[Triumf-linux-managers] trshare status

[Kelvin Raywood]

As most of you already know, on the late afternoon of April 25 there was 
a hardware fault that caused trshare to crash. Attempts at repair that 
evening were unsuccessful.  It was not possible to look at it again 
until late last week and on May 3 trshare was brought back online.

As most of you are also aware, the responsibilities of CCN were changed 
a few years ago by the external review of computing.  The consequence is 
that if trshare fails irrepairably within the next year, we cannot 
provide a replacement immediately.  trshare is a legacy system provided 
on an as-is basis.  It is on old out-of-warranty hardware with an 
end-of-life operating system and an insecure-by-design file-sharing 
model.  Therefore, it is recommended that you use it only for short-term 
storage of copies of files that you wish to make available to others.

However, we realise that trshare fills a need and a permanent failure 
without replacement will be inconvenient for many at TRIUMF.  It turns 
out that BCnet, the consortium of BC post-secondary institutions and 
research affiliates, may come to the rescue as one of their highest 
priorities is to provide a DropBox-like service to their members by May 
1, 2014.  This would be hosted at one of the member sites with a charge 
to cover the costs.  As time permits, CCN may also investigate providing 
an on-site service such as OwnCloud in the next budget year.

More info at:  http://ccn.triumf.ca/news/20130503

--
Kelvin Raywood
Core Computing and Networking
TRIUMF