July 2007 Archives

Blackboard services have been restored. UMR customers can now access Blackboard.

For more information, please contact the UMR IT Help Desk at (573) 341-HELP or submit an online Help Request at https://help.mst.edu.

Blackboard services are currently unavailable. UMSL, which hosts Blackboard services for UMR, is experiencing network connectivity issues and as a result, UMR customers are unable to access Blackboard.

UMR IT will post a follow-up notice when Blackboard services become available again.

For more information, please contact the UMR IT Help Desk at (573) 341-HELP or submit an online Help Request at https://help.mst.edu.

Blackboard services will be undergoing maintenance from midnight to 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, July 29, 2007.

As a result, customers will be unable to login to Blackboard during this time.

For more information, please contact the UMR IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP or by submitting an online Help Request at https://help.mst.edu.

As part of a process to provide secure purpose-built facilities for a variety of computing needs, the general purpose UNIX services (often referred to as “gpunix”) are being decommissioned on Thursday, August 9, 2007.

This process will result in providing more secure and appropriate services to campus users.

If you are currently using gpunix services, UMR IT strongly recommends you begin using the alternative, purpose-built services listed below:

• Network File Storage access from off campus:
  
  • Mapped network drives with VPN
  • Secure FTP – WinSCP client
• Departmental UNIX computing learning centers located in Room 213 of the Computer Science building and Room 106 of the Electrical and Computing Engineering building. You will need to use Putty/SSH and a VPN connection to access these systems remotely.
  
  • Hostnames for these systems can be found at: http://helpdesk.mst.edu/generalinfo/hostnames_unix.html
• Numerically Intensive Computing (NIC) Cluster

Information on how to install and configure applications to use secure protocols can be found at:
http://helpdesk.mst.edu/generalinfo/security/securecredinit.html.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding the campus UNIX/Linux environment, or would like assistance in connecting to campus computing resources, or please contact the UMR IT Help Desk at 341-HELP or submit an online Help Request at https://help.mst.edu.

On Tuesday, July 24, 2007, UMR IT will initiate new campus network bandwidth management protocols to shape the flow of network traffic to and from the Internet.

This will replace the current bandwidth quota system in place for students accessing the Residential Network (ResNet).

Most campus customers will see no changes in their network bandwidth usage. The new system will only have an impact on those customers who routinely utilize an excessive amount of campus bandwidth. Business critical systems have mostly been identified (it is Summer and some items are not currently in use) and special allowances have been made to ensure minimal impact.

All campus customers—students, faculty, and staff—accessing the campus network will be subject to flexible traffic shaping rules based on the bandwidth usage of each campus customer. As a result, campus customers who exceed the hourly bandwidth usage threshold will have their bandwidth usage reduced until the top of the next hour, at which point, bandwidth usage will return to the standard level.

In this way an individual customer’s bandwidth usage will oscillate between high bandwidth availability and low bandwidth availability for that customer only, depending on how much bandwidth the customer is using over time. In general, low-bandwidth usage applications such as streaming music, e-mail, instant messaging and web surfing will be unaffected by the changes. Downloading large amounts of data such as software distributions, applications, or other large files will result in decreased bandwidth availability for a short period of time (less than one hour in most cases).

Bandwidth usage will be monitored according to a customer’s campus userid. If a campus customer has more than one system registered in their name and one of the systems exceeds the new bandwidth usage threshold over an hour’s time, ALL of their registered systems will be impacted by the reduction in bandwidth usage until the top of the next hour. All unknown or unregistered systems are subject to summary removal from the campus network, per IT’s Device Responsibility Policy.

For more information, please contact the UMR IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP or submit an online Help Request at https://help.mst.edu.

E-mail services were disrupted today, Friday, July 20, 2007. Many campus customers were unable to connect to their Exchange e-mail account due to this interruption.

The backlog of e-mail messages will take several hours to clear up. Unfortunately, this will also result in customers receiving an increased amount of spam e-mail messages to their Inbox, even those customers who actively use spam filtering.

IT asks all campus customers affected by this disruption to please be patient while the e-mail servers resume normal delivery operation.

For more information, please contact the UMR IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP or submit an online Help Request at https://help.mst.edu.

The UMR IT Walk-In Center, currently located on the first floor of the Computer Science Building, will move to its new location on the first floor of the UMR Curtis-Wilson Laws Library on Monday, July 23.

Todd Kreuger, manager of the center, says the move will provide a more central location for customers. The center will continue its normal operating hours of 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday to Friday.

The center has also partnered with MinerTech, which provides service, sales and support for computer technology. The partnership will mean faster and more timely repairs for customers. Located in the UMR Bookstore at the Havener Center on campus, MinerTech is an authorized repair center for both Apple and Dell.

“All campus-owned systems will continue to be maintained and repaired at no cost to faculty or staff,” Kreuger explains. “If faculty or staff have a problem with a standard university-owned system, they should call the Help Desk at 341-HELP, submit an online request at help.mst.edu or bring the machine to IT Walk-In Center.”

The IT Walk-In Center will continue to offer free assistance on non-campus owned systems, including:

• up to 30-minute diagnostic service
• campus IT resource access
• campus connectivity assistance
• access to spyware and virus removal tools.

MinerTech can also provide free assistance on non-campus owned systems, including:

• up to 30-minute diagnostic service
• Apple and Dell warranty repair work
• access to spyware and virus removal tools.

MinerTech also provides a number of premium services on non-campus owned systems. The fee for these services is $45 per hour plus parts, with a 30-minute minimum. Some of these premium services include:

• hardware installation and repair
• software installation
• full-service spyware and virus removal

For more information regarding the IT Walk-In Center, contact the Help Desk at 341-HELP (4357) or visit the center in its new location inside the UMR Library.

For more information about MinerTech, call 341-4705 or visit www.umrminertech.com.

UMR IT will be performing critical security updates on all campus Windows and Linux servers on Thursday, July 19, 2007, from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Friday. This process is similar to the standard Windows desktop security updates but affects many of the campus computing services available. During the maintenance window, customers may have difficulty accessing a number of services, including e-mail, web applications, applications that need to access the licensing servers, and any other service hosted on the campus Windows-based or Linux-based servers.

Interruptions in service will last from 5 – 30 minutes, depending on which service is updated.

UMR IT recommends that all IT customers save their work before the servers are updated to keep from losing any data.

For more information, please contact the UMR IT Help Desk at 341-HELP or submit an online Help Request at https://help.mst.edu.

UMR IT will be distributing critical security updates via the SUS servers on all IT-supported Macintosh OS X machines with a campus standard install on them on Tuesday, July 17, 2007. These updates will improve the security of the Apple Macintosh OS X operating system.

Customers who use IT-installed computers (faculty, staff, CLC computers, etc.) may be prompted to reboot their computers shortly after 3:15 p.m. on Tuesday, July 17. The affected computers will automatically reboot themselves if no one is logged in.

This is virtually identical to the process IT uses to install Windows XP and Vista updates.

IT maintenance information can be found on the IT Press weblog at itpress.mst.edu.

For more information, please contact the UMR IT Help Desk at 341-HELP or submit an online Help Request at help.mst.edu.

UMR IT will begin performing routine computer account maintenance on July 16, 2007. This process will affect the following categories of account users:

• Students no longer associated with UMR prior to June 2006 who are not taking classes or have graduated from UMR. Students who have enrolled since Summer Semester 2006 are not subject to this phase of maintenance.
• Faculty and staff who are in terminated status prior to January 1, 2007 and who have already received a notice about the maintenance via their UMR e-mail account.

All accounts subject to this maintenance process have already been sent an e-mail notification through their UMR e-mail account. If the account has been returned to active status after the dates given above through re-enrollment or re-employment, the accounts will NOT be removed, even if a notification was previously sent.

Student accounts no longer in active status return to the UM System pool to allow the student continued access to Joe’SS. E-mail and local network file storage associated with the account is not moved to UM System.

For more information, please contact the UMR IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP or submit an online Help Request at http://help.mst.edu.