System Staff Newsletter - November 2011		Back to Current Newsletter
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INTRO
MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS
FUTURE
USEFUL INFORMATION

INTRO

Welcome to the Stony Brook University, Department of Computer Science System Staff Newsletter. It is our goal to keep all of our students, faculty, staff and community members informed about the great things that the System Staff is doing. The newsletter is monthly and will encompass major initiatives undertaken by the System Staff to support the research and teaching goals of the department. We hope you find our newsletters informative and welcome any feedback that you wish to provide.

MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Switches in Room 2114
  At the request of several faculty members, the switches in room 2114 have been replaced with fanless switches. These switches are completely silent and should help with the noise issues in that room.


• Updates to the Secure Sign-on Area of the Department Web Site
  
  • "Faculty Only Area" of the Secure Sign on (SSO): This section of the department website contains obsolete information that goes back to 2004-2006. We are in the process of removing old information from the website and updating it to be current. The backup of the old information will be available, if needed. The current authentication process is also changing to make it simpler.
  • Special Equipment Pricing: The campus is working hard to get better pricing on many canned configurations of equipment from Dell, Apple, Cisco, and more to come. These discounts go beyond the traditional educational/state discounts and are sometimes significantly lower. If you're planning or interested in buying such equipment please check this section in the Faculty Only area to see if there are better discounts available on suitable configurations you need. Current deals are available for Dell, Apple, and Cisco.


• CS Wireless Network Updates
  Over the summer the System Staff deployed a new wireless network for the department.  The new wireless networks (cs_secure & cs_guest) are already in use throughout the department.  We are planning to retire the sbgwap wireless network during the winter break.  In order to avoid problems we encourage everyone still using the sbgwap wireless to migrate their machines to the new wireless networks before the end of the semester.  Instructions for connecting to the new wireless networks are here http://www.cs.stonybrook.edu/facilities/faqs/cs_secure.html.

FUTURE

• Graduate Labs: In response to feedback we have received, and to accommodate a large number of incoming graduate students, a new Graduate Computing Lab will be opening later this month.  The lab will be located in room 1204, across the hall from the current Graduate Windows Lab (room 1239) and will contain a mix of Mac, UNIX and Linux workstations.
• Backup and File Synchronization: A backup and file synchronization service for Mac's is being created. The system will be based upon Chronos and requires a client agent to be loaded on the users Mac. The advantages to Mac users are: backups from anywhere connected on the internet, file synchronization between multiple Macs (users may configure advanced features and functions) and user access to recover files.
• Minix Infrastructure: The Minix cluster and Minix specifically will be upgraded with newer systems having more RAM and faster CPU.

USEFUL INFORMATION

• Students can reset their windows account by clicking on https://passwordreset.cs.stonybrook.edu:10443.
• Check our FAQs which are updated frequently
• To contact the System Staff send e-mail to RT AT cs DOT stonybrook DOT edu or call the hotline - 2-2772
• Follow us on   and provide feedback.

 

Past Newsletters

October 2011, September 2011, August 2011, July 2011, June 2011, May 2011, April 2011, March 2011