Minutes of AGM Sunday 26th September, 2004

Mad Hatter Hotel, Waterloo 2:00pm

 

 

Present

Jonathan

Andy Genovese

Peter

Steve

Satnam

David Barton

Jahingo

Richard Dalaway

 

Apologies

D-Fuse

Ian Westbrook (gave proxy to Jonathan)

Michael (the honeymoon kid)

 

Absent

Amanda

Alan

Andy Henson

 

Minutes from Previous Meeting and Matters Arising

 

 

 

We did not know if this had been done or not. Andy – did you do this?

 

 

Naughty JBB forgot. Ian Masters offers to take the reins on that.

 

 

Agenda Items

 

Members’ Subscription for 2005

 

Peter said that he would recommend a subscription of £60.00 for the next year, but Stuart asked if we should add an extra amount to contribute towards the cost of a replacement server over the next five years. This amount was agreed to be £40.00, assuming a price of £2000.00 for a new machine.

 

Action The agreed subscription for 2005 is £100.00 + VAT (£117.50)

 

 

Utilisation of Alice

 

It was agreed to re-state the current intention that we should all eventually move off Edith and on to Alice at some point. There is no fixed deadline for this, but events may conspire to make it happen: for example if Fedora Legacy announce they are dropping support for it, or if the box dies.

 

RAID - hardware/software, what's going on with this?

 

It was felt that the current RAID fault on Alice notwithstanding, we were happy with the RAID on that machine as it is. Moving to hardware RAID (which we did not think was possible in any case), would not bring any noticeable benefit in either speed or reliability.

 

Do we want to retire Edith?

 

This item was covered by the discussion of the first agenda item above.

 

What operating systems do we want to use going forward?

 

It was agreed that we are happy with RHEL on Alice, and RH 7.3 on Edith for the time being. We do not need to make any further decisions on this unless forced to by circumstance.

 

The Big IP Number Switch

 

We need to move all services from their current IP addresses to the new ones given to us by Loud & Clear. The deadline for this is Christmas. It was agreed that the move would be moderately complicated, and that an instruction manual for the change over should be written and posted to the list.

 

Action: JBB to write migration manual that members can use to affect the change.

 

Removal of unneeded software from Alice

 

Stuart asked if we could remove packages from Alice that are not, or are unlikely to be, used. It was agreed that a list of the RPMs on Alice should be posted to the list so that members can suggest candidates for removal.

 

Action: JBB to post list of RPMs to the list.

 

Sendmail to Postfix migration on Alice

 

After an initially successful setup of Postfix on Alice, it was agreed that JBB should complete the migration from sendmail on that machine. Since only two people use Alice as a primary (Jonathan and Peter), it was agreed that this would not be too disruptive.

 

Action: JBB to keep in touch about the migration and help Peter as needed with this.

 

The Sale of Old Alice

 

JBB said that selling Alice whole would be a pain, since the best price we could hope for on eBay would be about £50. It was therefore agreed to establish what kind of prices we might get for the components, and sell them off separately, perhaps giving away what was left.

 

Action: JBB to research prices and progress the sale.

 

Firewall for Alice

 

It was agreed we should have the same firewall rules for Alice as we do for Edith. JBB said that he thought the policy should be that all external ports should be shut off unless members needed specific ones open.

 

Action: Stuart to sort out the firewall on Alice.

 

Trusted Binaries

 

It was agreed that we should shove a CD into each machine with a set of trusted binaries in case we get hacked again.

 

Action: JBB to sort out the burning, testing and insertion of the CDs next time he is in Telehouse.

 

 

The meeting was then called to an end.