DICE Meeting 2002-04-16

Agenda

1. Corrections to minutes
2. Actions Arising from minutes of meeting of 2002-04-02
3. Roles
4. Review of Tasks

Decisions

1. Backups: backup facilities will be required on clients.
2. POP: the mailhub will not support POP access

Actions

• actions carried forward from previous meetings
• actions not under the Review of Tasks section.
• actions from Review of Tasks section that involves someone outside the task.

1. Actions Arising: CEG to discuss machine purchase mechanism. (noted 2002-02-19) Carried forward
   [Alastair/Jeremy/Ken]
2. Actions Arising: Use of XDM and issues of speeding up deployment of DICE (noted 2002-03-05). Carried forward.
   [CEG]
3. Actions Arising: Deployment tasks to notify Alison about types of documents (noted 2002-03-05). Ongoing.
   [All deployment tasks 'owners']
4. Actions Arising: 'Name and shame' list required for those who haven't submitted info on document types.
   [Alison]
5. Actions Arising: local site deployment publicity required.
   [Alastair/Jeremy/Ken]
6. Actions Arising: UUNs: Site managers to arrange to contact users who will need to change their username to warn them
   [Alastair/Jeremy/Ken]
7. Sponsors: feedback on how DB will hold sponsor information (noted 2002-04-02). Ongoing.
   [Ken]
8. MIS feed: check about getting data direct (noted 2002-04-02). Ongoing.
   [Neil]
9. Infrastructure: update tasks list for task renamed to infrastructure (noted 2002-04-02). Ongoing.
   [Jeremy]
10. Quotas: (noted 2002-04-02) proposal forthcoming shortly.
    [Neil]
11. Timetable: provide more detailed schedule for the summer (noted 2002-04-02). Ongoing.
    [Jeremy]
12. Applications Teaching staff to be advised of issues relating to provision of software for next year.
    [Ken]
13. Filesystem Maps: list of standard locations needs to be decided (noted 2002-04-02). Ongoing.
    [George/Bill/Alastair]
14. Common Home Directories: unification of groups to be resolved (noted 2002-04-02). Ongoing.
    [Roger]
15. Handwaving: Backups the backup task needs to be activated for stage 1.
    [Jeremy]
16. Roles: summary of DB output options to be circulated.
    [Ken]

Minutes

1. Corrections to minutes of 2002-04-02

   Filesystem Maps: there will be one component that will handle symlink creation rather than symlinks being created by separate components. This will permit much greater consistency in naming and also allow the structure to be changed easily if required (ie, without having to edit many components). (The decisions section of the last minutes has been changed so this isn't reported incorrectly.)

2. Actions arising from minutes of last meeting (2002-04-02)
   1. Actions Arising: CEG to discuss machine purchase mechanism. (noted 2002-02-19) [Alastair/Jeremy/Ken]
      Carried forward
   2. Actions Arising: List of modules to be published. (noted 2002-02-19). Gordon has started to create this list but further work is required.[Gordon]
      Migrated to task

      The issue of software required for next year needs to be raised with members of teaching staff. To be raised at Curriculum/Teaching Committees as appropriate.

      [Ken]
      p
   3. Actions Arising: Use of XDM and issues of speeding up deployment of DICE. [CEG].
      Carried forward
   4. Actions Arising: Deployment tasks need to notify Alison what types of documents they will be producing. [All deployment tasks 'owners'].
      Ongoing

      There are still very few responses so Alison should create a 'name and shame' list

      [ACTION: Alison]
   5. Actions Arising: DICE deployment publicity: Site managers should make sure that this publicity is provided. [Alastair/Jeremy/Ken]
      Ongoing
   6. Actions Arising: Conversion of accounts to UUN: Site managers should contact those users who will need to change their username to warn them again of the need for the change and should arrange for a list of things to change/look out for. [Alastair/Jeremy/Ken]
      Ongoing
   7. Arrange various cross-group technical meetings. [Alastair]
      Done
   8. Sponsors: feedback on how DB will hold sponsor information [Ken]
      Ongoing

      This information needs to gets collected and collated in the DB. Jeremy to contact support teams and liaise over this.

      [ACTION: Jeremy]
   9. Sponsors: note this task in relevant task document
      Done
   10. UUN queries: check that UUNs really are unique.

       Roger has received a list from EUCS (Christine Rees) and this is being checked

       Done
   11. MIS feed: check about getting data direct.[Neil]

       Neil has liaised with David Lowrie and the feed will be setup in due course.

       Ongoing
   12. converting UUN users: look into redirects back from @inf to legacy.

       There is no technical problem about doing this. (It does not against the original intention that there should be no backwards redirects because these will be under sysadmin rather than user control.)

       Done
   13. Infrastructure: update tasks list for task renamed to infrastructure. [Jeremy]
       Carried forward
   14. @informatics: write case for using @inf instead and suggest to Mike.

       Jeremy wrote the case and Mike has agreed that we should use the @inf form.

       Done
   15. Publicity: mailshot to be sent out with common change information.

       The first of several short newsletters has gone out. These will be roughly weekly or according to publicity needs.

       Done
   16. Quotas: these need to be discussed.

       The Quotas group has met. No controversial issues but they are still resolving final details. Neil will be writing a proposal.

       Ongoing - [Neil]
   17. Timetable: provide more detailed schedule for the summer. [Jeremy]

       This has been started but needs to be distributed and discussed.

       Ongoing
   18. Filesystem Maps: list of standard locations needs to be decided. [George/Bill/Alastair]

       A proposal will be sent to COs before the next meeting.

       Ongoing
   19. Common Home Directories: unification of groups. [Roger]
       Ongoing
   20. LCFG Spanning maps (with host roles): [Paul]

       There is an alpha implementation which is working better than expected. The details have been mailed round and anyone using it is encouraged to check that it will do what they want.

       Done

       There was a review of remaining components that need to be converted and the relevant tables in the LCFG task doc will be updated.

   21. Handwaving: Backups. It was expected that backups would remain the way they are until stage 2. However there are new servers that will need backups, namely mail, web and KDC/LDAP master servers. It was concluded that there will be a need for an backup client. The backup task needs to be activated for stage 1.
       [Jeremy]
3. Roles There was a lengthy discussion of roles prompted by Craig's Defaults/Environments task. The main question was how coarse or fine-grained the roles should be and what conjunctions could be made. The database can produce role information from coarse through to fine (eg student, undergrad, 3rdyearundergrad, CS3 undergrad). Ken will mail Simon with a description of what the DB will produce and see if it is suitable/adequate for the roles function.
   [ACTION: Ken]
4. Review of tasks

   Mailhub

   We will not support POP access. This is in order to:

   • be as similar to the staffmail.ed service so that we can migrate at a later stage
   • to avoid the security problems associated with users using external services to poll POP accounts where their password gets stored in clear on some remote ISP site.

   Legacy (KB)

   Since there will not really be any legacy Solaris hosts at KB, if a user really needs to install to some Solaris-only software they will be given an account on a BP, FH or SB machine as appropriate.

   Rootmail

   There is a problem under DICE with the script that allows a user to be mailed root mail as well.

   [ACTION: Neil/Morna]

   Applications

   Roger and Gordon to liaise more over generating the list of applications.

   [ACTION: Roger/Gordon]

   It was noted there are two versions of Java needed.

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