srcf

Minutes SRCF committee meeting Thu Feb 24 2000

Venue: The Bun Shop

Present:
	Martin Keegan
	Hanna Wallach
	Peter Clay
	Jock Busuttil

1.	Matters arising

It was noted that the minutes from Tue 18 Jan 2000 have not been 
approved yet in the light of Matthew Vernon’s proposed amendments.  
As there was no consensus on his proposals, the committee resolved 
to approve them without amendment and to review his proposals at a 
later date   It was noted that, in general, minutes should not be 
posted on the website until they are formally approved by the 
committee.

Martin pointed out that he was not ‘present’, but ‘in attendance’ at 
the meeting Thu Feb 17 2000.

Peter is to send an email to Ian Jackson formally recognising him as 
Security Consultant, and to Peter Benie to confirm his role as an 
admin (crisis management).  He will be given root to allow himself 
to familiarise himself with the system.  They are both to be added 
to soc-srcf-admin@lists.cam.ac.uk.

Hanna asked for assistance with the HSBC back account application 
form.  Peter offered to help her, and they will arrange to meet for 
an hour at some unspecified time.  Presumably to go through the 
form.

The minutes from Thu 17 Feb 2000 were approved with the above 
amendments.

2.	AGM Stuff

Peter is to post the constitution and the question of membership 
fees for discussion on appropriate newsgroups.

The committee notes that there was the post of chair on the admin 
committee.  However, given that in the future there may be more than 
one set of admins, the committee resolved

-- to remove any formal committee structure (i.e. no longer any 
chair)
-- that the current SysAdmin roles (Package Management, 
User/Accounts, Website, ‘Everything Else’) should remain unchanged
-- to change the name of the admin committee to ‘the SysAdmins 
group’ to avoid confusion as to their collective role
-- to assert its responsibility for the creation and/or 
reorganisation of SysAdmins’ roles

3.	Long Term Objectives

The committee resolved to deal with this after item (4.) on the 
agenda.

4.	Short Term Stuff

Confidentiality/public access: although emails between committee 
members can be specifically flagged up as ‘confidential’ or ‘for 
publication’ (via Peter), they should be thought of as publicly 
accessible by default (i.e. they may be forwarded on to non-
committee members without their explicit approval).

DNS changes: the DNS changes (A record, PTR record) wrt 
foo.srcf.societies.cam.ac.uk will be requested by Hanna.

Role-based email: it was resolved to use the role-based email 
addresses (@srcf.ucam.org) on the soc-srcf-committee@lists mailing 
list.

Email alias files: it was noted that the alias files have been split 
up into ‘system’, ‘roles’ and ‘vanity’.  Vanity addresses should be 
discouraged, but applications for them may be submitted to the 
committee for approval.  Jock asked where www-data@srcf.ucam.org was 
delivered.  Hanna said she would make it point towards the 
webmaster, and Peter volunteered to alter the apache configuration 
so that outgoing emails were posted as webmaster.

Co-option of Matthew Lavy: the committee resolved to co-opt Matthew 
Lavy as External Liaison Officer.

Society membership: the committee noted that Matt Kern and Julian 
Midgley are both members of the SRCF.

Canonical membership list: Hanna said that she would manage this and 
would make its location known to the rest of the committee.

people.ucam.org: this is a service involving homepage redirection.  
The committee resolved to go ahead with this service.  Peter is to 
publicise the service and somebody should be found to maintain it.

Training stuff: Hanna is to oversee the training programme for 
SysAdmins.  She is to contact Matthew Vernon about this and report 
back to the committee.

Delegated projects: in the situation where we have lots of active 
projects, the committee may choose to co-opt people specifically to 
oversee them.  This will be done on a case-by-case basis.

CUSU: Jock reported that CUSU would be happy for the IT side of 
societies (email, mailing lists, website hosting) to be delegated to 
the SRCF, providing that the SRCF undertook to provide tech support 
of the sort that the present CUSU IT team does.  Nothing has been 
formally agreed as yet; Alan Bird (CUSU Services Officer) would like 
to wait until his successor has been elected before entering into 
formal discussions.

Mail forwarding: to be able to provide this service, the committee 
notes that an extra-CUDN box or a proxy JANET licence would be 
needed.  It resolved to investigate this service further.

The CS and societies: the committee resolves to see what 
improvements (if any) the CS is making to the existing PWF system 
before making any decisions as to their own course of action.

3.	Long Term Objectives

Martin suggested that the SRCF should provide a generalised managed 
web service, that it should aim to cultivate a community of clueful 
people throughout the university and that the SRCF should provide 
some kind of support for JCRs that do not have as developed IT 
structures as other colleges’.

Jock suggested that the SRCF should strive to earn a reputation for 
sane and reliable computing in general.

It was resolved that the SRCF should not involve itself with 
providing recruitment opportunities for companies as the society 
would have to be of equal or greater stature to other organisations 
such as CUIS before we could attract interested companies.

5.	Changes/additions to Services

The committee noted that the relevant details were to be found in 
changelogs on the server.

Peter is to publicise the services that have been recently added 
(TrustedCVS, SSIN, etc.).

6.	AOB

There was no other business.

The meeting closed at 19:16.