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December 05, 2003
Cobalt RAQ opportunity
"What? A rack of kobolds?" --Ed
In speaking with our sysadmins and D. Barnes, it has been made clear that we can make use of a Cobalt RAQ for a CSCS project server. We would be root on the machine.
Now, before you wet yourself, there are a few catches. First off, the machines have been heavily firewalled until now, because the department didn't trust them in their "out-of-the-box" configuration. So, they have been accessible from hadar only. If you don't know what this machine is, it doesn't completely surprise me, as it's a large, multi-processor machine mostly used for research.
So in moving the RAQ(s) out from behind hadar, we're going to be come responsible for the security of our machine. Currently, there's a short list of people who will have root on this machine:
- mcj4
- clj3
Now, I don't think either Christian or I want to be the sysadmin on this machine (I can tell you for sure that I don't want to be the administrator!) I do suspect that there are some of you who would enjoy this, and furthermore, I suspect there are some of you who would like to learn what goes on in being a sysadmin.
So drop me an email if you'd like root, and would like to be part of the server admin team. One of the most important things we'll be responsible for is monitoring the usage and traffic in and out of the machine; in short, make sure we're neither hacked nor being used to propagate a hack. While I trust the CSCS group... I don't. That's rule one of being a good sysadmin, I think: trust noone.
Let me know if you want to play, and which category you consider yourself in: quasi-experienced, or learner. We can't all be root at once, but I'm interested in seeing that everyone who wants to have some responsibility gets a chance at screwing everything up horribly. 
Posted by mjadud at December 5, 2003 01:54 PM