HOWTO run an UCC:LAN

First, set a date. You will need at least two days to get things sorted out, but for optimum promotion you should have a date well in advance.

Well before the date

• Organise tables and chairs for the night, most trestle tables can take 2 comfortably, 3 at a pinch, and 4 if cramped

• Get a night pass by e-mailing, phoning, or lassoing the Guild president (mailto:[email protected]). Make sure you know where it is! Also forward a copy security and guild reception

• Make sure the Coke and Snack machine are stocked. History shows that sales are about the same as a hot day, so no need to get too carried away. Snacks sell quite slowly on the night.

• Send an email announcing the LAN and all the pertinent details to the UCC list (mailto:[email protected]) and the Announce list (mailto:[email protected]).

• Put the event on the UCC calendar
• Having a microphone for the night has proven to be handy, speak to [BOB] to borrow one which can plug straight into the club amp.

Before people arrive

• Phone security on 3020 to let them know you have a night pass and will be in the building overnight.
• Make sure you've got the night pass pinned to the door.
• Clean up in the loft - sweep, empty bins, tip water over resident roleplayers. [BOB] suggests bringing a sulo bin upstairs to avoid having to empty it during the night.
• Arrange the tables and chairs (it gets really hot under the lights, so don't put people sitting there)

• Sort out power: use extension cords to pull from as many different circuits as possible (i.e. the wall in the loft, the corridor wall under the fire extinguisher outside UWAnime, drop a cord down into UCC) and make sure there aren't too many power boards connected to each other. This is absolutely essential! Circuit white 6 especially gets overloaded. Try and put the game server and switches on their own circuit just in case.

• Bring the CAT5 box upstairs.
• Get the switches out of the machine room and connect them up - use Gi0/1 on lorenzo as the uplink (makes it much easier to see errors on the link, and to fix it if spanning-tree screws up like it did last time).
• Find a Wheel member and get them to set up the network:
  • The loft is VLAN 5.
  • Put any clubroom Windows machines on VLAN 5 - on the Ciscos, don't do 'wri mem' and then you can just reboot them when you're done.

  • Don't put any of the Mac or Linux machines on VLAN 5. NFS will break.

  • Check the firewall - it should look something like this, with line 2 commented and line 4 uncommented. If it's the other way round, change it.

# And Loft
#$IPTABLES -A FORWARD -i eth0.5 -d 130.95.13.0/24 -j UNTRUSTED
# Use this instead for LANs
$IPTABLES -A FORWARD -i eth0.5 -d 130.95.13.0/24 -j ACCEPT

• Start the TF2 and ET servers if not already running. The game servers are usually run off Heathred, speak to [RVS] or [TPG] for more information.

Commonly played games

It's a good idea to mention these in the email, so hopefully people can install and/or patch up before the night.

• Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (see the page at http://mussel.ucc.asn.au/etmaps for install and patch guide.)

• Warcraft 3 (version 1.21b)
• Team Fortress 2
• Counterstrike: Source

Less common games that may also be played:

• Freelancer
• Age of Empires 2
• Battlefield: 1942
• Supreme Commander

• C&C 3

• UT2004

During the night

• Consider a pizza order.

• Make sure the bottom doors stay locked (especially if there's a Leisure, etc. event on)

• If people have odd DHCP problems:

  • Make sure we're not running out of leases (how? should be added to Network/Services#DHCP)

  • Make sure there are no extra DHCP servers on the network. You can run the following command as root Madako to scan for rogue DHCP servers.

/root/dhcp_probe-1.0.4/src/dhcp_probe -fc /root/dhcp_probe-1.0.4/extras/dhcp_probe.cf eth0.5

The next morning

• Even though you're tired and/or wired, the more packing up you can do the better.
• Put the network back to normal - including changing the firewall back.
• If you're going to go to sleep and there's no-one else around, lock the top doors. Stuff has been stolen before.

Tips, tricks and advice

• To reduce cable clutter, put a switch on each major desk with a trunk to a central switch. This is a little harder to set up but reduces cable clutter dramatically.

• It really sucks when the circuits trip, read the advice from above again, and follow it!

• Timed games and tournaments are hard to do, especially if people are disappearing for dinner and breaks. Make sure teams are organised before the event, and game times are well publicised.

• A whiteboard in the loft is really handy
• Game consoles sound cool and everyone is enthusiastic...but then nobody uses them on the night. If someone else wants to organise one and bring it in, let them, but it's really not a huge issue if there isn't one.
• Guild catering (not the actual Guild) has some trestle tables that they have lent to us in the past because they're awesome. Speak to Geraldine (Functions Co-ordinator 2010) about borrowing some, but give them plenty of warning - they don't have to lend us anything!
• The loft can hold a maximum of 28 computers, any more than this and you're really straining the power. Don't forget you can always use the clubroom if you need more room. If you have 45 RSVP's, about that many will come.