MPU Meeting Wednesday 8th April 2020

Inventory

Completed and signed off.

Profile Security

Waiting for the code review.

Alternative Desktop Platform

• The package list management tool is coming on well, but more work needs to be done to cope with Ubuntu's distinctly odd repo structure.
• Bugs in the LCFG core libraries were found and fixed.
• Alastair will look into bonding support in Ubuntu. It may "just work" with netplan.

User Security Training Materials

Nothing happened. Alastair and Chris will talk about deadlines.

Misc Development

• Stephen found that the inifile component doesn't make a directory for a config file it's making, if the directory isn't there already.

Operational

• Chris processed the March firmware updates for MPU servers. A couple of servers joined our Trello list of those with "urgent" firmware updates pending. However in current circumstances we're a little leery of installing firmware updates, in case physical access should be needed.
• However it's still a good idea to reboot servers in order to update their kernels. In particular Chris will reboot azul, clavichord and harpsichord soon.
• dsu is now crashing on our oldest servers. Chris is investigating and will try upgrading to the latest version.
• Stephen will advertise XRDP direct to the office desktop, and mention it in computing.help.
• We're concerned at our dependence on the Forum server room, with its unreliable cooling facilities. We're going to take a closer look at MPU servers at KB -
  • Could our DP servers there be promoted to master if necessary? We'll consider this.
  • What VMs could we kick off the KB-based KVM servers if necessary? Chris will add a "could dump?" column to the MPU KVM servers' wiki pages.
  • Is there anything we could currently delete from the KB KVM servers?
  • Stephen will test a DICE server install which uses only KB-based infrastructure.