Trinity Hall Computer Society

Minutes of the THCS OGM, 19th November 2005

Present were:

Apologies for absence were sent by:

Adam Biltcliffe purposefully did not send an apology for his absence.

Jeff apologised for his presence.

  1. Ratification of minutes from the previous meeting.
    • As no meeting was held last Easter, the previous meeting was the AGM in Lent. However, the minutes of an AGM must be ratified at an AGM. The minutes from the previous ordinary meeting were not available, but were ratified in absentia.
  2. Threats of hardware donation from Neill.
    • All threats were rejected.
    • Malcolm noted that it is good to have sufficient power to run hardware.
    • Jeff was pleased to see that the committee made a distinction between hardware and useful hardware.
    • Worthwhile hardware will be accepted. However, the society probably needs to get rid of hardware: specifically, the SGI in O is currently not being used and the attic is too full.
    • Hardware donated will be dropped on the foot of the donor. If this is not a problem, the hardware will likely be accepted.
  3. Discussion of LAN party.
    • Corun is not allowed.
    • Saturday 3rd December is unsuitable as Alan will be unable to make it.
    • Various other dates are unsuitable for various reasons.
    • Sunday 4th December may be suitable if the LAN party is held early, as there is a Feeder concert that evening.
    • Otherwise the LAN party would have to take place on a weekday or not in December.
    • Rob has offered to book GSR for the LAN party.
    • It was decided to hold the LAN party on 4th December.
  4. Discussion of bandwidth charging for Hal.
    • The policy of the administrators was summarised as "if a user abuses it, abuse them".
    • There is currently no mechanism for bandwidth accounting. One is needed in case someone uses an excessive amount of bandwidth, as the society would be billed by the JCR.
    • Bandwidth use can currently only be determined per user for Apache.
    • It would be possible to measure bandwidth per user using iptables. However, this would require an entry for every user, which would be painful.
    • Ian suggested that he could implement accounting using "netlink crack", but this would run partly in kernel space.
    • Jeff banned Ian from the kernel.
    • Ian offered to investigate the possibility of a user-space netlink solution.
    • Malcolm was concerned that bandwidth used by sshd might be attributed to root, rather than the user that logged in.
    • The sysadmins agreed to investigate setting up a bandwidth accounting system.
    • The sysadmins agreed that the society should try to absorb bandwidth charges up to a certain level by billing the JCR for bandwidth charges up to the amount usually allowed for societies, if possible. If the charges exceed this amount, all users above a certain threshhold should be billed. That threshhold should be determined by the excess.
    • The treasurer agreed to talk to the JCR about the possiblity of the society billing the JCR.
    • It was (humorously) suggested that a possible source of income might be selling the college's firewall system to other colleges.
  5. Any other business.
    • A proposal was made. However, it was agreed that, while this could be minuted, the proposal itself should not be revealed until the next AGM. No goats are involved.
    • It was agreed that any committee member not present was made of lego.
    • Malcolm was unable to pair with Ian.
    • The life of the secretary continues under sufferance.
    • It was noted that Ian keeps pictures of Jeff on his mobile phone.

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