UNIX Team mail list and discussion

Date: Thu, 05 Dec 1996 16:09:23 -0500 From: "Myretta Robens" Subject: Coordination Hello Unixteam, As Amy mentioned today, I've volunteered to coordinate our effort. I did this for two reasons: 1) I think that if we are all rooting around in the operating system at the same time, doing the same or conflicting things, we may come to regret the experience. 2) I'm probably better at coordinating than I am at UNIX. So, I propose that the best way to start is to inventory our experience, our level of expertise, our comfort level and our interests and then take it from there. I'll begin. Hi, I'm Myretta Robens. I have worked with UNIX on and off since 1985. I'm currently managing network infrastructure so my exposure to UNIX has diminished. I have worked with System V release 3.x and 4.0, BSD, AIX release 4.1, and SunOS 4.?. I have done Bourne shell programming, a little C shell and even less K shell. I have no PERL or CGI experience. I can get around the operating sytem with some facility and am a vi queen. Unfortunately, my heavy duty UNIX years were well before the Web became real ty. So, you see, my intentions probably outweigh my expertise. I would like to help and I think that, in some cases, the best way I can do this is to make sure we don't collide in trying to make this work. I welcome your thoughts and suggestions and look forwared to working with you. Myretta

Date: Fri, 06 Dec 1996 04:32:15 -0800 From: Joan Winsor Subject: Re: Coordination Hello Unixteam, Myretta said: ] 1) I think that if we are all rooting around in the operating system ] at the same time, doing the same or conflicting things, we may come to ] regret the experience. I agree - this is the voice of experience speaking - it is possible for those accidentally working at cross-purposes to make a huge mess that takes a lot of someone's time to clean up after! ] the best way to start is to inventory our experience, our level of ] expertise, our comfort level and our interests I'm Joan Winsor. I have worked with UNIX as little as possible. I only know what I have needed to know for some particular purpose, and there is considerable rust upon what I do know. At one time I was responsible for doing some specific "janitorial" duties on a UNIX host. At my initial training session, they started out by telling me, "No matter what you do, never type in "rm mix" or you will delete the entire network." I knew right away that I was in a very dangerous place! One thing I am curious o know about is what level of privilege (potential for doing damage) our IDs have been given here. I have had more direct experience working with "moderator" or "organizer" or "customize" commands within specific conferencing software such as Caucus, CoSy, and FirstClass, and have run my school district's dial-in BBS with an Internet mail gateway for four years. I'm quite certain that my intentions as far as UNIX itself is concerned outweigh my expertise, but I *am* able to follow very specific directions and do specific tasks properly, and I did manage not to delete the entire network in my previous paid experience. Joan

From: Paul Terry Walhus Subject: Re: Coordination Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 07:20:40 -0600 (CST) Basics: Everything is in /usr/bbs/confs/austen Each topic is of the form _11 *this would be topic 11* You have to be extremely careful if you go in and edit a topic because you can easily muck it up. This is the voice of experience. There is a generic way to affect the look and feel of the whole spring and their are specific ways to affect just a particular topic. Do I need to set up other hostlevel folks in the austen confernce besides myself and Amy? My guess is that Matisses manual is out of date compared to Daves manual, has anyone actually managed to get it converted to readable form? Dave Tahler a d Kaylene Thaler support yapp. Dave wrote it. These nice folks reside in Ann Arbor Michigan. Teh yapp conference posts get emailed directly to Dave. There are "other" topics onthe spring which maybe of interested to this group and feel welcome to contribute inother areas *eg. books, tv, movies, cultures, etc. Terry

From: "Amy Bellinger" Subject: Re: Coordination Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 18:11:03 -0500 To: Unix team From: Amy ______________________ Responding to our coordinator's first missive: Myretta said: ] 2) I'm probably better at coordinating than I am at UNIX. I think we are lucky to have somebody with experience in managing technology -- and you do seem to remember your UNIX pretty well, Myretta. Thanks for volunteering. ] So, I propose that the best way to start is to inventory our experience, ] our level of expertise, our comfort level and our interests and then take ] it from there. Me, I am Amy Bellinger. Here is my resume: http://www.bluemarble.net/~amyloo/resume.html I'm a writer, editor, survey researcher, former PR flack who has used computers as a tool. First exposure in an office setting was in a PR agency in LA that had a clunky Fortune Systems network, 1985. Have written and done newsletter layout on a Mac, owned Apples and PCs. I know just enough Perl and CGI to fake out a script to process survey forms entered from the web -- and to half understand how to modify canned CGI/Perl scripts. I do adore the web and confess I like the "making it pretty" part more than the mucking about in the back stairways, but there can be some satisfaction for me in that part as well.

From: "Amy Bellinger" Subject: Fw: root Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 10:35:59 -0500 Terry, I think some of your comments may have been intended for the UNIX group rather than the austen.com planning group. I am forwarding the message. Amy ---------- ] From: Terry Walhus ] To: Terry Walhus ] Subject: root ] Date: Wednesday, December 11, 1996 8:50 AM ] ] There are some things that affect austen that must be done ] on a general level to the whole system. These are affected ] by a general set of parameters by loggin in as sysop on the ] website. ] ] Also, others can be added to host level status in austen and ] in other conferences if they want to. ] ] I'm just trying to figure out what I can be doing that I'm ] not doing now to help you all out. ] ] I'm not sure of the status of the www.austen.com address. ] Email webmaster@bastrop.net for a status report. This is ] supposed to have been set up, but you'll have to email ] webmaster@bastrop.net to get an ftp account set up on this ] system. Can someone try and ftp something there today to ] see if it is functioning and then connect to the website. ] ] I will be checking in evenings and early am sometimes. ] My time during the day is very limited now. but I'm hoping ] that the Spring can continue to grow with your guidance and ] support. ] ] Hope you're having a good day. ] ] ] Terry ]

From: "Amy Bellinger" Subject: Background gif Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 20:59:51 -0500 Myretta, I found the message in the Yapp conference about backgrounds. Below and at http://www.spring.com/yapp-bin/restricted/read/yapp/17#Resp0 What did we ever determine about the online manual Kaff found -- that it was current, or not? ___ Topic 17 of 38: Conference wallpaper Thu, Sep 12, 1996 (13:33) | Dave Thaler (thalerd@eecs.umich.edu) Paul Walhus asked: ] Is it possible ] to create custom individual wallpaper for particular conferences or ] is the background wallpaper required to be the same for all conferences? Yes it is possible. One way to do this would be to: 1) In the "Standard page header" section of the System Customization page, make the wallpaper part of the body tag be a new macro (pick any name) like %{wallpaper}. 2) Define the default wallpaper in a global rc file (e.g., /usr/bbs/rc) For example, define wallpaper 'default_wallpaper.gif' Only cfadm can do this from Unix. 3) For each conference in which you want to have non-default wallpaper, redefine the wallpaper macro in the conference rc file. Either cfadm or the conference host/fairwitness can do this from inside yapp with "change rc".

From: "Amy Bellinger" Subject: Permissions and coordination Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 21:10:40 -0500 Okay, Joan, let's bring this back into general discussion. ] ] Amy: ] ] Asked Terry for Myretta, ] ] Zimei, Kaff and me, with co-host status for the rest of ] ] the members of the UNIX team, that Myretta's access is the ] ] priority, since she would like to add a test conference as ] ] soon as possible. ] Joan ] I feel that I have to say that IMHO this is too many people - snip Amy: I know I should not be trusted. On the other hand I can't stand not being able to set my own permissions, and according to Myretta, root access is needed to do this on this server. I don't want to have to ask Myretta to let me be able to write to a particular topic file if I want to get in and edit it. And I don't think she wants to be bothered with that sort of request either. Me, I trust Myretta as an experienced tech manager to tell us the rules. Like: don't ever touch this; don't go here this week while I am doing something else there; you _have_ to copy these kinds of files before futzing with them; &c.

Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 08:43:46 -0500 From: "Myretta Robens" Subject: Catch Up These are just some responses to the email that has been flying around last week. 1. I'm happy to manage the system aspects of our conference and, where I can, give Terry a hand with Spring. 2. It should be possible to allow non-root people write access to all the appropriate conference files and still restrict the directory itself. (If you own a file, you can change permissions, but you can't change ownership). 3. Even without root permissions, there should be some coordination of work being done on the conference. We still run the risk of running into each other. 4. I'm sure it won't be necessary for anyone to give more time or effort than they can afford or want to give. If it comes right down to it, we can maintain the status quo quite easily. We'll do what we can when we can. 5. The online manual Kaff found is not as comrehensive as the Admin Guide we downloaded. But it's not as cryptic either. I think they can be used together to make sense of Yapp. 6. I think that a good place for us to start trying our wings is with the look and feel of the interface. It would make me happier if we could emulate at least the look of Amy's Bluemarble site. However, we really will need root access to do this. Also, I would rather play around with a test conference as we learn our way around the system. 7. I haven't heard from Terry about system priveleges. Has anyone? 8. When all this gets organize let's set up the test conference and start trying to customize it. What do you think: Well, I guess that's it for now. I alternate between disbelief that I'm taking on another Unix system and excitement about getting started. I think this will be a lot of fun. Looking forward to your responses (and I know you'll have some). Myretta

From: "Amy Bellinger" Subject: New Yapp features Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 00:50:39 -0500 Yeah, team. I bet you all saw Terry's repost of Dave Thaler's post in the Yapp conference, but here it is again just in case. Am I nuts or is the response to response feature one of the things we most miss being able to do? If you agree, please join me in lobbying for it to come out in the new release. Post in topic 39 in the Yapp conference. Thanks. Alternatively, tell me I'm nuts. Amy __________ http://208.199.212.10/yapp-bin/restricted/read/yapp/39/all ]From Yapp conference at Spring Topic 39 of 39: Status of new release Wed, Dec 18, 1996 (22:49) | Dave Thaler (thaler@armidale.ann-arbor.mi.us) Here's an update on latest Yapp developments... The following bugs are fixed: - minor security hole in "source" command - duplicate responses are now prevented - cfcreate and cfcreate shell scripts now work right on System V platforms - commands embedded inside seps now work again - After posting from the web, all responses are displayed starting from the last one seen (requested here by Anna) The following features are added: - added macros so that the "browse all" web page shows a "NEW" icon next to new items (suggested here by Joan) - you can now change your name in each conference. Also, if you set it to "none", it will always be the same as your global fullname. - added support for ulist includes (requested by Trinity College) to help manage private conference user lists - Added support for ".cfjoin" files (global default and/or per user) to be executed the first time you join a new conference (requested by Drizzle) - "fixto" command (currently from Unix only) allows marking all responses as read up to a specified date, unlike the current "fixseen" which marks entire items (requested by Drizzle) - You can now mark everything as read from the web (requested here by Joan) Things not done yet: - Allowing responses to responses from the web (requested here by Amy) - Updating the help files and/or admin guide to document the new features If there's anything you've suggested that you don't see listed above, please mention it again in case I missed it. I'm thinking about doing a release within the next couple of days with just the things already done, plus hopefully the documentation. Any more features/changes would delay the release. Questions/comments?