response 111 of 176:

Dec 5 21:50 UTC 2005

I agree 100% that we shouldn't have rebuilt the system by overwriting
the old disk partitions.  One of the recommendations I made in my
post-mortem item immediately after the new system came up was to never
do that again.  Alas, I did not make that recommendation before the
rebuild - though that was certainly part of the upgrade method defined
in Grexdoc - that's why the ALT partitions exist.  But I'm really not an
experienced system adminstrator anyway.  I'm not sure that the need to
avoid a destructive rebuilt was as clear in my head before this fiasco
as it was afterwards.  Live and learn.  In any case, I wasn't around to
give any recommendations.

Before the upgrade, John was really the only active staff member.  He
was doing the reboots.  He was debugging grexdoc on another machine.  He
was reluctant to undertake the rebuild by himself though.  My impression
was that there was something of a panic at the board meeting.  Grex was
crashing regularly, and their wasn't much of staff plan to do anything
about it.  STeve, a board member and a staff member, responded to the
emergency by committing his next weekend to a Grex upgrade.

I had been neglecting Grex so completely that I didn't even know about
it until I talked to John and Mary on the Grex walk the morning before
the upgrade. There was never really any staff meeting to discuss the
upgrade.  If there had been, we might have given it enough thought to
realize that there were alternatives to doing a destructive rebuild.  In
fact, I think we have a spare (rebuilt) 18G drive laying around.  I
think with that we could have managed the rebuild without buying a new
disk.  But buying a disk would have made sense too.  We rushed into the
upgrade.  It felt like Grex was in crisis.  If we had held a staff
meeting first, I'm not sure anyone except John would have shown up.

response 113 of 176:

Dec 5 23:07 UTC 2005

shame on you.

response 115 of 176:

Dec 6 00:23 UTC 2005

thanks tod :L)(

response 117 of 176:

Dec 6 16:45 UTC 2005

 Grex is nobody's primary responsibility.
Grex is the fiduciary responsibility of all elected volunteer board members.
If someone is not willing to be responsible for Grex's operation, they
shouldn't be on the Cyberspace board of directors.  Its that simple.

response 119 of 176:

Dec 6 18:52 UTC 2005

re #118
Obligation: "ensure that Grex is run"-ning for such purposes as "public
education and scientific endeavor through interaction with computers, and
humans via computers, using computer conferencing.." because "The Corporation
assumes all liability to any person other than the Corporation or its members
for all acts or omissions of a volunteer director incurred in good faith
performance of their duty as an officer"

I'm not saying people are going to get sued or that businesses will crumble
as a result of downtiem.  What I am saying is that "good faith effort" should
be a minimum goal of any director of Cyberspace Communications when assuring
Grex stays online and maintained.

response 121 of 176:

Dec 7 01:18 UTC 2005

re #120
I'm not making demands.  I'm simply reflecting on the current status of
Cyberspace.  A status that lacks some leadership in the management of
Grex when it craps out.  Is that so much to ask?
These cries of pay-for-service levels are spin.
We've had numerous outages and waited days on end before someone could
get to Grex.  And then when they did, it was ad-hoc, and files were lost.
I'm simply looking for a lil assurance from the Board that somebody is in
charge and that everyone knows who that is.
Who is accountable next time Grex goes offline for a week?  Answer that.

response 123 of 176:

Dec 7 04:27 UTC 2005

It is a problem but it isnt one I see an easy answer to. I am not going
to demand that a volunteer give more time than they offer to give. I try
to remember to let them know I appreciate their efforts but I am
admitedly not the best at that. I do really appreciate all the volunteer
time that goes into running this place though. And frankly, if someone
with more energy than me were to step up to do a better job, I would
gladly step out of their way to let them do it. 

So who is accountable the next time Grex goes offline for a week? I dont
know. Whichever staff person steps up. We are pretty lucky that we have
anyone at all really. Maybe next time no one will do anything and then
the board will have to scramble to figure something out although I hope
it never comes to that because I honestly dont have any idea what I
would do in such a sitution. 

response 125 of 176:

Dec 7 04:32 UTC 2005

The organizations I volunteer with do not accept the excuse "I'm
only a volunteer". If you ask me, thats a learned attitude in an
organization.

response 127 of 176:

Dec 7 12:44 UTC 2005

The other thing is that just because Grex has been more stable in the past than it has been recently doesn't mean anyone was any more accountable then or that anything has changed in the organization. The only thing that is substantively different is that the machine is less accessible when it is convenient for those who can do something with it to do so, and those volunteers who are able to do something may be less available for whatever reason now than they may have been in the past. This too may pass.

Bitching about the situation and blaming the existing volunteers for having lives and responsibilities other than Grex only serves to make those volunteers feel less like the efforts they do make are appreciated and that very likely has the natural consequence of making their efforts here a lower priority in their lives than other things they may find more rewarding.

This has been a particularly wordy way of saying "There's really nothing that can be done about it, so get over it and stop potentially making it worse."

response 129 of 176:

Dec 7 16:55 UTC 2005

Hey Tod, I'm going to walk across the street and ask the volunteer
firemen what would happen if they showed up to fight fires whenever they
wanted.

response 131 of 176:

Dec 7 17:35 UTC 2005

Or just do something simple and go in and ask "Who's in charge?"
I haven't seen any "or else" demands.  That's just more spin.
Mary is right.  Some of us take downtime a little more seriously.  I
appreciate Lynne's participation in this discussion because she is honest
without throwing rocks.  I ask who is in charge and she says "the first staff
person to step up."  That sounds logical.  Every disaster's first incident
responder is obviously the first person on the scene.  Now, how incidents are
handled after that are where things could probably improve.  There needs to
be a "go to" so when the system goes down, the rest of the Board knows who
to call for a status..and then the members can ask any Board member available
and get some sort of decent response.  I'm not saying it has to be chinese
fire drills and all corporate red tape but at least just some sort of formal
person that shows up at board meetings to represent staff.  If that's STeve
or Remmers or whoever, great.  I'd at least like to see the Board address it
at their next meeting and come up with something.

response 133 of 176:

Dec 7 20:27 UTC 2005

 No, actually, lately we don't, which is clearly a problem.

 I'm not trying to sugar-coat what happened or shut down criticism.
 What I would like to do, however, is promote a pragmatic view of
 the situation.  We do have a problem, but we also have very limited
 resources with which to fix it.  Arguing about what "should" happen
 is kind of pointless at this point unless it's something that also
 *could* happen.  Until/unless a proposed solution is possible with
 the constraints we have to deal with it's kind of a waste of time
 to spend a lot of time arguing about it.

response 135 of 176:

Dec 7 22:46 UTC 2005

i'm proud to call GreX my home!