Getting involved in one of our projects is one of the most common ways to join SIPB. If you would like to get involved, please email the primary contact for each project.
SIPB has the resources and the expert advice to make your project to improve computing at MIT (better, the world) happen! Come by our office at W20-557 and say hello.
Please email the SIPB Vice Chair at sipb-vice-chair@mit.edu if you would like to get more information about projects or need help figuring out what to do (she doesn't bite, and would love to help!).
SIPB Minecraft
Description: Virtual MIT in a Minecraft server!
Contact: sipb-minecraft-root@mit.edu or William Moses, wmoses@mit.edu
SIPB Discord
Description: A project that creates discord bots that authenticate against your choice of MIT lists.
Contact: sipb-discord@mit.edu or Alice Nguyen, mwnguyen@mit.edu
SIPB Website
Description: Keeping the SIPB website nice-looking and up-to-date
Roles
Contact: sipb-webmaster@mit.edu
Backup Contact: sipb-secretary@mit.edu
Scripts
Description: Scripts is SIPB's most used service, which hosts thousands of websites for the MIT community. scripts.mit.edu is a Linux/Apache web hosting platform for the MIT community. Any Athena user or group locker can host dynamic web applications written in PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, or any other language, or automatically install blog, wiki, and other software via the quick-start autoinstallers.
Links: Website, bugtracker, starter tickets
Communication Channel: -c scripts on Zephyr.
Roles
Support Tech: get familiar with MIT's and SIPB's computing infrastructure by helping answer user questions and approve user requests.
Service Maintainer: help revise and upgrade the Scripts codebase and deployed server configurations.
Contact: UNKNOWN
Hyades
Description: The SIPB Hyades project is SIPB's next-generation computing infrastructure service, designed to eventually replace Scripts and XVM with a self-configuring Kubernetes cluster deployed on bare metal servers. Hyades is a cluster computing management system (SIPB's internal AWS). Whether a user wants to host their website, run code for a class, or work on a side project, our service will give them a container to fit these tasks. Hyades uses exciting open-source tools like Kubernetes, etcd, Bazel, Envoy, and Ceph.
Communication Channel: the Hyades Development channel on SIPB Mattermost.
Link: sipb/homeworld.
Roles:
Contact: Ryan Yang, ryang2@mit.edu
Hardware Operations (HWOPS)
Description: The HWOPS team maintains the physical server rooms for SIPB: maintaining and upgrading our physical infrastructure, coordinating with IS&T and Facilities, and communicating with other SIPB projects that have or need physical computing resources. We are responsible for the operation of the machine room in W20-575A, as well as for some operations of SIPB's servers in W91. We provide physical server space, server hardware, and server support services to other SIPB projects.
Communication Channel: sipb-hwops@mit.edu
Links: hwops.mit.edu
Roles:
Machine Room Infrastructure Tech: help maintain the hardware in the SIPB machine room, including anything from racking servers to ordering hardware to reconfiguring cables to doing hardware archeology.
Operations Coordinator: design and implement organizational systems to help us more effectively manage our hardware. coordinate within the HWOPS team. handle inquiries and requests from external sources.
Web Application Developer: help maintain and upgrade the HWOPS internal and external web application.
Contact: HWOPS Team, sipb-hwops@mit.edu (Justice Vidal, Benjamin Steffen, Timmy Xiao)
Mattermost
Description: SIPB's Mattermost instance for communication. Mattermost is an open source, private cloud slack alternative hosted on XVM. By the way, a lot of SIPB communication happens on Mattermost - would recommend joining if you haven't already!
Contact: Fisher Jepsen, efjepsen@mit.edu
SIPB Uplink
Description: This up-and-coming SIPB project intends to build a Mattermost-based chat service that integrates with Athena.
Roles:
Service Developer: work on changes to the Mattermost web application and/or help implement containerized deployment.
App Developer: work on forking and upgrading the Mattermost mobile apps.
Prereqs: previous experience with app development on iOS and Android or ability to learn independently. (We don't know how to do this, so we can't teach you.)
SIPB Mastodon
Description: https://mastodon.mit.edu is an instance of the Mastodon federated social networking platform, a part of a Twitter-like communications network of independently-run servers. Anyone on any individual server can communicate with the global ecosystem of federated servers, creating a decentralized social network where no one person or corporation has control of everyone’s data.
Roles
System Administrator: Keep mastodon.mit.edu up to date, perform system maintenance as needed, respond to infrequent moderator reports.
Contact: mastodon@mit.edu
IAP Classes and Cluedumps
Description: SIPB organizes dozens of IAP classes each year on technical topics both serious and fun. During the fall term SIPB also offers a series of Cluedump talks, with a different topic each week. Add yourself to cluedump-announce@mit.edu if you're interested. We're also looking for MIT students to help keep them running smoothly.
Contact: CJ Quines, cjq@mit.edu
SIPB WISP
Description: SIPB wants to become a wireless internet service provider! Join if you want to point antennas around and figure out how to make a secure and reliable network. We’re really all learning together on this one.
Roles
WISP Setup: Pointing antennas around and doing network/authentication things. * Prereqs: None
CourseRoad
Description: a Four-Year Planner for the MIT Undergraduate Community. We always welcome anyone who wants to help out! More hands === more features. Webdev experience preferred but not required (we use Vuejs).
Links: courseroad.mit.edu
Contact: courseroad@mit.edu or Georgia Shay, gshay@mit.edu
SIPB Library Project
Description: The Library Project aims to provide a web interface for managing the SIPB Library. This includes an administration and cataloguing UI, as well as a book scanner and checkout process.
Communication Channel: sipb-library channel on SIPB Mattermost.
Links: MIT GitHub Repository
Contact: Georgia Shay, gshay@mit.edu
SIPB Publicity Committee
Description: SIPB runs events, which means SIPB needs posters, dormspam, cool swag, and whatever else our publicity committee can imagine -- sometimes even chalking Stata!
Roles
Contact: Emma Batson, emmabat@mit.edu
SIPB Social Committee
Description: SIPB has a lot of cool people and we should hang out outside of meetings! We need people to remind us to do so by scheduling social events
Roles
Contact: Emma Batson, emmabat@mit.edu
SIPB Documentation Project
Description: The SIPB Documentation Project is a project to document in written form the collective knowledge that SIPB members take for granted or use in maintaining services and projects that is not otherwise written down anywhere.
Contact: Angel Alvarez, alvareza@mit.edu
CertAssist
Description: Download and install your MIT personal certificate using the CertAssist website, even if your browser is not supported by ca.mit.edu.
Contact: Anders Kaseorg, andersk@mit.edu
SIPB Badges
Description: Recording the achievements of our members
Contact: Josh Noguera, jnoguera@mit.edu and Rihn Hong, rihn@mit.edu
Locker Software
add outland; whichlocker
)add sipb; rolodex
)gp (add gp; ecm
)
Many, many more (look in /mit/sipb
, /mit/outland
, /afs/sipb/project
, etc.)
Debathena1 brings Athena to your Debian or Ubuntu system, and is the basis for the current release of the Athena client software running on the public computer labs (clusters) across the MIT campus.
Macathena brings Athena to your macOS system.
BarnOwl is a curses-based IM client with support for Zephyr, AIM, Jabber, and IRC. It is primarily used by the MIT community as a Zephyr client. BarnOwl aims to be easily extensible and customizable through a Perl plugin interface.
XVM offers virtual machines to the MIT community. Start with our three-minute Debian or Ubuntu installer, or install an operating system of your choice. Please e-mail xvm@mit.edu for help using XVM. If you'd like to get involved, please email xvm-team@mit.edu.
Links: (Bugtrackers: Trac, Launchpad: XVM, Launchpad: Invirt)
Contact: xvm-root@mit.edu
The SIPB AFS Cell and Locker Software: SIPB maintains hundreds of useful programs in AFS lockers for use on Athena. Many popular programs are in the sipb and outland lockers, and even more have their own lockers in SIPB AFS. SIPB's whichlocker program, located in outland, makes locker software easy to find. (add outland; whichlocker whichlocker). The SIPB AFS-Moira synchronizer can automatically synchronize some AFS groups in the SIPB cell with Moira groups.
Feed is a free RSS reader (running Tiny Tiny RSS) available to MIT account holders.
SIPB Domain Name Service provides master or slave name service for personal domains of MIT affiliates. With SIPB DNS as a master name server, your domain is generated every hour from a file in your Athena home directory. It can also serve as a slave name server, providing redundancy with existing name servers.
etherpad.mit.edu is an MIT-specific installation of Etherpad, a real-time collaborative text editor. Please email etherpad@mit.edu with questions, comments, or suggestions. If you'd like to get involved, send mail to etherpad-dev@mit.edu. We're looking for developers with experience or interest in Java, SQL, and system maintenance, as well as HTML, Javascript, and CSS.
[1] Debathena is currently looking for someone to take responsibility for it (it really should be an active project). Email sipb-vice-chair@mit.edu if this is your calling.
Gutenbach is a networked music jukebox implementing the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). It allows users to queue or "print" music to a remote set of speakers or "printer". Spawned from the original sipbmp3 (the SIPB office music player), Please email gutenbach@mit.edu with questions, comments, or suggestions.
MITeX is a web app that lets users edit a TeX document (either source or WYSIWYG), using a template, and then compiles to a PDF (or PS or DVI, etc.). This way, people can create beautiful documents entirely from the web. You can see the current version (in development) at http://mitex.mit.edu. You can see the newest features that we're trying out at http://dev.mitex.scripts.mit.edu. Please email mitex@mit.edu with questions, comments, or suggestions.
LAMP (retired!) is an electronic music library for the MIT community. Request songs from a selection of 1840 CDs at lamp.mit.edu and tune in on MIT cable TV to hear your music play.
Mailman-ACL: First steps towards improving compatibility of Mailman and Moira mailing list systems: enabling mutual access controls and building compatible command-line configuration tools for Mailman. Our plan to accomplish this is in progress.
Here's a list of some other, smaller projects SIPB members would like to work on. For (recent-)historical interest, a list of some past projects circa 2000-2007 also exists. On December 13, 2008, we squashed a bunch of bugs in Debian Lenny.