Minutes of Cross-Division Meeting, 31st May 2000

  1. Attendance List

  2. Apologies for absence

    • Paul Anderson
    • Jeremy Olsen
    • Morna Findlay

  3. Matters Arising

    1. Informatics newsgroups

      Ross Hamilton will circulate an outline for newsgroup strategy (hierarchy), with a request for comment & feedback.

      [Action: RAH]

    2. Clarification of VLAN support from EUCS

      George Ross will continue to push EUCS on behalf of Informatics.

      [Action: GDMR]

    3. Access [via Perl] to Divisional Database

      Access will be provided to a sub-set of data only, that which has been defined as "public" - and this data will be exported to relevant users/sites.

      A suggested list of fields (sub-set of data to be exported) has been agreed by CEG - this will include a UID field.

      The UID ranges across sites will need to be unified - Ken Dawson will announce this.

      [Action: KTD]

      The unification of UIDs will require action at each site. This will be co-ordinated by Tim Colles.

      [Action: TC]

    4. TeX

      Craig Strachan announced that site versions of TeX, etc, would be upgraded to tetex 1.0.6, so that a consistent version would be available across the Division. This is already installed, but not the default - this is to be arranged.

      [Action: CMS]

    5. Microsoft licences

      Alastair Scobie announced that 1600 licences had been requested, following the donation by Microsoft of OS licences.

      [No Further Action]

  4. Any relevant Responsible Person reports

    Simon Wilkinson reported on the recent problems with the Division web server, following the air-conditioning failure at JCMB. The secondary air-conditioning unit didn't kick in, and power was automatically removed to prevent machines over-heating. The web server failed to re-boot and a damaged disk was replaced - but backups had been incorrectly configured, and data was lost. The backup procedure has now been modified to prevent this happening again.

  5. Presentation by Alastair Scobie

    Alastair expanded on his "Privacy in Informatics" talk, given at an earlier XDiv meeting (5th Apr '00). An interesting exchange of views ensued.

  6. Tabling of CEG Minutes

    This was postponed until the next meeting.

  7. Items for discussion from CEG

    There were none.

  8. A.O.B

    • Responsibility for Informatics-wide information dissemination (Virus warnings, etc).
    • Informatics "Systems Newsletter"

    These items were post-poned due to lack of time.

  9. Date of Next Meeting

    ... is Wednesday, 28th June, at JCMB and Appleton Tower, courtesy of Video Conferencing. Watch this space!

Those present at this meeting were:


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