Monday, July 14: Shmuel and I (Ben) met with Dean Adler. Before the meeting, he called in George Sullivan of MIS to join us. Mr. Sullivan began with a history of 501: It was started as an alternative mail server to yu1 because yu1 could not handle all of its users. MIS donated the machine to Josh and Jack to start it up. It later evolved into more than MIS had planned, including the web server. After having recieved several complaints, including: the Commentator, a spamming incident (anyone know what? I couldn't figure it out but didn't want to ask), two incidents of Israeli institutions tracing cracking to YU, and most recently, the cracking of ymail. After this last one, MIS felt that they had no choice but to down 501. Mr. Sullivan declared that he was not going to turn 501 back on.
I then gave my version of the story: When I came to YU, 501 already existed, and everything I learned that has enabled me to work this summer as an internet programmer I learned from 501 (two semesters of C doesn't get you very far). Since YU does not offer courses in these areas, it is essential that Computer Science students have their own server for educational purposes. I said that YUCS is more than willing to work together with MIS to make it happen in a way that will be acceptable to MIS and YU administration.
With regards to the reason for shutting down 501: Mr. Sullivan said that he felt that since 501 was causing so much trouble and that people were using it to crack other sites, it had to be shut down. Dean Adler said that cracking 501 was extremely serious, punishable by expulsion in other schools, and that he felt semi-raped. I explained that in order to hack into a server (don't try this at home), you must have an account on that server, and from there you can look for security holes. Therefore, not 501 but rather the victim servers themselves were used for the illegal activity. At this point, Dean Adler said that as responsible adults, all members of YUCS were responsible to know in advance (May!) that **** was planning to hack root at ymail. I respectfully disagreed. Dean Adler said that we had all lost our trustability, and we would have to regain it.
With regards to proposals for a YUCS Student-Run Server (SRS) in the
future: Mr. Sullivan seemed to be very open to any suggestions, provided
that they would be backed my members of the faculty and administration.
MIS will, once official arrangements have been made, donate a box to YUCS.
We will then take it from there. Possible in-between solutions would be
a server without web capability, 501 on intranet-only, use of acis as
our Unix environment, and an NT server. Mr. Sullivan indicated that he
would like to have root access to any SRS that we would have. He requested
this earlier in the year but was ignored. But it's not as bad as it sounds;
Mr. Sullivan assured us that he does not know Linux and only needs root
so that he can tell people (and know for himself) that if there is a
problem, he can do something about it. It would still be student-run.
Tuesday, July 15: Shmuel and I recieved an email
from Dean Adler regarding future meetings. We also recieved an email
from George Sullivan regarding the files on 501.
Wednesday, July 16: Dean Adler called to tell me that we would not meet next week as planned. Instead, I should call him in September. He also told me that Mr. Sullivan had come to a decision about how to get the files to us. I don't know the details of the arrangement; I left a message on his machine, and I will let you know as soon as I find out.
I also recieved an email from Dean Adler
detailing the process involved in determining the school's internet policy.
Apparently it is only after all of this is completed that we will be
able to accomplish anything.
Thursday, July 17: I recieved an email
from Mr. Sullivan asking for our help transfering the files. Then, Aryeh
sent out an email describing Arthur Myers' more
limiting plan for transfering the files. Mendy called Mr. Sullivan, who
said to send him a proposal for tranfering the files. Here
is the proposal I sent him, and here is his
response. Arrangements will be made in the very near future to get
all of the files to their rightful owners.
Sunday, July 20: Mr. Sullivan responded to my email, confirming that we would pick up the files on Monday. Shmuel and I and hopefully Jack will be going in tomorrow. Please keep checking back here for details. A list will be made of all 501 users, and we will make an attempt to contact everyone.
Monday, July 21: Ben and I (Shmuel) went in to work with MIS to begin the process of getting everyone their files. With the help of Zeli Kartzman, we made a backup of all of the files from 501 onto a new hard drive. However, we had problems reinstalling LILO and so this drive is not bootable yet - that will probably be taken care of on Wednesday by Jack.
We had been told by MIS that they were spooling the mail and that all
the mail from the last two weeks would be forwarded to acis. Unfortunately,
the mail server at acis (as with most mail servers) gives up after trying
to send the mail for 3 days. Any mail that you would have recieved has
bounced back to the sender.
NB: Make sure to remove or edit your .forward file on ymail if it is set
up to forward to 501, as all your mail to ymail will bounce.
Ben made a list of all the addresses of people on 501 that we could find.
He sent an email out yesterday regarding the 501 situation. If you
did not receive this email and want to, contact Ben.
The email list is up. If you want your address added
or changed then email me (Ben).
Wednesday, July 23: Zeli got the hard drive bootable
this morning. I (Shmuel) spoke to Jack and he said that he would be coming in
tomorrow morning to pick it up. Mr. Sullivan's plan for creating temporary accounts
on ymail will still happen. I don't know exactly when yet, but I will
find out soon.
Monday, July 28 Jack has been very busy lately,
but he said that he will go in tomorrow to get the drive. We will then
work out a way of making the files accessible. Please keep checking the
page, but don't send me email telling me that your files are important!
Everybody's files are important, and we will all get them in due time.
In case you were wondering, I don't have my own files, either.
Wednesday, August 6: Jack has still not gotten the drive, so we gave up on him and went in ourselves. Unfortunately, while waiting for Jack a new issue developed. Someone suggested that there could be a legal problem with the school turning over the files to us since that would give us access to people's private data, such as their mail. George Sullivan was not specific as to who came up with this concern, but it seems to have come from someone in the office of the Dean of Students. We discussed this with David Himber, the associate Dean of Students. He was very difficult and would not give us any information without first discussing it with Mr. Sullivan. Hopefully that will be tomorrow, and more details will be forthcoming. This legal issue is obviously ridiculous for more reasons than I'd like to go into here, as I'm trying to keep this page as objective as possible. All concerns should be forwarded to Mr. Himber. He has not yet learned how to use email (really), but he can be reached at (212) 960-5480.
I also suggested to Mr. Sullivan the possibility of turning on 501 for ftp access only. This would be the easiest way for us to get our files while avoiding all other issues. We would still like to get the hard drive, but while that is being arranged, we woould be able to access our personal files. There had been some objection to this, although I do not know from whom or on what grounds. Zeli discussed the possibility with Mr. Sullivan, suggesting that if there was a security concern, possible solutions would be either giving root solely to Zeli or turning off ftp access for root. Mr. Sullivan liked the idea and said that he will discuss it with Dominik DeRosa and Joe McGoldrick, and if they approve then we may be able to set up ftp access.
Shmuel also spoke to Dean Adler about the possiblity of us borrowing a computer for use as a local Linux machine. This would allow us to learn how to set up a Linux server without having to wait for the permission to connect such a machine to the internet. Dean Adler will be discussing this proposal with the Dean of Students tomorrow.
Thursday, August 8: Mr. Sullivan called me (Shmuel) today and told
me that ftp access for 501 has been turned on! Only ftp access is
available. In order to connect, type ftp 129.98.200.231 from your unix
or DOS prompt. Zeli said that the reason that 501.yc.yu.edu
does not work is because AECOM deleted our DNS. Enter your login and
password when you are prompted to do so. I would like to thank the MIS
department, and especially Mr. Sullivan and Zeli, for making this possible.
Now everybody can get their files, so this resolves that problem. We are
still working on getting the hard drive, but our main problem has been solved.
Monday, August 11: Mr. Sullivan had told me
that Rabbi Adam Miller from Student Services is the one to speak to about
the legal obstacle to our getting the hard drive. Since Mr. Sullivan is now
on vacation, I (Ben) called R' Miller to continue the discussion. He told me
that he would look into it and get back to me. However, he was not at
liberty to discuss it with me, to tell me the details of the legal concern,
to tell me if it was his idea, to tell me who he had to talk to in order
to work out the issue, or to refrain from accusing me of having ulterior
motives in calling. I was very surprised about this, since Mr. Sullivan
and everyone else I have spoken to have been very helpful and forthcoming.
R' Miller explained to me that there are certain issues which are not
of concern to students that can therefore not be discussed with us. I
mentioed that I was a student and that this was of concern to me, but he
was not amused. If you are reading this and happen to be both a student and
concerned about this issue, please feel free to express this concern to
R' Miller in the Office of Student Services at (212) 960-5480.
Thursday, August 21: R' Miller called my house on Tuesday (I wasn't home) to say that the issues preventing us from picking up the hard drive had been resolved and that I could pick up the drive from Paul Scrudato. However, when I called today, Mr. Scrudato didn't know about this, and Mr. Sullivan got on the phone to tell me that there remained a minor mystery issue which neither he nor R' Miller knew anything about. Hopefully this will be resolved by Monday.
On the bright side, Mr. Sullivan said that he expects the high-tech
committee to approve our request for a student-run server, and we may even
be able to fire up the old server. Of course, the details of this still have
to be worked out. Look for more details when school starts!
Thursday, August 28: On Tuesday, Shmuel, Mendy, Aryeh, and I (Ben) met with Dean Adler, R' Hecht, and George Sullivan to discuss our proposal for the upcoming meeting. Several concerns were raised and addressed, and we believe that we can count on the all of their support at the high-tech meeting on Wednesday. Nothing is official until after the meeting, when we will post the proposal and let you know what happened.
Besides this, we are expecting a fun-packed year for YUCS. The club
fair is on Thursday (9/4), and everyone is encouraged to show up and
officially become a member of YUCS. Also, look for a YUCS meeting soon
after the club fair.
Wednesday, September 3: Today was the much-awaited meeting of the high tech committee. Several issues were discussed, such as MIS's plans for the YU website and whether YU should use Hebrew Word or Dagesh or WordPerfect 5.1 for Hebrew word processing. The topic of the student-run server came up about 5 minutes before the end of the meeting, so we did not have much time to present our case. First, Arthur Myers gave a summary of what Dean Adler called "the saga of 501." We handed out copies of our proposal and people asked a few questions. Since we were out of time, Dean Adler said that we should send out copies of the proposal and people should email their responses to him within two weeks. He will then present it to his [unnamed] higher-ups. We did, however, get a commitment from MIS for a computer, which we will hopefully be gettng next week.
The club fair was postponed until Wednesday, September 10 (my birthday!)
at 8:00 PM. Please come and sign up!
Wednesday, September 10: MIS has informed us that 501 will be up for ftp only until Monday! Please make sure that you download all of your files by Monday. They will most likely not be available afterwards.
Of course, the club fair was postponed again. Latest rumor has it that
the club fair will be next Tuesday. Look for signs.
Wednesday, September 17: We finally got the computer from MIS. It is the same one as 501 used last year. We hope to start instlling and configuring our server soon, and hopefully we will get permission from the school to actually use it.
The club fair was last night, and it seems to have gone well. Over 60
people signed up. We are meeting tonight at 10:15 in Room 501 Morg.
A large range of topics will be discussed. There is a lot we would like
to accomplish, so please come and join us.
Friday, October 10: As we go into the break, the situation is as follows: Dean Adler and George Sullivan have both expressed support for the CS server. The server is also fully installed and ready to go. We now need to write up a description of what will be on the server. We also need to get a faculty advisor. From the way it was described to me, the position seems quite nominal. Aizik and Lenny Brandwein both said no, so we are still searching.
We plan on having a meeting right after we come back from the break. You should get an email about it, but just in case, check back here.
Friday, October 31: The latest situation as Dean Adler has explained to me is as follows: We need a faculty advisor. He will pick the faculty advisor, but hasn't found anyone yet. Also, we can't put anything up on the web until the school hires a web coordinator. Dean Adler has assured us that he does want this server to go up, but several obstacles must be overcome before this can happen.
Sunday, December 7: To update you since the last time this page was updated: We gave up on YU and decided to go out on our own. Despite the Commentator, we will continue to work with MIS and the YU administration to improve the CS facilities at YU.