This series of web pages is produced by the Grex Staff to describe various administrative and technical matters related to Grex. These pages are meant as a way for staff members to share knowledge and information about how Grex works both with other staff members and the general public.

Some of these pages are meant for the general reader, while others delve very deeply into technical details of how things work on Grex.

Grex's staff believes that good system security should not depend on obscurity. Therefore, there is quite a lot of detailed information included here about things like how passwords are stored on Grex.

We encourage anyone who has comments or suggestions about the contents of these pages to send mail to help@grex.org. Please send questions about Grex to help@grex.org, not to individual members of the staff. Many staffers are swamped with too much e-mail and may reply very slowly or not at all.

Grex's Staffers

Grex has always been staffed entirely by volunteers. Currently, the staff consists of the following people:

Name Login
Walter Cramer i
Dan Cross cross
Joe Gelinas gelinas
Chuck Martin unicorn
Kent Nassen kentn
Tony Publiski tonster

Past staff members include Glenda Andre, Steve Andre, Greg Cronau, Kip DeGraaf, Tom Dohne, Meg Geddes, Michelangelo Giansiracusa, Steve Gibbard, Dan Gryniewicz, Scott Helmke, Rob Henderson, Bruce Howard, Jeff Kaplan, Dave Lovelace, Valerie Mates, Mike McNally, Carl Miller, Charles Mitchell, Michael O'Leary, John Remmers, TS Taylor, Marc Unangst, Marcus Watts, Steve Weiss and Jan Wolter.

Several people assist in the running of Grex but do not have superuser access. Ryan Antkowiak (ryan), Eric Bassey (other), Nissa Austad (snow), and Jill (beamer) are party administrators. Mary Remmers is the Grex archivist. A number of other users, including Jared Mauch, Rob Argy, Mike McNally, Klaus Wolter, Mark Conger, Dave Martinelli, and Sri (nt) have been very helpful in assisting the Grex staff in various ways, as have all the users who volunteer as helpers, assisting other users with problems.

Staff Notes

Grex's Hardware and Software
An overview of the hardware and software Grex runs on, and the configurations we have made.
Grex 2003 Assembly Notes
Construction of Grex's 2003 computer.
Security on Grex
A general description of Grex's security and our goals.
Privacy on Grex
A discussion of the kinds of circumstance under which Grex's staff might look at private user files or email.
Networking on Grex
A description of Grex's policies regarding network access and configuration.
Authentication on Grex
A description of how password authentication on Grex works, with a discussion of how we migrated from our historical system.
Bots on Grex
A FAQ discussing why we do not support or allow bots on Grex.
Volunteering
Information for people who would like to help the Grex staff, or perhaps join the ranks.
Equipment Inventory
A list of the equipment currently owned by Cyberspace Communications.