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02.12.96

Open Computing Facility Board of Directors meeting

February 12, 1996

Attendance Board of Directors

Ed Chang Erik Agee Connie Chow Elaine Chao (General Manager) Jennifer Snider Tom Cheng Michael J. McElligott Michael Constant (Site Mgr) Rune Stromsness Kennish Nishimoto Alan Coopersmith Wang Lam Meeting Highlights

  • The Site Manager reports that all OCF equipment is up and running (as of the time of the report). (See Site Manager's Report.)

  • The OCF will participate in the student group open house in March.
    (See New Business.)

  • OCF revives its PCs versus Sparcs debate for a rehash--this week only! (See Special Treat.)

Announcements

  • Kenji Hubbard missed his second Board meeting, and was therefore dropped from the Board. In a related note, the Site Manager appointed Erik Agee to fill the position of Sparc Manager which Kenji held. (Repeated in the section Sparc Manager's Report.)

  • Secretary's note: This has changed since the conclusion of the meeting.
    Please see Corrections.

General Manager's Report

  • The General Manager reports she has completed her proposal to Information Systems and Technology (IST) to have the OCF stay in the basement of Evans Hall, and she expects to turn it in this week.

  • On the issue of offering first pick of OCF's equipment at Excess and Salvage to the Computer Science Undergraduate Association (CSUA). The vote passes 5-0-2 (five for; none against; two abstain); the General Manager promises to contact the CSUA.

Site Manager's Report

  • Plague (OCF's mailserver) is up; typhoon (OCF's main server) crashed but was rebooted, and appears to be working. Cause of crash remains unknown.

  • Two staff were added, George Gong and Ahilan Anantha .

  • Secretary's note: This is incorrect. The second new staff member was David Tang . (Repeated in Corrections at the end of these minutes.)

Sparc Manager's Report

  • The Site Manager appoints Erik Agee to fill the Sparc Manager position formerly held by Kenji Hubbard .

  • Secretary's note: This has changed since the meeting. Please see Corrections.

  • The new Sparc Manager will talk to Kenji Hubbard to catch up on what he has been doing.

  • Dan Holliman will take of setting up the IRC server (a Sparc), tenatively named pestilence.

Old Business

  • Reregistration software: no report.

  • Netras offer received, prices "fair" (--Elaine Chao ). Issue pushed to new business.

New Business

  • The Board expresses an interest for the OCF to participate in the student group open house on Tuesday, March 5 in Eshleman Hall, hopefully it will provide exposure for the OCF.

  • Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) persists in requesting to borrow unused hard disk external cases ("shoeboxes") from the OCF. Jennifer Snider notes that TCS and OCF already had an arrangement concerning the shoeboxes, but that HKN could talk to TCS to obtain. Wang Lam reports HKN somehow never received them.

  • Secretary's disclosure note: Wang Lam is coincidentally (or maybe not), the Computing Services co-chair of HKN (and was therefore pushed to bringing this up), a member of the Board, and the secretary writing your minutes. (Can you say, "conflict of interest?" :) )

  • The Disk Usage Management Board (DuMB) was created for spring 1996. Elected into the DuMB were Alan Coopersmith , Rune Stromsness , and Jennifer Snider .

  • Thomas Cheng proposes moving the Board meeting to a south campus location to attract more general users to attend, on an experimental basis. Under general consensus, Elaine Chao notes she'll try it.

  • One user's account was shut off for going over quota, but the user had not accumulated the minimum five quota points. The Site Manager notes this situation has been corrected.

Special Treat - PCs versus Sparcs

  • Michael Constant and Ken Nishimoto propose that the Board purchase Pentium-based machines for OCF's migration, instead of the Sun Sparcs discussed in the last meeting.

  • While the debate was supposedly settled last semester by a quorum vote, Michael Constant and Ken Nishimoto note that the situation has changed since then: the price/power ratio has changed, and Ken is able to get discounts on Pentium-based machines.

  • The secretary attempts to reconstruct major arguments for PCs and Sparcs below. Some are recaps of arguments from last semester.

For Pentiums For Sparcs

approximate quotes: (generic) approximate quotes: (Tatung) $6700 - Pentium/133 - 192MB/4GB $6738 - Sparc20/75 - 32MB/1GB 1MB supercache

More computing power for money. There are 192MB RAM on this thing. I/O is more important, and Suns has its Ethernet built-in. And architecture faster than PCI. We already have Sun equipment, software. New version of Solaris for PCs not PCs can't mesh with existing equipment yet tested, could be stable. stably. Sun donations easier to come by. Can mount moby on Suns. Campus offers support for Suns. Modular upgrading available.

  • A Pentium/133 is about as fast as a Sparc20/75, counting the 10% benchmark error Intel found that boosted Pentium ratings.

  • The Pentium can handle all the users, so that we could afford to support all of the OCF on that one machine. (We could "go UCLink.")

  • The vote on this issue is postponed by Board consensus until the next Board meeting, so that Board members could attend an upcoming Unix trade show. (As a historical note, this trade show was how OCF got its first donation of Apollos.)

Miscellaneous

  • Michael Constant counted up OCF's users in four different ways, and got four different numbers for the Mid-Year Report. 12,700 home directories (but there are a few duplicates) 12,100 entries in the registry (the user/password/shell info list) 11,700 entries in the registry in org ocf.ucb, general users 11,150 of 11,700 above have accounts not deactivated

  • Jennifer Snider reminds Elaine Chao that she has the option of rewriting OCF's mission statement.

  • Jennifer Snider notices that the OCF home page was momentarily turned black (without an official OCF decision). She emphasizes that the OCF does not and cannot take a political stand, since it would violate Smith vs. Regents.

  • Rune Stromsness and Jennifer Snider were added to the Board, with no objections.

Corrections (after the meeting)

  • In the last issue of the Board minutes, there was an error concerning space for the OCF next year. The Board believes it likely the OCF will stay in the WEB (Evans basement) next year, pending the submission of the General Manager's proposal to Information Systems and Technology (IST).

  • In this issue of the Board minutes, the Site Manager did not properly name the two staff members added to group approve. The new staff are George Gong and David Tang .

  • In this issue of the Board minutes, the Site Manager had Erik Agee replace Kenji Hubbard's position as Sparc Manager. The Site Manager reports that he actually intended to appoint them co-Sparc managers, and will clarify the issue at the next Board meeting.

Respectfully submitted, Wang Lam OCF Board of Directors and OCF Board Secretary February 12, 1996