Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 10/27/97 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by kretch. In attendance were Voting members: jmorzins katyking kretch elliot amu jewell amsmith fubob jered daveg jdaniel sit svalente | nygren foley pipa Associate members: kcr ghudson jweiss srz klmitch tlyu mhpower Non-voting members: Prospectives: xela justom "Martyn Peck" ajw yak | jrpelavn Guests: Treasurer's Report: '() Chairman's Report: '() Office Report: ghudson: Move to allocate up to $4500 to buy a new PC of the same type as the server we expect to buy. This is a Dell PowerEdge with 128 megs of memory. It will replace granola. The old granola will replace limekiller (as the scanner machine). The old limekiller will lose it's desk; perhaps jered will take it home. The cost will probably be closer to $3700. jered: What kind of processor(s)? ghudson: Single processor 233 MHz Pentium. [Seconded. Motion passes Many-0-3.] ghudson: One of the charon maintainers will deal. jweiss: I will probably send mail today announcing an auction next week. The auction will include snorklewacker. kcr: Move to remove snork from the auction block if it's working by next monday. [Seconded. Motion fails 5-9-7.] ghudson: Note that you could try again to save it next week. ghudson: We didn't decide what to do with VRC16 cables from the monitors we're getting rid of. They cost $20, and make the monitors useful if you don't have a DECstation. I guess we'll keep them. jered: zsr doesn't have /bin/athena/login. Does anyone know anything about this? ghudson: I updated it recently; maybe I screwed up. I'll deal offline. ghudson: Plans have been made to get an Ultra for SIPB, as well as an O2. mhpower: What do people think about getting rid of machines if we get these. jered: I wouldn't mind seeing a Classic go away. kcr: An IPX! foley: I need a thin-head drive mounting screw. Anyone know where I can get one? fubob: Has the invoice turned up for the exabyte enclosure? ghudson: We should call ADS and ask them to fax a copy of the receipt. kretch: Don't lose stuff when we receive packages! Office Cleaning Report: kretch: Office cleaning happened. People need to remember to take cans down though! MIT Computing Report: jered: MIT cluster machines hit by insidious virus. Film at 11. ghudson: 8.1.12 goes out tonight. Computer Services: amu: "newtex" is no longer a misnomer. jweiss: Server maintainers should let me know this week what their hardware needs are for the year. SIPB Backup Report: foley: On saturday I attempted to do a backup and it failed. tlyu: I think the exabyte is dead. Writing other tapes and trying to read good tapes failed. ghudson: We could use DLT tapes. mhpower: Doing backups on DLTs doesn't really solve the problem of reading existing tapes. ghudson: Anyone know how much an exabyte costs? jered: About $1700, though we can probably get a top-loading one for only $1000. jweiss: Is it still on service? srz: Can we get it fixed for less than $1700? ghudson: You never know just how fixed things that have been repaired are. They often fail 6 months later. I think it's old enough that replacing it is a good idea. jweiss: In the short term, I'll see if ops has something to lend sipb. kcr: Shouldn't we have a big pile of them somewhere? jweiss: I'll check on that. kretch: Would ops be lending or giving one? jweiss: Depends how many we have. We're more likely to be able to lend than to give. If we have one to lend, I can probably have it available for someone to pick up tomorrow. kretch: We can buy a new one from the server budget without allocating money. jweiss: Who's going to look into getting a new one? fubob: I will. jweiss: Move to get rid of the old drive when we get rid of the old enclosure, sometime after we have a new drive, at the discretion of the Office Czar in Charge of Special Operations. kcr: Friendly amendment to make this "with supreme dictatorial power". [Accepted. Seconded. Motion passes 12-0-9.] kretch: afs happened friday. jweiss: In case you haven't guessed, nothing else did. Publications Report: '() R/O Report: '() IAP Report: '() CokeComm Report: pipa: If you are negative, you are hightlited. Pay me and give me a note saying it's for CokeComm. Other: ajw: Can I put the comic books at the back of the office in a box, before the potentially valuable ones are destroyed? kretch: Go for it. pipa: I'm getting married! nygren: Office dumps core. elliot: To Jessie? pipa: This is serious... Other Other: mhpower: The stock market crashed today. Film at 11. This will probably take priority over jered's film. amsmith: There's speculation this is related to pipa getting married. svalente: The World Series ended. jered: LSC is slowly gnawing at my brain. jewell: C++ sucks. If anyone thinks they know about esoteric uses of templates, come talk to me. amsmith: Bubonic plague kills you in a really neat way. The meeting was adjourned at 19:54. Minutes taken and submitted by elliot.