I've proposed a number of "what we should do about this" type things. If
you feel strongly about them (either way) please let me know. I'd like to
reach some sort of consensus on this within the week.
But I thought Steve Evans said:
> I find it distressing that ftoomsh, a machine which is primarily made
> available to us for learning, is being used by people for things like this!
>
> People are joining progsoc for the sole reason to get ftoomsh accounts.
> These people have been told from friends that they basically can get an
> account with no quotas, irc access etc etc ... for a mere $6...
> (most of the non-socs machines have banned irc for the duration of
> semester and have very severe quota's)
I don't mind people joining ProgSoc just to get an accounts on ftoomsh,
provided they use the resources fairly and don't abuse the acceptable
usage policy.
It would be sad to have to ban IRC on ftoomsh. But I also don't want
ftoomsh to be overrun with IRC heads who think ftoomsh is "an IRC haven"
(as Sbg put it).
With regard to IRC, the proposal is:
* The running of IRC bots is banned completely and utterly, the reason
being it consumes far too much network bandwidth and CPU time for such
a frivolous purpose and could get our site in real trouble if it fowls
up. If someone comes along and convinces us that they are competent
enough to write, run and administer one properly (if indeed there is
such a thing) we *might* think about reconsidering.
* If the ftoomsh load average has been over x (x == 5?) for more than y
(y == 5?) minutes IRC becomes restricted. /usr/local/bin/irc stops
working, any user process using or sending to a known IRC port is
hunted down and killed (*). Anyone trying to circumvent the IRC
restrictions looses their account (see below).
Comments anyone? Is this fair? Too harsh? What should x and y? If I
hear a deafening silence I will assume it's acceptable and instigate it.
As problems arise with other resource intensive programs, we may need to
work out similar measures.
(*) Is this feasible? Is the IRC port well known enough?
> I feel that something needs to be done about this soon!
>
> As for this person... I'll leave it for you guys to judge what should
> happen.. But it seems to me that he is running some sort of pirate
> software site on our machine, using up at least 20megs of disk... This is
> VERY bad!
Sbg had mentioned something about this. Normally I'd be in favour of the (two?)
people loosing their ftoomsh accounts permanently, although given that we
haven't yet agreed on our code for dealing with such things I think we should
be a bit lenient (eg: lock their accounts for 2 months with permanent zero
warnings).
I think we need two things:
* A committee (3-5) who independent of the ftoomsh admins assess whether
said person(s) knowingly did thing that constituted a breach of the AUP.
The committee is voted in (yearly at AGM?)
* A pre-determined code for dealing with them, depending on how serious
the breach is.
For the latter, the proposal is:
* trivial: said person gets a warning. You only ever get one warning.
* minor: account get locked for x (x == 2 months?) permanent zero warnings.
Again, this only ever happens once, thereafter the account gets deleted.
* anything else: loose account. All files deleted etc.
Once an account has been lost, said person can only get it back by
petitioning at the AGM and having a vote of confidence passed.
If it's serious, we should also tell ITD (although I doubt they're
interested).
I'm a bit uncertain who should determine how serious the breach is. I'm
inclined to give it to the executive, primarily so the committee doesn't
have to get involved with that side of things.
Comments?
Cheers,
Christopher.