1. SFT Group Meeting April 28th , 2006
SFT Group News John Harvey
Inside-outside story about grid middleware Predrag Buncic
Report from HEPIX meeting Rome, 3-7 April Rene Brun 
AOB

2. Staff Movements Predrag Buncic started April 1st
Leandro Franco started April 1st 2006
Marie-Curie EST fellow working on PROOF
Torbjorn Sjostrand rejoined SFT April 1st to resume work on Pythia 8

3. CHEP06 Papers Posters Please have them proof-read by someone else
I assume that authorship has been agreed with project leaders
Posters
Can be reused to replace those in Bat 32 and Bat 2
See Nathalie for assistance

4. MAPS SFT has completed the 2006 MAPS exercise on time
Many thanks to everyone involved
Feedback from PH to HR - ‘Schedule should allow more time’
Please come and discuss with me if you have comments or questions concerning any aspect of the process

5. Hardware Purchases
New printer : HP Business Inkjet B32-RB20-COL
draft quality ppm : 22(colour) - 26 (b/w)
best quality (4800 x 1200 dpi ) ppm : 2 (colour) - 4 (b/w)
Reminder: Please remember to set a banner page when using B32-RB20-HP
2 X 500 GB disks purchased for Xserve G5
intended to implement a backup service for those with Macs
New Mac Mini : 1.5 GHz Intel Core Solo
To be installed in 32/1-A24 - for making presentations
Lighting to be updated in 32/1-A24
Room will be unavailable for ~1 week

6. New SFT Home Webpage
Current page designed for internal use (mainly links)
New page designed to explain to others what we do

7. Future Events
CERN School of Computing 21 Aug - 1st September, Helsinki
Deadline for applications is May 15th
Tracks : Grid, Software, Physics Computing
Please see me ASAP if you wish to attend
Please let me know well in advance if you wish to attend a conference

8. Summer Students
Name Firstname DOB Nat. Supervisor Contract start Contract end
DEMARET Matthieu 12/6/1983 FR COUET
DIERCKX Hans 8/27/1983 BE GRICHINE
GONZALEZ David 2/24/1982 ES ANTCHEVA
HAERTL Daniel 12/11/1982 DE MONETA
HAHTO Antti 3/18/1982 FI ROISER
KRUSE Daniele 6/21/1981 IT POKORSKI
REID Giles 3/31/1985 NZ FOLGER
Please check now to assign a desk and make sure there is a computer available
NB Four students start on June 6th

9. Noise Problem …. …has (hopefully) been solved.
Problem caused by work outside Bat 100 workshops
This has been finished.
Thanks to Claude Detraz (PH/DSO) for intervening on our behalf

10. Firewall Closure Plan
In order to better protect devices connected to the CERN network from the regular attacks initiated from off-site, direct connections to TCP and UDP ports of all devices will be blocked in the CERN firewall by default.
Specific exceptions will need to be approved before server ports can be directly exposed to the Internet.

11. Firewall Port Closures
April
Decnet/IP, Gopher, PAW, CVS, OracleTNSlistener, …
Possibly restrictions on outgoing DNS
May 8th
TCP and UDP ports
May 16
re-structure SSH server entries
no functionality change
removes the IP address range requirement
May 23
CVS (except known/registered CVS servers), OracleTNSlistener

12. Firewall Port Closures
June 6
close IMAP and POP (insecure)- see my mail of April 27th
Use (secure) IMAPS and POPS protocol instead
June-November
close remaining ports (not yet fully defined)
assumes availability of registration tools
high risk ports first, GridFTP, MySQL, VNC, web(TCP/8080)
others by port ranges
More details (incl. port numbers) on the schedule is available at: