INFORMATION SERVICES
March 2006
return
to Information Services
Announcements from the Bulletin, Today, Notification-L
03/31/06, OCS E-mail Outage
OCS Web mail went down last night [Thursday 3/30] and was generating a large number of
errors. The entire OCS mail server was brought down this morning at
around 9:00 AM to fix the problems. It was brought back up at 10:35 AM.
The outage was slightly longer than normal because we were gathering
debugging data to send to Oracle. This debugging data will help Oracle
figure out what caused the crash, and how we can prevent them from
happening in the future. [Notification-L]
03/24/06, Open Forum for AVP of ITS Candidates
The three finalists for the Associate Vice President for Information
Technology Services will be on campus next week. We have asked each of
them to attend an open forum at which they will make a 15-20 minute
presentation regarding their vision for technology at Macalester
followed by a question and answer session. All members of the college
community are welcome to attend.
The schedule for the presentations is as follows:
Monday, March 27, 1:45 to 2:45 PM Humanities room 402
Wednesday, March 29, 2:15 to 3:15 PM Humanities room 402
Thursday, March 30, 1:45 to 2:45 PM Humanities room 401
The first candidate is currently the head of academic computing at a
large public university in Arizona, the second is the former CIO of a
private institution in Chicago, and the third has extensive experience
in both the private and non-profit sectors in the Twin Cites and is a
Macalester graduate.
You are all invited to come learn about the candidates and to test their
understanding of our needs.
- David Wheaton [Bulletin, also 3/28]
03/20/06, Mail Server Outage This Morning, UPS Maintenance Last Week
The mail server was down this morning from approximately 7:50 to 8:30 AM.
This was an unscheduled, unplanned outage (a crash) and not planned
maintenance. We are very aware that any Monday, but particularly the
first day back after a break, would be a terrible time to schedule any
maintenance. The system was brought back up as quickly as possible. We
currently are collecting the detailed debugging information I mentioned
in a previous e-mail [3/17], which will assist the Oracle engineers in fixing
these kinds of problems. We apologize for the aggravation this caused
many of you.
Last week's maintenance on the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) in the
Data Room went well. Three parts were replaced with no interruption of
power to any systems.
Reminders:
Are you running the current version of Thunderbird, version 1.5?
Upgrade today - it's easy and the new version has some new features, like
spell-as-you-type and many bug fixes. You don't have to do any
configuration to upgrade, so anyone can do it! Get the latest
Thunderbird here:
www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/
Firefox 1.5 is out now too. All of the claims of an easy upgrade apply
to this too. Get Firefox 1.5 today for better pop-up blocking and
security!
www.mozilla.com/firefox/ [Notification-L]
03/21/06, Apple's Intel Migration: Will It Affect You?
Last fall, Apple announced that they would be transitioning their
computers to Intel processors. In February, Apple started shipping
iMacs and MacBook Pros (a new name for the PowerBook line) equipped with
Intel processors. We have been evaluating a test machine and can
confirm that these computers are fast, easy to use, and reliable.
Most programs written for OS X will run seamlessly on these new
machines. Programs written for OS 9 (also known as Classic) will not
work. For more information, visit the Mac-Intel transition Web page at
www.macalester.edu/its/macintel.html or contact your AIA.
[Bulletin, also 3/24]
03/17/06, E-Mail Change
Hi all,
We need to apply a change to the e-mail server, which requires that the
e-mail system be taken down at 6:00 PM tonight. Last semester under
Oracle's direction, we applied many changes and patches to the system to
try and fix the severe stability issues we were seeing. We ceased doing
that, as we felt there was no real methodology to Oracle's process, and
saw little to no positive results. This semester, we currently see the
e-mail system become unstable after about 6 days of continuous use,
after which time it stops responding or responds very slowly. To avoid
the crashes, we have been rebooting the system twice a week, during
off-peak hours in a controlled manner. This is better than crashing,
and while not acceptable at all has been the better option for us.
We are now receiving assistance from a high level within Oracle and the
upcoming sequence of events is designed to give them specific
information to help us stabilize the system.
We want to apply a change because it was written to fix a specific
problem we have been seeing. As part of the change, we will add greater
'debug' (troubleshooting) information to the e-mail system so that
Oracle can see whether the change has the desired effect. What we have
to do however, is let the system run for 6 or more days, into the time
where we usually see it crash. This means the system may abruptly crash
at 6 days, 4 hours after starting, in the middle of a weekday. What
we're going to embark on is analogous to setting up a monitoring camera
to record an event which you know is periodically happening, but you
don't know why.
I just wanted to share with everyone that this potential abrupt crash
is, however odd it may seem, planned. Making a change like this is
sometimes a one-time event, and sometimes a process. In this case it is
a process, which means that we have to let the system run its
course - even if it is headed for a crash, to observe the effect of the
change. And, depending on the data Oracle finds in the debug
information, they may instruct us to make another change at a later
date - perhaps in a week.
Thank you for your patience while we work to make the system as reliable
as it should be. [Notification-L]
03/17/06, ITS Support Guidelines Published
In our ongoing effort to be as transparent as possible - while
delivering the highest quality service we can - ITS staff have posted
an overview of our support guidelines. If you've ever wondered what we
can do for you, and to what extent, please check this overview first.
It's on the Web at this URL:
www.macalester.edu/its/faculty-staff-supported-software.html. [Bulletin, also 3/21]
03/16/06, Server Memory Upgrade
Hi all,
Server memory upgrade
The Novell server named 'Garden' needs to have some additional memory
installed, which requires the server to be brought down. Garden is
significant because it functions as our LDAP (Lightweight Directory
Access Protocol) server. Several other systems require Garden to
function, such as Moodle, Lester and Thunderbird (for sending only).
Installing memory is very quick, and would cause Garden to be down for
about 15 minutes total.
We will plan on installing this memory at 5:00 PM today, unless we hear
of a particular event or critical need of those systems at that time.
We realize most of our systems are always critical to someone and
apologize for the disruption. If you have something planned for that
time, please let me know [contact Ted Fines, fines@macalester.edu or x.6781]
and we can reschedule. Thank you. [Notification-L]
03/14/06, UPS Maintenance Wednesday 3/15, 4:00 PM
Just a reminder, we will be doing maintenance on the primary ITS UPS
(Uninterruptible Power Source) Wednesday, March 15th at 4:00 PM. During
that time the servers and associated services will be running directly
off a main line power from Excel. We will not be bringing down any
equipment so campus-wide service will continue as normal.
Any questions? Feel free to contact me, Gabe Stitzel, at x.6823 or via
e-mail at stitzel@macalester.edu.
[Notification-L]
03/13/06, OCS Reboot Tonight at 7:00 PM
The OCS System will be rebooted tonight at 7:00 PM, and will be down for
35-40 minutes. This is normally done twice weekly, after 9:00 PM, but
because of a scheduling conflict needs to be done earlier, just tonight.
We apologize for the inconvenience this causes. [Notification-L]
03/07/06, Library/ITS Offer Technology Training
It's not too late! You can still sign up for the Library/ITS-sponsored
training sessions being held during Spring Break. Visit the Spring Break
Seminar Web page at www.macalester.edu/infoservices/training/springbreak2006.html for
a complete list of the sessions being offered! [Bulletin, also 3/10]
03/03/06, Template Wizard for Web Pages - New Version Available
Need a quick and easy way to produce a Web page that matches the design
of the Macalester Web site? Try the Template Wizard! This wizard
presents several page layout and color scheme options and then creates a
customized template, including the appropriate header navigation
elements for your department or office. The template can be saved to
your desktop or directly into a web folder for further editing. The
Template Wizard also includes an option to generate a template for a
course project. To access the wizard, point your Web browser to
www.macalester.edu/web/wizard.
Web Services staff members are available to help if you have questions.
Contact Sara Suelflow at x6307 or Leslie Mollner at x6502.
[Bulletin, also 3/7]
03/03/06, A Telecomm "Did You Know?"
Did you know that you can get the same information from our on-line
directory as in your printed version? From the Macalester home page,
click on Directory, then type in a department or person's name and click
'go.' Department information includes location, main phone number, FAX
number and staff/faculty members.
You can set up the on-line directory as your home page in the Firefox
Web browser - the steps are a bit different for PCs and Macs:
Firefox Windows: with the browser open, click on the Tools menu, then Options,
then General, then in the Home Page location type in: http://www.macalester.edu/directory.html
Firefox Macintosh: with the browser open, click on the
Firefox menu, then Preferences, then General, then in the Home Page
location type in: http://www.macalester.edu/directory.html
Don't have Firefox? Get it here: www.mozilla.com/firefox/.
If you have any questions, please call Telecommunications at x6566. [Bulletin, also 2/28]
03/01/06, OCS Reboot Tonight at 9:30 PM
The OCS System will rebooted tonight, Wednesday March 1, at 9:30 PM; the
system will be unavailable for about 45 minutes. Please check the e-mail
status page at www.macalester.edu/email
...to see when it is back up. Thank you. [Notification-L]
03/01/06, UPS Maintenance: Good News
Everyone,
Thank you for your responses about scheduling downtime for the data room
UPS [posted 2/24/06 - ed.]. After having a difficult time planning an
acceptable date, we went back to the UPS maintenance techs and asked
again whether we really had to take the whole UPS offline for this.
(Although the tech we spoke with stated this would be necessary, we have
had maintenance done before on the UPS, and have never had to take the
whole UPS offline.) We have now been told that it is possible to
perform the maintenance without taking down the UPS.
There should be no downtime of any systems because of the UPS
maintenance. Sorry if we caused anyone a great deal of anxiety about
this, though I'd say we were as unhappy at the prospect as anyone. But
the very good news is that we will not have to take any campus systems
down. [Notification-L]
[return to Information Services ] [CIT homepage] [Library homepage] [Media Services homepage]