From: lisbon@vpnet.chi.il.us (Gerry Swetsky)
Newsgroups: chi.mail
Subject: Clout SysAdmin January minutes
Date: 23 Jan 93 03:25:34 GMT
Distribution: chi
Organization: Vpnet Public Access



Preamble
--------

    The Clout Project of /usr/group/chicago provides email services to
    the Chicago computer community.  It is currently a two node system.
    One (nclout aka clout.chi.il.us) resides at the University of Chicago,
    Department of Computer Science.  The other (homebru) is in the home of
    Dave Ihnat.  Eventually we hope to have a clout node as a nearby phone
    call for everybody in the Chicago area.
    
    The Clout System Administrators' Committee is responsible for
    maintaining and upgrading the Clout distributed computer system.
    The Committee meets on the first Monday of every month, at a
    variety of locations.  Meetings are open to all interested parties,
    but we do request that you notify the host if you plan to attend.

    If you have any questions or problems related to the Clout Project,
    send email to postmaster@clout.chi.il.us.  If it is not possible
    to send email, or if there is a matter of urgency, you may contact
    the Sysadmin of the Month.

Minutes of the Clout Project System Administrators meeting of January 
4th, 1993 held at the home of Gerry Swetsky in Villa Park.

ATTENDANCE
----------

    Shannon Noe <noe@balr.com>
    Gerry Swetsky <lisbon@vpnet.chi.il.us>
    Greg Gulik <greg@gagme.chi.il.us>
    Mike Beirne <beirne@limerick.chi.il.us>
    Doug Blair <blair@obdient.chi.il.us>
    Russell Rezaian <rrezaian@zed.chi.il.us>
    Don Leaman <donl@shiptile.chi.il.us>
    Guests:
    Jay Kreibich <zymotic@vpnet.chi.il.us>
    Guest of Don Leaman (lost the name)

Agenda items
------------

* Drive Space
	Some house cleaning was done after the mail bombing incident,
	and we're currently running with just over 20MB of disk
	space available.  We may need to get the Smail-3.1.27 source
	again and rebuild to continue to work on the memory leak
	problem.

* Stats
	Shannon presented his Clout usage statistics.  Basically,
	they didn't provide anything new.  Gagme was found to be 
	the highest disk space user, with a peak of 6% utilization 
	of available spool space.  Normal traffic has minimal impact 
	on spool space utilization.  There is no "real" disk problem!

* Disk
        As soon as we can locate the broken 200MB drive donated by
	Bob Schottland, he'll replace it with a working disk.

* File Table Overflow
	A possible solution to this problem may be to increase the
	"max users" parameter in the kernel.  We should also try to 
	figure out the Smail feature of limiting the number of SMTP's 
	that can run at the same time.  Russell and Greg will look into
	this.

	Another potential solution is to increase the amount of
	RAM in the machine.  Clout currently has 8 MB of RAM, but
	can support 12 MB with four additional SIMMs.  Greg Gulik
	offered to donate two 1MB SIMM modules, and if we can get 
	two more, we'll have the memory up to 12 MB on clout.

* New Admins
	Must be added to group 'wheel'.  
	The procedure should be more formalized.
	Admins must:

		- Read clout README
		- Understand Smail 

* homebru
	Darryl Baker will donate a Sun-3/60 to Dave Ihnat.  Dave
	wants to try running SLIP/PPP with clout.  The consesus
	was that's probably not a good idea.  The Sun-3's have
	horrible serial ports, and that would mean dialing out to
	clout everytime there was an outgoing message going to
	clout.

* Development Machine
	Russell contacted Tom Barron about it.  Presently we are
	waiting for a response.

* Path File
	Lots of problems.  We need to clean up gargoyle routing.
	Russell will look into that.  .balr.com still doesn't work,
	once again Russell will look at that.  Russell also needs
	to contact Randy Suess about NFS mounting the maps, and then 
	Doug will build the paths file once that's done.

* Name Service
	Some cleaning up was done.  Some old domains were removed.

* Taylor UUCP
	kwhpc uses it, and Gagme is experimenting with it.  It has
	support for the G protocol, and the most amazing part is
	that it has support for a bi-directional protocol so that
	UUCP can send and receive files at the same time.  This
	would probably be really great for the larger sites.  Greg
	is looking into this, and will install it on Clout once
	it's stable.

* Answering machine
	Dave Inhat has requested /usr/group/chicago pay for an 
	answering machine and FAX/DATA switch.  

* February Meeting
	The February Admin meeting will be held either at Brian's 
	or the offices of BALR.

Postmaster of the month
	Russell Rezaian

Postword
--------

The Clout Project would like to thank the following organizations and
individuals for their generous help, loans and donations:

	The University of Chicago, Dept. of Computer Science
		(CPU system, machine room space, phone lines,
		 an Internet drop, and much general support)
	Tellabs (CPU, High speed modem)
	BALR Inc. (High speed modem)
	Gerry Swetsky (Meeting space, pizza and hospitality)

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