Present
| Department | Advisor name |
|---|---|
| AHS | Lowell Williamson |
| Arts | Nevil Bromley |
| Engineering Computing | Daniel Delattre |
| Erick Engelke | |
| Hon Tam | |
| Ray White (Secretary) | |
| Environmental Studies | Bernie Rutter |
| Science | Steph Sempson (Chair) |
Regrets
| Computer Science | Steve Nickerson |
| IST | Steve Carr |
| Tim Farrell | |
| Math | Naji Alamrony |
Agenda items this month
Meeting discussions
Staff members cannot scratch
The discussion directed us to conclude that scratch needs to be reworked to better address the exceptions, however, it is too early to redesign the system except for minor upgrades until we know how the ID Auth project merges with the current setup. In the meantime Paul has added the "New User Activation" link to the MyWaterloo login page in order to help direct students, a PHP addition to the MyWaterloo login to check if the user has created the account will follow.
EMERGE
Erick elaborated on the project. Daniel has deployed it to Engineering and is looking at adding the MSI to the "Nexus Common Services" GPO mid-term. Currently ! accounts can manage the notifications, this will change later and will likely need a database back end for managing the notices.
Testing of AD restores
Hon went through rebuilding of engtest and nexustest for various reasons (exchange, server 2008 etc.) and ran into a few unexpected results. Hardware failures, doing multiple rebuilds simultaneously and refining of the procedure gave more work since the domains needed a complete rebuild. The new procedure needs to be tested from scratch and the new 64bit hardware will need to be installed later.
Distribution of domain controllers
Hon is having troubles with one of the domain controllers so temporarily it has been rebuild and currently resides in Sharcnet rather than the Math building. The redistribution will be fixed as soon as possible. The first unscheduled power outage in Sharcnet that we are aware of happened September 28, 2007 for approximately 35 minutes.
Passwords
At the end of term the rules for valid passwords will be tightened. Those users who do not meet the minimum requirements will not be able to log on when the change happens and will need to change their passwords via the newpassword web form. A small cleanup of privileged accounts happened when Erick sent out email about lengthening the passwords for privileged users. A > 14 character password is necessary to use the more secure encryption scheme for passwords.
Printers
For some computers it was necessary for an administrator to fix printer driver installation problems. It appears that recently this procedure has failed and some printer drivers installations require higher privileges. Further investigation is needed and a work around other than changing privileges needs to be determined. Vista has a similar problem and will need more research to fix.
USB drive problems
Similar to the printer driver problems, some USB keys are causing issues again. Again more research needs to be done to find a work around that does not require privileges.
Software licensing
Sandra will be scheduling a meeting early November on campus with Microsoft representatives to determine the leasing agreements. If you will be leasing software, finalize your plans soon since after the meeting orders will be going out.
Next meeting scheduled for November 21, 2007.
