Announcements concerning Computer Support staff.
We need to perform off-line maintenance on a number of computing services in CBC, before the semester resumes. We will start work at 5:00 p.m. on 18-Mar-16. We will end all work by 12:00 midnight that evening, if not before. I will send out an email to all faculty, staff, and graduate students if our work is complete sooner than midnight.
We apologize for any inconvenience this will cause.
Thanks, Bruce
It is necessary for the Chemistry department to transition to a new spam detection and prevention mechanism.
The Borderware Spam Appliance in use by the Chemistry department (as well as several other departments in the college) is nearing end-of-life (October 2010). In addition, Arts and Sciences began offering Microsoft Exchange to departments early this year. This service offering includes a separate spam filtering mechanism using a Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall.
Chemistry’s cost-sharing partner departments who have used the Borderware Spam Appliance are rapidly shifting all of their mail services to the Microsoft Exchange server offered by Arts and Sciences. As a result the Chemistry department is faced with the choice to bear the entire burden of licensing fees or to find an alternative solution.
Continuing maintenance is cost prohibitive for a single department. Steve Fabian has worked with Arts and Sciences to test use of their Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall in conjunction with our existing mail services- a cost-free and effective solution. We will be moving to this solution next week. The transition to the new spam system will be completed on the evening of Monday, 8/30/2010.
If you use the quarantine server to check for mail flagged as spam, to configure spam detection parameters, or to whitelist or blacklist email sender addresses there will be some changes. These are outlined below:
* Old web interface login: https://hormel.mps.ohio-state.edu – we will no longer use this URL
* New web interface login: https://mx1.asc.ohio-state.edu – after the transition, begin using this URL to manage your spam settings and view quarantined mail
* As with the old web interface login, you will be able to access the new web interface using your Chemistry Department username@chemistry.ohio-state.edu email address and password as your login credentials.
* Your BorderWare Trusted/Blocked Senders lists will NOT be automatically transferred to the Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall. The two systems use different methods to classify spam, so it is necessary for you to rebuild these lists on our new system. We recognize that this might present an inconvenience and we appreciate your patience and understanding.
* Finally, the Arts and Sciences Barracuda system has the added benefit of receiving and classifying a substantially greater volume of mail. The system has already intercepted and learned to recognize over a million spam messages since going live. This will provide better detection and prevention of spam over time.
If you have any questions or would like assistance with this new service or managing the transition, please contact us at support@chemistry.ohio-state.edu
All Linux servers & workstations connected to linuxfs will be rebooted Thursday (8/27) beginning at 9:00 pm so that security updates can be installed. This includes the Linux file server (linuxfs) and web servers (web, group, legacyweb). Linux workstation users should close all remote connections and log out completely before 9:00 pm. Linux workstations connected to instruments or the old chemistry server will not be affected. Maintenance should be completed by 11:00 pm, but check the blog for confirmation.
Most chemistry computer services are back online.
Please email support if you are having trouble with anything.
-John Puskar
Update 2
The following services are back ONLINE:
The following services are still offline.
Updates will continue to be posted as we bring more systems online.
Thank you,
John Puskar
Update 1
We are still working on repairing the failure. DNS should be up shortly, followed by our domain controllers. Our next priorities will be the department website, then printing.
Thank you for your patience.
John Puskar
Chemistry Windows Support
(Older)
We’re currently experiencing an equipment failure. The following list of services are down:
They will be back up as soon as possible. Expect another communication in an hour.
Call my cell phone for more information.
Thank you,
John Puskar
Chemistry Windows Support
All,
Please email me or support@chemistry for more info, explanations, help, or anything else related to this email. This is also posted on the support blog at http://osuchemistry.info – this email applies to Windows only, not Mac nor Linux. I will address those systems separately.
Windows File Storage Has Reached Critical Levels
A considerable amount of hardware was just purchased to improve all of our computer support services. Without your help Computer Support will have trouble providing basic services as we build more storage and systems to serve everyone for years to come. We are midway through rebuilding our entire infrastructure and have just made a significant investment in hardware. Your assistance could help us provide reasonable service to everyone over the next few months.
We Are Asking For Your Help
Computer Support is asking that you tidy up your files. We could easily reclaim 1/3 to 1/2 of our Windows file storage space if our community moved personal items off of the U drive onto your local machines and deleted old items you don’t need out of “My Documents” or from your Desktop. How can you help?
– Go to Start -> My Computer
– Double click ‘C: (local disk)’
– Create a new folder here. Place your PERSONAL files in this folder. ‘My Documents’ and your desktop are not on your local machine. Note: You local machine is not backed up unless you back it up. We don’t have the resources to continue backing up personal items- it is costing us the ability to provide excellent service for your department related use of our computing systems.
What to move: personal photos, music (mp3s), movies, videos, recipes, ebooks, personal PDFs, and other PERSONAL items NOT related to work, education, or research.
What to delete: old downloads, installers, disk images, old backups of whole hard drives (that you dont need), and stuff you just don’t want nor need.
What NOT to move: research data, email, department files, or anything important and/or WORK, EDUCATION, OR RESEARCH RELATED. The U drive and group drives are backed up and protected against hard drive failure. This backup should be used to ensure the security of our work files and material.
***** We’re here to help advise you on what action to take and to assist in any way ***** Please contact us if you have questions or concerns. *****
A Critical Note About Backups
Windows Previous Versions (Windows Volume Shadow Copies) – DUE TO LIMITED SPACE THE NUMBER OF PREVIOUS VERSIONS OF FILES ON WINDOWS (VOLUME SHADOW COPIES) HAS SHRUNK TO JUST A FEW DAYS. IF YOU HAVE USED THIS FEATURE YOU MIGHT BE ACCUSTOMED TO HAVING MORE PREVIOUS COPIES. THIS IS PRETTY IMPORTANT TO KNOW. If we all pitch in to clean up our files, the number of previous versions available will GROW as it is dependent on having some free space. The U drive is 99% full and the Group Drives are 98% full.
Additional Notes and Measures
COMPUTER SUPPORT IS GOING TO RECLAIM AND DELETE THE 70 GIGABYTES OR SO ON THE WINDOWS SCRATCH DRIVE. WE WILL MAKE A COPY OF THIS TO SOME OTHER REMOVABLE DISK, BUT NOW IS THE TIME TO SAVE YOUR OWN FILES OFF OF THIS DRIVE. WE’LL MAKE A SANITY COPY TO A REMOVABLE HARD DRIVE, BUT DON’T DEPEND ON THIS. If you don’t know what ‘Scratch’ is, don’t worry about it. You would know if you were using this for file storage.
IMPORTANT NOTE: YOUR ‘MY DOCUMENTS’ FOLDER AND DESKTOP ARE STORED ON THE FILE SERVER ONLY IF YOU ARE JOINED TO THE DOMAIN- YOU ARE JOINED TO THE DOMAIN UNLESS YOU HAVE PURPOSEFULLY CHOSEN NOT TO BE. IF YOU ARE JOINED TO THE DOMAIN YOUR U: DRIVE IS THE SAME PLACE AS ’MY DOCUMENTS’ OTHERWISE YOU ARE ALREADY USING LOCAL STORAGE.
Please, please ask me if you need help or more information. I am happy to help. We are dependent on you for this help so we can provide decent service to all.
Thank you,
Michael Reed
Chemistry Computer Support
2102 NW, 100 W. 18th
614-292-5496
mreed@chemistry.ohio-state.edu
Outages, information, and department computing news
http://osuchemistry.info/
The new windows file server is back online.
Services are available immediately.
Thank you,
John Puskar
Chemistry Windows Support
We are experiencing a problem on the new windows file server (winfs) related to the work done during the scheduled maintenance window on Friday evening. All file services depending on this server are currently down.
We expect to have the system up and running within the hour.
Thank you,
John Puskar
I’m trying to talk to each member of the staff about computer security. It would help tremendously if you would provide me (mreed@chemistry.ohio-state.edu) with the following at your earliest convenience:
– number/type of computers you use and operating system of each
– if you routinely need to work with (and store) grades or social security
numbers
You could simply reply to this email with something like:
2 Windows Desktop PCs (my work PC and a student PC)
1 Linux Laptop (controls an instrument)
I do not use grades or social security number on these computers.(but whatever information is appropriate for you)
We’re required to report on security to OIT monthly. Included in this report is a count of machines that have “restricted data” stored on them. (The most common restricted data are grades or social security numbers, but credit card #s are an issue too.) We have a fairly good idea about the number and makeup of computers used in the department. I’m just trying to get a handle on computers that are already secure for reporting. The purpose of all of this goes back to incidents where social security numbers we lost and it ends up costing ALOT of money to notify and provide services to those affected.
When discussing this with faculty and staff I have found that most people do not have restricted data on their computers and it is very helpful for Computer support to simply account for the machine and be done with it.
If it turns out that you do have SSNs, grades, credit card #s or some other data on your machine- no need to panic. Support can help remove it or aid you in encrypting your machine. This is most critical with mobile devices (laptops, USB drives), but in some cases it might be a good idea to handle desktops too. Computer Support is here to help and we ideally want to offer sensible solutions that don’t create a lot of extra work for you.
Thanks for the help.
Barb is out today. This disrupts our ability to provide normal service levels. Please be patient with us if you have IT related needs. Thank you.