[Discussion] Fwd: Status of the lab

[James Howard]

>

>
> Maria is okay with SFSU students coming to do stuff.  Paul said he is
> "theoretically" okay with it.  I just need to send him an email with a few
> details.
>


The SFSU interns would essentially be working for Partimus and under our
direction  -- so Paul can think of them as the same as us. I'd like to
have Paul meet with Sameer, the interns, Maria, and Partimus project
managers before that project kicks off. In fact, I think Paul's
participation in that project would be invaluable if not essential.

That said, this is separate project unrelated to system
administration/engineering of the lab (the topic of this thread), so let's
switch gears back to that.


>
.
>
>
> The lab is pretty much in the same condition as last year.  Someone
> plugged
> the server back in, but I didn't turn it on when I was there, because I
> was
> not sure if the ethernet cables had been moved around or not, and I was
> not
> sure if the ethernet cables were plugged into the proper jacks in the back
> of the server.
>

This would certainly explain why nobody can log in. So, that one should be
an easy fix. With Ethernet cables, remember, trial and error (and perhaps
the PING tool) are always an option. (maybe we should label the cables --
add that to the task list).


>
> Maria has said that Sunday would be better for her than Saturday, if that
> is
> okay with you, James.  If not, then we will need to ask her to be there on
> Saturday.  We will need Maria to be present for the first week or so,
> until
> we get new keys, because the keys for the north building have been
> changed,
> and not even the teachers currently have keys to get into the north
> building.  I will email her to find out what time works for her.  Does
> Sunday work for you, James, or do you need it to be Saturday?
>

Oh, Sunday is fine. In fact, at one point, we discussed working *both*
Saturday and Sunday. See below.


>
> I can't currently think of any more tasks.
>

How about "lab cleanup" weekend? Recall we discussed this? We can triage
and pack up all the hardware that we don't need and get that shipped out.
Sounds like we're going to need to do that soon, as we're losing one of
our storage closets.

Also, I'm still sitting on a pile of RAM and HDD upgrades. As you may also
recall from our June board meeting, in addition to lab cleanup, we also
discussed coordinating those upgrades for the same event.

I can think of a couple other items and feature requests for the "to do"
list, but they're pretty technical, so I won't go into them here, but I'll
certainly get them into the mix.

I'm sure other things will crop up as we get to work.