Item 109. Minutes of the Board Meeting of Wednesday, September 27, 1995 Steve Weiss (srw) Fri, Oct 6, 1995 (00:33). 306 lines, 7 responses. Minutes of the Board Meeting of Wednesday, September 27, 1995 Z. The meeting was called to order by Valerie Mates at 7:15 PM in the cafeteria of ITI on Hubbard Road. In attendance were the following board members: Valerie Mates (popcorn) - President Steve Weiss (srw) - Secretary Dan Romanchik (danr) - Treasurer John Remmers (remmers), Steve Gibbard (scg) Rane Curl (rcurl), STeve Andre' (steve) And the following members of the public: Jan Wolter (janc), Mark Conger (aruba), Dave Lovelace (davel), Scott Helmke (scott), Rob Argy (ajax) ------------------ Y. Treasurer's report. Danr reported that we have been doing well, and have $3000 in the bank. He expressed concern though, that some of our down months yield insufficient funds to pay our monthly operating costs. Dan suggested that perhaps we should have a membership chair, and push just a little harder to get a broader base of support. Dan announced that he will be filing our required annual report shortly. ------------------ X. 501(c)(3) Committee report Rane Curl reported that there has been no progress. Rane inquired how close we were to the level of $15000 income over 3 years. Dan indicated that for the three years ending with 1995, we will exceed that amount for the first time. ------------------ W. Rehabilitation Committee report Rane reported that he now has 4 to 5 computers set up at his house. He needs to contact the recipients next. He is saturated with hardware, but he does have recipients line up to receive these machines. ------------------ V. Publicity Committee report Misti Anslin was not present but Valerie stated that Misti had reported by email that the "Grex Handbook" that she has been working on is almost done. MOTION: (steve,scg) Allocate $50 for reproduction costs for Misti's "Grex Handbook". PASSED (7-0) ------------------ U. Technical Committee report U1. There was a 24 hour period during which numerous reports came in from people who connected to Grex via dialup and found themselves already logged in as someone else. STeve explained that it was his hope that this was an isolated incident due to a quirk in the OS. STeve said that he had edited ttytab that day while the system was up, which changed the size of utmp. If the system had failed to log people out properly this might have caused it. There have been no repetitions. As a consequence of this problem, Valerie and Scott worked on the modems in an attempt to reduce the contents of the S-10 register. They found that the modems would not remember the setting though, so this effort was in vain. Staff is closing this incident, in the absence of any evidence that it is continuing. U2. Grex has received a gift of a 16 line terminal server. Many, many thanks to Rob Argy (ajax) for this. STeve said he has gone through the documentation, and plans to configure a single line for a terminal (non-modem) to test its function. STeve is only concerned about SunOS throughput if we bring it up before the Sun-4. Nevertheless he plans to experiment with it shortly. Scott Helmke pointed out that we could not use a limitation on ptys to limit access to Grex from the internet if we went to this terminal server, because users of the terminal server will also consume ptys. Staff will think about this one. U3. Telnetd problems - STeve reported that twice now telnetd has failed. Failure of telnetd leaves the system up and everyone who is logged in is unaffected, but no one can subsequently telnet to Grex, as connection will be refused. STeve said he would post in the staff conference the correct way for staffers to restore normal function when this happens. U4. Dungeon Floor problems - there is now a hole in the floor, and STeve is worried about the dust. STeve suggested we might need to use the urethane again. Srw pointed out that tenants had complained about the odor from the last time we did that. Scott pointed out that in some sections the floor has a hollow sound, as if it is not supported properly. If this is the case e can expect cracks in the floor to continue to form. U5. Phone cable on West Liberty Street - STeve reported that he noticed a trio of Ameritech people working on the cable. STeve talked to them and reported that they said the phone line noise problems we have been experiencing are likely to be improved. U6. There is a source for Sun VME cards, who is selling them for $20, although in lots of 5. STeve expressed the desire to pick up some SCSI cards and possibly serial cards. Serial cards may be of no value if we take the terminal server route, though. The board took no action. U7. Heating - With the Sun-4 coming to the dungeon, there will be more need to remove heat from the enclosed area. The plan is to put in a bigger fan and exhaust it directly to the basement. U8. The SUN-4 Software preparation - There are 4 major areas where there is work to be done in preparing software for the Sun-4: (1) Marcus's code - Marcus has the code for sendmail, shadow, login, passwd, picospan, and finger (and perhaps one or two other things). (2) /usr/local/bin - a lot of things have been ported in this area, but STeve promised to make a list of the things that have not been done yet, so that staffers can divide it up and finish the job. (3) Security Patches - CERT and other lists of security patches must be in place, so that we are protected from the vast array of cookbook hackers on the net. (4) Kernel blocking patches - even though we could bring the Sun-4 up without these (Greg has already installed our current blocking patch), many felt that we should hold up the Sun-4 until this has been done, as it is over a year overdue. When the software is ready, the system will be moved to the dungeon, and further testing will be done. The target date for this is the last weekend in October, which is admittedly aggressive. U9. Certain users sharing a single ID have been causing problems on Grex by engaging in obnoxious behavior in party, and by generally harassing other users. Staff reports that these users were identified, and two of the three were interviewed. They expressed remorse for what they had done, or at least for getting caught. Perhaps they learned something valuable from this experience. U10. We installed a circuit breaker clamp to prevent the circuit breaker from being reset manually. It will still reset itself if automatically if overloaded. ------------------ T. Verification Policy - John Remmers passed around a verification policy which he had formulated. A few words were modified, but there was a long discussion about whether it should be possible for trusted people, such as staff, to relay information to the verifier. Ultimately, the wording in this respect was left intact. Here is the final wording of the motion: MOTION: (remmers, steve) (1) Anyone requesting access to Grex services for which verification is required shall present proof of his or her identity. Members and non-members will be held to the same verification criteria. In order to be considered verified, a person shall submit a photocopy of an item of acceptable identification and a signed letter requesting the access. (2) The acceptable items of identification are government-issued ID, school-issued ID, library-issued ID, or a personal check written to Cyberspace Communications Inc. by the person requesting access. To be accepted, the item must be currently valid (i.e. not expired), must identify the person by name, and must include additional identifying information other than a photograph (such as home address, passport number, or name of school). (3) There shall be one individual, referred to hereafter as "verifier", who is responsible for accepting verification requests and ID, notifying the appropriate staff member(s) so that access may be granted if the criteria of (1) and (2) are met, and notifying the requester if the ID is not acceptable. (4) The board shall solicit volunteers and appoint the verifier. The term of office is one year and is renewable. Any verified user is eligible for the post of verifier. If a volunteer for the post is not currently verified, then for the purpose of gaining eligibility he or she may present identification to the board that meets the criteria enumerated in (2). (5) In the case of personal checks submitted to the treasurer of Cyberspace Communications Inc., the treasurer may also verify a user, provided the check meets the criteria of (2) and is accompanied by a signed letter as required in (1). (6) An individual whose request for verification is denied may appeal the decision to the board. The board's ruling on appeals is final. PASSED: 7-0 ------------------ S. Newsletter Report - Rane explained that there are two issues related to newsletter progress. (1) A runoff vote, which John Remmers should arrange to conduct before we need the vote program for a board election, and (2) Getting the editors to start working on the first edition. An email alias now exists - it is: editor@cyberspace.org And it expands to nephi, mta, lilmo, and hross. Articles or ideas for articles should be sent to this address. ------------------ R. Grex Manual - Danr reported that he had taken the summer off, but was gearing up to get started on this once again. There was no progress to report. ------------------ Q. JCC Sale - John Remmers reported that he had rented two tables at the upcoming JCC sale, at the cost of $80. Also Rob Argy has agreed to act as the JCC sale coordinator. Thanks, Rob! MOTION: (popcorn,danr) Reimburse John Remmers $80 for the rental of the tables. PASSED: 6-0 (remmers was temporarily absent and did not vote) ------------------ P. Root Accounts and Dungeon Keys At the last staff meeting the staff voted to recommend three new roots to help with reboots, fsck cleanups, etc. All three are already on staff in one capacity or another. MOTION: (popcorn,steve) Authorize root access for Dave Lovelace (davel), Rob Henderson (robh), and Scott Helmke (scott), and to authorize keys for all root staff. PASSED: 7-0 Commentary: There was some disagreement about whether it was necessary to approve the issuance of keys to people with root, but in order to make sure, that clause was added. Not all authorized keys are actually issued. Only root staff who want and need keys will actually get them. Danr is in charge of keeping track of the keys. ------------------ O. Trade Marks / Service Marks We were running late and decided to skip this item. ------------------ N. New Business N1 (steve) : Steve wanted to set up a group to discuss the next platform after the Sun-4. The board decided not to take any action. N2 (rcurl) : Rane offered this point of information: Rane has submitted an entry for Grex to be listed on the SBI list of privately owned Bulletin Boards. Rane asked if there had been any confirmation to staff mail. There had not. N3 (ajax) : Rob Argy reminded the board that he has a hard drive in our Sun-4, which he had offered to sell to Grex for $500. MOTION: (popcorn,scg) To authorize $500 to reimburse Rob Argy (ajax) for the 1.7GB drive we have been using. PASSED 7-0 N4 (ajax) : Rob asked if staff would be interested in reducing the pty count by a few, in an attempt to experiment with controlling the worst cases of high load. STeve pointed out that the load actually starts to get bad when we have about 30 logged on, and he felt that this would have little effect. The rest of the participants seemed to feel that Rob's suggestion was a good one, because the last few ptys really do seem to make the system even worse than when running at the level STeve would call "slow". All agreed that this was a staff issue, but the sense of the board was that it would work to our advantage if, within limits, we reduced the load even if at the expense of turning people away during the heaviest times. No action was taken. N5 (popcorn) : Valerie reported that although the budget meeting held last Sunday had prioritized the items, prices were not available for all of them, so only a partial set of requests for spending was being offered. She then offered this motion: MOTION: (popcorn, scg): Authorize the purchase of a VME 32MB memory card (max $500) and installation of a staff line ($40 for RJ-11 breakout box, $0 for Ameritech installation, $20/month Ameritech monthly rate). PASSED: 7-0 N6 (popcorn) : Kenn Capman (wolfmage) had sent her some material describing his proposal to raise money for Grex by putting on a show. Some members said that we need to look for any way we can to raise money, but it was late, and there was some concern as to what Grex would need to do to make this happen. This was tabled until next month. M. The meeting was adjourned at 9:45 PM. Respectfully submitted, Steven R. Weiss, Secretary. (srw@cyberspace.org) ----------