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Grex > Coop8 > #129: Agenda for 10/23/96 Board Meeting, 7:30 pm at ITI | |
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scott
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Agenda for 10/23/96 Board Meeting, 7:30 pm at ITI
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Oct 19 12:25 UTC 1996 |
Agenda for 10/23/96 Board Meeting
1. Initial Gavel Pounding - scott < 1 minute
2. Treasurer's Report - aruba 5 minutes
3. Computer Rehabilitation Committee - scott 5 minutes
4. Publicity Committee - mta 5 minutes
5. Technical Committee - STeve 20 minutes
12. New Business - all ???
13. Final Gavel Pounding - scott < 1 minute
This agenda is pretty sparse, but I can't recall any currently heavy
issues. I'll add those as they turn up.
Directions to ITI:
Take US-23 to the Washtenaw Ave. exit (exit 37B). This puts you on Washtenaw
Ave, going West. Turn right onto Huron Parkway. This winds and twists for
quite a while. Turn right on Hubbard, then make your first possible left into
ITI (which has a hard-to-read silver sign out front). Watch out for handicap
parking spaces when you park -- there are a lot of them. Inside ITI, go
straight back to the funky toys in the lobby. Turn left, and the cafeteria
is ahead and to the left.
On Huron Parkway, if you reach Plymouth Road, you've gone too far.
Another way to ITI is to take US-23 to the Plymouth Road exit. Go West on
Plymouth Rd, to Huron Parkway. Turn left onto Huron Parkway. Hubbard comes
up pretty quickly from that side of town; turn left onto Hubbard and then take
the first possible left to get to ITI.
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| 27 responses total. |
popcorn
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response 1 of 27:
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Oct 20 04:43 UTC 1996 |
I think there was a proposal to add new staff, pending discussions with the
potential new staffers. Also there might've been something the staff wanted
to buy, but, if there was, I don't remember it at the moment. Also, we could
probably use a "Grex moved!" item to talk about how the move went.
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dang
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response 2 of 27:
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Oct 20 22:25 UTC 1996 |
JOOC, how does new staff become new staff?
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popcorn
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response 3 of 27:
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Oct 20 22:31 UTC 1996 |
Stick around co-op for a while. Demonstrate that you're a trustworthy
individual who cares about Grex and has excellent judgement. Demonstrate
some kind of useful skill that's needed on staff. (A skill we could
currently use a lot more of on staff is free time to answer tons of
e-mailed questions from users.)
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janc
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response 4 of 27:
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Oct 21 00:01 UTC 1996 |
Normally staff recommends new staff. Board votes on them. We tend to look
for candidates among people we know, and among people who have let us know
they are interested.
We always need more genuine Sun/Unix gurus, but just now we are also short of
people with time and energy for answering questions, helping people with lost
passwords, and answering requests to delete accounts. Of course, staff members
define their own jobs, when we add new people to staff, it isn't really for any
specific task.
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dang
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response 5 of 27:
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Oct 22 17:36 UTC 1996 |
Ah. Thanks.
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scg
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response 6 of 27:
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Oct 23 03:59 UTC 1996 |
Ok, now that I've talked to them, we can add the new staff stuff to the
agenda. Adding Ryan Antkowiak (ryan1) as party administrator, and giving root
access to Mike O'Leary (nephi).
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kerouac
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response 7 of 27:
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Oct 23 15:50 UTC 1996 |
Giving root to Mike would be the first time (am I right?) that Grex has
given root to a non-local A2 (or surrounding area) person. A milestone
of a sort.
I'm sure he'd be cool as a root, but this brings up whether grex has too
many roots already (he would be #11 or something right?) At what point
does the question of how many roots maximum grex should have come into
question?
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dang
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response 8 of 27:
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Oct 23 16:58 UTC 1996 |
when grex stops growing. Many of the staff activities that keep this system
running, such as account maintenance and clearing the mail queue, require root
access. As long as these tasks keep getting larger and larger, we will need
more and more roots. In someting like a company, where the users and use
stays relatively constant, you can limit the number of roots for all time,
but not here.
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kerouac
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response 9 of 27:
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Oct 23 17:02 UTC 1996 |
Also is it practical to give Mike root when he liveso ut of town and doesnt
have immediate access to the console?
By the way, I think party admin should be a staff member, so if Ryan1 is
to be such, than he shouldbe added to staff (maybe make ryan a root
instead of nephi?)
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robh
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response 10 of 27:
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Oct 23 17:09 UTC 1996 |
The functions of a partyadm don't require root access. You can
make an argument that nephi shouldn't get root, but that has nothing
to do with ryan1.
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scg
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response 11 of 27:
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Oct 23 18:20 UTC 1996 |
Richard, many of our local roots don't use console very often, even when they
do have access to it. If I have a choice between doing Grex stuff from home
or going out to the Pumpkin, I'll generally do it from home so that I don't
have to drive across town. Mike's got about as good connectivity to Grex as
I do.
Dan hit the nail on the head about the need for more staffers. Running Grex
is a *huge* job. If we could afford to pay full time staffers we woudln't
need to have so many people. As it is, the Grex staff is a bunch of
volunteers, each pouring large amounts of their rather lmited free time into
it. Grex has gotten beyond what the current staff can comfortably handle in
terms of the amount of work that needs to be done. We do need more people.
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ryan1
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response 12 of 27:
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Oct 23 19:52 UTC 1996 |
Re #6: Wow! spelled my name right! :) (gotta luv those long polish
names)
Re #(whole item)
I did not know that being a party adm required me to be on the "staff".
Either way, if the board passes this notion, I would happily accept the
positition of (co- ?) party admin.
-- The party admin does not require root access. All the access needed
for the party admin can be set with group permissions in /etc/group. So
as a party adm, I would not need root access for anything.
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srw
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response 13 of 27:
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Oct 24 03:12 UTC 1996 |
granting root is a separate board function than granting party admin.
I think of all official support functions which require board action to be
staff functions, so I would say that the party admin is a staffer. Some folks
have helped us write web pages. This did not require board action, and I don't
think of these folks as staffers (though they are a help to staff).
But whether or not someone is on "staff" is just a matter of definition. A
party admin would not automatically have access to staff mail, or staff conf,
or root. Those are granted separately (by the board) if the need is
recognized and the staff recommends it.
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steve
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response 14 of 27:
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Oct 24 14:39 UTC 1996 |
I've thought about the number of roots here too Richard, and I can
honestly say that probably don't have enough, really. Considering
that no root person does this full time, and four full time people
would be abour right for an organization of this size if it were
commercial, I don't think we have too many.
Access to the console isn't an issue except for 1) bringing the
system back up, 2) doing hardware work. So other than those things
Nephi could do just about anything the rest of us do, provided he
feels comfortable doing it in the first place.
Grex dwarfs *most* UNIX systems on the planet. We're at the
top 10% of such UNIX systems, according to a LISA conference paper
I saw, listing sizes of systems (this was a couple of years ago).
If/when Grex runs Kerberos for passwords, Grex will likely be the
4th largest Kerberos site in the world.
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popcorn
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response 15 of 27:
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Oct 24 20:32 UTC 1996 |
Re 7: Actually, Marc Unangst has been a Grex root living in Pittsburgh for
years.
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tsty
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response 16 of 27:
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Oct 31 11:18 UTC 1996 |
and he was a minor when he earned root ... and he voted too.... <g>.
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remmers
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response 17 of 27:
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Oct 31 13:28 UTC 1996 |
Did Jan Wolter have root before he moved back here from Texas?
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janc
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response 18 of 27:
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Oct 31 18:06 UTC 1996 |
No.
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remmers
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response 19 of 27:
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Oct 31 23:24 UTC 1996 |
Well then.
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adbarr
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response 20 of 27:
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Nov 1 11:48 UTC 1996 |
From what I know about Jan, and his abilities, he probably did not really
need root. Root for him is like an honorarium.
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davel
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response 21 of 27:
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Nov 1 15:41 UTC 1996 |
(I kind of think Jan got root about the same time I did, after he was back
in town in any case.)
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janc
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response 22 of 27:
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Nov 1 19:15 UTC 1996 |
I was doing development work on party, write and gate while in Texas, but I
didn't have root, so the installations here were done by others (mostly
Valerie). Now I do my own installations of new software, and also use root
for various other minor tasks. It's possible to contribute a lot to
grex without being root. Root isn't an honorarium for anyone. It's needed
for certain kinds of tasks, mostly day-to-day nudging of mail and misconfigured
user accounts and such-like, and very occasionally more interesting and
dramatic things.
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adbarr
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response 23 of 27:
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Nov 1 21:41 UTC 1996 |
Yes, of course, just what I would expect from janc. Meg, however, has implied
that "root", together with certain hormone fluctuations, can be an instrument
of power, and intimidation?
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kerouac
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response 24 of 27:
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Nov 1 22:40 UTC 1996 |
indeed, could not with root, one po'd staffer wipe out the entire /home file
and give grex a severe case of amnesia?
With like one stroke of a key?
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