Agenda February 16, 2005

Location: MC-1058. Time: 9:30AM - 11:AM.

Previous items resolved

  • The person who would like the meeting time changed (one-time) be responsible for securing the new time and resource (room).
  • After a unanimous agreement in the Waterloo Nexus Advisory Group (WNAG) meeting to synchronize the two Engsus servers. From a request to delay the synchronization, the time to the Tuesday (Feb 22) during reading week.
  • Slow logons, wrt the E-classroom Podium Nexus Stations.
    "I have created a feature whereby the user can elect at login time whether to load the profile or not.
    Logging in as the normal userid causes the login to proceed as normal.
    If the user enters a dash before the userid (eg. -erick2) then we revert to a local profile on the workstation. For the duration of the session, the user has his usual N: drive, but the the profile used is what would be given if the user was logging in for the first time.
    This local profile option should give approximately constant login delays (because less network i/o is required). The exact time will depend on the locally installed software, because each application will add its part to the profile.
    When the user logs off, this temporay profile is not copied back to the network. It still sits on the hard disk, and is eventually erased. The user's personal profile is untouched." (Erick Engelke, 31 Jan 2005)
    "Please note that the new '-userid' signon option Erick has developed is not available on the podium computers yet. Typically Nexus stations' software and configurations are not altered during the term and changes are only done in between terms." (Tim Farrell, 8 Feb 2005)

Current items

Steph

Ray

  • Mozilla Firefox - N:\Software\FireFox\prefs.js not importing user_pref("browser.cache.disk.parent_directory", "C:\\Temp"); correctly. Is there a major out-cry on campus from the cache (50MB) being setup on the N:\ drive?

Erick

  • main interest today is the new ngina, and getting some opinions so we can deploy for next term, or earlier for enthusiasts
    I want to keep
    • feature to allow encrypted station-only password - the human password is common, but ngina mangles the password with the netbios name, using MD5 or similar, and so the original password cannot be derived from the result, and breaking into one machine doesn't help on the next
    • minus logins, to avoid roaming profiles if the user so chooses
    Would like to toss
    • on screen keyboard, made unnecessary with the next feature
    Planning to add (currently in testing)
    • the ngina can use digital signing to verify all the DLLs in its process space. Spyware and others fail. We need to sign some non-MS dlls, like classnet-type stuff.
    Planning to add (not started, but not hard)
    • java based authentication feature for PDAs/Blackberries. This will resemble those one-shot password dongles, but the software will be free for us. I am assuming java compatibility on the device.
    • The information will be split, so a compromise on either the workstation or the handheld only will be insufficient to gain the user password.