Title | Description | Proposer | Supporter(s) | Computing staff comments | |||
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Use Central Lists Service to host Informatics Database Generated Mailing Lists | The Informatics Database currently generates the list memberships for about 860 locally run mailman lists (out of a total of 1560 lists). This project would implement hosting of those lists on the central IS, Sympa based lists service instead. | Services Unit | |||||
Publish teaching material using SVN rather than CVS | Most teaching material is published using CVS. Can we please port this to SVN? I find using CVS rather than SVN takes considerable time (for instance, SVN is much quicker when changing directory structure). |
Phil Wadler | Should be doable, and would remove our use of cvs pserver authentication. Would need to check that the various hooks we have into cvs to do triggers and access control could be reimplemented, and that publishing through the web would still work. neilb |
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AFS Automation | Develop tools to automate various AFS tasks (https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/135) | Services Unit | |||||
TiBS component | Improvements to the existing TiBS component (https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/150) | Services Unit | |||||
AFS Benchmarking | Develop tool for AFS performance benchmarking (https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/159) | Services Unit | |||||
Bug Tracking Tool | Improved Bug Tracking Tool (https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/183) | Services Unit | |||||
Data Archiving | How best to meet the School's requirements for archiving data (https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/194) | Services Unit | |||||
Web space to AFS | Move user and group web space from NFS to AFS (https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/243) | Services Unit | |||||
ERA/PR Enhancements | Investigate how best to make use of the contents of ERA within the School (https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/189) | Services Unit | |||||
Investigate DNSsec | https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/100 At long last DNSsec is becoming more and more pervasive, and it's really time we took a proper look at it.. The main aim here is to review and report, though if there are small-scale changes which would help then they should be done along the way. Implementing signed zones is likely to be a bigger job, and would probably be best done in a project of its own later. | inf-unit | |||||
Intrusion Detection System | We don't have any automated mechanism at the moment for spotting compromised machines. We could do with one somewhere (or perhaps one or more at each site) watching the network for the usual traffic signatures. https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/102 | inf-unit | |||||
sFlow | Most of our core switches now speak sFlow. Investigate whether this technology would provide us with any useful information that we don't currently have. This would usefully complement #102 (intrusion detection) https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/98 | inf-unit | |||||
Full-service jabber | Our current jabber not-a-service has a few rough edges. Bring it up to scratch. https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/221 | inf-unit | |||||
Review of Forum wireless installation | We have a large deployment of Cisco wireless access points (WAPs) in the Forum, but we have had at least one complaint of unsatisfactory wireless service. For an 'optimal' - or at least an improved - service, it might be that we should move some of our existing WAPs, or else add to (or subtract from!) their number. Do a survey and produce a report. https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/233 | inf-unit | |||||
Monitoring System: Passive reporting scripts | https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/244 The existing Nagios monitoring system provides an interface for passive monitoring, but the implementation of any such monitoring is a distinct matter from the Nagios monitoring system software itself. Some passive monitoring has been implemented already, but it might benefit from being standardised (for example, with respect to the Kerberos principals used.) In addition, there is a need for passive monitoring of disk space usage. | inf-unit | |||||
Lifecycle code design | https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/262 The prometheus system is incomplete without an account-lifecycle component. As implementing this could be quite intrusive into the existing code base, we propose doing a design project first. | inf-unit | |||||
Review of authentication technology | https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/260 We have used MIT Kerberos since the beginning of DICE.It's time we reviewed the alternatives (Heimdal, EASE) and their implications. | inf-unit | |||||
OpenLDAP DICE client configuration | https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/267 Investigate dice client replication options (e.g. nslcd, nssov overlay, sssd, proxycaching, etc.) In some way this picks up from stalled project, #79, but warrants redefinition under a new project, to reflect changes in technology. | inf-unit | |||||
OpenLDAP mdb backend | https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/265 Investigate and test the new mdb backend with OpenLDAP , with a view to using it on servers/clients. | inf-unit | |||||
OpenLDAP slapd-conf configuration | https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/266 For some time now, the recommended configuration for OpenLDAP has been to provide slapd configuration using slapd-config (i.e. storing the configuration in ldap itself), rather than in slapd.conf. The real difficulty with this may be incorporating it into LCFG. Support for slapd.conf is scheduled to be dropped in openldap 2.5. | inf-unit | |||||
Multicast routing | https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/255 Although our core routers are (apparently) capable of multicast support, our edge routers currently don't implement any multicast routing. As a result, Informatics users have no access to external multicast streams. Investigate and possibly implement multicast routing on our edge routers. | inf-unit | |||||
Improved web-based submission system | An improved, web-based submission system which
I guess it would be nice (essential?) to have this in place shortly after the start of next session if it was to be usable. |
Paul Anderson | |||||
LCFG client code cleanup | Simple code clean-up of the exsting LCFG client component, fixing those pressing deficiencies which are easy to fix (https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/225) | MPU | |||||
Virtualised DICE image - trial | Produce a virtualised image with all teaching software for students to install on their personal laptops and home PCs. (https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/239) | RAT/MPU | |||||
Increasing Energy Savings from DICE Desktops | For some years the DICE desktops in the student labs have used energy-saving sleep software, the LCFG sleep component, which was developed in project 94. More recently the sleep component was also installed on staff and postgrad DICE desktops. We should now follow up on this work by finding out how successful it has been and what might be done to increase the energy savings. The project would start by collecting statistics from machines to see how much of the time they are asleep - in other words trying to understand how much of a contribution that sleep might be making to energy saving. Depending on what the statistics say, some changes to the LCFG sleep component could be made or users could be informed about how to get their machines to sleep. |
David Sterratt | This seems both worthwhile and straightforward to me. It's time we quantified how successful the sleep component has been and took steps to increase its effectiveness where necessary. - Chris Cooke |
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MPU wee projects bundle | A number of MPU wee projects have not been resourced because prioritised projects have been seen to have higher priority. This project would tackle the wee projects which we consider to be of highest priority.
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MPU | |||||
Investigate AFS on ECDF storage | The University is proposing to provide each research active user with 500GB disk space. Unfortunately, IS are currently proposing that this space will be presented by NFS, CIFS or SSHFS. This project would investigate whether we (working with IS) can add AFS as an access mechanism. | ascobie | |||||
Revelop School inventory | The current inventory system does not meet all our requirements and there is concern that tracking machines has now become unreliable. This is particularly the case for self-managed machines. We are not able to easily answer fundamental inventory questions - this is a particular problem for planning expenditure and machine allocation. https://devproj.inf.ed.ac.uk/project/show/269 | ascobie |