Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 12/22/97


The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by elliot.

In attendance were 
	Voting members: elliot jewell jfmurphy
	Associate members: jhawk ghudson marc yandros eichin jweiss
		mhpower danw
	Non-voting members: 
	Prospectives: zardoz xela
	Guests: 

Treasurer's Report:

	'()

Chairman's Report:

	'()

Office Report:

	yandros: cutter-john seems to be dead.  It doesn't get to LILO
		when it boots.
	[yandros will send mail.]

	jhawk: bobbi-harlow's disk logged some errors yesterday.  And
		we still need to install DOS on snorkelwacker.

	ghudson: joewelch says he'll bring by SIPB's Ultra tomorrow
		morning.

	mhpower: I think people have noticed a problem with the HP
		monitor.
	jewell: It doesn't seem to sync well horizontally.
	mhpower: This could become irrelevant once the machine is in a
		rack because it would be using a different monitor.
	jweiss: Do we own that machine?
	ghudson: I think ECF could theoretically ask for it back.

	elliot: Shelves are not being found for the rack.  Probably
		during IAP I'm going to ask how people feel about
		getting shelves made.
	[Some discussion of alternatives for buying shelves.  Marc
		suggested Graybar.]
	elliot: People should offer me advice on the rack.

Office Cleaning Report:

	danw: It was cleaned on Friday.  No, really, kretch says so.

MIT Computing Report:

	mhpower: On Saturday someone elected to send out a bunch of
		e-mail about multi-level marketing by using the SMTP
		server on bozo.mit.edu.  The person has probably since
		learned that this was a mistake.

	mhpower: Up until this week if you happened to ask your OLC
		question using the web interface you had about a 5%
		chance of your e-mail going into a black hole.  I
		reported the problem and believe it has since been
		fixed.

Computer Services:

	'()

SIPB Backup Report:

	jweiss: I don't think UFS backups have been done successfully on
		most or all of the relevant machines in more than a month.
		What needs to be done: If the drive is still broken it needs
		to be fixed, someone needs to do backups and preferably
		confirm that they are readable on an older drive like the
		ASO one.  The ASO drive is currently on portnoy, but not all
		of the software is set up to work.  Part of the reason that
		I set up the drive on portnoy is that I thought we'd
		probably want to move it there permenantly when our ultra
		shows up, and we do something else with one of our classics.
          
	yandros: bdrosen sent in a question to have a volume restored
		from backup.  Has anyone dealt with that?
	jhawk: I don't think so.

	jhawk: I was thinking that if we were going to move a classic
		away, we might take this opportunity to put a tape
		drive in the machine room on the theory that it might
		be more reliable.
	jweiss: The main objection to it is that it would be harder to
		get someone to load the tapes.

	mhpower: Is there any way we could afford a tape robot?
	ghudson: That's probably an option, but someone would have to
		take initiative.

Publications Report:

	xela: I'm working on a revision of iLaTeX.  I'll have a draft
		ready in a week.  I'd appreciate comments on the
		extent to which LaTeX 2e should be covered.

	jhawk: It seems like the version of iLaTeX we have sitting out
		there is probably not the current version.

R/O Report:

	'()

IAP Report:

	jewell: I am running a morse code class during IAP for the
		radio society, if anyone is interested in passing a
		code class.  It's Tuesday and Thursday evenings, the
		first one in 50-358 (Walker 3rd floor shack) at 7:30pm
		on Jan 6.

CokeComm Report:

	'()

Other:

	jhawk: The student center will be closed during Christmas day
		and New Year's day, as well as the evenings before and
		the mornings after.
	jweiss: The cluster will be closed for longer.

Other Other:

	jhawk: Telecom was doing some wiring in the hallway this
		morning.


The meeting was adjourned at 19:45.


	Minutes taken and submitted by ghudson.