Witam, The deadline passed and there were several useful comments, onlist and offlist - thanks everyone. Here are some updates and specific proposals.

########## PROPOSALS su/web/TWiki/backup/quotas V0.1 ################## ### deadline for comments/veto Tue 22 Oct 00:30 ###

(1) superusers - There is now one staff member and one student who have been suggested and who have accepted, in principle, becoming superusers. I would be happy for both of them to be su, and think 3 people is sufficient. (Other people can become ordinary users, of course, and since there is plenty of scratch space, that's enough to develop experience in GNU/Linux, IMHO.)

Anyone who wishes to know their names please contact me offlist.

(2) web server - I've (tried to) install the default apache server of Deb3.0, and if noone objects, would like to put it online once the decision deadline passes. Are there any recommendations for firewalls etc, or good Deb /other linux links/hints for this?

(3) (T)Wiki server for * cosmic topology page - complete references to all published articles (last time I counted, there were only 36 authors during the 20th century + 1 in the last year of the 19th century) * standard ruler page * meta-page for other cosmology stuff * galaxy/AGN formation/evolution pages If there are no objections, I'd like to try installing this quickly, since I think it's a key piece of software for working together efficiently.

(4) backup strategy? Initial backup strategy: - daily hard disk backups (incremental) of /home - weekly hard disk backup (full) of /home + backup of same on to CDROM(s) (max 3 CDROMs since 2GB partition)

(5) initial quotas: - 200MB per user on /home - 2GB per user on a /scratch disk

(6) - mail server? For the moment seems safer *not* to run adjani as a mail server, and there's no obvious need anyway. So I propose to *not* run a mail server, at least for the moment.

Any comments (or veto, if for a fundamental reason of what we are here for) on (1)-(6) welcome by the deadline. #####################################################################

########## PROPOSAL for machine installation V0.02 ################## ### deadline passed ###

• Deb 3.0r0 or RedHat ?

I would like to install Debian 3.0r0, with the 2.4.18bf kernel flavour. This includes software like SnapPea which is useful for

...

There was one strong recommendation in favour of Deb 3.0r0 :) from Michał Frąckowiak.

• superusers - I think that Andrzej M and I should be superusers, but

For security reasons, it's probably better to discuss this more offlist in terms of individual names. There was one objection to having a student or two as su, but the same person agreed that if it's someone we know and trust, who knows GNU/linux, it could be OK. Another opinion was in favour of having a student or two as su.

See above for a specific proposal.

• name of machine (silk, sahni, liddle, peebles, novikov, levin?)

Andrzej pointed out that the "dead astronomer" tradition is really just for the solaris machines. Michał F had a bunch of suggestions which show that we have different personal tastes ;), and was not enthusiastic for using the name of a dead (or live) cosmologist.

But since this is a question of taste anyway, I finally chose "Adjani" after Isabelle Adjani :).

• partition suggestions (there are 2 disks each of 60Gb)

Geniu and Michał H made several useful comments - thanks.

My idea of 650MB /home is that CDROM backups should be relatively easy.

However, given that disks are so big today, should we create much more backed up home space? E.g. using hard disk backups on a daily basis + tape backups once a week? Or daily hard disk + up to 3 CDROMs once a week (I don't think I would have more patience than copying 3 CDROMS, even that would be pretty boring, done every week)? 3 CDROM => approx 2GB => 200MB for 10 users. Probably plenty for the next 12 months.

See proposal above.

In any case, the only decision required immediately is how big the partitions should be. And of course, there could be parts of a scratch disk which are linked with ln -s from the real /home in order to look like home disks so that users know/expect that they are backed up.

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