Wish List

This page aims to list current improvements we would like to make to the cluster. Ask jdhutchin if you have any questions about them.

Contents 1 Good starter Projects 1.1 Squeeze Upgrade 1.2 Fix splunk 1.3 Fix backups 1.4 Migrate to postgres 8.4 1.5 Upgrade ugcs_libs 1.6 Audit mailing lists 1.7 Write auto-scanner for malware 1.8 Mediawiki upgrader 1.9 Add news / tip of the day 1.10 Upgrade the juniper switch 1.11 Autofixers 2 Maintenance 3 Software 4 Small fixes 5 Mail System 6 Automatic group creation/management 7 Large file hosting 8 Account creator / password reset 9 Network 10 Hardware 11 Web hosting 12 Global login records 13 Documentation

Good starter Projects

Squeeze Upgrade

The following computers need to be upgraded to squeeze:

• Hermes (complicated, postfix needs to be rebuilt with a small patch)
• Hera (not too bad, dns CNAMES need to be changed ahead of time)
• Charon, enlil, kabta

Fix splunk

• The upgraded to 4.x broke it.

Fix backups

• The drives on persephone are too small, so we run out of space
• Also, tape backups need to be run more often than never

Migrate to postgres 8.4

• Not too bad

Upgrade ugcs_libs

• The package is mostly built, just needs some testing
• Needs to be deployed to get a rid of deprecation warnings

Audit mailing lists

• People have signed up random accounts on them and are spying on our mail

Write auto-scanner for malware

• We need to look at our web serving and auto-detect when we are serving spam off of it.

Mediawiki upgrader

• The upgrade to 1.16 for users may break, esp if they tried to install >1 mediawiki on their account

Add news / tip of the day

Even better, write your own nice little utilities and then let people know about them.

Upgrade the juniper switch

There is a new version if JOS out that we should upgrade to.

Autofixers

Set up nagios so it more aggressively auto-restarts stuff when it is down.

Maintenance

These are things that we have to do even if there aren't full-time student sysadmins.

• Account requests and password resets SLA: 1day
  • How do we know: We get emails

• Fix it when it breaks: Server down
  • SLA: 1hr
  • How do we know: Email alerts for most things, sms to jdhutchin's phone for really urgent things.
  • Owner: jdhutchin

• Fix minor support requests for things that are broken: SLA: 5days
  • Sooner would be better

• Answer user questions: SLA: Best-effort
  • It would be nice if we could do this but it isn't a top priority

Software

Fix mex (matlab compiler)

Add support for distributed Mathematica on mortals

Small fixes

Small things that need to be fixed across various services/machines:

• Email heartbeat
• Hestia SSL cert
• Change kabta back to ssh keys after Alex/Raymond add theirs
• Find the sysadmins PGP key
• Fix the backup schedules to something sensible

Mail System

See Mail Improvements

Automatic group creation/management

See ugcs groups

Large file hosting

Almost done! See NFS servers Server is running and exporting things correctly. All we need now is disk quotas.

Account creator / password reset

• Re-work as necessary to ensure robustness
• Add exception reporting system (email to sysadmins)
• Write full test suite to ensure quality

Network

• Write a system that shows us mac/ip/port number
• Add port mirroring to charon for deseriable traffic
• Improve firewalls
• Enable switch port security
• Fix switch names

Hardware

• Set up hestia to take over for dionysus - in progress
• network card flip: put one of the single gigabit cards into charon, and move its two-port gigabit cards into poseidon and persephone

Web hosting

• Add a failover web server

Global login records

We need to implement some stuff with ldap so we have global login records

Documentation

• We need a printed-out copy of critical wiki stuff
• We need to make more documentation about our services for disaster recovery.
• We need to update all of the core server pages with correct disk setups and currently running services.