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Grex > Coop > #267: Feb 2010 Board Meeting Minutes | |
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| 25 new of 66 responses total. |
cross
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response 38 of 66:
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Feb 23 02:39 UTC 2010 |
resp:37 Ad hominem? After you find my substantial inabilities astonishing?
If Grex is so horrible, Ken, why do you keep showing up? And substantial
proportions of the Grex community refuse to have anything to do with M-Net?
How, exactly, do you define that? I think that most grexers dual hat.
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veek
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response 39 of 66:
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Feb 23 02:56 UTC 2010 |
This response has been erased.
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veek
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response 40 of 66:
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Feb 23 12:49 UTC 2010 |
a point in favor of M-Net.. most of their cruft is restricted to
#general and they generally leave #grex alone. It really is the most
elegant solution in terms of interface and stuff AND a LOT of Grexers
hang out there anyway.. in fact who doesn't?? (rane, sindi, bellstar
anyone else??)
Anyway, why don't we meet on SDF (sdf.lonestar.org) when Grex goes
down. 'bboard' = fronttalk and 'com' = party. They had no inhibitions,
and stuck up a notice on their site inviting Grex users to migrate to
their server when Grex was down so.. it would make sense for us to take
their advice <g>
'ANONYMOUS' and 'GENERAL' would fit the bill.. you can, it seems, even
create a new board 'M' just like that.. so.. if ppl are interested, let
me know and I shall investigate further (by creating a 'GREX' board on
SDF and checking to see if it's workable/or someone else can take this
over and act as master of ceremonies..) Their 'bboard' interface is
very similar to fronttalk and they seem to have some sort of php
interface to bboard so web access may work. I suppose the polite thing
would be to mail emm and ask if it's okay.. so.. if everyone is okay
with this.. or we just use Posterus or M-Net. I'm NOT keen on splitting
this 3 ways :)
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remmers
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response 41 of 66:
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Feb 23 14:03 UTC 2010 |
Re resp:32 - Thanks for the support, Richard. The steps taken to
restrict access to the system were probably necessary, alas. One
of the challenges facing Grex right now is how to get back on a
growth path without incurring collateral damage from twits.
My thinking was that resp:14 was a bit of pot-stirring that was
best ignored, but maybe I should set the record straight on a few
things. I never "lobbied vigorously" for a CMS. My recollection
of the CVS server business is different from Dan's. And although
Dan is a board member who believes that M-Net is the best place to
hold Grex discussions when Grex is offline, Dan wasn't speaking for
the board on this issue - there are two board members who are on
record as believing the opposite.
As to why I volunteered to return to staff in December? Well,
because it appeared that Grex was in danger of sinking into oblivion.
In particular, Dan was calling for a permanent shutdown. I wasn't
ready to see it happen, and neither were a lot of other people, to
judge from the turnout at the December board meeting and the
discussion that took place there.
I'm here to help out, not "take control" as resp:14 suggests. Like
other people, I throw out ideas from time to time as to directions
the system might take, some of which are probably ok and some of
which are probably lousy, but I'm a team player who doesn't make
changes without concensus. I was a root staff member on Grex for
about 15 years starting in 1991, and that's the way I played it.
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tonster
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response 42 of 66:
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Feb 23 15:22 UTC 2010 |
I find it curiouser and curiouser that I've offered a number of ideas
and specific options I'd be willing to help out with for places to meet,
and have been pretty much ignored. I've also offered to help out on
staff, and pretty much been ignored there too. I guess I don't know who
all is on the board and staff, but the only people I've really seen
respond to my offers are remmers, mary, jep, and cross. Should I take
that as a hint?
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mary
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response 43 of 66:
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Feb 23 15:43 UTC 2010 |
It's how Grex works. Think slow. Real slow. It has nothing to do with
you, Tony, it's the process. People come up with things that need to be
done, even agreeing to do them, but then the ball gets dropped. I don't
have a solution. The people dropping the balls are nice people. But the
effect is a leadership void.
I hope you get added to staff real soon. Please don't be discouraged.
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kentn
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response 44 of 66:
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Feb 23 18:44 UTC 2010 |
Re 43: I agree.
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tod
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response 45 of 66:
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Feb 24 23:18 UTC 2010 |
re #42
Give it another ten years, Tony. They still haven't decided if you're
part of the "collateral damage from twits" mainstream.
I don't think anyone was seriously calling for a permanent shutdown of
Grex but I do believe many were postulating options for its hosting.
Too bad opinions require a prePosterous vetting - especially Tonster's.
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goose
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response 46 of 66:
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Feb 25 17:16 UTC 2010 |
RE #43 - I don't come around here much anymore, so my opinions may carry
little weight and that's fine with me however Mary's comment about slowness
made me sit up and take notice.
I think part of the slow decline of Grex can be blamed on this slowness. I
agree that some decisions should be pondered and discussed at great length.
But some decsions need to be made in a faster fashion and I'm of the opinion
that the snails pace of decision making by the board/staff/etc over the last
<gasp> nearly 20 years (OMG, it has been that long hasn't it?) have created
a stagnation in what the "community" could be. I may be wrong, but years ago
I felt that Grex and sister community M-Net/Arbornet were way ahead of the
curve in terms of, for lack of a better term, Social Networking. And the
measured pace, especially here on Grex, made for a situation where the whole
world sped by. Maybe that's good, maybe that's bad. But I think that
anything decided could ultimately be undone if after a little reflection the
decision was agreed to be bad/wrong/etc., but instead we wait. Wait for
features to be added, wait while discussion is prlonged to the point of the
dead horse being a fossil, wait until a userbase is reduced to a handful of
what it was in it's heyday.
I'm not nostalgic for the M-Net that I enjoyed back in the late eighties/early
nineties or the Grex that sprung up from the chaos that M-Net became, but I
do find it a little sad that a lot of potential was wasted.
I don't blame anyone in particular, and I'll take some blame, I wasn't
standing up to volunteer (mostly because I was already seeing a broken system
I suppose, or maybe that's hindsight).
So, now thatI've complained, I need to figure out what constructive criticism
I can offer. Though I guess I'll remain part of the problem since I've no
time to offer being staff or board or volunteer. I have to remain one of the
members of the peanut gallery.
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tsty
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response 47 of 66:
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Feb 25 18:50 UTC 2010 |
w/b goose ... your thoughts are always wleome.
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richard
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response 48 of 66:
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Feb 25 21:09 UTC 2010 |
I don't see why Grex shouldn't *immediately* take up Tonster's offer to
host Grex at his house. Put him on staff asap and tell him to go over
to Provide.net and get everything out of there. Clearly a third party
co-lo no longer works for Grex because there aren't enough people on
staff to get anyone over to where the box is to re-boot it or service
it and thus you get this down time that kills casual user interest in
coming here. Why should there be any delay in taking up Tonster's
offer?
Is the intent for the board to wait to make any decision until
provide.net locks its doors and throws the box outside on the sidewalk?
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mary
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response 49 of 66:
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Feb 25 21:20 UTC 2010 |
I agree with Richard. Tony has proven himself with years of service to M-
Net. His offer is generous. He appears to be a respected and talented
team player. Provide is no longer a good option for Grex.
I have a few questions and concerns but I always seem to find something to
worry about. I'm trying to stay realistic here and I'm hoping we get Tony
on-board ASAP.
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slynne
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response 50 of 66:
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Feb 25 22:02 UTC 2010 |
FWIW, I think grex should take Tony up on his offer too. I doubt anyone
has any objections based on his character or anything like that.
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goose
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response 51 of 66:
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Feb 25 22:23 UTC 2010 |
This response has been erased.
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tonster
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response 52 of 66:
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Feb 26 02:06 UTC 2010 |
resp:49: feel free to ask any questions or show any concerns here. it's
not like anyone besides you, remmers, or cross is going to.
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nharmon
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response 53 of 66:
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Feb 26 03:31 UTC 2010 |
Do any of the ESX hosts run V-replicator?
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tonster
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response 54 of 66:
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Feb 26 04:08 UTC 2010 |
I'm rebuilding the host that grex would run on soon. I can put pretty
much any vmware on it at this point. I haven't decided which version
I'll put on though.
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tsty
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response 55 of 66:
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Feb 26 22:49 UTC 2010 |
i support (and supported) tonster for satff a whiel back ... it;s in tehere.
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tsty
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response 56 of 66:
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Feb 27 08:05 UTC 2010 |
re 48 ... simply because yo are not runing -nor directing- grex, that;s why
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remmers
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response 57 of 66:
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Feb 27 15:39 UTC 2010 |
My goodness, run Grex on a virtual machine? What an absurd idea;
why is anybody even considering it? ;-) (That's an in-joke; feel
free to ignore it.)
Okay, re resp:49, I have a few questions about how the virtual
hosting would work, how the resources would compare with what we
have now. Maybe some of them have already been answered somewhere,
but it'd be nice to get the info collected in one spot.
Disk space:
How much can we have?
Currently, Grex has a capacity of about 128G on wd0, roughly
26G of which is actually in use. That seems pretty modest and
easy to accommodate. I don't know how much was on the SCSI
disk that died, though. (By the way, the entire 19 years worth
of conferences uses less than 700M of space. Hey, I could fit
that on a corner of my laptop.)
Processor capacity:
Would multiple processor-intensive activities (like, various
users doing compiles at the same time) be handled gracefully?
Network connectivity:
What ISP would Grex be using? Cable, DSL, or something else?
How would speed and capacity compare with what we have currently?
Would users notice slowdowns in shell interaction, upload/download,
web page loads, etc? Would there be a cap on how much Grex
could use? Would Grex continue to have its own unique IP
address?
Operating system:
Can we run OpenBSD? That would certainly simplify the process
of moving stuff over from the current machine. Would it be
preferable to run something else, e.g. FreeBSD, in a VM
environment, though?
I'm fairly familiar with VMWare, by the way, and run it on both
Windows Vista and OS X machines. I know that it's perfectly
possible to install OpenBSD in a VMWare image, having done so
myself, but haven't played around with it enough to know if
there are any gotchas that might impact us.
Remote console:
Is there a virtual console that staff can access providing
facilities such as power on/off, shutdowns, and single user
mode? I have a small FreeBSD VM (XEN technology) hosted at
RootBSD (http://rootbsd.net) that uses a Java applet for
that purpose. Would you provide something similar?
Remote console access would be a huge plus for Grex.
Currently, console work requires physical access to the
hardware, which only happens when a local staff member is
available to visit our colo during their business hours.
I'd love to see that troublesome bottleneck removed.
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tonster
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response 58 of 66:
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Feb 27 16:54 UTC 2010 |
resp:57: I think I've adequately outlined my position on virtual
machines at commercial facilities in prior posts. I agree with you that
it can work very well, but I don't think any commercial company will be
able to offer what Grex needs to run well at a reasonable cost. I don't
know what you're paying to colo the box now, but I think you could only
get a fraction of the memory/disk/cpu at a vm hosting provider for the
same cost.
As far as what I can offer, I'm currently planning to install the new
box that Grex would go on with 2x500GB mirrored drives, so I would give
Grex a fraction of that space. I think it's not unreasonable to say
200GB would be no problem. If Grex actually wants more space, I could
reconsider and get different drives, but I already have this hardware.
The physical box is an HP server, has 2 CPU's, and 1GB of ram (though
I'm adding a lot more RAM once I finally get around to ordering it).
The box ultimately won't be dedicated to Grex, but the other VM's that
will be running or installed on it are not used often and only used in
testing configurations for work. I wouldn't anticipate them often
conflicting with grex in any way.
I've compiled multiple things at once and installed multiple
applications on multiple machines at the same time before (I use it to
test the zimbra mail software, which is a fairly intensive app at times,
so it's stress tested) and usually theres no real negative affect on the
other VM's.
My ISP is AT&T UVerse, so I've got pretty good bandwidth.
OpenBSD would depend on whether it could run on VMware, which as you've
said, I believe it can. I've offered before, and if anyone wants to
play around and test it, I'd be happy to assign the VM, give it some
space, and give some people access to install the OS and play. The
Virtual Console would be through VMware Infrastructure Client, although
if I install vSphere instead, it may be a slightly different client.
Either way, I can assign all rights to whoever wants/needs them so they
can do whatever is needed anytime they need to. The only real obvious
hurdle would be if I lost power or internet access, obviously the server
would go down.
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mary
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response 59 of 66:
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Feb 27 19:03 UTC 2010 |
Your ISP's terms and conditions of use would be okay with you hosting
Grex?
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richard
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response 60 of 66:
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Feb 27 19:41 UTC 2010 |
Still haven't found out what happened to the Grex Gavel. I mean how is
Grex to continue with board meetings when it has no gavel. I think
slynne must have let her dogs use the gavel as a chew toy :)
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tonster
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response 61 of 66:
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Feb 28 02:15 UTC 2010 |
I'm not aware of anything in the uverse terms and conditions that would
prevent me from hosting grex. additionally, I wouldn't be using at&t
IP's as I have my own tunneled IP addresses that I host my things on, so
it's unlikely they'd know anything about it, and any complaints or
anything would end up going to that ISP in the form of complaints or
anything, and that absolutely allows me to host whatever I want to.
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slynne
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response 62 of 66:
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Feb 28 20:51 UTC 2010 |
resp:60 It is in my desk drawer at work because I keep meaning to give
it back but then I keep forgetting.
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