INFORMATION SERVICES
February 2005
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Announcements from the Bulletin, Today, Notification-L

02/25/05, Access Suspended: Anth Lit & BHA Library Online Indexes
Please note that due to a planned upgrade by the vendor, there will be no access to the Anthropological Literature & Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) Library Online Indexes starting the evening of Friday, February 25 through Tuesday, March 1. Access to these two indexes should be restored sometime on Tuesday, March 1. Thank you for your patience. If you have questions, please contact the Reference Desk at x.6618. [Notification-L]

02/25/05, Barron Koralesky tapped for Frye Leadership Institute
Barron Koralesky, Academic Information Associate in the Sciences, has been accepted as a 2005 Fellow at the Frye Leadership Institute. Barron will travel to Emory University in Atlanta, June 5-17, for a two-week intensive series of lectures, readings, interactive exercises and discussions, groupwork with other top IT professionals, and a practicum project. Led and taught by IT professionals, scholars and administrators from around the world, this promises to be a transformative experience for Barron, and ultimately it will benefit Macalester as well. Congratulations!

"The purpose of the Frye Leadership Institute is to develop creative leaders to guide and transform academic information services for higher education in the twenty-first century. The Institute seeks to bring to tomorrow's higher education leadership the insights and understanding of the issues that will inform this framework, including academic, technology, economic, public policy, student, and constituent-relations dynamics." - Frye Web page, (www.fryeinstitute.org/).

The Frye Institute is co-sponsored by CLIR, the Council on Library and Information Resources (www.clir.org/"), EDUCAUSE (www.educause.edu/) and Emory University (www.emory.edu). Other Frye Fellows from Macalester are Terri Fishel, Library, class of 2004, and David Sisk, CIT, class of 2001. [Bulletin, also 3/1]

02/25/05, A Telecomm 'Did You Know?'
Did you know...that you have a redial key? If you are using a digital telephone (a phone with 8 or 16 function keys), your extension key (bottom right key) is also your redial key. Just pick up your handset and press that key, and you'll redial the last number you called.

If you have any telephone or voicemail questions that you'd like to see answered here, just call Telecommunications at x6566. [Bulletin, also 3/1]

02/22/05, E-Mail Server Problem This Morning
Note: Latest news on e-mail:
www.macalester.edu/infoservices/planning/email/
Note: Online e-mail discussion forum here:
webboard.macalester.edu/~infoservices

Our password verification server (LDAP) tanked in the early hours this morning. When this happens, e-mail is effectively down because you can't log in. Also when this happens, Moodle and CorporateTime are effectively 'down' for the same reason.

As soon as we noticed the problem this morning, we fixed the password verification server and brought the system back up.

This problem is, believe it or not, completely unrelated to yesterday afternoon's problem of mail not getting delivered. But it's awfully bad timing.

The problems of late yesterday afternoon and early this morning demonstrate some serious deficiencies of the current system:

  1. LDAP (password) server is a single point of failure
  2. E-mail server itself is a single point of failure
  3. E-mail server has chronic database problems, causing failure
  4. Our notification and paging system lacks some granularity in 'noticing' specific problems. Meagerly proactive.
(#3 happened yesterday afternoon, #1 happened early morning today.)

If failures 1, 2 or 3 occur, e-mail is down - and failure 4 doesn't always inform us in these cases. This is a bad position for us to be in.

So, I'm using this e-mail message as a reminder that the E-mail Workgroup has been and continues to be very active in choosing a new e-mail system for Macalester. This new e-mail system WILL BE IMPLEMENTED THIS SUMMER. For the new e-mail system, we have a single goal: to provide Macalester with a stable, reliable messaging system. We've listed system requirements to allow us to achieve that goal. Some of them are:
  1. Clustered or Redundant authentication system (possibly an OpenLDAP cluster)
  2. E-mail system clustering or hot failover
  3. New system will not have chronic problems
  4. Proactive monitoring and better notification when there is trouble
  5. Higher level of support (24x7x365) contracts available
A couple of definitions regarding the above criteria:

'Cluster' = a group of computers working together to provide a single service. The failure of any one or even two of the cluster members does not affect the availability of the service. (I.e., three computers working together to verify usernames/passwords; if one blows up, your ability to have your username/password verified will NOT be affected.)

'Redundant' = A second system, usually identical to the first, waiting in 'standby' mode. Should it detect that the first system has failed, it will automatically start up and begin performing the functions of the failed system.

'Proactive' = (I know you know what this means, but here's an explanation in this context.) Actively looking at a system for signs of impending trouble. E.g., are any disks almost full? Or, tracking memory and disk usage trends, allowing us to predict when we might need to upgrade hardware to accomodate growth. Or, there are a lot of message X in the log files, which are not critical notices, but which may predict a future critical failure.

Watch the Bulletin for updates and announcements. Hang in there! [Notification-L]

02/21/05, E-Mail Delivery Slow
The e-mail system had some problems with the mail queue cache this afternoon. Messages were being held in the queue and not delivered for about two hours. Mail was down completely for about 20 minutes at 5:00 PM while the cache was rebuilt. Normal message delivery has been restored, and the backlog of messages has been delivered. [Notification-L]

02/18/05, A Telecomm 'Did You Know?'
You may have a key on your phone labeled "conference." If so, you can have a conference call with up to 5 other people. With one person on the line (whether you called them, or they called you), press "conference," then dial the 3rd person, then press "conference." Continue until you have all parties on the line. The conference call will stay intact as long as a Macalester extension stays on the call.

If you have any telephone or voicemail questions that you'd like to see answered here, just call Telecommunications at x6566. [Bulletin, also 2/22]

02/11/05, Hosting an Event?
If you are hosting an event on campus that will involve outside guests, please notify Colleen Nelson, our switchboard operator, with details. Helpful information includes: what, where, when, who (contact info) and any ticket info. Please call x6000 or e-mail nelsoncm@macalester.edu. This would be a great help to her, your participants and you! [Bulletin]

02/04/05, Computing and Library Workshops
CIT and the Library have teamed up to offer a variety of focused workshops for faculty, staff and students. These sessions are offered during the afternoons throughout the semester. For session times and to sign up, go to:

www.macalester.edu/infoservices/classes/ [Bulletin, also 2/8]

02/04/05, Sign Up for the Safe Computing Class Now!
Your computer and data files are vulnerable to computer viruses and other computing hazards unless you take the necessary steps to protect them. This class will cover what you should be doing to protect your computer and data. Topics covered include virus protection, how to keep your computer updated with the most current operating system patches, methods for backing up your data and much more.

Registration: www.macalester.edu/infoservices/classes/

Location: Humanities 302
Tuesday, February 8, 3:30-4:30 PM
Thursday, March 3, 2:30-3:30 PM
[Bulletin, also 2/8]

02/03/05, Brief E-Mail Problem
There was a brief outage of the directory server this afternoon at around 2:30 PM, which prevented people from logging in to e-mail, the Corporate Time calendar, and Moodle while it was down. Staff responded immediately to the problem and brought the server back up. [Notification-L]

02/02/05, CARS Downtime: Saturday February 5
The CARS system will be down for maintenance on Saturday, February 5, between 11:00 AM and 12:30 PM. Contact Ramón Rentas at x6633 with questions. [Notification-L]

02/01/05, E-Mail Server Downtime: Sunday February 6
The e-mail server will be unavailable the morning of Sunday, February 6, from 8:00 AM until 11:00 AM. We will be performing system maintenance during that time. No other network services will be affected. If you have questions, please contact Geri Olson at x6171. [Notification-L]

1/28/05, Have a Telephone or Voicemail Question?
Check out Telecom's Web site at www.macalester.edu/Telecom/. You can also find it via the online directory, linked from Administrative Offices and linked from both the Information Services and CIT Web sites. Please check it out; we hope you find it informative. If you have any questions, or don't find the information you are looking for, please contact Telecommunications at x6566. [Bulletin, also 2/1]


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