Notes of the LCSR Users Group meeting June 7, 2000
 
Attendance: Rob Tuck, Ken Harris, Thu Nguyen, Rick Thomas

*) Unsupported Software repository: Thu proposed that we provide some
space for students and faculty to put "unsupported" software packages.
The idea is that LCSR-CF can't possibly support every software package
that an active DCS research community will need, especially so with
the increase in emphasis on "systems" research.  So let the research
community provide its own support -- the LCSR-CF staff could, should,
and would disclaim any and all responsibility for software in the
"unsupported" area.  Rick felt that this was a very difficult posture
to maintain, predicting that his staff would be pressured to support
"unsupported" software after the maintainer had left or lost interest
in it.  Nevertheless, Rick agreed to talk with Don Smith to try to
work out a way in which this could be done.
 
*) Setting up a cs.rutgers.edu DNS domain: Rick reported that TD's
plans to provide a procedure for departments to do this are
proceeding with the additional incentive that Windows/2000 Active
Directory will virtually require any department that uses it to have
its own subdomain -- at least for its Win/2K machines.  This may be
the final push that gets TD's implementation effort airborne.  No
completion date is currently available.

*) Mounting "/farm" filesystems by non LCSR-CF maintained machines:
Thu thanked Don Watrous for allowing the /farm/discolab files to be
mounted on the disco machines, even though those machines are not
under direct LCSR-CF control.  He indicated that this was
"cracker-safe", even though security on the disco machines was not as
tight as it would be if LCSR-CF were in charge, because these machines
were behind a firewall.  Rick said he wasn't sure that the firewall
was as impermeable as Thu believed.  Rick agreed to followup on this
with the shop folks.  To do so, he needs more concrete information on
which machines and which networks are involved.

*) Administrivia#1: We need to pick a better time to meet than 5PM on
Wednesday.  At least for the Summer months, attendance is poor at that
time.  Everyone please get back to me (Rick - rbthomas@cs) with
suggestions for a better time.

*) Administrivia#2: These notes are posted on the web at
	
Frequently, the notes generate e-mail discussions.  Do we wish to
set up a way in which those discussions can be posted to the same web
site?