Computer Science Department - Monthly System Staff Newsletters

SYSTEMS STAFF MONTHLY UPDATE - January 2004

Happy New Year to all and best wishes for a happy, healty and sucessful year to come. Pictures from the department Christmas party which was held in the new Charles B. Wang Center are available at http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/news/stories/Xmas2003, thanks to Bin Zhang, our resident photographer.

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.

There is now a WREQ Problem Reporting Tool for work requests directed to the department secretarial and administrative staff. You should use secwreq for requests such as requisitions, course room changes, office supplies, grade changes, room reservations, payroll issues, tuition issues, reimbursements and building management needs. This tool can be found at http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~secwreq or you can send mail to SECWREQ AT cs dot sunysb dot edu.

New/Upgraded Software for Solaris

The prep utility has been installed on the Solaris systems (/usr/local/bin/prep). Prep is a perl version of the grep utility. It understands perl regular expressions and includes a recursive -r option. "Man prep" for complete information.

Utility "tnef" for winmail.dat attachments under Unix

Winmail.dat attachments are a Microsoft-only item. No Unix mail readers, or MS Windows mail reader except the full version of OutLook (Not even OutLook Express) can decode the file.

We now have a utility called tnef (/usr/local/bin/tnef) which can decode the winmail.dat (99.99% of the time) and extract "attachments".

The procedure to use tnef is:

Save the winmail.dat somewhere (preferable into a separate dir).
Change directories to the dir with the winmail.dat and run
/usr/local/bin/tnef -v -f <filename/path>
Any *.doc/*.xls or power point files will be extracted into the
current dir. tnef will not overwrite existing files so that's why a new, clean dir is a good idea.
On Solaris/CDEuse the CDE file manager to go to the extraction dir
and double click on the extracted file to make the mime helper program start and display the extracted file(s).

It's also handy to inform whomever sends you a winmail.dat that almost nobody on the internet can read their attachments (even OutLook users disable opening attachments because of fear of viri).

Unix Browsers

Please note that Mozilla is now the browser of choice on the Solaris platform. Netscape should be used only when necessary for legacy reasons. A new FAQ has been added to the department FAQ area which addresses the use of Mozilla along with the twm window manager.

New/Upgraded Software on MS Windows

If you are planning to use the Transaction Lab as part of your course(s) for the Spring 2004 semester please let us know the resources required for your course. The current list of software packages that will be available in the Transaction Lab, starting 1/26/2004, is:

     Microsoft Win2000 SP4
     Microsoft Office XP
         Access
         Excel
         PowerPoint
         Frontpage
         Word
         Photo Editor
     Microsoft Visio 2000 Professional Edition
     Microsoft DirectX SDK 8
     Microsoft DirectX Runtime v9a
     Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0  SP5
         OpenGL V1.1
         Visual C++
     Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1
     Microsoft Windows Media Player 9.0

     Adobe Acrobat Distiller 5.0
     Adobe Acrobat Reader V6.0
     Borland Jbuilder 9.0 Enterprise Edition
     MKS Toolkit 7.0
     Maya Complete 5
     Norton Antivirus corporate edition 8.01
     Rational Rose Enterprise 2002
     Simscript II.5 Rel 2.02
     SSH Secure Shell Ver. 3.2.3 client
     XMLSPY 2004 Professional Edition

     Active Perl 5.8 build 806
     AnalogX Capture V2.01
     BMRT v2.6
     DivX Video for Windows V5.0.2
     Evrsoft First Page 2000 v2
     Fltk 1.1.4
     GhostView 4.5
     Ghostscript 8.11
     GLUI V2.1 and V1.0.1
     Glut.dll v3.7.3
     Irfan Viewer v3.85
     Java2 SDK v1.4.2
     Java2 SDK v1.3.1_08
     Java2 Runtime Environment v1.4.2_03
     Java-3D (for OpenGL) v1.3.1
     JavaMail V1.3.1
     JAF V1.0.2
     Mozilla Firebird 0.7
     Opera v7.23
     PowerArchiver 2002 v8.10.0
     RCS v5.7
     Realone Player V2.0
     WinCVS V1.3b13-2
     WS_ftp 5.08 Lite
     Xemacs 21.1.9
     X-Win32 V5.3.3

     Sybase PC Client Ver. 12.5
         Jconnect 4.5 and 5.5
         Sybase Central
         JISQL

     IBM UDB DB2 Client v8.1

If the resource you are requesting is a commercial product please send your requirements early since the turn around time for ordering/receiving is approx. six weeks.

Student Accounts will be created from the official course rosters. Students should refer to http://www.translab.cs.sunysb.edu/website/studentAcct.html for information regarding their accounts.

The current list of courses using the Transaction Lab for the Spring 2004 semester is:

If the course you are teaching is not listed please send an e-mail to NTADMIN AT cs dot sunysb dot edu . Please indicate what resources your students will need for the course.

Any requests received after the semester has begun will require an evaluation period to determine the impact on the existing software installations. All new software installations will require a minimum of two weeks notice, this will allow for the proper coordination of the installation(s) in order to produce the minimum lab disruption.

Infrastructure Changes and Upgrades

New system for room reservations - http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~reserveroom

This is a demo version to display the look and feel of the new room reservation software. The final version will require a login and run from intrawww. The new software is browser based, will prevent overlapping of reservations for a room and is very easy to use.

New labs

Work is progressing on the new Wireless Research Lab in room 2314/2315. This lab will house both the WINGS lab and the Media Network Lab.

Upgrades

The VMWare cluster will be expanded and upgraded during the month of January in order to support the increased class usage. An announcement will be sent out detailing expected downtime as soon as the information is available.

New Facilities

Room 1310 will be renovated into a department conference room in the coming months.

Multi-media projectors have been ordered for the department conference rooms 2313a (across from the new seminar room on the second floor), 1441 (next to the graduate secretary's office on the first floor) and 1310 (new conference room on first floor).

The Stony Brook Community

Nine nodes of the Visualization Lab's HP cluster have been moved to the Radiology Department to support work being done on a joint grant shared by Computer Science and Radiology.

HOW TO REPORT A PROBLEM or MAKE A WORK REQUEST

First you should check the FAQ pages at:

http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/FA Q/index.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 AT cs dot sunysb dot edu 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:

The room you are working in, either room number or lab name.
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).
The sequence of things you did just prior to having the problem as best you recollect.
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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