussed and ways
to deal with them expeditiously found.
Here in SF Bay Area, we are able to get new Linux-based computers as low
as $179. I am thinking perhaps a backup computer can be built, and when
the main computer goes down the backup computer put into service until
the problem is fixed.
If you give me the specs, I can also look around here to see if there
are any free surplus used servers are available from the Silicon Valley
firms.
Ahmet Toprak
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naftee
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response 4 of 33:
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Sep 13 15:43 UTC 2005 |
i <3 GreX
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richard
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response 5 of 33:
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Sep 13 23:11 UTC 2005 |
"consider hiring staff to repair grex during down times."
how could grex possibly afford that? even if it was affordable, how
many people are even available to be paid that know unix anymore?
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mcnally
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response 6 of 33:
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Sep 13 23:15 UTC 2005 |
Ann Arbor alone probably has dozens, if not hundreds of people with
professional-level knowledge of Unix System Administration. However,
it's not as easy as just hiring someone who knows Unix really well.
As for how Grex can afford it -- what do you think Grex will be able
to afford if it continues to go down without warning for a week at
a time?
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richard
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response 7 of 33:
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Sep 13 23:28 UTC 2005 |
This response has been erased.
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richard
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response 8 of 33:
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Sep 13 23:30 UTC 2005 |
re #6 years back, in the olden days, grex used to go down routinely.
If it was up for 24 hours straight it was cause for celebration. The
down time never killed grex. When its up, people come back. Also
grex's dues are classified as donations, so I don't think (not sure)
that a member could request a partial refund of his dues because of
excessive down time. Nor does it say anywhere in newuser, or it
shouldn't, that grex in anyway guarantees the reliability of its
service. If they could do that, if grex would feel compelled to honor
such refund requests, then you might consider paying extra money to get
grex up faster
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nharmon
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response 9 of 33:
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Sep 14 00:27 UTC 2005 |
Certainly, reliable uptimes should be a goal of the system
administrators. But by no means should it be guranteed to the users.
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aruba
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response 10 of 33:
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Sep 14 14:09 UTC 2005 |
That's right, Grex is not a fee-for-service organization. Still, we're
going to lose a lot of users if we keep going down like this.
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mary
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response 11 of 33:
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Sep 14 14:26 UTC 2005 |
My thought was that if we get into a state where we are down and it
looks like we'll be down for a while because staff is busy with paying
jobs, that what's left is to at least be able to ask staff to help us
out on a for pay basis. If I needed money and had to choose between
spending time where I'd make money or instead spending that time in a
volunteer position, I'd be working for the paycheck. That's sane. Grex
can't expect our volunteer staff to do otherwise.
Now, I'm not sure that even if we agreed to have this emergency option
available that anyone on our staff would be able to bump Grex's problems
up to a higher priority, or if we could afford the time they'd need to
devote. But I do know one thing, that paying staff in an emergeny
wouldn't stop anyone from donating any time that they otherwise would
have been able to volunteer. It's not going to happen. Not with the
people I know.
This would be an emergency intervention. We couldn't afford to pay for
what our volunteers do routinely. But, in my opinion, if we have to
choose between Grex withering and dying offline, with a bank account, or
being penniless, but online where we can ask for support, I'd go with
the latter, and sweat the outcome.
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jep
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response 12 of 33:
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Sep 14 15:48 UTC 2005 |
The problem I see with hiring emergency expertise is figuring out a
balance between several factors:
1) The amount of help Grex can afford
Does Grex sign a blank check and then hope someone can pay the
bill? At a couple of hundred dollars per hour, Grex's cash on hand
would be quickly consumed. Then what? Grex could borrow, or run up a
credit balance, but not honestly, given that it's income is declining
steadly.
2) Making sure the help which is hired is actually helpful
You kind of need a technical expert who knows Grex to be in charge.
If such a person is available, chances are pretty good there's no need
to hire an outsider. Other than that, you need someone who's dedicated
and savvy and who isn't going to charge Grex for 3 hour coffee breaks.
And who isn't going to take Grex's money, say they'll do X and Y and Z,
then wander off to another project which they think is higher priority.
3) Determining when, and how, the emergency help is to be brought in
Who presses the panic button, and when do they press it? How do
they decide to do it? What if they're wrong?
I don't see a way to hire an expert, unless we have a staffer or other
insider for whom being paid would make a difference in whether they can
help out Grex.
Have we had a situation like that? If so, is there any harm in asking
for specifics? (For a hypothetical example: janc could have been
available September 6 if Grex could give him $500, but instead had to
stick with his paying work.) Or more generally, what reason do we have
to believe anyone could ever be available for Grex when Grex is
encountering a critical situation?
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cross
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response 13 of 33:
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Sep 14 20:35 UTC 2005 |
I think it's mostly technology problems. Grex cut some corners and
made some decisions that `made people happy' but were misguided at best.
Now they're paying the price for it.
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spooked
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response 14 of 33:
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Sep 14 20:48 UTC 2005 |
Could be Mr Cross. Those corners - can you ellaborate on them, please?
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naftee
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response 15 of 33:
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Sep 14 20:50 UTC 2005 |
We cut out some jugs and some hooters. And some racks.
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cross
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response 16 of 33:
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Sep 14 21:19 UTC 2005 |
Well, ECC memory was billed as one of the biggest reasons *not* to get
an Intel machine, even though you can get them with ECC memory. That
didn't happen when we actually bought the machine, though. Not getting
a SCSI RAID controller was also, I think, short sighted.
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spooked
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response 17 of 33:
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Sep 16 21:31 UTC 2005 |
What can we do, Dan, to rectify these problems?
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cross
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response 18 of 33:
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Sep 16 21:51 UTC 2005 |
Oh, beats me. I'd say take some of the money and buy a new machine and
install FreeBSD on it. I don't suspect I'm supported in that by anyone
else, though.
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nharmon
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response 19 of 33:
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Sep 16 22:00 UTC 2005 |
Cross, I might support you if you could explain why you think FreeBSD is
more secure or reliable than OpenBSD. I hode both in high regard.
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twenex
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response 20 of 33:
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Sep 17 20:17 UTC 2005 |
I haven't seen any evidence that the problems grex are having are
hardware-related. Am I blind?
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scott
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response 21 of 33:
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Sep 17 21:01 UTC 2005 |
There's a lot of custom software on top of the OS.
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richard
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response 22 of 33:
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Sep 17 22:00 UTC 2005 |
grex seems to be having a lot more problems since it moved to the co-
lo. Was grex better off living by itself?
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slynne
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response 23 of 33:
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Sep 17 22:51 UTC 2005 |
Not financially
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mary
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response 24 of 33:
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Sep 18 11:17 UTC 2005 |
When we moved to co-lo we also moved to a new machine. And you maybe have
forgotten how incredibly slow the old machine was, and how it crashed all
the time due to (what was thought) to be bad wiring at the pumpkin?
Our biggest problem at the moment isn't hardware, or software, or colo.
It's staff being available to help. Any problem requiring staff care and
feeding would be bringing us to our knees.
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