Sure. I was just about to post one (honest!).
Basicly there were two distruptive things I wanted to get out of
the way before letting everyone on. Firstly, the shadow passwd and
account management stuff. I've installed, configured and (unfortunately)
debugged Shadow 3.1.1 which now appears to work (though it still needs
a little more configuring). Secondly, getting the new drive online;
which will mean taking ftoomsh down, rearranging all of the partitions
(the swap and system areas should really go on it instead of the
SMDs) and so on.
The Union are proceeding at a snails pace with regard to getting a
purchase order written up so we buy the driver tax free. At least
Heather Anderson is away which means I have to deal with Richard,
who may be lazy and disinterested but at least isn't rude (please
don't quote me :-).
I got a better quote for a different drive, a 2.1Gb DSP3210 for
$1695, from Top Range computers, who said they'd give us a free
external drive enclosure if we gave them a plug. The Digital drive
is a similar in performance to the IBM one, but with a slightly
lower media transfer rate (around 4.(8?) MB/s vs 5.5 MB/s) and
is $350 cheaper.
So, if the Union gets of their butt and all goes well when Sbg and I
try and install the disk, ftoomsh should be ready for passengers
late this week.
The are a number of additional things I'd like to see happen before
ftoomsh becomes general access:
* someone going through the Sun OS performance tuning manual
and "tune" our 4.1.3 kernel.
* install security software (tcp wrappers, tripwire, 4.1.3 U1
security patches ...). Maybe read ``How to improve security on a
newly installed SunOS 4.1.3 system'' etc. I don't know a real lot
about this stuff, so perhaps someone more knowledgeable should
step forward to comment.
* install news, nn, create local progsoc groups etc. (this and the
above are both a serious amount of work).
* stuff to generate and post disc usage summaries (I can probably
install the thing we use here at Softway),
* sources area and /usr/local/bin maintenance program (believe me,
without one they can become a mess real fast -- I'm sort of writing
one for Softway at the moment)
If anyone would like to volunteer for any of the above and is prepared
to do it in the next week or so, then let me know.
The other news is that I'm going back to Japan for another two
months at the end of this month. I'm not yet sure weather I should
resign as president or not; it's not particularly fair being in
absentia (all you can do is pester other people to do things, and
if you're dealing with the Union to rack up a massive telephone
bill). On the other hand, it looks like I'll have heaps of spare
time while I'm over there and this time I will hopefully have direct
internet access (If anyone here speaks Japanese and would be prepared
to negotiate with Fujitsu on my behalf, I'd really like to hear
from you).
PS: There is meeting of the UTS Clubs and Societies Activities
Committee some Thursday night early August. I mention this now
because I'll be away and we absolutely, positively have to send
someone or we get disaffiliated. This would be bad. We can send
up to two people and you get free food (it's probably vegetarian,
but I wasn't prepared to trust it).
Later,
Christopher.
-- Christopher Fraser ``Tempers overflow and harsh words are uttered as the chrisf@nospam.sw.oz.au chilling suspense continues in Dial M. for Meeting!''