Item 44. Minutes of the March 25, 1996 Board Meeting Steven R. Weiss (srw) Fri, Mar 29, 1996 (23:43). 182 lines, 3 responses. Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Cyberspace.Communications, Inc. Monday, March 25, 1996 at the cafeteria of ITI on Hubbard Road in Ann Arbor. 1. The meeting was called to order at 7:40 PM by Scott Helmke Board members present: Scott Helmke (scott), President Steve Weiss (srw), Secretary Valerie Mates (popcorn), Steve Gibbard (scg), Misti Anslin (mta) Board Members absent: Mark Conger (aruba), treasurer Rob Henderson (robh) Others present: STeve Andre' (steve), staff Jan Wolter (janc), staff 2. Treasurer's Report (skipped because the treasurer was not here) 3. 501(C)(3) Committee Report (also skipped) 4. Computer Rehabilitation Committee Neither Rane Curl, nor Rob Argy were present either, so this was skipped, too. 5. Publicity Committee (mta) * The "Wizard in Training" booklet is now available. We have sold 10. Misti will send the proceeds to Mark. * Misti will announce on-line shortly that they'll be available. * An on-line version is planned, but there will be revisions made first. 6. Technical Committee * Scott offered a "Thanks" to all who worked so hard on the Sun-4 project. Applause was given all around. * The Terminal server is flaky. It crashes. There are various theories as to the cause. None are checked out yet. We need to contact IOLAN technical support, as it is covered by a warrantee. * The sun-4 is up and it is very stable. No crashes, and no loss of disk files. * For some reason, during the boot-up cycle, it doesn't enter multi-user mode like it should. This is being investigated, but it is not a serious problem. * Some strange messages were issued by the system log on 3/22 regarding incorrect inode values. The system corrected these in real time. It is possible that this is a left-over artifact of the file system instability from the Sun-3. * The sun-3 is still running. It is much more stable without users. * The "last" log needs to be merged from the sun-3 into the current system. This will happen soon. * The main user disk partition, /home, was not rebuilt during the changeover, due to the unexpected failure of mdw's backup disk. We need to get that disk repaired or replaced. It will take a while, but it is covered under warrantee. * When mdw has a working disk again, if we can borrow it, we are planning to use it to rebuild our /home partition into a hierarchical structure, which should speed up certain common operations, and generally improve performance. * The 8mm tape drive we use for backup is flaky, Scott cleaned it and tested it, but it needs to be tested on a long tape. * Our new Apache web server is working, but has occasional failures, which require manual intervention to restart it. We plan to upgrade to a newer version to see if the problem has been fixed. * STeve Andre' says that the GVC modems should cost $90-$95. He had located some less expensive ones, but did not have his calls returned, so is locating another source. * Staff fixed a large number of software glitches that appeared in the days immediately following the conversion of Grex to the Sun-4. * The number of ptys was increased from 40 to 48. There is the possibility that the staff will continue to modify this number in order to come up with a value that permits the greatest amount of usage without unduly loading the system or internet link, rendering it too slow to use. * There are now 12,500 entries in /etc/passwd. We cannot reap accounts at the moment, because the "last" log has not been merged. (See above) However, reaping is not going to remove very many of these. * There were a couple of mail spamming incidents, involving users who sent mail to every user on the system. Delivery of most of these messages was cut short by staffers, but several thousand were delivered. (End of technical committee report) 10. Newsletter Report Misti reported that one new volunteer has stepped forward. Therefore, there is some possibility of publishing a newsletter eventually. 11. JCC Sale * The net proceeds from the JCC sale after subtracting the cost of the tables was $370. * The number of vendors was way down. * We received a donation of books from Patty Rayle (pegasus). * We gave out a lot of Grex fliers. * Ten "Wizard in Training" booklets were sold. This is in addition to the other ten mentioned in the Publicity Committee report. * We received one $10 donation from someone who said "I like the Sun-4". (End of JCC Sale report) 12 Further Discussion of the CDA We are waiting for the outcome of the ACLU and CIEC court challenge to the law. We are posting updates from the trial into the conferences. 13. Plan the Budget Meeting There are four items that were discussed at the meeting. The highest priority item was the increase of network bandwidth. Unfortunately this is still too expensive to fit in our budget. The 0 was to have a fund-raiser to raise enough to fund the line for some period of time. At least a year, and preferably more. The next highest priority item was to increase the dial-up pool by two more modems. It has been filling regularly, although there was some discussion regarding the extent of busy signals. A lot of anecdotal evidence was given. The remaining tow items were not prioritized. They are the obtaining of a UPS, with an estimated cost of $600, of which we currently have $160 pledged and earmarked for a UPS. The other project was the Usenet machine. The cost of this depends on the architecture chosen, and the staff is still discussing the merits of different architectures among themselves. It was also recommended that we undertake an auction to raise money for the general fund. This would make more projects affordable. MOTION: (popcorn, scott) To approve $300 for the purchase of two additional GVC modems and the installation of two phone lines to expand the hunt group. The motion passed unanimously 5-0 (robh and aruba were absent) The board decided not to take action on the UPS or Usenet machine at this time, as more technical discussions are needed before authorizing purchases. 14. New Business * Membership Chair - Dan Romanchik proposed this position. The sense of the board was that it would be helpful to have it. There were no volunteers for it, though. Valerie agreed to enter an item in coop to discuss it further. * Dungeon Issues - There is another building inspection coming up. STeve reported that the contractor (Ian) used by the landlord (Nick) did not use Wolmanized lumber for the base plate. Nick has hired another contractor to perform the needed repairs. There is the possibility that we may have to rearrange some equipment or furniture to accommodate this activity. * Auction - Rob Henderson and Valerie Mates want to co-chair a committee to run the auction described above. (Rob Henderson arrived for this portion of the meeting.) MOTION (srw,scott) To authorize Valerie Mates and Rob Henderson to plan and execute an on-line charity auction to raise money for Grex's general fund. The motion passed 6-0 (aruba was absent). Adjournment: The meeting was adjourned at 9:27 PM. ----------