Minutes of the meeting of the THCS committee and Hal admins, 10th May 2004
Present:
Ed Allcutt (President & Hal Admin),
Malcolm Scott (Secretary & Hal Admin),
Ian Abel (Treasurer),
Adam Biltcliffe (Publicity Officer),
Stu Rowan (Hal Admin),
Matt Johnson (Hal Admin),
Jeff Snyder (Hal Admin),
Steve Horne (Hal Admin),
Ben Titmus
Meeting chaired by Ed Allcutt.
Minutes taken by Malcolm Scott.
- Appointment of additional hal admins
- Informal applications received from Ian and Ben
- Committee voted unanimously in favour of Ben becoming a hal admin
- Committee voted 3 for, 1 exclusion (Ian) in favour of Ian becoming a hal admin
- Hence both Ian and Ben are hal admins with immediate effect.
- The possibility of THCS providing and advertising windows-domain-related
services on hal, e.g. offering SMB-accessible backup space
- Matter raised by Matt
- Backup space:
- The IT dept used to provide backup space to students; THCS could
take over this role
- Disk space: current hal doesn't have enough, but new hal does
- Users must understand that we can't guarantee their data will be safe
- Suggestion that the new hal admins could write backup scripts; Ben volunteers
to do this over the summer
- Non-account-based services, i.e. anonymous access to some SMB shares on hal:
- Suggestion that we could mirror the virus scanners and updates provided
by the CS; this was rejected as it is really part of the CSG's role.
- However it was agreed that anonymous access to some shares would be a
good idea as we may want to provide utilities for download in the future.
- Matt mentioned that there may be some technical issues with keeping both
anonymous access to some shares and user-level access to others (e.g. homedirs), and
will look into it.
- Privacy:
- Ian had previously promised to draft a privacy policy for Hal and was duly prodded.
- The Hal privacy policy may be written in conjunction with the CSG's, but there
will be distinct differences.
- Privacy of users' personal data cannot be guaranteed, and we should recommend
users encrypt sensitive files.
- We could provide a link / download of a Windows-based encryption app.
- IRCd on Hal?
- This was suggested as Kern has been having stability problems lately.
- It was pointed out that Hal isn't particularly stable either.
- A 3-way network with Kern (SRCF) and Zeus (JCN) was suggested.
- Choice of IRCd:
- Malcolm suggests Bahamut (as currently used on Kern); this requires recompilation
to change options but got right (i.e. not like Kern) then it can be good
- Jeff suggests Unreal-IRCd, as he knows others who use it and claims it is
reliable and featureful.
- There may be interoperability issues between different IRCds if we form a network.
- Ed proposed a vote on whether we should form an IRC network; the remainder of the committee
voted unanimously in favour.
- Liason with SRCF and JCN: Malcolm and Matt
- Discussion of migration to new Hal (how, when, etc.)
- The changeover procedure was clarified, primarily by Stu: it rougly amounts to
announcing downtime, disabling logins on old hal, rsync'ing data across, and ensuring
new Hal takes over old Hal's IP address.
- Some system settings must be changed on new Hal before it goes live, e.g. modules
and network interface name (old hal has bond0, new hal has eth0 - though we could equally
move a network card from old hal to new hal for a bonded interface, like old hal, to produce
better network performance).
- The changeover will be left till the end of the exam period (after Malcolm's last exam).
- We should ask users if they will be needing Hal for critical exam-related work during this
time before deciding on downtime.
- What's happening to old Hal?
- Jeff suggests installing Gentoo, and is subsequently derided. He claims this was just
to uphold and reinforce his reputation as a mad Gentoo advocate.
- Old Hal or Lah could be used as a backup server for new Hal: nightly snapshots being taken
of Hal whilst running, then being dumped to tape by the backup server.
- Issues with Lah and SCSI: the SCSI controller apparently thinks it's in an x86 box, which
causes interesting behaviour. Also SCSI bus termination is dodgy, which may be an issue with
either the SCSI controller or the tape drive; need to figure out which.
- Lah might need more RAM for running the backup; it currently has 32mb.
- Expenditure may be able to come out of the Hal budget (significantly larger than the THCS
budget) as the "JCR web server backup solution".
- If Lah becomes the backup server, old Hal could be a non-CUDN service, i.e. connected to
the Redstone DSL link. It could then provide services such as MX (eliminating the need for
dependence on the SRCF) and other externally-available services (Ben suggests CVS).
- Treasury details clarified from the AGM
- Hal and THCS have separate budgets from the JCR; the former as the JCR web server, and the
latter as a college society.
- Hal should have a sub-account of the JCR bank account (held at Barclays)
- THCS is not big enough to warrant a bank account (receipts are instead submitted to the
JCR at the end of each year and are reimbursed)
- The matter of donations was raised; it was agreed that they should not go into the bank
account as the JCR could then claim the money. Instead they should go into petty cash.
- Ian mentions he has secure storage for petty cash as he is also treasurer of the UBC
- The treasurer and/or secretary should be issued with a receipt book to track petty cash
transactions.
- AOB:
- Issue of power for the June event
- Last year a large cable was run through OSEC, without any care being taken for the servers;
as a consequence Diamond nearly fell off its shelf.
- It would be ideal if we could move servers into the rack before then; however this may not
be possible.
- It was agreed that some people who are not going to the June event should look after OSEC.
- JCR Lists - issue raised, but this is a CSG matter rather than THCS.
- JCR Website - THCS "manage" this, i.e. sort out the technical side (server, services, updating the website with text provided by the JCR) but not the content side. A new JCR webmaster should be appointed sometime.
- Post-exam LAN party
- Jeff attempted to raise this issue but was superceded by Steve.
- Thursday before May Week would be an ideal time. Suggestion of the Crescent Room.
- We will ask Eric if we can borrow the Loan PCs for this purpose.
- Steve will take responsibility for this.
- Publicity report
- Adam claims that publicity should be done online, therefore he can continue despite
the absence of the long-awaited colouring pencils.
- Adam condemns the previous president for nominating him as publicity officer in his absence.
- Nothing publicity-wise has happened yet; Adam explains this with "I didn't want to do this job,
fuck you".
- We need to advertise the SMB services discussed earlier.
- Matt suggests a publicity think-aquarium; Adam states that a think-tank will suffice.
- Thus followed a nonsensical discussion regarding amphibians and matchboxes...
- Stu suggests a poster campaign with Static and "this bear needs you".
- Ed closed the meeting.
