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 to security and guild reception. Even though UCC has a permanent after hours agreement, this does not cover large group events.
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.
For a small lan:
- Email to (mailto:[email protected])
- Put the event on the UCC calendar
For a big lan:
- Email to mailto:[email protected] and mailto:[email protected]
- Put the event on the UCC calendar
- Announce the event on the UCC steam group page and the facebook page
- Put an announcement in gnews
- Put posters up in the Guild courtyard and wherever else you can
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 and powerboards box upstairs.
Get the switches out of the machine room and connect them up - port 1 on palm (the loft switch) connects to port 48 on coconut (the machine room switch)
- Ask a wheel member to enable the port on coconut for you.
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 [ASH] 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
Starcraft 2
Age of Empires 2

Less common games that may also be played:

Freelancer
Battlefield: 1942
Counterstrike
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 Murasoi 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.
The current 04/2011 situation with tables is the catering dept. set and the guild/soc sets are one and the same. If you ask catering, they will assume you want the tables booked and delivered, then try and charge you $10 per table to do so. If you go through the guild/soc route, you won't be able to book them but they will be free (just pick them up from the guild courtyard on the weekday before the LAN). The smaller/narrower tables are okay, but only fit one person per table.
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.

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