SYSTEMS STAFF MONTHLY UPDATE - APRIL 2008

1. Network disruption March 17-18 2008

A denial-of-service attack on the main campus routers was launched Tuesday
night, March 17th at approximately 6PM. The attack caused the failure of
the main campus routers. CS and the campus were eventually isolated from
the Internet. The attacks were not discovered and addressed until the
following day at about noon. It is critical for users to keep their systems
current with patches and anti-Virus/Anti-Spyware releases.

2. New teleconferencing hardware

We have several new teleconferencing units for use in the department.
People who wish to use these new department teleconference units should send
requests to WREQ in advance of the reservation. Eventually we plan to equip
each conference room with permanent teleconferencing capabilities to
eliminate the need to make reservations.

3. Renaissance Technologies Symposia

Renaissance Technologies Symposia announcements are once again coming to CS.
An interruption of the announcements occurred at the time of a change in
management of the announcements occurred.

4. Wireless dead-spot eliminated

The wireless dead-spot that included room 1440 has been eliminated by the
installation of a new 802.11N access point nearby.

5. Failed network switches

A sporadic network switch malfunction in the machine room induced traffic
delays and lost packets on the network servicing faculty offices, mail and
DNS systems. A similar malfunction affected the grad PC Lab. The switches
have been replaced and we are monitoring for further potential problems.

6. Graduate Database server setup

A graduate student database is being setup by Dr. Kifer and Dr. IV
Ramakrishanan on a specially configured machine. The goal of the project is
to create a system which will track students' academic careers from
admission to graduation providing support for the decision process of
various department committees.

7. Translab

We have upgraded the Class Monitoring software "Vision" in the 2129 Teaching
Lab. This software allows an instructor at the podium to take remote
control of any machine in the class and display it on the podium system's
screen.

MS Visual Studio 2008 has been installed on all the machines in the Translab
and Teaching Lab 2129.

8. Grad PC lab

Two Workstations are available with Nvidia Geforce 8600 video cards.
Currently they are reserved for the CSE-564 course. If you require the use
of advanced graphics, please send email to WREQ.

ONGOING WORK

1. Wireless

The staff is working to install new wireless access points to eliminate
additional dead-spots at the PhD offices from rooms 1204 to 1212 and from
room 2236 to 2212.

2. Imap and upgrade to webmail

The staff is working on installation of Dovecot Imap server and enhancements
to the webmail system (e.g., creation of folders).

3. Faculty Printing facility

Work continues 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.

4. CEWIT

We are 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.
This will hopefully provide more proactive discovery and repair of problems.

5. Backup server

Work continues on the backup server being setup to address backup needs
including research labs and CEWIT. We hope it becomes available during the
Spring 2008 term.

6. User Provisioning and integrated file services

We are working on a long-term 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.

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.

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: <http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~cewit>. 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: <http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~wreq>. 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:
<http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~secwreq>. You can send mail to secwreq AT
cs DOT sunysb DOT edu; please do not send MIME mail or attachments there. Send
email from your CS department account.

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