What'sJohnWorkingOn

This week I’ll be trying to roll out an IPP printing system, as well as continuing on the tasks from the previous week.  Microsoft security patches are also being rolled out.

• Black network switchover tests
• IPP print server
• WSUS server updates

The IPP printing system so far seems to work well with windows, linux and mac clients, with the caveat that print management from cups clients isn’t supported. To work around this, I’ve had to change the default ErrorPolicy to abort-job for those clients, and use the web interface to manage the print jobs.

• Continued black network switchover tests
• Update automated scripts for non-nfs linked dgp servers

I’ve made some progress with the IPP printing systems, including figuring out that windows and mac os x clients have different ideas of where to connect to find such services.  So far, it works but doesn’t accurate resolve the printer status after a print job has been sent.

• Java update on windows machines
• Continued IPP testing and work
• Testing new black network scripts

Windows software updates are released this week.  I’ll also be working on setting up a few different silent  installers that rely on the innodb installer, since the command line options for it are well defined.

• Windows security updates
• innodb silent installers for xming, audacity
• testing IPP printing through windows

The windows domain rename has been completed and we’re preparing the network to move from one I.P. range to a new one, which will give us more bandwidth, flexibility to deal with network monitoring requests and more room add laptops and other computing devices.

• Monitoring deployment of ghostscript update
• checking dhcp and dns scripts for black network switchover
• installation of new hard drive for vmware server

It appears our data migration was successful. I’ll be working on a lot of admin activities, and trying to sort out some problems with uninstall commands in my upgrade scripts for windows software.

• yum update monitoring
• making windows script work in 64 bit OS
• windows ssl certificate checks

I’m still working out some of the issues with the automated yum scripts – all the machines have now updated from centos 5.2 to 5.3 (Rocks Cluster software is based around centos).  Apparently not all the mirrors have synchronized the repositories they carry, so it’s taken a few days to get all the nodes to update.

• Ghostscript and Gsview update and new install scripts
• Windows Security Patches
• Data migration on linux file server

I’m going to be concentrating on the cluster update tests this week – testing out the package list I’d like when we next decide to upgrade the cluster OS. We’ve also added a new backup routine for some of the home directories on our linux file server, so I’ll be continuing to monitor that, as well as the security updates for the windows machines running adobe products.

• New version of Maya
• Cluster automatic update script testing
• Active Directory ssl certificate research

There is an update to an acrobat pdf problem that has been out in the wild for some time, and so we’re patching the individual installations of Acrobat Pro this week.  Still haven’t had an opportunity to work on hydra’s new configuration, and still testing our new backup drive array.

• Adobe  Acrobat Update
• Hydra update and config changes
• Researching laptop backup and synchronization system

The RIA (research in action) fair is on Tuesday, and several lab members are demoing research for it.  The hard drive replacement was a success for zeus, and it appears my roll-out of flash, thunderbird and firefox updates has been successful as well.  Only  a few machines haven’t been restarted.  Here are some of the tasks for this week:

• Testing Raid backup for u3
• New Maya version
• Hydra update and configuration changes