Operational Meeting

Alison

These were accepted.

Actions completed:

• Make platspec header entries explicitly SL5
• Mail users re. fail2ban

Actions added:

• ALL to consider the consequences of doing an EVO upgrade during the Forum power-down
• Roger to take the points raised during the "end-user documentation" discussion back to the project group.

Matters arising from actions:

• Ian will correlate information on FibreChannel use passed to him by the Services and Managed-Platform Units.
• The F12 port is pretty much there, though there's still a pam-stack thing to be sorted out.
• Neil will circulate a list of servers which appear to him still to need to use amd.

Report from Computing Executive Group

Nothing to report.

Reports from units.

• Infrastructure.

• Managed Platform.

• Research and Teaching.

• Services.

  3. New tape library

     There are likely to be FibreChannel issues, as each tape unit has its own connection, and it's intended to keep the old library running for a while. Craig is in discussions with Ian about possible workarounds.

  6. Update of KB EVO firmware

     Craig floated the idea of upgrading the EVO firmware during the Forum power-down. All to consider the consequences.

• User Support.

Topics for discussion

1. End-user documentation

   Roger led a discussion on the proposed documentation site mock-up, which the project's Focus Group had found to be generally acceptable. Various points were raised:

   • Were the categories right? The Focus Group thought they were reasonable, though the names might change. We wondered how some topics might be categorised. It would be helpful if topics could appear in multiple categories, and even better if there were tools by which items could be tagged in some way so as to appear automatically in the corresponding categories. An (alphabetical) index page would also be very useful, again automatically generated.
   • The Focus Group preferred the lack of descriptive text in the front-page boxes, along with "hover" popups. We weren't so sure. Icons might help with the starkness too.
   • Is the left-hand menu bar necessary, at least on the front page? How should it be sorted? Should its sort-order match that of the front-page boxes?
   • Indeed, how should those front-page boxes be ordered?
   • The status column currently only appears on the "service desk" page. Should it appear on any (all?) others? How should the status be displayed?
   • Where does this front page link in? Does it link off the "systems" page? Does it link in place, with that page linked off it? Do the two merge? We didn't come to any conclusions on this. For further study!

   Roger will take these back to the project group.

AOCB

1. Disappearing AFS tokens

   A few people had noticed that when they ssh into ssh.inf (ratz) and then try to send mail, they find that sometimes they have lost the ability to write to their home directories. It looks like it only happens on ratz, and only AFS tokens (not Kerberos tickets) are affected. It doesn't seem to be a new problem. Hmmm.

2. CVS vs. SVN

   Should we be moving packages from cvs to svn? Iain pointed out that the old buildtools won't be ported to F12/13, so it's essential that this conversion at least is done asap.

The next meeting should be on Wednesday 14th July in room 4.31; but watch this space...