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

11/29/05, Get Connected CD Wins Honors
Congratulations to Bonnie Alexander and Jacob Dorer, who once again collaborated to create the 2005 edition of CIT's 'Get Connected' CD-ROM! They won second place honors at this year's Association of Computing Machinery SIGUCCS conference, in the 'Software CD' category. SIGUCCS is the ACM's Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services and is the largest professional computing support organization in higher education. The competition was fierce, and Macalester's team beat out rivals from all over the country, finishing second only to the University of Pennsylvania. This is the second time 'Get Connected' has won this award, having also captured it in 1999 (the first year we produced it). [Bulletin, also 12/2]

11/28/05, Safari Users Need to Switch to Firefox for OCS
We have received reports from several Safari users that they cannot read Webmail in OCS, even after restarting the browser or rebooting. (Safari is a Web browser for Macintosh OSX.) Switch to Firefox, at least when using OCS.

     Download Firefox for Mac OSX

     Download Firefox for Windows

No changes were made to OCS this weekend. While several operating system patches were made, I don't understand how any of them could have caused this. Anyway, that appears to be what has happened. The only answer I have is to use Firefox instead, at least when using OCS. I am not able to present this problem to Oracle, as they have never offered support for Safari on our version of OCS. [Notification-L]

11/28/05, Messages Display Empty in Webmail (See http://tinyurl.com/dc4pf)
A number of users have reported that they cannot read messages in OCS Webmail. New messages are listed in the Inbox; the subjects may be read but the bodies do not appear. If this is happening to you, all you need to do is restart your browser. Quit and close ALL browser windows you have open, completely exiting the browser program. If you're unsure how to do this, then just reboot your computer.

Then start it up again and your Webmail should appear normally. If it does not, then the browser is caching the bad message view. Clear your browser's cache or (for now) use a different browser. More detailed instructions for clearing you browser's cache, including screen shots, are at the end of this message.

Users who have reported this issue (including myself) have only needed to restart their browser. There is nothing wrong with your mail - it's all there. The system was restarted Sunday morning [11/27] at about 8:00 AM. I found that my mail messages did not appear in Webmail until I quit and restarted the browser. I had opened my browser window before the restart and left it open, and I think that anyone else who did - and it sounds like a lot did - experienced this. A number of operating system patches were applied on Sunday morning. That's all I can think of to explain why this issue happened this time but hasn't happened before.

Clearing the cache: Firefox

  1. If using Windows, click Tools -> Options, then select the Privacy option and click 'Clear All' as shown below.
  2. If using OSX, click Firefox -> Preferences, then select the Privacy option and click 'Clear All' as shown below (Windows screen shot shown, but it looks the same on OSX).

    clear cache in firefox
Clearing the cache: Internet Explorer for Windows
  1. In Internet Explorer, click Tools -> Internet Options and in the General Tab, click 'Delete Files' (1). When the pop-up box appears, check the 'Delete all offline content' box and then click OK (2).

    clear cache in IE
[Notification-L]

11/23/05, Security Warning
A new e-mail virus (Worm.Sober.U) surfaced recently, which purports to be from the FBI or CIA. The e-mail arrives with an attached file with "questions" for you to answer. The file is a virus, the message body is a lie, and it all should be deleted immediately. The Barracuda anti-spam/virus firewall updates its virus definitions every hour, so it started blocking these very quickly after they first appeared. But if one made it through to you just delete it. If you think you may have infected your computer with this virus (only Windows computers are vulnerable), please call the Help Desk at x6525 for assistance. [Notification-L]

11/23/05, Mass E-Mail Duplication, Part 8; Systems Status Page
In this notification-l:

  1. Update on mass e-mail duplication problem
  2. New Systems Status Page
Update on mass e-mail duplication problem
On Monday and Tuesday we did receive some more reports of massively duplicated e-mail messages. Some users received 250-700 copies of the same message, for example. That should have been the last of it. Really. Please continue to report this behavior if it happens again. Thanks again to all for their assistance with troubleshooting and providing additional information.

New Systems Status Page
In our continuing effort to try to provide more information to the community about what is going on in CIT, we have implemented a monitoring package which allows everyone to see live, up-to-the-minute status of some of our systems. Included on the page are e-mail, the Novell servers, Moodle, Lester and more. You will find a link to the new live "Systems Status" page on the CIT home page (www.macalester.edu/cit). Click on "Systems Status" in the upper-left corner.

The Systems Status page shows a recent historical record of "uptime." While the number of outages of e-mail has been unacceptably high, it is also troubling to hear, "[Your least favorite system here] is always down." Now we'll have some real metrics, and we will all be looking at the same data.

The "Systems Status" page is different from the "E-mail Status" (/email) page we have been encouraging people to view before reporting a problem. The /email page is not live or automatically updated; it is updated by hand. As such, it may not be as up-to-the-second accurate as the Systems Status page. But we are able to put our own custom informational messages on the /email page when the e-mail system is down (e.g. "Down at 8:30 PM for reboot, up by 9:00"). On the /email page we will be able to explain why something is down, and when it will be back up. So please continue to use the /email page when you suspect an e-mail problem.

This is the first version of the "Systems Status" page. It is by no means comprehensive. Its purpose is to provide you with clear and up-to-date information. If there is something on there you'd like to see or see differently, please send me [Ted Fines, fines@macalester.edu] an e-mail. [Notification-L]

11/21/05, Mass E-Mail Duplication, New Password Change Page

In this notification-l:

  1. Mass E-mail Duplication Update
  2. New Password Change page
Mass E-mail Duplication Update. Last Friday at 4:30 PM, a patch was applied to the OCS server which was to help stop the mass duplication of e-mail. After some testing this weekend and today, I'm pleased to say we have made some real progress. In no case did any user receive huge numbers of duplicate messages. I did get a couple reports of a user receiving two.

Thank you for your cooperation in refraining from sending to "a lot" of recipients from Webmail. Please resume using your Webmail lists and other lists of any size, and send to as many recipients as you need to. We'll know soon enough if the successful tests were just flukes. You will probably be receiving 2-3 copies of this notification-l, and other mailing list messages. Still working on that.

For the curious: The bug was related to space characters being present in either a group list name, or in a user's DN (Distinguished Name). Having a list with the name "Foosball Champs" could have caused problems, just because of the space in the name.

An OCS end user's DN is something the end user never sees. In OCS, your DN is "cn=username,cn=Users,dc=macalester,dc=edu". "cn" stands for "Common Name" and "dc" stands for "Domain Component". End users never have to deal with their DN in OCS - just the cn (aka username), and e-mail address. A user's e-mail address is always just their cn + '@macalester.edu'.

Anyway, space characters are supposed to be ignored by programs reading through a DN. "cn=myname,cn=Users,dc=macalester,dc=edu" should be interpreted exactly the same as "cn=myname,cn=Users, dc=macalester,dc=edu" (there is a space between "cn=Users," and "dc=macalester" in the 2nd one). The bug in OCS prevented it from doing this, which caused mass amounts of duplicate e-mail for us.

Exactly how an extra space translates into thousands of duplicate messages is something we'll never know. But it is a good example of how diagnosing computer systems can be anything but straightforward.


New Password Change page. Finally, some good news. We have a Web page where, with a single form you can set your Novell, E-mail, Corporate Time, Moodle and Lester passwords all at once. Visit the CIT Home Page and you'll find the new password change link and other useful information available. [Notification-L]

11/18/05, Would you like to know more about accessing up to 500,000 high-quality images available to you at no cost?
See www.artstor.org. For more information, please contact Dave at collins@macalester.edu or Barron at koralesky@macalester.edu. [Bulletin, also 11/22]

11/18/05, Community Assistance Needed to Solve Duplicate E-Mail Problem

Short Version

I need to ask EVERYONE using the OCS webmail client (http://ocs.macalester.edu) to not send any messages to more than 10 recipients. If you need to send to more than 10 addresses using the Webmail client, send multiple messages with a portion of the recipients in each message. This does include your address book lists. If you have an address book list which contains more than 10 recipients, please do not use it.**

If you receive multiple copies of an e-mail, please forward a copy to me [Ted Fines, fines@macalester.edu] so I can contact the sender and get more information about how the e-mail was sent. It's not that the senders are doing anything wrong - I just need more data.

** This does NOT apply to any course lists, or other lists on the list server such as notification-l, announce-l, etc., just your personal lists. Continue to use course lists, dept. lists, etc. how you do now.


Long Version

I need to ask EVERYONE to not send any more messages with "a lot" of recipients from the OCS webmail client (http://ocs.macalester.edu).

What is "a lot"? I do not have an exact number, but I have seen messages with only 38 recipients with the duplication problem. So let's call "a lot" 10 for now. If you need to send a message to more than 10 recipients, DO NOT use the Webmail client.

I think the problem of hundreds of duplicate messages may caused by sending an e-mail with these characteristics:
I had been focusing on individual recipients, thinking there was some kind of mail loop happening, but from the reports I have seen the mass-duplicate messages appear to come from people using OCS Webmail and specifying "a lot" of recipients.

This is obviously NOT how a system should work, and if this is the case, then it is a bug. So I am not asking for everyone to permanently stop doing this. The way to determine if it is a bug is to stop doing it, and then try to reproduce it in a controlled way (with some test accounts).

If you need to send to more than 10 addresses using the Webmail client, either:
For assistance getting and setting up Thunderbird, here are a number of resources:

Note: Install Thunderbird by downloading it from the above link, because it configures most of the settings for you. Then after that, download and install the latest version from Mozilla. You won't have to reconfigure anything; it just updates the program.

Thanks to everyone for their help, feedback, and patience with this. [Notification-L]

11/18/05, OCS System Scheduled Maintenance
The OCS system needs to be taken offline to apply a patch which may address the massive duplicate e-mails issue. I will plan on taking the system down at 4:30 PM today. It should be down for two hours or less. The status will be updated on the /email status page.

If your department has a particular project also planned at that time with which this would really wreak havoc, please call me at x6781. Otherwise I will go ahead with the patch at 4:30 PM today.

Why two hours? It takes about 10 minutes for the system to fully come down. I do not know the exact amount of time it will take to apply the patch, but one hour is a reasonable estimate. Then it will take another 15 minutes to bring the system up. Add another 30 minutes to be on the conservative side, and the total time is about two hours.

For the curious: View the Readme/Instructions for this patch. Search for "BUGS FIXED" (about 1/3 of the way down) to see the list of bugs fixed in this patch (the 9.0.4.2.6 patch). [Notification-L]

11/16/05, E-mail Status Page and Duplicate E-mails
Topics in this notification-l:

  1. E-mail status page
  2. Duplicate e-mails
  3. Upcoming network projects
E-mail status page. If you are ever unable to access e-mail, check the E-mail status page before calling the Help Desk to report the problem. The E-mail status page is at www.macalester.edu/email. The page will show a stoplight icon indicating the current status of OCS.

Green = OK
 Yellow = Part OK, Part DOWN
 Red = DOWN
Green = Everything is UP
 Yellow = Partially UP
 Red = DOWN

If the /email page shows Green, but you're pretty sure something is down, there may be a problem we are not aware of. Please call the Help Desk at x6525 to report it.

If the /email page shows either Yellow or Red, it means some part of the system is down and we are aware of it and working on it. There will also be some short accompanying text next to the stoplight with info about the date/time of the problem, and a brief description. Just revisit the page periodically to see additional updates or whether the system is back up.

We're not trying to discourage you from calling the Help Desk. This is just to provide a quick and easy way for you to check on the system status. We have often heard users express a desire to know whether we know something is wrong. That is why we made the /email page.

Duplicate e-mails. We are working on the duplicate e-mails problem still. Many users reported receiving two or three copies of my previous notification-l message, for instance. We are also aware of and working on the problem of some users receiving many, many more copies of an e-mail. Thank you for reporting these to the Help Desk. Now please stop.

Upcoming network projects. Other things we're working on.
  1. Wireless network improvements, including encryption, authentication and more seamless roaming between departments and buildings. Some of these improvements will be implemented this semester, some later.

  2. Firewall and Intrusion Detection System. A firewall is used to block hackers and protect our data. An Intrusion Detection System 'watches' for suspicious network traffic and can notify us or take action. Our goal is to have this implemented by the end of the semester (mainly in a 'watch-and-learn' mode).

  3. VPN (Virtual Private Networking). This will allow off-site users to more seamlessly work on Macalester systems (a VPN makes a remote user appear to be on the network). This is also a security improvement. Our goal is to have this implemented by the end of the semester.

  4. New mailing list server. We're looking for one that doesn't suck, basically. More specific characteristics we'd like: Web-based management; more end-user self-service management and control; automatic archiving of messages in a searchable, web-accessible format. Our goal is to have this implemented ASAP (keeping in mind there are other urgent issues also).

  5. Campus Manager (network registration). CM has been off-line this fall, but will be returning no later than the start of the spring semester. Students are more familiar with it than faculty/staff, as we've only required students to register on the network. The new version works with our wireless equipment, so wireless student computers will have to register too. Once again we'll only require it for students, and will implement it dorm-by-dorm, announcing the schedule beforehand.
[Notification-L]

11/15/05, A Telecomm Tip: Adjusting the Ringer Volumes
Want to adjust your phone ringer volume? Or wish you could turn someone's voice down? The key below your "0" key, <<< >>>, controls three volume settings: the ringer, the handset and the speaker (if applicable). The trick is, to adjust the ring volume, you must do so while it's ringing; or to adjust the caller's volume, you must do so while you are on a call.

If you have any phone or voicemail questions that you'd like to see answered here, call Telecommunications at x6566. [Bulletin, also 11/18]

11/15/05, A Telecomm Tip: A Correction
Want to know when that voicemail message was left? Press 5 while listening to, or right after, a voice mail message and you'll hear the date and time the message was left. It will also tell you who left it, if the call came from someone's campus phone. An added tip - if you forward this message to someone and they need to know when it was originally left, you need to include that information in your "introduction."

If you have any phone or voicemail questions that you'd like to see answered here, call Telecommunications at x6566. [Bulletin, also 11/18]

11/15/05, Recent Network Issues
The following topics are covered in this whopper of a notification-l:

  1. Phishing e-mail
  2. Outgoing e-mail error
  3. Corporate Time slowdown
  4. Viruses
  5. Massive amounts of duplicate messages
  6. Barracuda feedback
Phishing e-mail. The number of fraudulent ("phishing" or spoof) e-mails is only increasing. "Phishing" e-mails are those which purport to be from a company like Paypal, eBay, a financial institution or even Macalester, but which are actually from criminals or other deviants. Paypal has a good page on 'How to spot spoof e-mail'. Be sure to also read the "10 ways to recognize fake (spoof) e-mails" in the article; it's all very good and useful information. The Barracuda anti-spam/virus firewall mentioned in a previous e-mail detects and blocks most of these (approximately 1,200/hour), but some still get through. Your best defense is your own knowledge and awareness, so please look at the above article!

Outgoing e-mail error. For a short period on Sunday, November 15, a configuration error caused all outgoing e-mail for non-Macalester addresses to be rejected. When sending an e-mail to an external account during this time, the e-mail would have been bounced back to you with a message indicating failure. So you will have received a notice that your message did not get sent. That problem has been fixed. Incoming e-mail and intra-campus e-mail was not affected.

Corporate Time slowdown. Yesterday, we had to delete some old accounts from the Corporate Time server to free up licenses for some new accounts. This is apparently a processor-intensive operation on the Corporate Time server, which caused it to be unresponsive (particularly the Web-based server component). We will from now on only delete one account at a time, or perform the deletions during off-peak hours.

Viruses. A number of people have received the "Worm.Sober.T" worm, which arrives in an e-mail message. The attached file may have the name "excel_table.zip" though the name varies. The message may also contain something like, "You have successfully updated the password of your Macalester account." This is of course all complete garbage, and any such messages should be deleted. The Barracuda anti-spam/virus firewall updates its virus definitions hourly and no longer accepts these messages. But if one has already come to you, delete it. If you are unsure whether a message is harmful, please contact the Help Desk at x6525.

Massive amounts of duplicate messages. With the cooperation of a few students, the problem of some users receiving hundreds of duplicate copies of some messages was worked on over the weekend. We haven't heard any reports of this happening yesterday or today, but maybe that's just luck. If you do receive mass quantities of duplicate messages, please report it to the Help Desk at x6525.

Barracuda feedback. Have you noticed an increase in spam since Monday, November 7? Have you noticed a decrease? We started using the Barracuda anti-spam/virus firewall that day (on a free trial for 45 days), and would like to hear back from everyone on how it has affected their e-mail. Please e-mail comments to fines@macalester.edu. [Notification-L]

11/11/05, Partial Freeze on TEM Expenditures
[Ed. note: this Bulletin article affects all of campus. It is archived here because of its affect on the 2005-2006 Micro Fund - see paragraph 4.]

As a way to make more funds available for unexpected budget contingencies this year, we are imposing a partial freeze on TEM (technology, equipment, and maintenance; the largest amounts are in CIT and Facilities Management, the Provost's line also has some funds) spending for the next 120 days. That timing has been chosen to allow us to get to mid February when we have a better fix on our revenue for the spring and on certain major expense categories including heating costs and study away expenses.

This plan means that items that are not yet purchased or committed (encumbered in the system as of Nov. 3) will be held until at least March 1. We are looking at ways to make funds available in summer 2006 to meet some of the requests that are not met this year.

In general, items with the following character will still be done in 2005-06: health and safety-related items; replacements of major equipment that has failed such as the projectors in Carnegie 06 and Old Main 09; and PCs for employees who do not have one, typically new employees; and items such as grant matches for which we are contractually obligated.

Among the items that will be postponed will be Microfund expenditures for normal replacements of desktop PCs and discretionary repairs and maintenance on campus facilities. Questions about particular items should be sent through Line Officers to me. - David Wheaton, vice president for administration [Bulletin]

11/10/05, Internet Back Up; New Anti-Spam Trial Underway
The Internet connection was restored to a fully functional state at about 3:20 PM this afternoon. The problem turned out to be related to some of the fiber-optic cable which connects Mac to the Internet.

Also, on Monday morning we started evaluating an anti-spam product called Barracuda, which is made by Barracuda Networks, Inc. It is connected so that all e-mail from off-campus goes through it before being routed to the mail server. You can see some of its statistics (updated hourly) at www.macalester.edu/emailstats. We're looking at alternative anti-spam measures because of desire for a better feature set and potential cost savings. The product has become widely used by educational institutions, and is currently in use at St. Olaf, the Ohio Supercomputer Center, Wheaton, Beloit and Carleton. [Notification-L]

11/09/05, Internet Outage, Wednesday 11/9
Access to off-campus Internet sites went down at approximately 8:00 AM this morning. Access to on-campus resources, such as e-mail and Moodle, are not affected. Network staff began working on the problem immediately, in consultation with relevant vendors. We regret the serious inconvenience this causes and are working to restore Internet access as quickly as possible. [Notification-L]

11/09/05, Internet is Down
Our Internet connection is down. We are working on the problem with our ISP and another vendor. Our Internet connection is an extremely high priority and is being given our full attention. We will continue to post updates to the status of the Internet connection via notification-l. [Notification-L]

11/04/05, New Resource Added - CSA Sage Full-Text Collections
CSA Sage Full-Text Collections, providing access to over 200 electronic journal collections covering the fields of Communication Studies, Criminology, Education, Management & Organization Studies, Materials Science, Nursing & Health Sciences, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, and Urban Studies & Planning, is now available.

You can link to the entire set of journals from the library online resources page:
http://libdata.macalester.edu/libdata_pos/page.phtml?page_id=24 (Go to S for Sage)

Or, link to each individual title via the Journal Finder:
http://macalester.liblink.umn.edu/macalester/a-z/default. We will also be adding the individual titles to our catalog. [Bulletin, also 11/8]

11/04/05, A Telecomm Tip
Want to know when that voicemail message was left? Press 5 while listening to, or right after, a voicemail message and you'll hear the date and time the message was left. It will also tell you who left it, if the call came from someone's campus phone. An added tip - if you forward this message to someone, and they need to know when it was originally left, you need to include that information in your "introduction."

If you have any phone or voice mail questions that you'd like to see answered here, call Telecommunications at x6566. [Bulletin, also 11/8]

11/01/05, CARS System to be Scrapped! Administrative Systems Project
[This is a campus-wide announcement, rather than an Information Services posting. However, given the scope and impact of the project - not least on CIT - it will be archived here as well as in other venues. Ed.]

The Macalester community is invited to attend a meeting that will introduce Macalester's administrative systems project, "Effectively Linking Macalester," from 12:00 noon to 1:00 PM Wednesday, November 2, in the John B. Davis Lecture Hall. Refreshments will be provided.

Many employees in all administrative offices will be involved in the project to varying degrees. We ask for your patience for the immediate future if service to you is not meeting the high standards that you have come to expect. The long-term goal is to improve all services, so the temporary "pain" will eventually be worth the long-term "gain." The Project Steering Team involved with the switch looks forward to receiving your full support in this effort.

The members of the Project Steering Team are: David Wheaton, Treasurer's Office, chair; Chuck Standfuss, project manager; Kate Abbott, Advancement; Nancy Eastham, Business Services; Maureen Englund, Business Services; Jim Hoppe, Student Affairs; Patti Koehler, Admissions; Brian Lindeman, Financial Aid; Jayne Niemi, Registrar; Jeane Olson, Bursar; Ramón Rentas, Computing and Information Technology; and Doug Rosenberg, Business Services.

Please direct any questions regarding the project to Project Manager Chuck Standfuss at standfuss@macalester.edu or x6911. [Bulletin]

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