SYSTEMS STAFF MONTHLY UPDATE - August 2003

Announcements

We would like to welcome all the new students to the department and also welcome back returning students. We hope you had a pleasant summer and wish you a productive and successful academic year. If you have questions or problems relating to the department's computer systems please see the information below on how to report them to the staff. You can view pictures from Orientation Day on the department's web site at
http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/news/stories/Orientation2003/.

We would also like to welcome to the department visiting professor Tzi-Dar Chiueh. Professor Chiueh is a professor from Electrical Engineering Department of National Taiwan University. He received his Ph.D. from Caltech and his current research area is wireless communications, in particular, physical-layer protocols and hardware implementations. He will be visiting the department for the coming year, working mainly on a wireless switched network project and a high-performance system interconnect project. He is also interested in collaborating with others in sensor networking and digital TV areas.

WREQ Problem Reporting Tool

Email work requests and problem reports are now being entered into the WREQ problem reporting tool. You should submit all requests directly to WREQ and not to ntadmin or individual staff members. You can do this by posting a request through the web interface at: http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~wreq or simply by sending your email request to WREQ at cs dot sunysb dot edu.

When you use WREQ for your request it goes to the entire staff simultaneously, so that the person best able to help you sees it immediately. It is logged in a central location so that it cannot accidently be overlooked in someone's mailbox. You will automatically receive updates by email when the problem is either resolved or updated along the path to resolution. Finally, you can look it up online yourself at any point to see its status and any notes a staff person may have made.

Department MS Windows Systems

Student accounts will be active in the Transaction Processing Lab starting Wednesday Sept. 3. These accounts are created from the class rosters. Students should refer to http://www.translab.cs.sunysb.edu/studentAcct.html for information regarding their accounts.

Six additional systems have been added to the Programming Techniques Teaching Lab (Roomt 2129) making a total of 47 student seats.

The computers in the TA Helpdesk room (Room 2110) have all been upgraded.

Linux

VMWare accounts are available for students who would like to try out the Linux interface and user software. Email VMWARE at cs dot sunysb dot edu if you would like to set up an account.

There are also virtual machine accounts available for students who would like to try kernel development under Linux. Email VMWARE at cs dot sunysb dot edu if you would like to set up one of these accounts.

Web

The new website was deployed on August 25. We value your input, so please send comments and suggestions to WEBADM at cs dot sunysb dot edu.

Some new FAQs have been added to the department website, including how to set up mail filters in CDE and why you may receive a bounce warning for email you never sent. The FAQ area has answers to many other common questions. We are always willing to consider your suggestions for other FAQs you think would be helpful, send them to WEBADM at cs dot sunysb dot edu.

The renumbering of graduate courses on the department website has been completed. Please email root if you need the password to your course web account.

Labs

On August 4 the Visualization Lab had a visit from Tohei Nitta, Ph.D., Profesor of Information Science and Technology at the Osaka Institute of Technology. He is the founder of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) (www.merl.com). We licensed cube-4 to them, and they manifactured the VolumePro 500 board.

Also visiting was Akio Doi, Ph.D., Professor of Software and Information Science at Iwate Prefectural University. Professor Doi was a visitor in residence at the Vislab six years ago.

Infrastructure Changes and Upgrades

As discussed at the Computer Science retreat and Operations Committee meetings the system staff has been actively testing spam control software.

Based upon points raised by the first antispam efforts the current software will meet the following user critera:

  1. zero loss of email
  2. Users can choose to "opt-out" of the system and deal with spam in their own way. Email flows uninterrupted.
  3. users will not be forced to change their mail reader to use the system
  4. minimal user interaction required to use the system

We have a commercial-duty spam control system called PureMessage which has been tested for nearly three months on the staff. PureMessage has a very low false positive. Our configuration will assure a zero accidental loss of email.

An announcement will be made in the near future once the system is ready for general use.

Upgrades

During the month of September software and hardware on the department mail server will be upgraded. There may be some brief periods of time in which mail is delayed reaching you by an hour or so. If we anticipate any lengthier interruption of service we will announce it in advance. We thank you for your patience.

PCs and Laptops

The internet continues to be flooded by the Sobig.F computer virus, and other viruses and worms are also still active. Never click on an email attachment unless you are absolutely certain you know the content. You should always be running up to date antivirus software on a Windows machine. Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition is available for free to SB students and faculty from our downloads website at http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/CSSite/AboutUs/Information/Downloads/index.html . To access the downloads, get the login information from /var/adm/sysinfo/info/downloads.password on any of the unix machines in the department.

Make sure that your virus definitions (for Norton Antivirus) are upto date. You can either use LiveUpdate feature installed in the Norton Antivirus Client or download the virus definitions manually from http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/defs.download.html.

If you are using Windows, make sure your computer is upto date with critical updates / patches. Please go to
http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/FAQ/MiscWindowsUpdate.html for instructions on how you can do this.

Ths MSDNAA program in which students and faculty can obtain free software from Microsoft is online at http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~msdnaa. Reminder that if you want to obtain Microsoft software through the MSDNAA program you need to register on the website and then take the resulting form to the library in order to check out the CD. You cannot go directly to the library without registering on the website as this would violate our licensing agreement with Microsoft.

Email MSDNAA at cs dot sunysb dot edu if you have questions or problems.

A secure backup facility for faculty PCs and laptops is under development. An announcement will be made as soon as it is available for use.

New Facilities

A new and experimental system was developed and put into placed which allowed new students to check in and request a computer account on-line. The system allows students to request the userid of their choice, and also makes it easier for the department to track the arrival of new members. This system will be refined in future semesters.

Future plans

A department-wide mailing list service is being planned. This will allow users to create their own mailing lists through a simple web interface, and also to archive up postings to the list for future reference. An announcement will be made once this service in in place.

HOW TO REPORT A PROBLEM OR MAKE A SYSTEMS REQUEST

First you should check the FAQ pages at:

http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/CSSite/AboutUs/Information/FAQ/FAQbyCategory.html

There is also a link to an index of FAQs.

If the answer to your question is not in the faq's you should use wreq

to report the problem or make a work request.

There is a short blurb on wreq in the faq area (search by index)

Wreq lives at:
http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~wreq/

You can also send email to: WREQ from your dept account, or campus account. The subject line should cover what is wrong or what you need. The body of the email can supply any details.

Your problem report must include the following information for us to be able to help you promptly:

  1. The room you are working in, either room number or lab name.
  2. The name of the host you are working on (hostname command in Unix, machine number in 1239, the number written on the bookshelf by your desk in the student offices).
  3. The sequence of things you did just prior to having the problem as best you recollect.
  4. The exact text of any error message you see on the screen, or a complete description of the problem that occured.

Please report problems promptly as they occur so they can be investigated under the same set of conditions as far as possible.

When in doubt, feel free to send email to:

  • Unix and network problems: ROOT at cs dot sunysb dot edu
  • PC problems: NTADMIN at cs dot sunysb dot edu

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