Open Computing Facility Board of Directors Meeting
         Monday, 5 February 1996

Present at this meeting (BoD members denoted by ): Erik Agee (agee) Kenneth Nishimoto (kennish) Ajay Kapur (ajay) Michael Constant (mconst) Alan Coopersmith (alanc) Rune Stromsness (runes) Andrew Swan (aswan) Thomas Cheng (tomcheng) Elaine Chao (chaos) *Wang Lam (wlam)

General Manager: Elaine Chao Site Manger: Michael Constant

Meeting Agenda: * Announcements * General Manager's Report * Site Manager's Report * Sparc Manager's Report * Old Business * New Business * Additions to the BoD * General Discussion

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Elections for the Disk Usage Management Board (DUMB) are postponed until next week because the announcement was made too late.

Wang Lam (wlam) is appointed secretary. Thomas Cheng (tomcheng) is appointed representative to the Engineers Joint Council (EJC). We are still looking for a minister of propaganda.

GENERAL MANAGER'S REPORT

Five (5) people have volunteered for the general manager's administrative staff.

BoD meetings will be held at 8pm, ever Monday, for the rest of the semester (except during weeks with general meetings).

The IS&T proposal is being worked on.

We will need to prepare a mid-year report, as we have for previous years. Reports from previous years are available on-line.

SITE MANAGER'S REPORT

Typhoon needs to be backed up and reformatted. Most likely, the files will be tar'ed across the network to another machine. We will need to talk to Kenji Hubbard (kenji) about backing up the registry, since that requires special handling.

Printing has been enabled in aisles 10 and 11, with thanks to Ken (kennish). The machines in aisle 9 will also be able to print by the end of this week.

Elaine (chaos) asked if it may be possible to alias lpr to enscript, so that files will be automatically reformatted so that two pages of text will fit on once piece of paper. This will significantly reduce the amount of paper used. Michael (mconst) points out that, as it is, this is not such a good idea because enscript cannot handle PostScript files. We may, however, be able to set it up to print PostScript files using normal pathways, while enscripting everything else.

There are three broken, completely inoperable printers sitting in the printer alcove that need to be disposed of. Since they bear UCB tags, they must be disposed of through Excess and Salvage. Elaine will take care of that.

We will need to break the token ring some time so that we can add Hailstorm to the ring. At the moment, Hailstorm is residing in the printer alcove in aisle 10.

SPARC MANAGER'S REPORT

Kenji will be the Sparc Manager unless he doesn't want to, in which case Erik (agee) will be appointed Sparc Manager. Since Kenji is not present, Erik made the Sparc Manager's report.

We should work on getting our machines back from Amy Baron (amee), who has had them for more than a year.

Dan Holliman (danh) is working on setting up an IRC server on Pestilence.

OLD BUSINESS

An inventory of stuff the OCF has in the warehouse was obtained from Keir Morgan (kmorgan). These machines are useless to us. We can either donate them to other schools or send them to Excess and Salvage. The estimated value of the hardware, as scrap metal, is $2000. That seems to be our best bet. Michael points out that if anyone can take it off our hands and not charge us for it, it will be good enough.

The reregistration software is ready. We can begin testing it as soon as a few logistical details are worked out.

NEW BUSINESS

Ajay (ajay) requests that his account be turned back on. It was disabled at the end of last semester due to a "security breach". There is no record of any of the specifics, however, and no one seems to know anything about it. The most likely possibility is that some malicious person cracked Ajay's account. Given that there is no evidence of wrongdoing, Ajay's account will be turned back on, with the advice that he change his password.

Andrew (aswan) and Kenji came up a concrete plan for a platform migration over the summer. The board has been discussing, for the past several semesters, the details of migrating to another hardware platform--away from Apollos, toward either Suns or Intel-based machines. Andrew and Kenji's plan was sent to the BoD. It was recapitulated during the meeting. Discussion of the plan then followed. +++++++ The most essential services (i.e. the ones we definitely want to deal with during the migration) are: o mail o ftp/gopher/www o remote logins o file service (for home directories) o file service (for binaries and testing)

Currently, we have 3 Sparc 2s, a Sun 4/330, and a bunch of Sparc IPCs. We can devote our 3 Sparc 2s to mail, ftp/gopher/www, and file service.

The problem is in finding machines for remote logins. The IPCs that we have cannot support very many logins (the OCF machines currently have as many as 150 users logged in at a time). We will probably have to invest in a new machine.

If we spend $2000 of our $8000 hardware budget on upgrades (hard disks and memory) for the other machines, we can have $6000 to spend on a machine for logins. A Sparc 20 would be preferable, since it has a better I/O, but we probably won't be able to afford it. We will have to settle for a Sparc 5. The other problem with the Sparc 5 is that its memory modules are not compatible with other machines, so it is more expensive, and if we upgrade to other hardware, we will not be able to use memory modules from the Sparc 5 into the new machine.

Even if we get a new machine, it is still a good idea to keep the IPCs and Apollos around for logins (the Apollos are still good for running X for console logins). Pestilence can be used as a staff machine, for compiling and testing software.

To conclude, we should keep in mind that this solution is not perfect, but it's the best we can do for $8000. We can continue to do more with next year's allocation.

The board generally approves of the Sparc plan. For now, we should get quotes for the hardware. Rune (runes) was appointed to take care of that. +++++++ Ken asks if we're ever going to bring the HP Apollo up. It would be as powerful as any of the machines we have running now. It just seems to be missing a hard disk.

Michael notes that Bigbang needs to be brought back onto the network, since it has some files that we need.

Anonymous FTP and gopher will probably be moved to Pestilence, as soon as it's up and running. This should take some load off Typhoon.

The OCF will remain in the EMF for another year.

ADDITIONS TO THE BOD

Tom is added to the BoD, with no objections.

======================================= The meeting was closed at 9:05 pm, PST.

Respectfully Submitted, T. Thomas Cheng