Completed
Projects
New Student
Robert Robere has been set up with an account, an ltsp and given
the highlights of John's cslab comuting talk.
Postdocs
Showed Wah-Ming how Elizabeth organized in in the past and took
over for Wah-Ming while he was on vacation.
Fourth Floor
Networking Problem
Intermittent networking problems where users would be
disconnected for a couple of minutes and then reconnected. Problem
wasn't always noticed by users, had to be trying to load a page at the
time of the problem for it to be noticable. Eventually tracked the
problem to a switch in the fourth floor wiring closet, which as then
replaced.
Win 7 Home to
Win 7 Pro Upgrad
We currently
have an upgrade license, but they keys we have are for the regular
installation discs. Win 7 insists on using Windows Anytime Upgrade.
There is a resgistry hack that will allow someone with Win 7 Home to
trick it into thinking its Win 7 Pro, afterwhich upgrading from the
disc is possible.
Theory Webpage Updating
A few links didn't work properly and Vinod needed to be added to
the list of faculty
Theory Sandbox
After talking to core and other pocs, we decided that Theory
shouls get its own subnetwork, the theory sandbox. This is where the
desktops will go.
New Mac Mini
Setup and installed new Mac Mini. Only real problem was getting
symantec antivirus to stop rechecking mail folders each time the mail
app was run.
Theory Webpage
The theory website was broken after a software upgrade. Tracked
down
the most likelt cause of the problem and got in touch with Tassos
iPad Mail
Alternatives
Looking into iPad Mail alternatives. It looks like the only ones
available are either designed to work with Microsoft Outlook on the
home machine, or with specific email providers such as hotmail, gmail
etc.
Latex on iPad
Looking into applications to run latex on the iPad. So far found
MathBot, TexTouch, TeXEquations and Formula. Non of them actually let
you typset a latex document on the iPad.
LTSP Upgrades:
All the black and gray ltsps have been upgraded with extra RAM.
New Machine
Room
The construction for the new machine room has finished and some
machines have been moved in there. There were a few downtimes,
including network downtimes, while things were switched over.
New Monitors
Sourcing new monitors, went with two 23" dell's. UShop site was having
problems, ended up puting things through via email and phone.
Allan's
Laptop
Laptop being slow, found problem on the disk. Backed up everything but
the iPictures library which is probably where the problem is, stopped
backup after 5 hours, it was estimating another 60 (and increasing) for
the 18 GB. I can fix the disk, but it may involve data loss. Allan
bought replacement laptop.
Toni's Laptop
Its being very slow. Already tried installing new os (Windows
vista). This time I checked the hardware, (disk, ram etc) All checked
out as ok. Set up additioanl monitoring for both ram and hard disk, to
try to track where/if there is a bottle neck. Tweaked the os as best I
could to speed things up and it does seem to be faster.
Mac
Tutorial
Demonstrated how to use ssh with windows forwarding to Arkadev. Showed
him how to ssh from laptop such that it behaves as if he were using a
his terminal in his office.
OldApps End of
Life
Tracked down last of the oldapps users and got them migrated to the new
apps machines.
Mail Forwarding
Yuval messed up his .forward such that he wasn't getting any email, now
fixed.
VPN Problem
I got several reports that people couldn't connect to cslab's VPN,
turns out server went down over the weekend.
Mail Server
Upgrade
The mail server was upgraded June 22, which resulted in some fallout.
The most noticable being that bogofilter stopped working. Updated
Bogofilter in /p/theory/pkgs/bin to work on upgraded mail server
Bookable
Compute Server
Booked compsbk2 for Joel June 22 - July 4.
Wapps 2003
Its having problems because disk is full, many users are storing files
on the wapps disk instead of in their home directory. This is not a
good idea, wapps disk is not backed up the way home directories are.
Contacted effected users about storing files in their home directory,
which can be accessed on the wapps machines.
LaTeX Editors
Looking at alternate latex editors for Mike, he isn't liking Winefish,
Kile or Lyx.
Web Server Upgrade:
The web server is being upgraded to ubuntu 10.04 on April 19. This
will likekly cause some user run web servers to stop working properly.
Disc Migration: As part of the
ongoing updating sytem updates taking place, CSLab is moving to a new
file storeage system. The move is taking place in several stages. In
stage one, discs with only one or a few users are moved at a time when
the users don't need to access it during the day. The second stage, for
disks with many users, the users are conntacted and arrangements are
made to move each home directory individually at a time that is
convenient for that user.
Theory Lab PC: The Windows
machine in the Theory lab seems to have had a bug that
caused some users passwords to expire in a very short amount of time (a
week or tow) and they would be asked to reset their password. This is
especially strange since the machine was set up to only expire the
original password that was first mailed out to people and never to
expire subsequent passwords. This seems to
now be fixed, at least its been over a month and no one's passwords
have expired to my knowledge.
Printers: The old
print server has been
taken down, and everyone is now using the new print server. A few Mac
users have found they can now only print duplex or simplex and no
longer switch between then as they did in the past. I'm working on
tracking down the problem. If you are experiencing this, or any other
printer problem that started on Monday July 14, please contact me. The problem was
fixed with a slight modification in the print server configuration.
SVN: This is already installed on
the apps machines, but some
users would like to collaborate with people outside the department. I
think the best way to do this will the by setting it up on the new web
server (colony.cs), people outside the department would then be able to
access it via the web. I think I have this working and would like to do
some testing with users, before announcing it to the group at large. Documentation
on how to set this up is now available, users can set ip up for
themselves.
Simics: Requested by a student wishing to
use the GEMS simulator. Virtutech (the company that provides Simics)
has rather strict requirements for providing a license. I'm currently
working on meeting all these requirements so that I can start trying to
install it. Its been
installed on comps4.cs.
DVP.cs: CSLab
is planing on taking down DVP.cs (the last of the user accessible old
world server). As a first step, dvp.cs has been made inaccessible to
users, unless they requested continued access for a specific reason.
Switch to new mail system:
Like many servers at CSLab, the
mail servers are being migrated from solaris to linux. If your files
need no modifications and will work on the new system you will not hear
from me. Everyone else has been sent an email, but some people have yet
to respond or carry out the instructions in the email. The switch will
take place at the end of the month, May 30. This includes the people
who have yet to switch to the new version of Bogofilter. Everyone is now
using the new mail system.
Switch to new
web server:
The old web server (christie.cs a Solaris 8 system running on SPARC) is
being replaced by a new web server (colony.cs with Ubuntu
Linux
6.06 running on Intel hardware). This might cause currently existing
CGIs
to work improperly or to stop working completely.
Users with running CGIs have been contacted and offered assistance in
migrating to the new environment. The web server
has been migrated on schedule (May 12), a few glitches with CGIs have
come up, but overall I'd say things went smoothly.
SSH timeout problem:
A handful of people have reported ongoing problems with their ssh
sessions timing out when left idle for a short time. The problem seems
to be independent of platform, service provider, and apps machine.
After having eliminated these possibilities I'm looking at the account
settings and client setup of these individuals. The solution
seems to be a combination of turning off power save options and setting
up ssh-keepalive. Bell sympatico seems to be particularly aggressive
about disconnecting "timedout connections", but the keepalive option
seems to resolve this as well.
New Theory
Partition: The purchase of a new theory partition has been
approved and is being set up by core. Some users from partition /h/152/
and /h/153 will then be moved onto the new partition. The goal is to
distribute users such that there is an equal amount of free space on
each partition. The new
partition is /h/181
GAP: Software
for abstract algebra. Has been
installed on the comps machines.
Last Update: Jan 30