OCF Board of Directors (BoD) Meeting 30 October 2003
Tonight's BoD Present (y/n)?¶
akopps n jkit y eleen y geo y remlluf y cpfeyh y jones y elliot y sajmm n yonathan n mbh y njstahl n phlee y kitajun n
Total members: 14 Needed for Quorum: 10 Present: 9
Tonight is First Consecutive Absence¶
akopps sajmm yonathan njstahl kitajun
Tonight is Second Consecutive Absence¶
(n/a)
Present but not on BoD¶
kaisenl
BoD for Next Meeting Name Absenses going into this mtg
akopps 1
jkit
eleen
geo
remlluf
cpfeyh
jones
elliot
sajmm 1
yonathan 1
mbh
njstahl 1
phlee
kitajun 1
Total Members: 14 Needed for Quorum: 10
Minutes
GM Message Paper and toner Paper and toner is located in the big filing cabinet next to the desk and printer
The key to this cabinet is in the lockbox near the medium
sized filing cabinet
Printing Alias
We've been using the pimp@OCF e-mail
We should start using the printing@OCF e-mail
printing@OCF used to bounce messages sent to it
this has been fixed
Wireless Access
ASUC wirelesss has been set up by Fullmer
It's done but is not ready yet because it
has to "gel"
This wireless is not airbears
It's not a closed network, it should just
show up on your computer without
special access
Air Conditioning
Was supposededly fixed but is actually not
Jimmy is working on it
If you need AC but the circuit breaker has tripped,
e-mail sm@OCF or gm@OCF
Account Names
Put the exact name off of UCB ID onto the account forms
and into the approve script
Must have the full name off the card, feel free to add
nicknames, but *no less than full name from ID card*
This problem will be solved soon by using CalNet user IDs
- Using CalNet, full name is not private info
- Eventually we'll have login via CalNet and
be able to reset password online
Printer Settings
Users currently have ability to delete their printer
settings, especially on the Macs
How do we restrict modification to printer settings?
Paper Theft
Don't let users steal paper from the printer.
Scanner
We have a good scanner. It works.
It's hooked up to the Dell in the Southwest corner
SM Message Do we have toner on order? (Unknown/No answer) Is there a way to check how many pages have been printed using current toner cartridge?
- There is an absolute page counter, you can
record how many pages have been printed when you
replace the cartridge
- Then subtract that number from the number
of pages currently printed
When was the last time the printer was serviced?
No one knows.
A staff member got mad and quit OCF staff
Good for him.
Getting more responsibility and access at OCF
jones: If you're in the lab enough and it would
be useful there's no problem getting more access
If you use it for the power for good.
Reading logs and have access = no problem
E-mail Devin or talk to him at meetings
ASUC Cluster
1 computer has been installed in ASUC cluster
Couldn't figure out how to make other computers work
Devin has decide he hates NIS+ and wants to do away
with it.
NIS+ Replacement: LDAP
NIS+ is old and unsupported. Documentaiton doesn't
make sense, and there is no documentation on OCF's
implementation of NIS+
LDAP is NIS+'s replacement. LDAP is:
- Being used by campus to distribute public
and private info
- Better.
- Useful for other things like
- Authentication with CalNet
- Allowing users to self-service
password changes
There are other people on campus working on LDAP
Devin will also work on it
There is a campus committee on LDAP
Not only for CalNet
Just about LDAP in general
There's a majordomo list
LDAP is built into new Microsoft software
- Is it made by microsoft?
- It's supported by Microsoft and Apple
- Designed to be interoperable between systems
- So we don't have to make homegrown connections
(i.e. between NIS+ and Samba)
Purchases
More RAM for servers?
ASUC's money was frozen
- We don't get our cash until they elect a lot of new
people
We're currently left with $2814
Phone bill will be $360 max
Fullmer needs an invoice for the Dell for $600 to reimburse OCF
and forms to deal with purchose of old AC unit
Webcam
Cheap capture card has been found
Willing to try it
SSL Certs
Some certs found for about $100
but some cheap certs aren't recognized
by all software
Hopefully will cost $200-300 max
- our e-mail cert needs to be good
- i.e. more expensive
- b/c e-mail cert needs to be
recognized by everyone
- webserver cert onlyl needs to cover 90%
of browsers
- not as big of a deal as e-mail cert
Power supply for Athlon box in server room
We need one.
SM Contingency FUnd
- So SMs can just buy stuff
- We can't get quoroum often enough, so SMs need
some leeway to make purchases fast, if need be
- Has this contingency fund been routinezed somewhere?
Software (UNIX):
- Our UNIX software is out of date
- remove mozilla and netscape
- get Firebird
- abiworld - old
- GAIM - old
- install via packages
- look around for where to install
- opt/local/package
- opt/src/user
- jones will show mbh how to do this.
- mbh knows how to configure blackbox to look nice
- cpfeyh says: always test stuff, don't ever take down
something that works.
- jones: standard procedure is to install in
a new directory and ask people to try it out
Software (Windows):
- If you want to work on the windows machines,
and are comfortable administrating them,
talk to jones about the administrator password
- Things to install:
- Powerpoint, OpenOffice, Exceed
- We need to update the Gateway hard disk image
- We can do this as a day when people
learn how do a clean new windows installation
- We have a Samba mounted windows directory with
an entire image in it.
- Things to uninstall?
- McAfee (Dells) - is this auto-updating?
- Replace with Norton?
- We have a campus license for Norton
- E-mail ideas of things to install to staff@OCF
Proxy
- The library has classified OCF as on campus
- Thus disabled proxy access
- CNS has classified OCF as insecure
- Thus has disabled full access to campus network
- This is technically correct.
- Thus we currently do not have full access to the library's
resources.
- Someone needs to talk to the library and get them to give
us proxy access.
- Tell users "we're working on it."
Spam
- War has been running really high loads b/c of SpamD
- spamd is CPU intensive
- Jeremy's been talking about making the new spamd server
- Our mail server is running slow
- worst case: messages being delayed several hours
- Other people have been taking care of this
besides Devin
- People have been disabling spam-assassin
if the server load gets too high
- SpamAssassin
- Marks a message as spam or not
- If deactivated, no spam is marked.
- You filter to check for spam marking level
and decide wat to do w/spam
- The spam server's being worked on and
is almost done (thanks to Jeremy)
Printing
- Dells are having problems selecting double-sided printing
- Bem says this is a driver problem.
- Printing Accounting
- 6-up double sided pages count as 12 pages
- simply dividing by 2 doesn't work
- people are becoming more aware of this issue
- who knows how to fix this stuff?
- What do we tell users?
- You can't sell paper to users.
- jones: could we make this legit?
- jkit: As long as it doesn't go in
your own pocket!
- we've researched this in the past and
decided against it
- cpfeyh: we'd have to send people to the
4th floor accouting offices
- Integrate with CalOne debit plan or CARS?
- remlluf: The debit card hardware is
already installed in the building.
- You would just need to
install a card swiper
in the OCF lab.
- Talk to Greg Snow @ rescomp
- Quota Error Messages (or lack thereof)
- When you're out of quota it kills your job
and doesn't tell you why.
- We need to notify users that they're out of
print quota.
- We could just make people aware to check their quota.
- Print History Checker
- Why don't we have one?
- Why is our print history a secret?
- The logs are hidden away on supernova
- The print history doesn't show filenames
- Does show who printed when.
Documentation
- Write down all questions and how you solved them.
- Wiki
- Need to research security options
for restricting editing and viewing
- Intelligibility
- Users have not been understanding all
of our helpful responses.
- Surveys?
- We need to survey users to figure out
which explanations are useful and which
are not.
- Then evaluate responses
Passwords
- We need to emphasize strong passwords.
- People think OCF is just a printing account,
they don't relaize that the account will exist forever
is a full shell access acount.
- They don't realize an unbreakable password
is important.
- Jeremy has been running a password checker w/sorry
- Devin: It's safe to tell users that if they pick
a bad password that their accounts imght be turned
off.
Service, Windows Machines and User Quality in the modern age
People expect a certain level of service...
The kind of level of service where they don't
know anything and expect themselves to not know anything.
We didn't used to have Windows.
- Windows is good, but
90% of our users are exclusively interested
in Windows and free printing.
This is bad.
It detracts from our ability to provide good service
if we're constantly dealing with everyone's
stupid issues.
Consider the following: No windows machines?
No printing? No free printing?
Free printing is the jackpot for most users.
They're willing to get an OCF account solely
for the free printing, and ignore everything else.
What is exactly *is* everything else we do?
- ASUC and everyone else loves
our free printing
What is our purpose?
Besides free printing?
These days, none of our services
are unique.
If we drop our newbie windows services
we'll be declared a geek club and screwed.
ASUC will never let us use MLK.
If all they want is free printing, they don't
even need/want an account.
But we need accoutning to prevent
print abuse.
Fullmer: We can set up windows to reject
big printing jobs
- Limits abuse
- If you have a really
big job you have to
manually print each
section.
Devin: printing only accounts?
- Crappy passwords owulnd't matter
Patrick: We can try to provide but we're
definitely limited.
It's not worthy getting freaked out
over.
The Dells were never supposed to be Windows.
All windows machines are totally impacted.
Staff can't even sit down.
Our UNIX machines suck.
Devin: Plans to convert Dells to Linux, just to piss
people off!
mbh: We could really nice, user friendly Linux
Xandros
Patrick: have something people use and like
We always fail to converting to Linux b/c of NIS+
ppl complain about geeks and EECS
ASUC tells us we must use windows.
Linux is okay but it's got to be clean enough
for end users.
Problems between NFS and SUN
We are one of the most high profile groups in ASUC AUX
We need to fix our website
What is our desired level of service
Making signs to be useful things for users
jkit: help points--you can only ask for help X number
of times
Question tracking
If the same questions keep coming up
is something broken
or is the process to complex
Fix the computers vs. fix the users
Help pages
Ther's no reason why we have to exist
Online we communite
bBay- it will be our new purpose!