Item 272. March 2010 Meeting Minutes Denise M. Anderson (denise) Mon, Mar 8, 2010 (16:31). 76 lines, 1 response. Present: kentn*, unicorn*, gelinas*, denise*, remmers, mary, and through skype: cross* and tonster. *=board members. Call to order at 6:15. Discussion of any updates to old meeting minutes to take place in that item in coop. Next board meeting: April 11th at Zingerman s at 6pm. Treasurer s report: TS will be meeting with Mark on 3/11 to get paperwork. Mark will pay outstanding bill[s] before turning paperwork over to TS. Staff report: -Dan reported that Grex has been upgraded to Open BSD 4.6. Steve has the usb drive with some backup info on it. Remmers will try and get it from Steve to bring it over to provide.net so we can access the info stored on it. Picospan stopped working with the most recent upgrade about a week ago, so it was removed. Dan would like to pass on some info to rest of staff so a staff meeting has been scheduled for Thursday, 3/11 at 7:30 pm EST; place TBD [will pass on info in email]. Grex status & future--will come back to this after other necessary items done. -Status reports when system is down: Twitter can be set up and used for status reports. remmers has set up a page: twitter.com/grexstatus; we can be notified of any updates/reminders. Staff will need to use it, though, to post the updates. Google is also set up; Posterous can also be used. A clarification was made that there are 2 scenerios [sp?]: - status announcements vs what to do if Grex is down long term. Staff appointments: gelinas moved to add tonster to staff with root access; unicorn seconded; motion carried. -Should we open up the staff conference? Current conference should stay closed as comments were made with the confidentiality factor in place. Keep the current conf. available for [new] staff to access to see what has happened when, precidents, etc. Will need a member vote before changes are made as there has been a vote in the past; need to see what and when this was last voted on. -Google rank and updating grex s web pages: Keep pages updated to improve rank; someone needs to do the work to keep it updated; what can we do to make the work easier now? remmers will look into the web stuff; once the web is maintained, rankings will improve naturally. -Increased disk space: are individual quotas being inforced? Yes. Can quotas be increased? We have the space so it should be able to increase; this is a staff issued to discuss limits and set up. Other business/walk-in items -Grex s future location-staff to come up with location possibilities. -Meeting venue change: kentn has done some research; many of the available community resources require contracts, memberships and/or fees. Also would like to provide remote access. Will continue to explore options. -Facebook status; there is a grex page already there. -Access for MySQL/PostgreSQL databases for users. What are users trying to use this for? What does access mean? People are using this on mnet; using it for such things as making tables, queries, compiling programs... Would having this bring in new people? -Back to the question of What does grex want to be? How can we open it up without bringing it down? Should be a place to explore, experiment, learn C, shell scripting, BBS, etc. Need to bring validation to another level. With the financial aspect, what would we provide for it? What IS the system? --> an abstract community of people who care and support it [the technology is the tool]. There IS a mission statement online that we can use. -Traceroute/ping/nmap wrapper which limits use? Should be provided for varified users; treasurer has been varifying users. -SSH bs Telnet. Is telnet going away? Is there a reason to keep it going? It has not been supported since grex was using BSD[?] versions 3.7/3.8. Most places have already shut it off. Though we should warn people when it would go away, perhaps in the MOTD. This is something staff should discuss. -Dial-up--Is there still a script available to see how these lines are being utilized? Need to get the statistics and go from there. [There was little use in Feb [2 users, one for 0 minutes, one for 24; a little more in Jan; down in Dec.] Meeting adjourned at 8:55pm 1 response total. ---------- (272) #1 Kent Nassen (kentn) Mon, Mar 8, 2010 (16:54). 2 lines. Thanks, denise. Good job with all that technical discussion. If there are any corrections or clarifications, make them in this item.