[committee] Restrictions on group applications for freshers

[Ash Tyndall]

I am personally of the opinion that a clear-cut audit trail is always nice,
trust or not. There is always the potential to need to investigate a
dispense log entry, but if time has past since the event, the wheel member
involved may have even forgotten that they were responsible for the
dispense.
If we're going to keep logs, we should be doing it properly. I would support
modifying dispense so that in general, it cannot perform actions as root;
probably with the exemption of automated events like initial membership
credit.

On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 11:53 PM, Bob Adamson <bob at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> wrote:

> On Thu, 19 May 2011, Daniel Axtens wrote:
>
> > >> Another alarming thing that needs to be addressed is the 10% of the
> > >> additions are done by wheel members using root!
> > >
> > > I don't see how this is alarming or needs to be addressed. If you can't
> > > trust wheel, you can't trust anybody, and I don't like what your
> statement
> > > implies.
> >
> > Again I find myself advocating due process. :/
> >
> > I was under the impression that the new version of coke designed to
> reduce dispense as root. Furthermore, not knowing any wheel members who are
> not also coke members, I'm unsure what could be accomplished by dispensing
> as root as opposed to dispensing as self? Feel free to enlighten me.
> >
> > I also distinctly remember being told off by someone (trs80, I think) for
> using dispense as root, and am a better person as a result of the reproof :P
> >
> > [DJA]
>
> The root user is an admin that can add/subtract money, set an account to
> an arbitrary value, and create accounts. The new system was designed so
> that root can't dispense items. This was aimed at preventing wheel members
> from accidentally dispensing an item as root (which charges the root
> account) when they weren't paying attention to what shell they had open,
> and unknowingly getting free items.
>
> There is no gain or loss for wheel members adding/subtracting credit as
> root - it still has to be applied to a non-root account and the safe still
> has to balance at the end of the week. I would point out that only 51
> 'dispense adds' have been done as root this year (the other 44 were new
> users being given credit), of which 22 were myself. Not exactly a huge
> number. Personally, my 'dispense adds' are generally due to the fact that
> I'm in the middle of doing something on a server when someone asks me for
> credit, and I want to get back to what I was doing with minimal effort.
>
> Bob Adamson
> UCC President
>
> |"Bureaucracy is a challenge to the be conquered with a righteous        |
> |attitude, an intolerance for stupidity, and a bulldozer when necessary" |
> | ---Peter's Laws                                                        |
>
>
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