Minutes of Cross-Division Meeting, 8th March 2000

  1. Attendance List

  2. Apologies for absence

    There were none

  3. Finalising regular date & time

    This was agreed as being every fourth Wednesday at 11am, alternating between KB & central area

  4. Meeting format (who attends, what gets reported, &c)

    It was agreed that the meeting should be used for progress reports for Division-wide projects, etc, and for presentations of topics of general interest to COs. Attendance would be required only for those involved in active projects and service provision.

  5. Any relevant Responsible Person reports

    There were none

  6. Paul's "New Infrastructure" presentation & discussion

    An overview of current thinking about infrastructure issues was presented, with the main categories being:

    • Directory Services,
    • Authentication
    • Remote File Systems
    • System Configuration
    • Software Administration

    This was followed by general discussion, during which the following points were raised:

    • Implementation of Infrastructure technology to support as flexible an environment as possible, concentrating on enabling technology which is flexible enough to support different styles of management (policy decisions about how systems are are managed, and by whom, are not part of the current project).

    • The new Infrastructure would concentrate on Unix services (which makes up approximately 90% of the current provision). It is hoped that EUCS will provide the technology to manage Microsoft operating systems.

    • The design of the new Infrastructure should involve all interested COs.

    • Anyone wishing to be involved in any aspect of the Infrastructure design should contact AJS or PA.

    • There was support for the suggestion that the new Infrastructure project should be called DICE (Division of Informatics Computing Environment), and that an appropriate mailing list should be set up.

  7. Items for discussion from CEG:

    • Informatics newsgroups

      A need for Division-wide news groups had been expressed by Policy Committee, and it was suggested that a parallel system of news group(s) and mailing list(s) be set up, including an "announce" list as an alternative to the abused "staff" list (and posting to "staff" to be restricted if use of the alternative list doesn't catch on). A proposal incorporating these suggestions is to be produced.

      [Action: RAH]

    • Clarification of VLAN support from EUCS

      Some concern was expressed over the degree of support for VLANs by EUCS, and the level of any such support. Further clarification will be sought from EUCS.

      [Action: GDMR]

    • Access [via Perl] to Divisional Database

      The question of general (automated) access to the Divisional database was raised, and generated an interesting exchange of views. There was some discussion about the viability of access mechanisms that did not generate a verifiable audit trail. However, it was felt that some data was already available anonymously via the web, and further clarification would be sought.

      [Action: KTD]

  8. AOB:

    It was decided that the InfCOs portion of the Division web hierarchy that dealt with the cross-Divisional meetings should have unrestricted access.

    [Action: KTD]

Those present at this meeting were: Date of Next Meeting:


Home : Admin : Computing : Cdm : Meetings : 2000-03-08 

Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB, Scotland, UK
Tel: +44 131 651 5661, Fax: +44 131 651 1426, E-mail: school-office@inf.ed.ac.uk
Please contact our webadmin with any comments or corrections. Logging and Cookies
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all material is copyright © The University of Edinburgh