Minutes of AGM Sunday 23rd October 2005

 

Mad Hatter Hotel, Waterloo 2:00pm

 

Present

 

David

Jahingo

Jonathan

Michael

Peter

Richard

Steve

Time Rowe (prospective new member)

 

Apologies

 

Alan

Andy Genovese

Andy Henson

D-Fuse

 

Absent

 

Satnam

 

 

Minutes from Previous Meeting and Matters Arising

 

From the year-before last’s AGM:

 

Andy Henson to put Edith's old RAM in the post to unsuspecting IT master.

 

 

From last year’s AGM:

 

The Big IP Number Switch – some members seem to be referring to old IP addresses in their vhost.conf.

 

Action: Stuart to provide a list of the offenders.

 

 

Firewall on Alice: It was agreed we should have the same firewall rules for Alice as we do for Edith.

 

Action: JBB to post a list of all the ports being used on Alice, with a view to members’ claiming these. We can then consider shutting off the rest.

 

 

Agenda Items

 

 

Members’ Subscription for 2006

 

It was agree that the membership for 2006 would be £150.00 + VAT  (£176.25 incl). This it to include a contribution to the Development Fund for a new machine of £40.00 (unchanged from last year), and a contingency fund contribution.

 

Do we keep Edith?

 

It was agreed that the club does not need two servers performing the same role. Alice has adequate capacity to accommodate all members for at least the life of our RHEL support contract (approx. 3 years). We do, however, need the capacity to host secondary mail, DNS and (possibly) configuration backups.

 

It was further agreed that by the time our RHEL installation needs upgrading, we should have enough in the development fund to cover the purchase of a new server. It was assumed that we would be able to install this new machine off-line, copying data onto it at Telehouse (thus entailing only a short period of down time).

 

The final decision of what to do with Edith was then deferred, pending the following actions:

 

1. Pay for the hosting of Edith at Loud & Clear up to the end of the next payment quarter: January 9th 2006.

 

2. Begin the migration of all services off Edith onto Alice by January 9th.

 

3. In the intervening time, research and develop the following options to inform the final decision:

 

a). Retaining Edith at Loud & Clear as a locked-down secondary server for mail and DNS only (plus any other agreed services necessary such as rsync).

b). Moving Edith to another network/provider in the above configuration.

c). Discarding Edith and taking another hosting service (eg Bytemark).

d). Discarding Edith and taking a 3rd party service for secondary MX and DNS only.

 

(Richard noted that having secondary services on the same network as the primary (as Edith is currently) was not optimal. We all bought that for a dollar!)

 

Action: Tom and Stuart volunteered to lead the research into the above options, but all members are invited to stuff their oar in too.

 

Action: ALL MEMBERS TO VACATE EDITH BY JANUARY 9th, 2006.

 

 

Departing Members

 

The Seven Year Itch has taken its toll with three members declaring their resignation from the club: Ian Westbrook, Amanda Machinemaid and Satnam Singh-Loyal (the latter communicating his decision after the AGM). It was agreed that these members had been solid and upstanding participants in the club, and we wish them all the best.

 

We remind these members that their contracted period of use the Hatters’ facilities is now formally at an end, and that they should take steps to move any assets they have on the servers as soon as convenient. Their accounts were agreed to be terminated in due course.

 

 

New Members

 

We agreed to accept a new member, Tim Rowe. After some discussion about The Formula for New Joiners, it was agreed that the initial capital contribution had been made several years ago by others (some of whom have left) so Tim should not be made to contribute more than the agreed membership feel applicable to existing members for the forthcoming Hatters Year.

 

(Secretary’s note: Tim will be given access to the facilities on receipt of his payment.)

 

 

Replacement Assistant Treasurer

 

It was agreed that Richard Dalaway replace Ian W’s role as assistant secretary. All this means in practice is that Richard will have the power to counter-sign cheques drawn on the club’s account.

 

Does Alice Need More RAM?

 

It was agreed that if it does, we can use the contingency fund to buy some when/if that becomes apparent. Alice can probably accept another 6Gig as far as we know.

 

Should We Enable IP6?

 

It was agreed that seeing as IP6 support is not regarded as being unstable in RHEL, so we could enable it on one or more interfaces. It if causes problems we can always turn it off.

 

 

AOB

 

Not all users of Edith are configuring their mail accounts to store mail on /home. This is contributing to /var filling up.

 

Action: JBB to change the createmail.sh script to put the necessary gubbins for this in, and post instructions for migrating existing accounts to the new config.

 

Are backups happening in the way they should? Probably, but JBB said he would check.

 

 

The meeting was then called to an end.