Newsletter for 26 January 2004

Mon 26 Jan Newsletter

Events
1 LAN
2 InstallFest (Linux Installation Help)
3 CompSoc Meal
Technical
1 Molotov Downtime
2 Tech Team
Academic
1 Dave Jones Lecture
2 Academic Team
CAT5
Contact

1 Events

1.1 LAN

This coming weekend (Fri 30th Jan at 8pm to Sun 1st Feb at 8pm) we’ll be holding a LAN party. At the last LAN, as you may or may not know, we’ve had a problem with virii, so at this LAN, before you are plugged into the network, we will require evidence that your machine runs an up to date virus scanner, and has done a full system scan in the last week. If it hasn’t, you’ll be required to install one and run a full system scan before you are allowed to plug in. If you don’t have a scanner, please install the Piazza Virus scanner, available to all students at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/its/facilities/residences/safecomputing/savcenrb.exe

In addition, it is important that your operating system has all the latest security patches installed, especially those that protect against worms such as Welchia and Blaster.

If you are unable to do this, members of the Tech Team at the LAN will be able to help you do so.

1.2 InstallFest

Also at the aforementioned LAN, the Linux User Group will be providing help for anyone trying to install Linux onto their system. They normally have a large range of up to date distributions for you to choose from, and will be able to guide you through the install process and provide handy hints on what a good setup for certain things might be.

1.3 CompSoc Meal

On the Wednesday of week 5, Compsoc will be going to an all you can eat Chinese restaurant in Leamington. The cost of this is just under &£9 excluding drinks and the food is very good! Signups for this event will shortly be going onto the website and the deadline for signups will be around the end of week 4 (i.e. the lan) so that numbers can be confirmed. Lifts from campus can probably be arranged if necessary. This should make an interesting change from the pub and gaming sessions.

2 Technical

2.1 Molotov Downtime

Over last weekend, Molotov suffered approximately 5 hours of downtime due to excessive system load. We managed to bring it up again in the early hours of the morning. We request that users of molotov show more consideration of other users when using their shell accounts and/or the website.

In addition, Molotov has suffered more problems recently which we think is related to the IMAP server. The IMAP server has been stopped for now - so you should at least temporarily be using POP3 until we get it sorted.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

2.2 Tech Team

Our Technical Officer, Richard Wilson, has set up a Technical Team to handle the administration of the CompSoc servers in the future (we’re planning on expanding over and above the 2 servers we already run). If you’re interested in taking part in the maintenance of our gaming servers and/or the machines themselves, mail techteam@warwickcompsoc.co.uk .

3 Academic

3.1 Dave Jones Lecture

On Wednesday of this week (that’s the 28th Jan), we’ve arranged for a one hour guest lecture from Dave Jones, one of the Linux Kernel hackers. If you’re interested in hearing from him, the lecture will be in L4 from 4pm to 5pm.

3.2 Academic Team

In addition to the above Tech Team, our newly co-opted Academic Officer is interested in setting up an Academic Team to handle management and running of our academic events including: Guest lectures, tutorials, open source, programming competitions etc.

If you’re interested, the first meeting will be this Tuesday (27th Jan - yes, that’s tomorrow!) at 5pm in the Union North corridor (outside the meeting rooms) - feel free to turn up to this and/or mail academic@warwickcompsoc.co.uk .

4 CAT5

We still sell CAT5 cable to our members. The price is a 50p base charge plus 50p per metre for the first 10 metres plus 40p for every metre thereafter.

For example, 20m will cost you &£0.50 + &£5.00 + &£4.00 = &£9.50.

5 Contact

Website: http://www.uwcs.co.uk/
EMail: exec@uwcs.co.uk

David Buckley, webmaster - University of Warwick Computing Society