SYSTEMS STAFF MONTHLY UPDATE - October 2006

Mail Disruption
The mail disruption of September 17-19 was the result of a small number of individuals receiving over 17,000 spams in less than 12 hours, which stressed the mail system and network. A bug was exposed in the Anti-Spam system which caused mail processing to slow and stop. Patches have been applied and a comprehensive upgrade of hardware and software is underway.

Printers Repairs for Grad PC Room
The Publaser1d printer was down for repairs. The repairs were completed and the printer is up again. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Grad PC Scanner Repaired
 The scanner in the Grad PC lab was repaired. It was damaged when someone attempted to remove its SCSI cable. Please do not remove cables from the scanner. If you have scanning issues use WREQ to let us know.

New Grad PCs Online
 Seven new HP PCs were added to the Grad PC lab with 3GHz CPU and 1GB ram each.

Wireless Net Repaired in Room 2129
 The wireless network and user network connection at the podium of room 2129 has been repaired and is available for use by instructors in room 2129.

Dept Network Reach Extended
The department production network has been extended to the "Undergraduate" end of the building to bring connectivity to the Network Security and Applied Cryptography Lab in room 2113.

Faculty Incubator Lab
 Room 1208 has been setup as an incubator for new faculty and PhD students of faculty without a department lab. The goal is to jumpstart the process of building a research group.

Trans lab Software Updates
 Firefox Mozilla 1.5, NetBeans-5.5 Beta 2, BluJ 2.1.3, IBM Rational Data Architect v6.1, Torque Game Engine SDK, Jython, Wing IDE 101 2.1.2-1 have been deployed to the labs as of 09/29/2006.

AntiSpyware on Downloads of WWW
 Microsoft's WindowsDefender is available in msi format for download on the CS department downloads area of www.

[FUTURE PLANS]
 Add WebRoot Anti-Spyware to downloads on www (already ordered) Add Wireless Access Points to repair and expand wireless coverage (in progress)

[REMINDERS]

CEWIT
 The CEWIT reporting website is: http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~cewit There are 8 32bit compute nodes (Dell, Xeon cpu) named compute-0-0 thru compute-0-7. There are two HP 32GB ram 4cpu nodes available (compute-1-0, computer-1-1). A number of additional nodes are assigned to "Planet Lab". If you are interested in projects for CEWIT or Planet Lab contact Dr. Mohr (amohr) or Dr. Ajay Gupta (ajay). Specific requests for support (add software, problems, questions) should be submitted using WREQ.

Chemical Abstracts Service Downloads
 The Chemical Abstracts Service and main library would like to remind all users that the agreement between Stony Brook and CAS (http://www.cas.org/infopolicy.html) limit users to 5000 records saved to any one system. People who download more should notify the service that they are retaining only 5000 records and delete the excess. There has been two incidents in 30 days requiring investigation and we'd like to avoid more.

WREQ Problem Reporting Tool
 Work requests and problem reports must be submitted to WREQ and not to ntadmin/root or individual staff members. We suggest using the web interface to submit wreq requests at the URL: http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~wreq . You can email WREQ but the web is preferred. Do not send MIME mail or attachments (send attachments in a separate email to whichever staff person takes on your request). Highest priorities are to issues affecting courses, large numbers of users (eg. network outage, server down) and lastly home computing equipment.

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 however do not send attachments or mime mail.

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