===================================================================== Stony Brook University Computer Science SYSTEMS STAFF MONTHLY NEWSLETTER Mar 2008 ===================================================================== In this issue we have 9 general announcements, 8 ongoing-work items, 3 future work items, and 4 reminders. *** ANNOUNCEMENTS 1. New Software packages installed in Translab this semester: - Maya 8.5 with 50 users licenses. - Visual Studio 2008 Professional edition. - All security Updates, Windows Defender, etc. 2. Visualization Course CSE564 Two workstations have been reserved for this course in the Graduate Windows Lab (#5 and #12). Student login information has been emailed. If you have any questions, please send email to wreq@cs.sunysb.edu. We plan to install new Nvidia Video cards to facilitate this course and additional workstations will be added. 3. Security Alerts - Adobe Acrobat (Reader or Professional) should be upgraded to v8.1.2 because of recent critical security issues with prior versions. - Microsoft released critical security patches in February. Please ensure your computer is upto date using either Microsoft Update or Windows Update. - Apple released security updates for Mac OS X 10.5.2. Please refer to http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307430 for further information. 4. Faculty Software Upgrades Adobe Acrobat Professional v8 and Office 2007 upgrades are available for Faculty (Office workstations and laptops only). If you are part of the Faculty backup system, this software will be automatically deployed this month (a separate announcement will be sent out regarding this). If you are not part of the faculty backup system, please send email to wreq@cs.sunysb.edu to schedule the upgrade. 5. Faculty backup system A reminder that we have a department wide backup system for faculty desktops and laptops. In order to be included in the backup system your desktop or laptop must be a part of the secured backup domain. Being a part of this domain, also gives you access to various software and updates. For example, Microsoft Office Upgrades and patches, Windows security patches, Diskeeper Professional (Defrag Software), Symantec Antivirus client updates, etc. Please send mail to wreq if you are not currently participating in the faculty backup system and would like to. 6. Faculty aliases There is a new mailing list called which includes all faculty: current faculty, affiliated faculty, and emeritus faculty. Please use to reach this expanded list. You can reach the affiliated faculty only using , and the emeritus faculty using . However, for announcements of general interest to the entire department (e.g., talks), please use as that reaches all graduate students, visitors, and staff, as well as all faculty. 7. Network problem resolved An HP Procurve ethernet switch had partially failed causing congestion on the main department networks. Faculty Unix systems, DNS, fileservers, and the compservs were affected, among others. There may be minor disruptions while the network wiring in the machine room are cleaned up. 8. Web updates A number of updates were made to the official department web pages: Fix broken links in Admissions area, a Careers page and Scholarship Programs page were added to the undergraduate and graduate areas, new associated faculty were added to the faculty area, the DSL (Distinguished Lecture Series) page has an introduction explaining the purpose of the series, undergraduate requirements information, and Honors program pages were updated. An ABET committee site has been created in the faculty area and committee minutes posted. The Stony Brook Modeling week conference pages (SPM08/SMI08) have had major revisions made as deadines approach and agenda firm up. 9. Downloads area updated Acroread 8.1.2 for WinXP, Vista and Mac OSX 10.4.4-10.5.1 will be available on 03/06/2008 from the Downloads area of SSO. *** ONGOING WORK 1. Faculty Printing facility We are currently working on enabling Faculty office workstations and laptops (part of the Faculty backup system) to be able to print directly and securely to department printers. A separate notification will be sent to faculty once the new system is in place. 2. Translab: We are installing Class Monitoring software. Also we are working on getting a newer version of the "Vision" working. 3. CEWIT In the process of setting up a monitoring system called 'Nagios' for the Rocks Cluster Frontend. Nagios is capable of sending email alerts and monitoring Windows/Linux machines at various hardware and service levels. 4. Backup server A new backup server is being setup to address backup needs including research labs and CEWIT. We hope it becomes available during the Spring 2008 term. 5. Wireless The staff is working to complete the upgrade of the current 802.11b network to 802.11n for the whole production wireless network. Dead spots on the second floor faculty office area have been eliminated. A number of dead- spots in the first floor faculty office area are now being corrected. 6. User Provisioning and integrated file services We are working on a project to integrate all the user logins and file services in the department. The same login will work on UNIX, Windows and other infrastructure services provided by the department. Also, the file servers will be accessible from various systems. 7. New mail/dns/anti-spam servers. We are continuing to setup and install a new set of Linux-based servers to replace the aging Solaris servers. They are expected to be deployed during the Spring 2008 term. 8. Production Grad DB Oracle database server The staff and several faculty are installing a database server to help in recording and tracking progress of graduate students. *** FUTURE PLANS 1. Dynamic provisioning of CEWIT systems The staff is working on mechanisms to dynamically allocate portions of the CEWIT cluster. We're exploring some new software from CA. 2. Imap coming to town. The staff is working on installation of Dovecot Imap server due to numerous request from faculty for Imap support. 3. Unified LDAP-based login We have begun investigating the use of LDAP servers in our department. This would help to consolidate the many user-ID domains we have into one; currently there are different user-ID domains being managed on the Unix systems, undergrad and grad teaching labs, database servers, and more. With LDAP, we hope to be able to manage all user IDs more efficiently and centrally. ** REMINDERS 1. Staff hot-line 2-2772 (CSSB). It will ring all staff office phones and has voicemail. Business hours are 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon-Fri except State and Federal holidays. 2. CEWIT The CEWIT reporting website is: . There are 110 compute nodes (Dell, Xeon cpu). There are two HP 32GB RAM 4-CPU nodes available (compute-1-0, compute-1-1). There are 46 storage nodes online with 50TB of scratch space via PVFS. A number of additional nodes are assigned to "Planet Lab". If you are interested in projects for CEWIT, Planet Lab or have specific requests for support (add software, problems, questions) please use WREQ to send the request. 3. WREQ Problem Reporting Tool Work requests and problem reports must be submitted to WREQ and not to ntadmin/root or individual staff members. This helps us track the progress of work requests better. We suggest using the Web interface to submit wreq requests at the URL: . You can also email wreq at cs.sunysb.edu but the Web interface is preferred. If you send email, please send plain text (without MIME attachments) and send from your CS department account. 4. SECWREQ Problem Reporting Tool You are encouraged to use SECWREQ for requests such as requisitions, course room changes, office supplies, grade changes, room reservations, payroll issues, tuition issues, reimbursements and building management issues (heat/cooling/ lights/leaking roof). The SECWREQ tool is located at: . You can send mail to secwreq at cs.sunysb.edu; please do not send MIME mail or attachments there. Send email from your CS department account.