-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Open Computing Facility General Meeting 28 September 2000 Members present: Eugene Chan (ceugene) Jeff Emrich (jeffe) Patrick Feyh (cpfeyh) Gabe Gonzalez (gmg) Stephanie Hou (stephhou) Shariful Islam (shariful) Wayne Kao (kaow) Stephen McCamant (smcc) Ken Ott (kenao) Akop Pogosian (akopps) Jiong Shen (jshen) The meeting was opened at 7:00 PM. GM Report Steve M reminds everyone that this was a General Meeting so any decisions made tonight can't be reversed by the board of directors. Steve says he hasn't been doing too much GM stuff. He's been mostly doing SM stuff like getting the Ultras ready to be jump-started. Patrick said the D&D security people came and locked down the computers. Ken says they did it improperly for some of the computers. Patrick says they missed one of them. Akop says we can order a kit from them and do it ourselves. Patrick says there are more excess refuge bins in the lab. He talked to Tom Baker who said he'd fix the locks on the server-room doors by the end of today, but that didn't happen. At least Baker is aware of the situation now. SM Report Akop says yesterday there was a power outage which lasted for 5 hours. Akop says we aren't really ready for a power outage. Our UPS units don't really do anything right now when power's running low. Steve M says a message is sent to root saying power's about to go out but this is no good because no one can login when the servers are down. Akop saw a message about conquest shutting down, but that shutdown never happened so he's going to investigate. Steve M says the outage disrupted some pretty high logged in times. Akop says someone emailed complaining about the downtime of the web site but it's nothing to worry about because we've been up a long time and this outage was out of our control. We need to configure the UPS in any case. Ken suggests we colocate our web server to prevent future power outages from affecting anything. Akop wonders whether we should rotate the IP addresses on the machines. Steve M and Ken says it's probably not the problem and it's more trouble than it's worth. Akop agrees it will be a lot of work. He talked to some network guys to find out what IPs we can use because it'd be nice to start at 200. There is some talk about what IP address the printer got assigned. Steve M says it was already a waste of time reorganizing all the hostnames and he realizes there is some value in being organized, but "organization is helpful only if it helps you do other things better," and he doesn't think having the computers organized in sequential IP order is worth the effort. Jeff says people could just walk across the room and look at the label on the computer to find out its IP address. Steve said rotating IP's could delay jumpstarting the Ultra 1's. Ken said we could vote and override Akop. There are two machines up named mlk.bod and asuc.bod and Akop's wondering what those are. Patrick says some network guy was in Heller today looking for someone. Akop says that guy should have emailed him, but Patrick says the guy couldn't read Akop's note which Akop found amusing. Akop was wondering when we'll get a faster net connection; Ken says it's still a long ways away. Akop says he imagines we can potentially have a high network load; Steve M concurred but said upgrading the network isn't a high priority. Akop wants people to take a look at an Ultra 1 which is rebooting on its own. Akop says someone might have turned off a machine which cause some network corruption. Ken reports he bought a flashlight in case there's a future power outage but Steve M says there are emergency lights in Barrows and a few people agreed. Old Business Hostnames Steve M says the reason this is a general meeting is so we can vote on some names the committee had. Eugene and Jeff said the committee wasn't ready. Ken suggested we just pick 10 names and it's taking too long. Others agreed. Steve M says not much else has happened, but that this is something we should think about carefully. He also wanted to "point out something Kennish said." Steve said Kennish said that in his experience, picking hostnames was the responsibility of senior staff. When Kennish was involved in the OCF, it was a secret decision made by root staff. Ken motions that Steve and Akop decide on the 10 new hostnames. Ken said they seemed to be reasonable individuals. Eugene said we have "some bad hostnames, but we need some good hostnames." Gabe said "Christian hostnames?" Eugene said that didn't have to be the case. Patrick asked if there was a huge list; Steve said there was a long list. Steve said he envisioned there'd be a list of names, we'd pick a theme, and stick to that theme. Gabe's wondering what themes there are. Steve said people have suggested ~150 names. Some of them fall into traditional naming schemes, but Steve says there are categories that cover different kinds of disasters. Steve M is in favor of extending one of the existing themes we have. Eugene said it'd be nicer to have the committee here. Steve M said we don't have to decide now. He suggested "we decide how we want to decide," maybe have a proposal. Ken was wondering why we needed a new theme; Akop says the board voted on having a new theme. Steve says it is good to h Physical Security Steve M and Patrick says our front doors are unlocked. Patrick says the lock was taken off, and we have wrenches which let us open and close the locks. Steve M says we want them open during the day, and lock at the end of the day. Ken says we lost a USB cable. Patrick says the keys to the alarm door are lost. Steve M said this is bothersome because we can't just buy a new key. Akop says we should give a key to someone in Heller. Steve M says someone else should have a key to that room; Gabe suggests Tom Baker. Steve M says we don't want people locking and unlocking the front door because it's a security risk and people are getting used to using it. Akop says someone could take a backpack and throw it into the server room which could damage equipment. Steve says that'd be bad. Gabe says Steve C was able to hop the wall into the server room which Patrick says is a more realistic security risk than someone throwing a backpack into the server room. Ken says he could get a chainlink fence but then no one could get out. Extending the server room wall would be expensive. Akop pondered whether water from the sprinklers could damage the computers. Akop says he's not going to store tapes in the machine room because they'd burn if we left them in the Heller server room and there was a fire there. We should move the tapes into the filing cabinet, or move it into Barrows. The main thing now is just go get a lock for the server room door. Ken was wondering who had access to keys. Steve said he, Patrick, and Akop have copies, but we might want to put one into the lockbox. Ken was afraid weird people could use the keys then; Steve M suggested we could change the combination. Printer + Paper Ken says we're going through two reams of paper a week, and that's not bad. Patrick says we get 20% off things bought from the ASUC Store, but Steve M says they probably don't have reams of papers in bulk. Ken suggested Paper.com. There was some talk about keeping the paper in the server room door. Ken says we can buy half a ton of paper online. Akop says he had a little crusade earlier this week by limiting paper usage. Steve explained the whole situation. Everything's been changed back to how it was before. New Business Internationalization Ken asked whether he should stand up. No one seemed to care so he didn't stand up. He said we should install foreign language packs on the Win 2k machines so people can do web pages and be able to type/read international text. Akop says he did that on the machine he brought. Ken says he can't install without the admin password. Akop says the international stuff on locus is not very convenient right now. Ken says the Suns work right now, at least for Netscape. Steve M says that doesn't relate to locus; Akop says international characters don't work for conquest. Akop wants to setup a font server eventually. Steve M asks why we need a font server. Akop explained fonts are installed locally right now. Dual boot Eugene says we have 10 computers that can run Windows, and the way we have it right now we have single OS machines with 20% Linux right, but we should get as many computers running Windows as possible since our users will be mainly Windows people. Eugene suggested changing half the computers to dual-boot. Steve M was wondering why we don't switch to all dual-boot, but Eugene explained why that would cause less Windows machines to be open. Eugene said it'd be nice having a nice computer running Linux, but it shouldn't *only* be running Linux. Steve M says people will probably be logging in remotely if they want to do UNIX stuff. Akop doesn't like people logging into workstations anyhow; Ken accused Akop of logging into mudslide. Steve M says the Apollo's used to be decentralized which lead to more efficient use in many cases. Steve M said the lab has 8x the computing power as the login servers and the servers serve many more people. Ken said it'd be nice if the lab machines don't rely on the machines in Barrows but Akop explained why that wouldn't be a good idea. Ken said he agreed with Eugene. Akop says Windows is reliable because it doesn't require the home directory, and doesn't depend on domain controllers. Steve M says Steve C said one person should be responsible for each machine. Steve M says it's not working out right now and he'd prefer to have centralized administration. Steve M says Steve C is playing with plague, and Akop suggested replacing Steve C's box to a Pentium Pro. Ken motioned all Gateways have at least Windows install on them, and we'll decide everything else at a later date. Jeff seconded. For clarification, Eugene said we're currently planning 8 Windows only machines and 2 Linux only machines. Eugene amended that Linux users boot back into Windows after using them. Ken and Jeff took it as a friendly amendment. Akop said it'd be nice not to have restrictions on what machines run what. Akop says we could gauge demand. Eugene and Ken say the demand would obviously be for Windows machines. Aye: Eugene, Ken, Sariful, Wayne, Jeff, John, Patrick Nay: [no one] Abstain: Gabe (doesn't feel right about voting on "Steve C's baby"), Stephanie, Akop The motion carries. Steve states his opinion and says we didn't get the Gateways as dedicated machines. Misc Stuff Patrick says Tom Cordy, Steve M and he are going to have a meeting about a grand opening. Ken says some girl joined in 1996 and didn't have staff training. He just wanted to "throw that out." Stephanie was elected to BoD by acclamation. Gabe motioned to close the meeting. Patrick seconded. The meeting was closed at 8:10.