League of Professional System Administrators

LOPSA Legal Announcement

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:24:29 GMT

The following announcement went out to LOPSA members today:

As you may have heard, we have been made a party to litigation between Association Headquarters (AH) and USENIX. In September 2006, AH filed a breach of contract suit against USENIX, for AH's loss of revenue as a result of the contract between AH and USENIX. We currently use the services of AH for the staffing needs of LOPSA.

Recall that USENIX has planned to allow SAGE to spinoff as its own entity. Various members of that SAGE Board created LOPSA as an independent entity from both USENIX and SAGE. When we created that entity, we negotiated a new deal with AH which included substantial savings to LOPSA as well as different services. AH's breach of contract claim stems from the original agreement with USENIX, not with the agreement with LOPSA.

LOPSA had not been involved in the litigation until last month, when USENIX brought a Third-Party action against LOPSA bringing us into the litigation. USENIX has claims against us for contribution and indemnity. Our legal counsel has indicated that this means, in laymen's terms, that should a judgment be rendered in favor of AH, USENIX would seek monies from LOPSA to pay for the judgment. We clearly disagree with USENIX's claims and will defend this claim.

Our attorneys have spoken with the attorneys handling the case for AH, who have indicated that they are not seeking any damages against LOPSA and simply have no claim against LOPSA. AH would have no reason to sue LOPSA, a client in good standing, and in no way has taken hostile action against LOPSA. AH is not suing LOPSA, even though court documents list AH as plaintiff and LOPSA as a third-party defendant.

We are hopeful that USENIX will fail in its suit against LOPSA. Unfortunately, it will still be expensive to respond, especially as our general liability insurance company has declined to accept the claim on our behalf.

LOPSA has taken the initial steps to respond, as has been documented in our public minutes. At this stage, the Board is weighing the strategies in defending the suit. Our fundamental cause for concern and worry is that this action may threaten the progress, or even the existence, of LOPSA. We simply cannot afford the legal fees that USENIX can in this matter. We have been advised that the legal fees can be expensive and the litigation process is very slow. This matter inevitably will draw resources away from our mission.

Some of our choices ahead will likely be between unsavory alternatives. We're weighing every decision against what best will fulfill our mission and duty to our members, which remains our first priority. Due to the nature of litigation, we will be unable to discuss many of the details of the litigation. But note that we will endeavor, as always, to be as transparent as possible.

For now, the Board has appointed a committee of our officers — Trey Harris, Philip Kizer, and Stephen Potter — to handle the legal proceedings and day to day concerns. Our goal is to make sure multiple people can work together and cross-check each other, but also not permit this matter to consume the attention of the entire Board to the exclusion of the rest of our programs and mission. We had hoped this episode was entirely behind us, but at the very least we can ensure that our mission is being pursued while we deal with it.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact the Board. We may not be able to answer every question, but we'll do so to the extent we can. Thank you for your continued support of LOPSA.

— The LOPSA Board of Directors

This announcement is also available on LOPSA's website and the court documents are available here (PDF).

LOPSA IRC Channel Has Changed Networks

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:01:16 GMT

As previously announced, the #lopsa IRC channel has moved from its old home on Cognet/Byxnet to its new home on freenode. Details and instructions for setting up your freenode environment are at http://lopsa.org/IRCmigration.

Please note: If you used to connect to any server other than irc.lopsa.org directly, you'll need to change your client connection to either irc.lopsa.org or to irc.freenode.net (where irc.lopsa.org points as old DNS caches expire).

LOPSA IRC Channel Is Changing Networks

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:30:44 GMT

The official announcement came out today, but long story short, the LOPSA IRC channel, #lopsa, is moving from Cognet/Byxnet to Freenode on Thursday, January 31st, 2008, beginning at 11am (US) Eastern time.

IRS Approves LOPSA's 501(c)3 Status

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 16:42:26 GMT

The United States Internal Revenue Service has confirmed and approved the League of Professional System Administrators (LOPSA) as a §501(c)3 entity, meaning LOPSA can accept charitable donations. For more on what this means, see the IRS website and Wikipedia.

Annual Salary Survey Available

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:22:57 GMT

The SAGE Sys Admin Salary Survey for 2007 is available. Please fill it out so the results can be as complete as possible, even if you're unemployed.

LOPSA After Dark

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:20:18 GMT

Come to LOPSA After Dark!

Starts at 9pm in room 418

Who's Coming to LISA?

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 21:02:10 GMT

So, who out there is coming to LISA 2007 in Dallas (November 11-16)?

View Poll: Guess who's coming to LISA?

Question -- NTPD

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:37:28 GMT

Don't know whether this is the appropriate place for this, but figured I'd try

I'm running several RHEL4 boxes with ntpd running. On one of the boxes when I type "ntpq -p" I get a "No association ID's returned" They all have identical /etc/ntp.conf files

Here's what the ntp.conf looks like:

$ more ntp.conf
restrict default ignore
restrict 127.0.0.1
restrict {our network's ip} mask 255.255.255.0 nomodify notrap
restrict {our 2nd networks ip} mask 255.255.255.0 nomodify notrap

# Above sets a default deny policy, then opens all access to the 
# localhost so it can manage it's ntpd daemon, and finally allows


broadcastclient
driftfile /var/lib/ntp/drift
disable auth
authenticate no
$

this ntp.conf file is working for other machines in the network.

Anyone have any ideas?

Here's what comes from /var/log/messages {Machine names removed}:

Sep 26 13:10:00 ntpd: succeeded
Sep 26 13:10:00 ntpd[22001]: ntpd 4.2.0a@1.1190-r Thu Oct 5 04:11:32 EDT 2006 (1)
Sep 26 13:10:00 ntpd[22001]: precision = 3.000 usec
Sep 26 13:10:00 ntpd[22001]: Listening on interface wildcard, 0.0.0.0#123
Sep 26 13:10:00 ntpd[22001]: Listening on interface wildcard, ::#123
Sep 26 13:10:00 ntpd[22001]: Listening on interface lo, 127.0.0.1#123
Sep 26 13:10:00 ntpd[22001]: Listening on interface eth0, 140.90.91.90#123
Sep 26 13:10:00 ntpd[22001]: kernel time sync status 0040
Sep 26 13:10:00 ntpd[22001]: frequency initialized -8.471 PPM from /var/lib/ntp/drift
Sep 26 13:10:00 ntpd[22001]: configure: keyword "authenticate" unknown, line ignored
Sep 26 13:10:00 ntpd: ntpd startup succeeded

Welcome!

Fri, 04 May 2007 20:09:12 GMT

Welcome to lopsa, the LJ Community for the League of Professional System Administrators.

For those of you who were members of sysadminguild, welcome, and I'm glad you moved with us.

For new folks -- Welcome to the community! This is not a closed community; nobody will be checking for your LOPSA id card at the door. We welcome all system & network admins and security folks and anyone else related, and while we strongly encourage you to join LOPSA, we will not require it.

Some of you might wonder why LOPSA would want a LJ. There's already a member-postable website (http://lopsa.org), an regular IRC channel (#lopsa from irc.lopsa.org, which round-robins a small pile of servers) plus #lopsa-live, the frequent "chat with the Board" sessions, mailing lists, etc. So, why an LJ too?

Why not? If there's anything LOPSA believes in it's building community. One of the mottos (I don't recall if it's ever been "official") is "Hallway Track Every Day." The so-called "Hallway Track" is the unofficial part of conferences where you sit about and network with peers, gain new friends, and have a chance to talk with those who understand your needs and your pain!

So, post away - about LOPSA, about system administration, about your job, your personal pile of toys (you know you have them!), links of interest, whatever. This is *our* LJ community, let's make the most of it.

Sales pitch over. Milk & Cookies in the back of the room.