Item 148. Minutes of the Board Meeting of Jan 22, 1996 Steve Weiss (srw) Sat, Jan 27, 1996 (13:36). 192 lines, 4 responses. Minutes of the January 1996 Cyberspace Communications Board Meeting (Disclaimer and note: Agenda items are labeled according to the published agenda for the meeting. They appear in [brackets]. ) ---------- [British Columbia] The meeting as called to order by Valerie Mates at 7:50 PM on Jan 22, 1996 in the cafeteria of ITI on Hubbard Road. Directors present: Valerie Mates (popcorn), Steve Weiss (srw), Mark Conger (aruba), Rob Henderson (robh), Steve Gibbard (scg), Scott Helmke (scott), Misti Anslin (mta) Others present: John Remmers (remmers), Dan Romanchik (danr), Jan Wolter (janc), Marcus Watts (mdw), Corey Rydholm (laotzu) ---------- [Alberta] Treasurer's Report - this report was given by our outgoing treasurer, Dan Romanchik. Dan reported that we took in $228 in December, an amount that does not even pay our phone bill. It was a very bad month for memberships. He also said that January wasn't looking any better. Probably we are going to drop about 10 members. For the year 1995, we collected less in memberships than we did in 1994. Dan suggested that perhaps we should elect a membership chairman. We agreed that this idea should be posted in co-op, and Dan agreed to post it. Our membership in the Accounting Aid Society has expired. We need to decide if we want to rejoin. ---------- [Saskatchewan] 501(c)(3) committee report - It was reported that Rane Curl has the material but wishes to turn it over to someone else. Steve Weiss said that he thought that 501(c)(3) status was worth trying to attain. Dan Romanchik said that he thought we might not qualify. Most agreed that we'd like to have this status. Mark Conger agreed to have a look at the application papers. ---------- [Nova Scotia] Election of 1996 officers - this agenda item was deferred until now so that all 7 directors would be able to participate. The first election was for president. Scott Helmke and Steve Weiss were nominated. A secret ballot was taken, and the new president determined to be Scott Helmke by a vote of 4-3. The second election was for Treasurer. Mark Conger was the only person nominated and was elected to be our new treasurer unanimously by acclamation. The third election was for Secretary. Steve Weiss was the only person nominated and was elected to be our new secretary unanimously by acclamation. ---------- [Manitoba] Computer Rehabilitation Committee Report - Space has been a problem for the storage of machines. Misti Anslin generously offered the committee some space for this purpose at her place. Rob Argy was not present, but Scott Helmke expressed interest in working on this project. Scott agreed to send mail to Rane Curl and Rob Argy to coordinate. ---------- [Ontario] Publicity Committee Report - Misti Anslin reported that the Grex handbook is ready to be distributed. ---------- [Quebec] Technical Committee Report - * Steve Andre reported that Grex is mysteriously and randomly rebooting itself. We thought that these reboots might be due to having a different kind of memory card in one of the slots. Steve performed some experiments by removing the suspected card, but only confirmed that that was not the explanation. Scott suggested reseating the cards and cleaning the contacts. * Thursday, Jan 18, we had power problems. there were three separate outages. We may have power glitches, but we don't know if it was part of a pattern. * We need to tie all of the chassis together with a ground braid. * Valerie changed party and we received a lot of complaints from some partiers. * Sun-4 Stuff: o Stress Test: Greg loaded up a 2GB disk of his and restored /home in preparation of a stress test. In this process he discovered that restoring from a dump tape is fraught with difficulty due to the presence of various strange files, some possibly left over from the disk instability, and others being symlinks. Marcus Watts suggested improving the dump/restore program to solve some of these problems that Greg ran into. o Kernel blocks are still waiting to be installed and tested. This is best done sitting right at the Sun-4 console. It now looks like this will be done as soon as the machine is moved to the dungeon. o Disk Patches: Marc Unangst diagnosed the fault with the Sun Disk Patch that we couldn't install. It appears to have been compiled with improper headers. Marc studied the patch with adb. 27 places were detected that had an improper offset. These have all been patched by hand. We don;t know if this fixes everything, but someone (STeve Andre', I believe) said that Greg Cronau was going to send mail to someone to follow up on this question. o Marcus Watts reports that Picospan has been rebuilt for the Sun-4 architecture. It is not installed on the Grex Sun-4 machine yet, but will be soon. o Steve Weiss reported replacing the CERN httpd on the Sun-4 with the newest release (1.0) of the Apache httpd, per a discussion at the last staff meeting. Steve reported being pleased with the new server software. * Terminal server - The terminal server already has a BNC connector, so no dongle is needed. All we need is cable and a "tee". Steve Gibbard offered to donate ethernet cable. Scott Helmke pointed out that we will probably need new modem cables as we convert modems to the terminal server. STeve Andre promised to drop off the device and documentation at the dungeon for Steve Weiss to have a look at. * Staff Line - Scott Helmke reports that Gryps has a new 2-port serial card, bringing its serial ports to a total of 3. Now the FreeBSD OS needs to be reconfigured to recognize the third port. ---------- [Prince Edward Island] Newsletter Report - Misti reports that one article is ready for the newsletter. That is all. ---------- [Labrador] The question of whether to establish a validated "adult" group, so that portions of Grex containing explicit material can be placed in an area where minors would not have access to it. Marcus Watts explained the University's position on explicit material. It is primarily based on voluntary compliance. Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss expressed discomfort with our lack of rules regarding what minors are allowed to have access to. This discussion went on for quite a while, but I cannot report on the argumentation. It was agreed that we would discuss this more in coop. ---------- [Yukon Territories] Validation Volunteer - the question is who will be selected to perform the task of validating users and maintaining these records, so that our Usenet policy can be put into place. This is not pressing yet, as Usenet is not around the corner for us, so it was agreed that we would take this question to the coop conference as well. Valerie promised to enter the item. ---------- [New Brunswick] New Business: * Dan Romanchik raised the point that he is resigning as registered agent. Thus we need to select another person to act as registered agent. Mark Conger agreed to do this. MOTION (popcorn,srw) Moved that Mark Conger be approved as Registered Agent. The motion passed 6-0 with Mark Conger abstaining. * Dan Romanchik also pointed out that the Bank Account Signature card needs new signatures. Scott Helmke, Steve Weiss, and Mark Conger, as officers, will put their signatures on the new signature card. * Valerie Mates observed that more people came to the meetings when we used to meet downtown. No decision was made to change the meeting place, though. ---------- [Newfoundland] The meeting was adjourned at 10:10 PM Respectfully submitted, Steven R. Weiss, Secretary (srw@cyberspace.org) ----------