News

Further problems were experienced on the evening of Tuesday 1st July on the link between Swansea and LINX. This caused intermittent connectivity issues between 18:41 and 19:10.

Don't forget that an alternative version of Milliways is available by making an ssh connection to bbs@outpost.sucs.org - the password is "bbs".

There have been network problems on the link between Wales (SWMAN) and England(JA.net)

• Monday 16th between 15:35 and 16:00
• Tuesday 17th between 8:30 and 8:50

The Beach Party was a roaring success - as I type, there are still people on the beach enjoying the early morning sunshine! Photos and video from this year's event can be found at the bottom of the Parties Page on SUCS@20. If you have any photos from the beach party, please add a link to the SUCS@20 wiki.

As you may have noticed, the university's network is having problems, this is due to an outage in JANET. Therefore people connecting from outside the university may experience slow connections to SUCS.

It's that time of year again: The annual SUCS beach party will be held on Saturday June 7th on the beach near the Sketty Lane carpark:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=51.605&mlon=-3.983&zoom=16

Donations of burnable stuff are welcome. The party usually kicks off at about 19:00, but people will be around earlier to shift wood down to the beach so please lend a hand if you are able.

Remember to bring stuff to eat and drink, and if we're lucky we will convince Sits to do his usual good job of running a BBQ, so BBQable food donations are welcome.

You can now find the new Ubuntu 'Hardy Heron' on our ftp site - ftp://sucs.org

This term we are holding more events to give you all some breaks from exams and work. The dates for the next LAN event, lightning talks and the beach party have now been set. Read on for more…

The next LAN event is set for the Saturday 3^rd May in Dining Room C from 11am - 11pm, with setup from 10am, drop by and play some games. It's free for SUCS members and £1 in advance or £2 on the door for non-members. For more information visit: http://sucs.org/Games/LAN%20Events

We also have the date for our next set of lightning talks. They will be on Thursday 8^th May at 6pm in the Robert Recorde Room (Faraday Building). Come by and watch them - it's always interesting and fun, or if you're feeling brave, give one yourself! For videos of previous talks, visit: http://sucs.org/Community/Talks

And finally the beach party date has been set for Saturday 7^th June (the Saturday after exams finish). Put it in on your calendar, more details closer to the time.

Hope to see you all there.

Silver had kernel problems at 15:20 and was taken down shortly afterwards. As the problem was filesystem related, we fscked everything before we brought silver back up (just in case).

 Normal service was resumed around 17:40.

 Thanks to Tim (eclipse) for helping to get things running again.

We will be holding an Annual General Meeting this Wednesday (12th March) at 5pm in the Robert Recorde Room, Faraday building.

This is an opportunity for you to put your ideas to the rest of the society, as well as giving us your comments/complaints!

We hope to see you all there!

There were two short periods of downtime on Friday (12:20 -> 12:30 and 13:05 -> 13:20) as we performed maintenance on the Uninterruptible Power Supply which protects our servers.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

We've got a LAN Event planned for Saturday 23rd February in Dining Room C from 10am - 5pm with setup of the room from 9am for anyone that wants to come out and help.

Free for SUCS members, £1 in advance or £2 on the door for non SUCS members.

The full list of games that may make an appearance can be found here:  http://sucs.org/Community/Forum/viewtopic.php?id=183

The full list of things to bring can be seen here: http://sucs.org/Community/Forum/viewtopic.php?id=184

There was a short outage at around 08:40 today due to a power problem, resulting in Silver shutting down cleanly.  A further reboot will be required later today.

We are holding another of our famous lightning talks this week on Thursday 7th February at 18:00 in the Robert Recorde Room (Faraday Building). These are when our members do short 10 minute talks on topics that may be of interest to other members. We already have several confirmed talkers, but there may be time on the night for additional speakers, so if you're interested in doing a talk yourself, please contact the exec on exec at sucs dot org so that we have some idea of the number of people talking.

To find out more or watch some of our past lightning talks, visit:
https://sucs.org/Community/Talks

See you there!

During refreshers week we are opening our game server to all Swansea University students. For more information on what games we have and when we will be playing them go to http://sucs.org/Games. To jump right in and start playing go to http://games.sucs.org/auth.

We've had a few emails recently from people who've spotted the society's name mentioned in an online promotional game for the forthcoming film, ‘Untraceable’.

We were as surprised as players of the game to see this name check, as we have no affiliation with Sony Pictures. So, to quench your thirst for answers, allow us to explain a little.

The game is using a screen shot of a computer running an old version of the Linux operating system kernel. One of our life members, Alan Cox, is a Linux developer and up until version 2.5.66 of Linux, our name appeared in the boot messages because he named his version of some networking code after us. So you would have seen something like:

Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039

Since version 2.5.67 the boot message has been absent from the Linux start up because they were reducing the amount of ‘name checks’ in the boot messages but you can still find a reference to us in the code comments of net/socket.c

This won't help you win the game but we hope you found it interesting :-)

The election is now officially over and we have a clear winner for each position.

President: Grant James (grant)
Secretary: Tim Clark (eclipse)
Treasurer: Nicholas Corlett (worldinsideme)
Publicity Officer: Jocelyn Konrad-Lee (kyara)

A full vote count is available here: http://sucs.org/vote/results.psp

Congratulations to our 2008 executive committee! Have a great year, folks :-) 

As of midnight tonight (00:00 Monday 26th November, 2007), the online polling station for the 2008 executive committee votes will be active and will remain so for one week until midnight of next Sunday (00:00 Monday 3rd December 2007).

Please cast your votes here: https://sucs.org/vote/

Any queries/issues to vote[at]sucs.org.

Once again, it's time for SUCS to come under new leadership. It's election time! If there is someone you would like to see on the committee, or you would ike to nominate yourself, please send an email to vote at sucs.org stating who you want to nominate and for what post. Candidates must receive nominations from 2 or more SUCS members (this can include themselves) to be accepted.

The positions available on the SUCS executive are:

• President: Figurehead of the Society, and general administration.
• Treasurer: Deals with the society's accounts, and general financial administration.
• Secretary: Deals with paperwork, and takes minutes during meetings.
• Publicity Officer: Deals with posters and other publicity materials, and generally publicises the society.

(Note: These positions are Non-Technical - if you would like to be involved with system administration, please send an e-mail to admin at sucs.org)

If there is more than one candidate for each position, it will be taken to a vote. All nominations must be submitted by 12 noon on Friday 23rd November. The election itself should begin on Monday 26th November (but we'll tell you closer to the time).

To keep up-to-date with election news and to read candidate manifestos, visit the Election Blog, at: http://sucs.org/blogs/vote

Something seems to have killed off several of our machines, the SUCS Gateway machine among them.

I've used thorium as a replacement gateway machine to get us back on-line for now.

The next SUCS Talks will be taking place next Wednesday, 7th November, at 5pm in the Robert Recorde room in the Computer Science department, in the Faraday tower. If you don't know how to get there, some of us will be gathering in the SUCS room beforehand, so we can wander over together. :-)

A SUCS Talks evening is a fantastic way to spend time with your fellow SUCS members, and learn from them/impart your knowledge to them/both. Any SUCS member can do a 10 minute talk on a geeky/computer-related topic of their choice. Please come along! For a flavour of previous talks, please visit: http://sucs.org/Community/Talks (I'm afraid the second lot of talks still aren't online as of writing, as I still haven't got round to editing/uploading them).

Take a look at the old talks (http://sucs.org/Community/Talks for the first session, and http://sucs.org/uri/2T for the second) for an idea of previous talk topics. And it's still not too late to take part - in fact, we need more speakers! If you have an idea for something you might like to talk about, e-mail us at exec at sucs.org and let us know! SUCS Talks are a great way to practice public speaking, among friends in an informal atmosphere. We'd especially like to see some brave first years give it a go!

Thanks, and hope to see you there,

Frosty

There will be a disruption to campus network access on Tuesday October 30th between 7am and 9am

This is due to essential upgrades to the LIS networking equipment.

Sorry we're so late in getting the word out about this but we are going back to Que Pasa on Wind St. for Halloween this year on Wednesday 31st of October (so, that would actually be Halloween ;)) at around 8pm, since everyone had so much fun last year (see here: https://sucs.org/Community/Forum/viewtopic.php?id=85 and here: https://sucs.org/Community/Forum/viewtopic.php?id=64 ).

It's 2 for 1 on cocktails as always, and it's a Wednesday so apparently other drinks will be cheap too. Fancy dress is obviously optional but part of the fun of Halloween is seeing what everyone comes dressed as ;)

Also, you're welcome to bring a non-SUCS friend along if you haven't met any Real Life™ SUCS members yet :) Better yet, get them to join too :P

We have a new SSL certificate for our web and mail servers, which you should accept if it has the following details.

Fingerprints
SHA1 - 31:B5:CF:00:38:67:57:32:9D:7C:34:15:AB:A3:5F:31:26:48:A1:FC
MD5  - 45:0D:66:16:75:4F:86:0D:D9:3B:3E:64:43:64:84:AF

The campus network was intermittently available between Saturday 19:00 and Sunday 14:30.

All SUCS services were intermittently avalible from the outside world during this time.

The campus network was down from about 5:30am until around 7am this morning due to "a major loss of electrical power" to the LIS machine room.

All SUCS services were unavailable from the outside world during this time.

The Swansea University Computer Society welcomes all 2007 Freshers (and returning members)! SUCS is a society for anyone with even the smallest interest in computers, technology, science, etc. and offers a friendly environment for people to interact with others and to learn from one another (be that over the internet or in real life). SUCS has a small computer room on the bottom floor of the Students' Union building which SUCS members can use 24/7, and we encourage members to become active in the development and administration of those systems and to get involved with programming and web development projects. We also have regular meet-ups, parties, LAN gaming events, talk sessions and more!

If you would like to join the society, you can fill in the form on the website (although we need to collect payment before we can create your account), you can drop into the room, and we can be found in term-time in JC's (coffee end) after 13:00 on Fridays. All you need to join is to be a member of the Swansea University Students' Union and £5, which gets you membership for the entire year (including an account on our computer system, disk space, web space, an e-mail address, a blog, free printing (up to a reasonable limit) and all the things mentioned above)!

We hope to hear from you soon!

Or it will be in 2008, so we're looking for all sorts of information from all of our members: former, old and new.

We would like your help collecting anything about the history of the society, photos from over its 20 years and any anecdotes from your time in the society.

Any useful nuggets of information that you send us will be catalogued on the SUCS@20 website at: http://twenty.sucs.org

If you have anything, please send it to this e-mail address: twenty@sucs.org .

Thanks :)

We have a new mailing list for the discussion of SUCS projects. If you're interested in learning new skills this summer whilst working on things to benefit the society, you can join the mailing list here http://lists.sucs.org/mailman/listinfo/devel . 

We'd especially welcome members new to SUCS projects to take part in building a portal for university societies. If you'd like to know more about this or the other things going on in SUCS this summer, just sign up to the list and introduce yourself :-)

Due to a buggy backup system using up too much disk space, nightly backups of users home directories have been disabled while we implement a more stable system. Users are (as normal) advised to make their own backups of any important files they might miss.

The Beach Party went very well! Thank you to everyone who helped out by collecting wood, taking wood to the beach, securing our spot, bringing food, cooking the food and coming (especially everyone who travelled so far to get here) and having fun :)

This year saw the return of the Golden Diskette Awards and the winners were:

Our Top Bananas for 2007:

• Graham Cole (chckens) for the Most Bananas this year
• James Frost (frosty) for the Second Most Bananas this year
• Andy Price (welshbyte) for the Third Most Bananas this year

We also had:

• Most Helpful Millywaysian Award - Andy Price
• Best/Most Annoying Soundeffects - Chris Elsmore (elsmorian)
• Hostess With The Mostess - Sara Howes (sazzle)
• We're Glad You're Not Leaving Yet - Chris Jones (rollercow)
• Chaos Technician - Pete Berry (pwb)
• Sitsofe Wheeler SCSI Terminator Award For Most Promising Newcomer - Kristian Knevitt (loki)

Pics from the party are being tracked in this thread: https://sucs.org/Community/Forum/viewtopic.php?pid=910#p910 . Don't forget to add links to yours too :).

Also, "Hi and thanks for coming!" to our new friends in Loughborough Computer Society (LSUCS). We hope you had a good time too :).

See you all next year!

When: Saturday 9th June, from 7pm
Where: http://sucs.org/uri/1J (see e-mail for full directions)
Bring: Please bring however much food and drink you're likely to need. There'll be some barbeques happening too, so we we should be able to cook things. Also, if you have any burnable wood, it might be quite handy.
Please check your mail for more information!

Apologies, silver unexpectedly rebooted after a UPS Battery test. It seems the battery is dead.

The SUCS room is long due for a spring clean, so we've put together a list of all the old components we have that we don't want anymore.

See http://sucs.org/Community/Forum/viewtopic.php?id=137 for more information.

The 2nd SUCS Lightning Talks event will be taking place Tuesday 15th March, at 6pm in Kier Hardie, Room 248! Please come along!

Currently confirmed talks:
- Ian Tucker: "How I can hear you typing over the internet"
- Chris Jones: "Hiking+Geek"
- Chris Elsmore: "Processor and Semiconductor Technology" (topic
subject to change)
- Nicholas Corlett: "A Beginner's Guide to UNIX Commands - Part 2"
- Will Blackstock: "Top 10 Fictional Computers"
- James Frost: Topic to be confirmed
- Sean Handley: Topic to be confirmed
- Andy Price: Topic to be confirmed

And there's still time to get involved! If you've got something you want to talk
about then you're welcome to do so - it'd be best if you could let
us know in advance, by e-mail (exec@sucs.org).

The connection between the room and the rest of campus went down at 12:08:14 and returned at 12:29:48. This was caused by a fault with the switch on the LIS operated network we connect to.

There have been intermittent connectivity issues in the LIS-operated network infrastructure throughout the day starting at just after 9am on the 3rd, causing disruption to SUCS services.

We are told that LIS are infact trying to improve network resilance, and these works are causing the problems.

The minutes for this year's SUCS AGM are now available on the SUCS website at: http://sucs.org/About/AGM-2007-03-13

Videos of the talks given at the (extremely successful) first SUCS Talks session are now being added to the SUCS website. You can find them at: http://sucs.org/Community/Talks

There will be a short delay before the remaining videos appear, however, as Frosty left the charger for his video camera in Swansea when he went home for Easter. Unfortunately, it has now run out of battery so he can't get them off the tape until he returns. Keep an eye on the page, though, as they'll appear in the not-too-distant future.

There was a campus-wide network outage between approximately 6:30am and 11am today due to a hardware fault with a router operated by LIS.

There is now a backup Milliways available for use during network outages.

To connect, ssh bbs@sucs.opendium.net using the password "bbs". Once the Milliways login screen appears, use your normal Milliways login credentials (the user database is regularly synchronised from the one on Silver). 

We've started to run a nightly backup to a machine kindly hosted by the Computer Science dept.

You can find daily snapshots of your home directory within /backup.

We make no guarantees about this service! Make your own backups!

All the desktops have now been upgraded to Fedora Core 6. Thanks to all those that helped out!

If you have any ssh key problems just remove the problem entry from your .ssh/known_hosts file, we've set up the system so they should not  be required.

As always, if you encounter any problems or want any software installed, get in touch with admin [at] sucs [dot] org, or ask in Milliways 

The University's Internet connection was down for just over 24 hours, coming back at around 18:40 on 11/02/2007.

During that time, SUCS was not available to the outside world and this will mean that any email sent to SUCS users during that period will have been delayed. Mail will appear in inboxes as remote servers reattempt delivery over the course of the next day.

The votes are in and a new executive committee has been chosen!

Kat Meyrick (saya) will be president.
Chris Elsmore (elsmorian) will be secretary.
James Frost (frosty) will be publicity officer.
Kristian Knevitt (loki) will be treasurer.

Congratulations to our new executive committee!

Here are some photos from our excellent Halloween party!

• davea's photos - http://minus-zero.org/gallery/SUCS%20Halloween%20Party%202006
• talyn256's photos - http://sucs.org/uri/s
  

It's going to be this Tuesday, the 31st October, at Que Pasa (a cocktail bar) on Wind street. We've also invited Manga & Anime society and the Sci-Fi Soc along to join in.

• Free food for all members!
• Our own private section of the Que Pasa, just for us to use!
• Que Pasa loyalty cards for all members!*
• Halloween games!
• A live band!
• Voluntary fancy dress! (yay!)
  

So come, one and all, to the SUCS+SUMA+SciFi Halloween Party! You can bring a guest, if you'd like to :-)

If you want to discuss the party/ask questions, there's a thread on our forum at: http://sucs.org/uri/q and if you'd like to know where Que Pasa is, there's a map here: http://sucs.org/uri/r

See you there! (Que Pasa, 7:30pm, Tuesday 31st October)

Our FTP server now only accepts anonymous connections. This means that users are no longer in danger of sending their passwords in plain text across the Internet.

Users who previously used FTP to access their files should now use a more secure method to access them such as SFTP, WebDav, rsync, etc. You can find out more about how to access your files in the Knowledge section of the website.

SUCS' Jabber server is back up (for the technically minded, we're now using Ejabberd).

There are a few changes you need to be aware of:

• You now need to log in using TLS, plain text auth, and your SUCS username and password.
• All members can connect now - there's no need to register.
• Account registration is disabled. Hence, only members can log in now.

As existing members will have noticed, we have created a new visual identity to go with the new SUCS logo.  At the same time, we've taken the opportunity to reorganise the structure of the site and introduce some new features.

You can now log onto the site using your SUCS username and password. It will always submit your details securely using HTTPS even if you enter your details on a page that wasn't loaded securely. Some tools (e.g. WebMail) still require you to log into them separately, but our long term aim is to allow you to log in once to access all the web-based tools SUCS offers.

The Computer Society welcomes all Swansea freshers (and returning students)!

As usual, we'll be at the freshers' fayre this year to answer any questions you may have.

If we miss you at the fayre, then please come meet us at a social. We're usually in the quiet side of JC's from about 1pm on Fridays :-)

Have a great year!