Minutes of Cross-Division Meeting, 25th October, 2000

  1. Attendance List

  2. Apologies for absence

    • Jeremy Olsen
    • Irene Orr
    • Archie Howitt

  3. Matters Arising

    1. Unification of Division-wide UIDs

      Tim Colles confirmed that some UID changes were still outstanding, but re-iterated that responsibility for these changes rests with the relevant individual at each site (Roger Burroughes at ex-CogSci & HCRC, Carol Dow at ex-CS, and John Berry - via Tim Colles - at ex-AI). The majority of the outstanding UID changes are in the .cogsci domain, although some still remain to be done in the .dai & .dcs domains

      [Action: RB/TC/CD]

    2. TeX

      There are still some small problems still outstanding - but these are being investigated, and a status report will be given at the November meeting

      [Action: CMS]

  4. Any relevant Responsible Person reports

    Neil Brown mentioned that, since Simon had moved to the DICE project and he (Neil) had taken over web administration, there was no-one shadowing web responsibilities.

  5. Presentation by George Ross: IP filtering

    George gave a version of his talk to be presented at the London UKERNA meeting (on Nov 22nd). Slides are (currently) available in George's web space

  6. Assignment of Division-wide usernames

    This item was raised by Lindsey Brown, who was concerned that a couple of accounts had been created at AI with different usernames and/or UIDs from accounts for the same folk at CS.

    It appeared that this was a one-off error due to a lack of information, and was unlikely to recur - the step of updating the person@ field to the username assigned seems to have been omitted and so the CS account creation wasn't aware that the AI-provided username existed. However, provided an agreed procedure is followed, account creation should work smoothly.

    This generated some discussion, and Chris Cooke raised the point that there had been one or two problems with the DB interrogation/account creation script written by Rainer Thonnes (which now covers MScs as well as undergrads) - apparently it was slow to update and had problems with file locking. It was suggested that the DB might need to be run on newer/faster hardware. However, Tim Colles replied that the whole question of hardware & software support for the DB was being investigated, and he will report back on findings & progress.

    [Action: TC]

    The point was also raised that the DB entry should be the lynch-pin of account creation, and that no DB entry should mean no account. This point, and other DB issues would be left to CEG.

  7. Tabling of CEG Minutes

    Ken Dawson reported that the new posts mentioned in the last minutes (Item 4) would be advertised shortly (Scotsman & Guardian). Four posts already have Authority To Recruit, and one more ATR is awaited.

  8. AOB

    1. Alastair Scobie reported that the Microsoft OS licences (referred to in Item 3.5 of the minutes of the 31st May) have now arrived.

    2. Alastair also reported that the distribution to interested parties of CS PCs (that have been removed from public labs) is under way, but that other demands on CO time means that it may take a while to work through the distribution list.

    3. It was also mentioned that the Linux 16-bit UID problem (which limits the range of assignable UIDs) is being addressed by EUCS.

  9. Date of Next Meeting

    The next meeting will be held on Wednesday, 22 November 2000, at 11:00am, at JCMB.

Those present at this meeting were:


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