Re: Meeting

[gilfoyle <ggilfoyl@richmond.edu>]

hi sasko,

   my response are below.

cheers,

jerry

"Stefanovski, Sasko" wrote:
> 
> Dr. Gilfoyle,
> 
> >i will be in town next wednesday.
> >i think it would be useful to meet and discuss some things and i can
> >give you the password at that time. i would like to talk about the
> >possibility of getting some new machines and adding them to the
> >cluster. we would use the racks from the old cluster which would
> >mean at least starting to dismantle the old cluster. what would be
> >a good time to meet?
> 
> >let me know what you think.
> 
> I have no planed activities for the next Wednesday so far.
> Is it 10am o.k. with you, so I can update my calendar?

let's make it 10:30 or  bit after. i have to meet with one
of my students from 9:30-10:30.

> 
> I did apply security errata to some of the installed packages.
> Since the cluster is running customized kernel, it is impossible to update
> the following packages with the general RedHat updates:
>    nfs-utils,
>    modutils,
>    losetup,
>    mount
>    lpr
>    wu-ftpd
>    at
>    util-linux
>    openssl
>    openssl-devel
>    openssl-pyton
>    openssl-perl
>    glibc
>    glibc-devel
>    kernel
>    kernel-headers
> 
> Some of them have serious security issues and it is strongly recommended to
> apply their fixes. However, since the current installed versions are
> customized by Scyld engineers, we have to options:
> - either wait for patch from Scyld (I am not so optimistic on this)
> - put the cluster beside the firewall (an old box with 2 NIC's running the
> latest RedHat image would do the trick).
> 
> I vote for the second options. In that case we wouldn't have a vulnerable
> system exposed directly to outside world. That wouldn't affect the way the
> cluster is being used or his services accessed.
> 
> What do you think about this? I would like to chat more on this next
> Wednesday.

this sounds like a good idea. let's talk about it on wednesday. one
question
would be where do we get the machine for the firewall?

> 
> Regards,
> Sasko

-- 
Dr. Gerard P. Gilfoyle
Physics Department                e-mail: ggilfoyl@richmond.edu
University of Richmond, VA 23173  phone:  804-289-8255
USA                               fax:    804-289-8482