[tech] Stuff to do...

[Grahame Bowland]

Hi all,

If you've been in the clubroom recently, you'll have noticed the sad state 
of affairs. There's quite a lot that needs doing to make the place better for 
everyone to use. Here's a brief summary, post back with anything I've missed 
or corrections to any stupidity :-)

(The idea is that a list will help us actually _do_ something about it. Not 
everything here can be done by non-wheel members, but it's easier to make 
one list.)

 o NIS - we need a slave machine on each network, as some clients don't 
   support being told what their server is (eg. the NeXT boxes.) Perhaps
   use morayold.
 o Area of the clubroom near the door - we need ethernet over there so that 
   the Sun boxes can become productive. I've started setting up a hub, I 
   should be able to fix that.
 o Install operating systems on:
    o the Sun boxes
    o the purple SGI (magenta?), there is a SCSI harddrive in the machine 
      room for this. We need to get IRIX from somewhere and thanks to JP :)
 o Once this happens, we can put /home onto Scarlet and have 100Mb!
 o Fix router, install the two tulip cards.
 o Door - strange problems. Perhaps modem or black box getting too hot.
 o SOCKS - something strange is happening with Netscape. Investigate :-)
 o NFS - problems, [NTU] knows more...
 o General tidy-up needed, perhaps a Shenton Park run to ditch old monitors 
   and tidy Shenton Park itself. Fix broken monitor cables. (Remember to 
   retrieve the old Be, as someone wanted to do a project using it.)
 o Erwin - write a `poor students' (we are!) letter to SGI. Plead for tech 
   support so people can see how cool SGI stuff is.
 o Install a bathroom style ventilator fan in the roof of the machine room.
   That way the air conditioner will cycle air through the room, not out 
   the window immediately.
 o Licensing - make sure we follow up the server license for morwong and the 
   workstation license for centuri.
 o Fix the bizarre problems with new members' accounts - they can't log into 
   mussel if they don't have an .Xsession file. I might fix this by installing 
   gdm :-)

This is a reasonably long list. Sorry about that. If I get the time I'll be 
in on Sunday to try and get some of it done - at least those bits my 
technical incompetence and lack of physical prowess let me achieve :-)

You'll all agree it's disappointing when new members see a clubroom it's hard 
to safely walk around and only about three computers they can log in on.

Cheers,

-- 
Grahame Bowland                     OCM of UCC and UniSFA, UCC syadmin

Email: gbowland(a)gbowland.com           Web: http://www.gbowland.com/