Item 38. Board Meeting Minutes: August 5, 2007 Jan Wolter (janc) Mon, Aug 6, 2007 (11:34). 104 lines, 4 responses. Grex Board Meeting Minutes - August 5, 2007 Present: Mark Conger (aruba) - Board Member, Treasurer Jan Wolter (janc) - Board Member, Secretary - Staff Colleen McGee (cmcgee) - Board Member Larry Kestenbaum (polygon) - Board Member Mary Remmers (mary) John Remmers (remmers) Telepresent: Dan Cross (cross) - Board Member Absent: S. Lynne Fremont (slynne) - Board Member, President Bruce Howard (bhoward) - Board Member - Staff Opening Gavel Tap: 8:09 pm The beginning of the meeting was delayed by lack of quorum. Lynne had originally planned to phone in from Nova Scotia, but a power outage interfered with this plan. Quorum was reached when Dan was able to call in. Since Grex's official president was unavailable, the treasurer, Mark Conger, presided in her place. Since Grex's official gavel was unavailable, Mark's father's gavel was tapped in its place. Treasurer's Report: Grex took in $206 in May and spent $158, leaving a balance of $6785 in the bank account. There are 57 members. Staff Report: OS UPGRADE Grex needs to be upgraded to a newer version of OpenBSD. Jan had promised to start this process at the last board meeting, but hadn't actually succeeded in doing anything, and didn't feel optimistic about being able to do much more in the upcoming months. Dan Cross has experience doing remote upgrades of OpenBSD systems, and is willing to do so. He expects to shut Grex down for an upgrade starting next weekend (August 11-12). Before we can do an upgrade, we need to backup Grex. Mark Conger will drive an external IDE drive that can be plugged into Grex's USB port and that is big enough to back up all of Grex. We'll make the backup, and unplug the drive during the backup, to ensure that it is preserved. Possibly someone will take the drive home and burn it onto DVDs to make and additional backup. NEW HARDWARE We generally feel that the time has come to buy a new computer. We're hoping that we can get something designed to work as a remotely administrated server, perhaps with remote console capabilities. We'd also like to go with a RAID disk system, error correcting memory, and it would be nice if it were rack mountable, giving us more flexiability with future ISP hosting options. Dan Cross will put together a suggested list of hardware and post it to coop. Board would like to have something that can be approved by the next meeting. Old Business: APPOINTMENT OF STAFF For some reason, the question of adding Chuck Martin (login ID unicorn) to staff was addressed as old business, perhaps because expanding staff has been a long standing goal. Larry Kestenbaum moved: To add Chuck Martin to staff with root access and with all the privileges pertaining there to. Colleen McGee seconded. Five votes in favor, none opposed, none abstained. Motion passed. ADDITIONAL SUBSTAFF ROLES Dan asked if we should be considering creating more non-root staff posts. One idea suggested with creating a Webmaster post, with the power to update Grex's web pages. Discussion wandered into the subject of resetting lost passwords. Jan mentioned that he once wrote an password resetting system for Grex called repass, that was never actually put into use, but probably could be. Schedule Next Meeting: The next board meeting will be on September 9, 2007 tentatively at Lynne's house (nobody actually asked Lynne if this was OK. If not, we'll do it at Mark Conger's house.) Gather at 7:00pm, gavel at 7:30pm. New Business: There was further discussion of the proposal to create three user classes with respect to internet access, as discusssed in previous meetings. Colleen will develop a proposal and post it to coop. There was some discussion of recent vandal attacks on Grex, which came to no particular conclusion. 4 responses total. !kingjon ---------- (38) #1 Jonathan Stuart Lovelace (kingjon) Mon, Aug 6, 2007 (12:04). 3 lines. Two apparent typos: s/make and additional backup/make an additional backup/ s/pertaining there to/pertaining thereto/ !remmers ---------- (38) #2 John H. Remmers (remmers) Mon, Aug 6, 2007 (12:50). 5 lines. And in addition: s/drive an external IDE drive/purchase an external IDE drive/ Nice minutes. And I speak as someone who was present. !cross ---------- (38) #3 Dan Cross (cross) Mon, Aug 6, 2007 (13:10). 3 lines. Since we're picking nits about typos.... And s/unplug the drive during the backup/unplug the drive during the upgrade/. It wouldn't do to unplug the backup drive during the backup. :-) !slynne ---------- (38) #4 S. Lynne Fremont (slynne) Fri, Aug 17, 2007 (00:02). 1 line. my house is ok