Excellent society destroyed by DIT ignorance.

vinks

well, if anything does happen to netsoc, i do hope that the "student" owned machines loaned to netsoc will be returned to the rightful owners (the two DEC alpha's), and the cab should be returned to the rightful owners etc... (the two power edges came out of the SU funds for societies and so on...) and of course the Origin2000 belongs to the school of engineering i think.

ecksor

Originally posted by pcahill
By the way, a few of us are going to have our own dedicated server shortly. We are all splitting the cost of it evenly between a small group of us. If anyone is interested on joining in the group, and want a high quality relyable shell message me. Its going to be non-profit, all money ppl contribute will be spent on hosting.

There's already something similar at http://www.dmz.ie/

See http://www.dmz.ie/FAQ/ for details.

Ste.phen

Originally posted by Mk X
I don't think that continuing the discussion here will benefit NetSOC in the long run.

Did anyone else read into this the same way i did...?


Hmm, this is the sort of thing that should really be discussed at http://www.netsoc.dit.ie/bbs

oh. right.

vinks

some one was kind enough to turn of the ports on the firewall, so the http://netsoc.dit.ie/ doesnt work anymore.

Red Alert

The reason why i voiced my opinion on the UCD network at all was that this sorry state of affairs could just as easily be replicated here. On netsoc's own boards they have said that they are 'guests' in the CS server room. Fine by me, if they're guests in someone else's house then they have to play by the rules. My point is that should Computing Services wake up on the wrong side of bed in the morning, Netsoc would then be better called OffLineSoc. Consider if another person takes the helm at computing services and decides he/she wants FULL control of ALL servers? I mean it is possible, although admittedly unlikely.

My reasoning behind this viewpoint is due to an incident which i heard about in Trinners. An sub-net for some kind of cluster belonging to a researcher was prevented from operating, as the equivalent of computing services refused to stop DHCP and other broadcast traffic from crossing the router into the subnet, unless they and they alone could have control over DHCP inside the subnet, in addition to having full root access to the server inside - which was probably holding quite sensitive academic research. As you can imagine, the admin of the server was quite unhappy to have this occur and eventually computing services were forced to back down by the heads of two different departments, but not until the new system was gathering dust for eight months.

Anyway, those little formalities aside, there's one vital piece of this DIT jigsaw missing, can anybody actually say what the straw was that broke the camels back? And to Mr. X, for the benefit of those like myself who are not in DIT, maybe those 'terms and conditions' you suggest should be detailed on these boards so that 'biased' people here might be able to inform themselves.

DMT

Is the DIT netsoc still accessable from within DIT?
And can I still get back my account from last year if I pay the one euro renewal fee?

vinks

Originally posted by Red Alert
My reasoning behind this viewpoint is due to an incident which i heard about in Trinners. An sub-net for some kind of cluster belonging to a researcher was prevented from operating, as the equivalent of computing services refused to stop DHCP and other broadcast traffic from crossing the router into the subnet, unless they and they alone could have control over DHCP inside the subnet, in addition to having full root access to the server inside - which was probably holding quite sensitive academic research. As you can imagine, the admin of the server was quite unhappy to have this occur and eventually computing services were forced to back down by the heads of two different departments, but not until the new system was gathering dust for eight months.

This was this ITAAC replacement cluster that you were probably refering too, it was actually a combination of a few problems that the dept. had, it had to do with the lack of air-conditioning, and the fact that there was going to be 160 or so nodes on the network, so the IS dept. wanted it to be properly segregated from the network, it was to be plugged into the main backbone of the college network afaik, so that different depts. could use the cluster. BTW, they have resolved those issues, have will have another cluster running soon from what I know.

Ste.phen

Originally posted by vinks
some one was kind enough to turn of the ports on the firewall, so the http://netsoc.dit.ie/ doesnt work anymore.

Naah, i'm in the college today and all the machines seem to be offline (netsoc,jives,hyperion). bastards. i had stuff on there!
i think.

DMT

Originally posted by Igy
Naah, i'm in the college today and all the machines seem to be offline (netsoc,jives,hyperion). bastards. i had stuff on there!
i think.

The computing department probably have all the drives formatted already...

vinks

well i guess the saying goes "you should have kept good backups" i kinda really feel for the people who had/have their projects college work on netsoc. and yet the machines are inaccessible. oh well.

DMT

Originally posted by vinks
well i guess the saying goes "you should have kept good backups" i kinda really feel for the people who had/have their projects college work on netsoc. and yet the machines are inaccessible. oh well.

Were the accounts from last year that weren't renewed deleted before the computing department seized the servers?

vinks

afaik from what i was told by a few people, the accounts that didnt get renewed just got crippled shells so you couldnt do anything with them, i think the admins arent the kind that delete peoples files. the files are probably still there.

Red Alert

Hang on here, 'seized the servers'??? Who exactly owns these machines?

vinks

afaik, the machines were bought out of the SU clubs and socs funds (the two power edges) and the two DEC alphas are the "on loan" from students. not too clear on the SGI's though.

ecksor

In all fairness, Mark Deegan is right that this isn't an appropriate place to have this discussion. He's also right that this isn't doing you any favours. Some "well meaning" (I'm being generous) supporters of the netsoc are saying some pretty daft and uninformed things and making your side look bad. Also, while I am not very familiar with the issues here, I do believe that computing services have problems with the attitude (which is backed up from reading here) they've encountered and require assurances about the running of the networking society. Arguing in a hardheaded manner here is pissing against the wind and a pretty dumb tactic.

If pcahill wants me to close this thread, I will.

DeVore

While I agree with Ecksors sentiment and I do think you get more with a soft word and a big stick rather then just a big stick... I would tolerate this being discussed ont his site if it was the only place left that it could be aired. Thats partly what Boards is about, to give people a platform to broadcast relevant topics that wont otherwise see the light of day. Perhaps a dedicated DIT forum might be better but in its absence this is fine.

I come from an EFI "access is a right" sort of frame of mind. I see access to the internet in a similar fashion to access to pen and paper... its generally the first thing to get smacked down in a nasty regime...

Anything seriously libelous will get cut and I think *both*sides should perhaps meet in person and talk this out but I'm not about to shut down such discussion willynilly... why shouldnt the college hear the anger of their customers....

DeV.

vinks

Originally posted by ecksor
In all fairness, Mark Deegan is right that this isn't an appropriate place to have this discussion. He's also right that this isn't doing you any favours. Some "well meaning" (I'm being generous) supporters of the netsoc are saying some pretty daft and uninformed things and making your side look bad. Also, while I am not very familiar with the issues here, I do believe that computing services have problems with the attitude (which is backed up from reading here) they've encountered and require assurances about the running of the networking society. Arguing in a hardheaded manner here is pissing against the wind and a pretty dumb tactic.

If pcahill wants me to close this thread, I will.

your right about that, here isn't really the place, and now isnt really the time, this should have been brought up earlier and not days before project deadlines and mere weeks till exams, which i m sure most students need to worry about right now.