Summer 2002 System Updates

• Spam/Virus Email Filters - The CS Department has installed the ActiveState PerlMX Email Spam/Virus filtering package to assist users more effectively manage email by identifying spam and eliminating virus-laden email. Please see the Spam/Virus Notices Page for more details and the Spam Filtering FAQ for information on how to automatically block spam.

• Disk/Quota Upgrades - We added a Storage Area Network (SAN) in the machine room that boosts the storage capacity for Burrow and Sharkestra users. The SAN consists of dual Qlogic Fibre Channel (FC) switches, 2Gb Qlogic FC host bus adapters, and an IBM ProFibre DF4000R disk array with dual Mylex RAID controllers. The initial storage capacity is 1.1TB and is easily expandable as storage needs grow.

  As new accounts are added, home directories are being created on the SAN with increased quotas of 700MB on the Sharkestra cluster for current graduate students (up from 500MB) and 150MB on the Burrow cluster (up from 100MB). Existing accounts that still reside on the older disk arrays still have the smaller quotas but will be increased as we move them to the new SAN. If you want the larger quota we can move your home directory immediately so just let us know. You can run "quota -v" to check your current disk quota.

• Embedded Systems Laboratory - The embedded systems course is exploring the real time issues of implementing a tracking vision system. In support of this objective, the LH008 PCs have been upgraded and FPGA development boards have been added. The PCs are running Real Time Linux while the FPGA development boards are using a "soft" processor called Microblaze. Students will use the systems in directing a motorized camera to track an object of interest.

• Network Upgrades - A number of servers in the machine room have been upgraded to Gigabit Ethernet connections. This includes all the primary disk servers in the department.

• Burrow Upgrades - The Suns in the Burrow cluster in LH004 have been upgraded to Sun Blade 100 workstations with 21" monitors. The SGIs have been replaced with new Dell workstations running Linux. One of the old SGIs is still available for legacy application support. In addition, the Burrow server burrowww has been upgraded to 2GB of memory and a CD-Recorder has been added to LH004.

• Graduate Student Lab Upgrades - The SGIs in the graduate student lab (LH125) have been replaced with new Dell workstations running Linux. One of the old SGIs is still available for legacy application support. There have been some upgrades to the Sun hardware in that lab as well.

• Teaching Lab Upgrades - All of the PCs in the LH035 and LH008 teaching labs, along with the PCs in the consulting rooms (LH016, LH112, and LH201I) have been upgraded to new Dells running Windows 2000. These machines are now part of the IU ADS domain so you log into them using your ADS username/password. However, we do restrict access to these machines with local groups so let us know if you are unable to login and we can add you to the group.

• Hyplan Changes - There have been some changes to the way the CS homepages/hyplans are being handled. Please see the Hyplan Notices Page for more details about these changes.

• Wireless Network Changes - The wireless access points in Lindley Hall were moved into the standard IU VPN wireless pool so the network in Lindley Hall is now identical to the rest of campus. Please see the Wireless Notices Page for more details about these changes.

• Network Security - In addition to the security-motivated changes in the wireless network, we also made some changes in the wired network. These changes will result in most network drops in the basement and 1st floor being unusable by any device other than the CS-owned computer that is permanently connected to that network drop. If you need network access in these areas, you are urged to use the wireless network. If you need wired network access for a laptop computer on these floors, please let us know and we will work with you to get you connected again.

• Software Upgrades/Installs - There have been a number of software upgrades and installations on various platforms. Some notable additions are Gcc 3.2, Hyperlatex, DrJava, Eclipse, and checkhyplan as well as upgraded versions of Mozilla, LyX, DrScheme, Chez Scheme, and the Scheme Widget Library.

• Documentation - We have been busy adding documentation to the CSG FAQ. Some of the notable additions and updates include answers to "How can I check my web page for broken links?" , "Can I run MS Windows applications on a Sun?" , "How do I set up for a class I'm teaching?" , and "How can I filter out SPAM email I don't want to see?" .

• Sun Hardware Upgrades - We have upgraded the CPUs and memory in a large number of the Sun workstations in faculty, staff, and student offices over the Summer. The goal has been to make a 333MHz Sun Ultra 10 with 512MB of memory be the minimum configuration for any Sun workstation in the building.

• Public Lab Security System Upgrade - The security system used in the more public CS labs in the basement and 1st floor of Lindley Hall has been upgraded to improve the maintainability and coverage of the system.

• Administrative Computing Upgrades - The upgrades of the computers for the administrative staff were completed. These machines are now all new Dells running Windows XP.

• New Scanner - There is a new scanner available in LH428. The scanner has a transparency attachment that makes it possible to scan slides, transparencies, and negatives. Please see the Using the Epson Expression 1680 Scanner page for more information, including information on using the transparency/slide adapter.

• Mac OS X Support - Even though the Macs used to support the A suite classes in LH016 and LH201I are still running Mac OS 9 to stay in sync with the UITS clusters, many other department Macs have been upgraded to Mac OS X.

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