Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 20:08:57 -0400
From: rbthomas@lilypad.rutgers.edu (Rick Thomas - Richard)
Subject: LCSR User Group May 10 - Minutes

Minutes of the LCSR Users Group meeting May 10, 2000

Attendance: Rob Tuck, Don Watrous, Don Smith, Rick Thomas

*) DNS Subdomain for DCS -- Rick Thomas

We can do it if we want to.  TD (The RUCS Telecommunications
Division), who currently handles the hostmaster duties, is setting up
a procedure for decentralizing much of the work of maintaining DNS.
This will allow us to setup a cs subdomain and administer it ourselves
(using their tools) any time we want to.  Availability is planned for
late 2000.

The upside would be greater freedom in naming machines.

The downside would be (1) the work of maintaining our own subdomain,
and (2) possible confusion between (for example) "red.cs.rutgers.edu"
and "red.rutgers.edu" causing things like mis-delivered mail and
confusion in conversation.

Is this overkill?  We can already request cnames (aliases) with a dot
in the name.  (For example, www.cs.rutgers.edu is an alias for athos.
The "name" part of that is "www.cs" as far as DNS is concerned.)  So
it appears that we can already get most of the benefits of a separate
subdomain with none of the problems.

Comments are invited.

*) Research Cluster implementation -- Dons Watrous

Ponedelnik is now the master of its own YP domain.  Currently it is
just a mirror of the Fac cluster's YP domain, but that will change as
we develop the implementation more.  Currently, the Monday/Tuesday
machines, and the other Research machines (such as Konrad) are still
clients of the Fac cluster.  Moves to the Research cluster will happen
as schedules permit. Don will contact the owners/major-users of
existing Research machines to schedule transitions and gather
usernames that should have access to the new cluster.

*) Replacement of DEC Alphas with Sun Ultra-5s - Don Smith


There's good news on the equipment front.  A combination of end of year
LCSR funds and an unexpected SUN 2-for-1 deal has put us in a position
to upgrade all Dec workstations with new SUN workstations supporting 21"
screens.  These will be installed over the summer and should be fully on
line by this fall. 
 
This "purchase" required an intense last minute effort by Doris Allen,
Rick Thomas, and Maryann Holtsclaw.  They worked very hard under extreme
time pressure to make this possible.  I want to take this opportunity to
publicly thank them on behalf of DCS and LCSR.

The story behind the story is that 5 years (or so) ago, DEC made us a
"gift" of 55 (or so) Alpha workstations that were almost obsolete at
the time, but definitely a better deal than X-terminals, which was the
alternative.  By now, these machines are definitely obsolete, and due
for replacement.  We've been looking for a way to accomplish this,
and the Sun deal came at an opportune time.  It's only a coincidence,
of course, that the Sun Ultra-5 is almost obsolete today...

*) Mail server ("dragon") implementation -- Don Smith

There are still a few problems, but they are _not_ directly traceable
to either the hardware (Del PC running Linux) or the software
(Communigate mail server) under test.  Don says "I'm happy with it",
but feels that more testing is necessary before committing funds to
purchase the commercial version of the Communigate software.

*) Cereal cluster networking -- several

The networking hardware that connects the Cereal machines to our
machine room was upgraded last week from three 8-port hubs to one
24-port switch.  This will provide better security (less chance of
eavesdropping on the ethernet) and improved bandwidth.  Don Watrous
reports that at the same time he found and fixed a software
configuration bug that was causing occasional problems with booting
several of the cereal client machines at once.

*) Grad server upgrade - Don Smith

The ICI committee has awarded us money to be used to upgrade the Grad
cluster servers, and purchase grad-student workstations.  Timing is
still a subject of negotiation, but we hope to install the new servers
in parallel with the installation of the Ultra-5 workstations.