DICE Meeting 2002-02-19

Agenda

1. Actions Arising from Minutes of meeting of 2002-02-05
2. Primary and Secondary Groups; their Usage and Management (Simon)
3. Ordering Linux 7.1 PCs (Alastair)
4. Review of Reports

Decisions

1. Primary groups There would be just two primary groups; one for real users and one for daemon-like pseudo-users. Test accounts that require a full user environment would fall into the first category.
2. Secondary groups We will continue to need secondary groups to control access to the file system (until the latter is replaced). Some predefined secondary groups will be derived from roles.

Actions

1. Actions Arising: Toby to tag the cvs versions of the reports that date from Monday evening 2002-02-18.
   [Toby]
2. Actions Arising: CEG to discuss machine purchase mechanism.
   [Alastair/Jeremy/Ken]
3. Actions Arising: Toby and Simon to look into printing requirements for the authorisation model.
   [Toby/Simon]
4. Actions Arising: Morna to investigate potential problems with the EUCS mail service.
   [Morna]
5. Reports/Documentation: How DICE and LCFG components/documentation are split. Carried forward.
   [Alison]
6. Reports/Common home directories:Add notes about firewall/netgroup issues wrt to filesystem exporting. Carried forward.
   [George]
7. Reports/Common home directories:Need to sort out lists of trusted machines for exporting to. Carried forward.
   [George]
8. Reports/Filesystem Maps: Need a way to pick up RPMs; access to mirror servers required (????) Alastair to mail Bill. Carried forward.
   [Alastair]
9. Ordering Linux 7.1 PCs: Anybody who will need a Linux 7.1 PC in the next few weeks should mail Alastair to let him know as he is about to order a batch of these.
   [All]
10. Reports/Misc: Report writers should aim to have reports ready by 09:00 on the Monday immediately preceeding the DICE Deployment meeting.
    [All]
11. Reports/Misc: Jeremy should publish to the web a PDF version of the composite report on a daily basis so that others can read most of the updates well before the DICE Deployment meetings
    [Jeremy]
12. Reports/Misc: Anybody wishing to comment on the reports should inform cos@informatics on the Monday morning preceeding the DICE Deployment meeting.
    [All]
13. Reports/Applications at Forrest Hill/South Bridge: Gordon will carry out a survey of MSc module software requirements.
    [Gordon]
14. Reports/Authorisation: Simon is to publish which resources om requires.
    [Simon]
15. Reports/Beowulf: Iain should rewite the report to describe a minimum Beowulf service and a full Beowulf service.
    [Iain]
16. Reports/LCFG technology: All maintainers of LCFG components should do a minimum conversion.
    [All]
17. Reports/Mail issues: The Mail Issues and Common Home Directories teams need to coordinate/synchronise the mail server system redirects from secondary sites to primary sites.
    [Roger/Jeremy/Neil/Craig]

Minutes

1. Actions Arising from Minutes of meeting of 2002-02-05
   1. KDC/LDAP master: sorting login issue [Tim]. Done.
   2. Tasks/Actions/Timescales: Send round a template for report change summaries. [Jeremy] Done.
   3. Tasks/Actions/Timescales: Send round a template for actions. [Jeremy] Done.
   4. Tasks/Actions/Timescales: Circulate magic for getting CVS to tag the latest changes [Simon ] Done.
   5. Tasks/Actions/Timescales: Tag the reports repository every meeting. [Jeremy] Toby will tag it this time.
      [ACTION: Toby]
   6. Tasks/Actions/Timescales: Alter schedule on deploy page. [Jeremy] Done
   7. Reports/Misc: decide what/when WRT machine purchase [Alastair/Jeremy/Ken] Initial purchase dealt with under Ordering Linux 7.1 PCs the other aspects carried forward
      [ACTION: Alastair/Jeremy/Ken]
   8. Reports/Misc: make OM overview document available [Jeremy] Now available as http://www.dice.informatics.ed.ac.uk/doc/newom.html
   9. Reports/Printing: check authorisation model is adequate. [Toby ] Toby and Simon are looking into this.
      [ACTION: Toby/Simon]
   10. Reports/Mail:talk to posties about delivery performance to ed.ac.uk. [Morna] Morna has spoken to Craig and Neil about this and it seems that there might be a problem with the EUCS mail server(s). Morna to investigate further.
       [ACTION: Morna]
   11. Reports/Mail: make new proposal about how legacy mail addresses will be handled and circulate [Jeremy/Neil/Craig/Morna] The mail report has been updated to include the proposal.
   12. Reports/Documentation: Release management to be clarified [Paul] There will be no formal releases of the DICE software. There will be regular (daily?) snapshots of the list of which RPM versions make up the current default version of a DICE installation.
   13. Reports/Documentation: How DICE and LCFG components/documentation are split. Carried forward.
       [ACTION: Alison]
   14. Reports/Common home directories:Add notes about firewall/netgroup issues wrt to filesystem exporting. Carried forward.
       [ACTION: George]
   15. Reports/Common home directories:Need to sort out lists of trusted machines for exporting to. Carried forward.
       [ACTION: George]
   16. Reports/Filesystem Maps: Need a way to pick up RPMs; access to mirror servers required (????) Alastair to mail Bill. Carried forward.
       [ACTION: Alastair]
2. Primary and Secondary Groups; their Usage and Management (Simon)

   After some discussion it was agreed that there would be just two primary groups; one for real users and one for daemon-like pseudo-users. Test accounts that require a full user environment would fall into the first category. It was also agreed that we will continue to need secondary groups to control access to the file system (until the latter is replaced). Some predefined secondary groups will be derived from roles.

   Neil will decide with the Account Management Procedures team which secondary groups are needed.

   [ACTION: Neil]
3. Ordering Linux 7.1 PCs (Alastair)

   Anybody who will need a Linux 7.1 PC in the next few weeks should mail Alastair to let him know as he is about to order a batch of these.

   [ACTION: All]

4. Review of Reports

   The actions associated with reports were discussed. Brief summaries are below.

   Misc:

   Report writers should aim to have reports ready by 09:00 on the Monday immediately preceeding the DICE Deployment meeting.

   [ACTION: All]

   Jeremy should publish to the web a PDF version of the composite report on a daily basis so that others can read most of the updates well before the DICE Deployment meetings

   [ACTION: Jeremy]

   Anybody wishing to comment on the reports should inform cos@informatics on the Monday morning preceeding the DICE Deployment meeting.

   [ACTION: All]

   Account Management Technology:

   Neil to supply Tim with details of LDAP data to be held.

   [ACTION: Neil]

   Applications at Buccleuch Place:

   Roger has started a survey of BP users to generate list of required applications.

   Applications at Forrest Hill/South Bridge:

   Gordon will carry out a survey of MSc module software requirements.

   [ACTION: Gordon]

   Authorisation:

   Local om is now done but it is dependent on there being an authorisation system.

   Simon is to publish which resources om requires.

   [ACTION: Simon]

   Beowulf:

   Iain should rewite the report to describe a minimum Beowulf service and a full Beowulf service.

   [ACTION: Iain]

   LCFG technology:

   All maintainers of LCFG components should do a minimum conversion.

   [ACTION: All]

   Mail issues:

   The Mail Issues and Common Home Directories teams need to coordinate/synchronise the mail server system redirects from secondary sites to primary sites.

   [ACTION: Roger/Jeremy/Neil/Craig]

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