NOTICES for EECS Instructional Users


Oct 29 - email phishing from "inst" - don't be fooled!
 
	In the last week we've received several bogus emails (samples) that 
	claim to be from *inst.eecs.berkeley.edu*, which sounds like us 
	(the EECS Instructional Support Group) but IS NOT.  As with all 
	phishing emails, don't click on any links - just delete it.  

	The emails say that you need to click on a button to re-authencate 
	your account or because you have exceeded your mailbox storage limit.

	The buttons and From addresses are not berkeley.edu addresses.  
	Any legitmate email from us would be from inst@eecs.berkeley.edu.

	Thanks!

Sep 18 - wireless network downtime tonight, 10pm-10:30pm
 
	The wireless networks in EECS buildings will be down for maintenance
	from about 10pm-10:30pm tonight, Sep 18.  This includes:

	Buildings: Soda, Cory, SDH, Jacobs, Blum, Calvin, HMMB BiD Center

	Networks: AirBears2, CalVisitor, EECS-*, eduroam, and all others in
	those buildings.

	For more information, please see
	https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/news/22234-wireless-network-maintenance-91818-10pm

Aug 1 - Instructional computers were down for power outage: July 31 9pm - Aug 1 10am
 
	Aug 1, 10am: 
	All services have been restored.

	Jul 18: 
	There will be a scheduled outage of EECS computing services overnight 
	between July 31 and Aug 1 (Tue-Wed), 9pm-10am.  This is for electrical 
	work in the primary server room.

	Networks and computers in Cory, Sutardja Dai and Jacobs Halls will be
	unavailable, as servers for passwords, home directories and other
	services are down.

	Computers in all EECS Instructional labs (Soda, Cory, SDH) will be 
	down, including these servers:

	* Webacct (computer accounts)
	* remote login servers (UNIX and Windows)
	* inst.eecs (this WEB server, including course WEB sites)

	For details, please see the department announcement at 
	https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/news/21874-most-iris-services-offline-731

Apr 17 - Spring 2018 cardkey access expires May 11; computer accounts expire May 14
	Please see http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/End-of-Semester.

Apr 2 - network delays, 3:15pm+
 
	EECS network staff have widespread reports network slowness and 
	dropped packets.  READ THE COMPLETE POST AT
	
	https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/news/21114-network-slowness-dropped-packets

Feb 16 - network outages are fixed
 
	updated Fri 5pm

	Full network service has been restored.

	From about 9am on Feb 15 through 5pm on Feb 16, network connectivity 
	in Soda and Cory Halls had intermittent outages.  This included 
	AirBears wireless connections from those buildings.  The connection 
	between EECS and the outside world was disabled completely for testing 
	on Feb 15 between about 12:30pm and 1pm.

	Details from the network staff are being posted to 
	https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/news/20594-eecs-network-border-malfunctioning-21518.

Jan 17 - logins to our Linux systems were broken (4pm-7pm)
 
	At about 4pm today, our UNIX password service stopped working.  
	That prevented existing accounts from logging in, and it prevented
	new accounts to be issued by WebAcct.  We needed to replace the
	server certificates.

Nov 27 - Soda labs/servers closed for power outage: Nov 28-29, 8pm-9:30am
 
	There will be a scheduled closure and power outage for all 
	of Soda Hall overnight between Nov 28-29.

	EECS instructional computer labs and servers in Soda Hall 
	will be inaccessible from 8pm on Tuesday Nov 28 through 
	9:30am the next morning.  This may delay the start of 
	CS61A labs at 9am.

	The servers that may be down include 
	
	* our UNIX and Windows remote login servers; for a list, see
	  http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/clients.cgi?choice=servers
	* inst.eecs (this WEB server), including course WEB sites 
	* WebAcct

	Workstations in the EECS Instructional labs in Cory Hall and 
	Sutardja Dai Hall are expected to run normally during this time.

	For details, see the department announcement at 
	https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/news/20014-soda-hall-power-shutdown-wed

Oct 17 - 349 Soda converting from instructional lab to Help Desk
 
	349 Soda is no longer an instructional computing lab; it will reopen 
	in January 2018 as the EECS Help Desk.

	The instructional Linux workstations in 349 Soda will be re-deployed
	to 200 Sutardja Dai Hall, to replace the 8 year-old MacPros there.

	The current location of the EECS Help Desk in 395 Cory will be 
	reassigned to a research group.

	(October 2017)

Aug 25 - Soda labs/servers closed for power outage: Aug 28 8pm - Aug 29 9:30am
 
	There will be a scheduled closure and power outage for all of Soda Hall.

	EECS instructional computer labs and servers in Soda Hall will be 
	inaccessible from 8pm on Monday Aug 28 through 9:30am the next morning.
	The servers may include 
	
	* our UNIX and Windows remote login servers; for a list, see
	  http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/clients.cgi?choice=servers
	* inst.eecs (this WEB server), including course WEB sites 
	* WebAcct

	Workstations in the EECS Instructional labs in Cory Hall and Sutardja Dai
	Hall are expected to run normally during this time.

	For details, see the department announcement at 
	https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/news/19314-soda-hall-power-shutdown-tues
	

Aug 9 - WebAcct, course WEB sites, UNIX logins will be down 11pm-12am tonight
 
	The servers for WebAcct, EECS course WEB sites and UNIX passwords will 
	be down for maintenance between about 11pm and midnight tonight.

	The servers are

	http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu
	https://acropolis.eecs.berkeley.edu/~account/webacct
	ildap3.eecs.berkeley.edu

	Users who are logged into the instructional UNIX computers are
	advised to save their work frequently during that time, in case
	they are denied access while the password server is down.

Aug 2 - campus buildings were closed 2:40-5:40pm due to probable power outage
 
	At 2:40pm, PG&E advised that the campus would lose power due to a 
	wildfire that threatened the transformers near Grizzly Peak Blvd.

	Cory and Soda Halls, including the Instructional labs, were evacuated 
	and all network services were shutdown.  The power outage was later
	canceled.  Service and building access were restored by 5:40pm.

	For more information:
	https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/news/19094-campus-losing-power-iris-services
	https://local.nixle.com/alert/6089385/?sub_id=1000042655

June 21 - 12:30pm: Soda Hall power failure; 6:30pm: computers are back
 
	At about 12:30pm, a construction site error cut off power to
	Soda, Etcheverry and Jacobs Halls.  Soda Hall was evacuated,
	and CS61A labs were moved to Cory Hall.  (This was unrelated 
	to the 3.3 earthquake that occurred 30 minutes earlier).  

	All EECS networking runs through Soda Hall.  By 1:30pm, the 
	battery backup was depleted for the critical network routers 
	and servers.   Wireless networks and computers in Cory Hall 
	were also cut off the network at that time.

	Power was restored at about 4:30pm, and limited use of Soda Hall
	was allowed.  Access to all of the EECS instructional computers
	was restored by about 6:30pm.

Apr 9 - (9:30am) UNIX home directory disk filled up overnight; now fixed
 
	Yesterday (Saturday) around 11pm the disk for our UNIX home 
	directories, /home/tmp and /home/submit filled up.  We added
	space at about 9am on Sunday morning, which fixed the problem.

	Please see Symptoms when UNIX home directories are missing below,
	which also decribes the bad side effects of a full home directory.

	File content that could not be saved may, unfortunately, be lost.
	Previous versions of files may have been backed up in the hidden 
	.snapshot subdirectory of your home directory.  You can search it 
	with a UNIX command such as

		find ~/.snapshot -name my-lost-file.py

Mar 28 - License server downtime: resolved
 
	The instructional license server (known as License-srv, Scotland and 
	128.32.42.28) crashed due to a hard drive failure on Sunday night,
	March 26.  It serves these products:

		Synopsys (Sentaurus, etc)	- restarted Monday @3:30pm
		Xilinx				- restarted Monday @3:30pm
		Mentor (ModelSim, Calibre)	- restarted Monday @3:40pm
		ADS				- restarted Monday @4pm
		Keil				- restarted Monday @4pm
		NI (LabVIEW)			- restarted Monday @4pm
		Maya				- restarted Monday @8pm
		Renderman			- restarted Monday @8:20pm
		Nvidia (MentalRay)		- (new, still in progress)

	The license server went down again at 3am on Tuesday, due to a normal 
	automated reboot for updates that required manual intervention to
	complete.  We restarted it at about 10am and corrected that problem.

	There was additional intermittent downtime until about 2pm while we 
	installed patches and tested some firewall settings.

Feb 24 - UNIX home directories were down, 6pm-8:30pm
 
	Updated Feb 24, 10:20pm

	The department server for instructional UNIX home directories crashed 
	at about 6pm (Fri Feb 24) and was restored at about 8:30pm.  Course 
	WEB sites on http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu were also down.

	During that time, you could not login, or access to your files were
	frozen if you were already logged in.  

	See the EECS department notice for current information about the failure.
	
	Please see "Symptoms when UNIX home directories are missing"
	below for how this may effect you.

Jan 17 - modify you CGIs for this new WEB server
 
	After software upgrades to this server in January, WEB sites using
	CGI (programs to generate the WEB pages) in user accounts may need 
	modifications.  We are working to resolve some of the administrator-
	owned CGIs (Jan 2 2017).  See below for coding tips.
	
	Also, the syntax of the .htaccess files has changed.  .htacess files
	can be used to implement password-controlled access to the WEB contents 
	of a UNIX directory under your public_html directory.  The changes 
	are to comment out (#) several directives if you have them, and 
	replace them as shown below>

	#AuthzLDAPAuthoritative off

	#AuthType AuthCAS
	AuthType CAS

	#AuthLDAPURL ldap://ildap3.EECS.Berkeley.EDU/ou=people,dc=EECS,dc=Berkeley,dc=EDU?uid TLS
	AuthLDAPURL ldaps://ildap3.EECS.Berkeley.EDU/ou=people,dc=EECS,dc=Berkeley,dc=EDU?uid

	Without those changes the content of the directory is inacccessible 
	via the WEB server (https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu).  Howvever,
	owners of the WEB sites (ie, instructors of classes, etc) can access 
	the files directly by logging into the account on an Instructional
	UNIX computer.

	Here are some notable differences between the old and new servers
	that affect CGI scripts:

	old: SolarisX86, new: Linux Ubuntu
	any compiled modules may need to be replaced
	change /usr/sww/bin/git to /usr/bin/git
	change /usr/sww/bin/ps2pdf to /usr/bin/ps2pdf
	change /usr/sww/bin/groff to /usr/bin/groff
	change /usr/local/samba/bin/smbclient to /usr/bin/smbclient
	change /bin/sort to /usr/bin/sort
	change /bin/uniq to /usr/bin/uniq
	change 'sort +6' to 'sort -k 6', for example

	The version of Perl has changed from version 5.8 to version 5.18.

	Here are sym links we have added for backwards compatibility:

	/bin/ssh -> /usr/bin/ssh
	/usr/local/bin/perl -> /usr/bin/perl
	/pool/www/cgi-bin -> /pool/cgi-bin
	/var/www/cgi-bin -> /pool/cgi-bin
	/export/www/cgi-bin -> /pool/cgi-bin/
	/usr/lib/cgi-bin -> /pool/cgi-bin
	/usr/local/httpd/cgi-bin -> /pool/cgi-bin/

	Please ask inst@eecs.berkeley.edu for help if needed.

Jan 17 - cory.eecs is down; here are other servers
 
	The well-known instuctional login server called cory.eecs.berkeley.edu
	will be down until further notice while we convert it from Solaris to 
	Linux. (Jan 17) 
	
	You can use one of our other general-purpose UNIX login servers:

	ashby.cs.berkeley.edu
	cedar.cs.berkeley.edu
	derby.cs.berkeley.edu
	gilman.cs.berkeley.edu
	heasrt.cs.berkeley.edu
	oxford.cs.berkeley.edu
	solano.cs.berkeley.edu
	ward.cs.berkeley.edu



Apr 18 - Intermittent network outage
 
	5:30pm

	There have been intermittent network outages today.
	Wired and wireless networks are down in Sutardja Dai Hall (SDH)
	(CS10 relocated to 277 Soda for the day.)

	Login shell connections between computers in Soda, Cory and SDH have 
	failed repeatedly after 4pm.  Department WEB servers generally have 
	stayed up and the login connections seem to be stable again.

	We'll post more information it here when we know it.  We are watching 
	for updates on https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/.

Apr 15 - Instructional mail server downtime: 3pm-3:30pm today
 
	The imail.eecs.berkeley.edu mail server and the related WEB mail 
	client will be down for as long as 30 minutes starting at 3pm today.  
	This is to add memory and disk capacity to the new server.

	The imail.eecs.berkeley.edu mail server and the related WEB mail 
	client were upgraded on Wednesday April 13.  There is now a new WEB 
	mail interface:  it is Roundcube instead of Squirrelmail.

	You may need to re-select your folders in Roundcube.  To do that, 
	select "SETTINGS" from the top right corner (or "Manage Folders"
	from the bottom left gear icon), click on the Folders setting and
	click in the boxes for the folders you want to add.  Those folders
	are stored in the Mail subdirectory of your UNIX home directory,
	just as they were for Squirrelmail.

	You may also need to import your old INBOX, depending on your 
	procmail (~/.procmailrc) filtering.

	In .forward files, the old setup tolerated a forward slash to spacify
	delivery to a local address, but the new system (legitimately) wants 
	the backslash, for example:

	\cs199-zzz, yourmail@gmail.com

	Please ask inst@eecs.berkeley.edu for help if needed.

Apr 3 - servers down: ashby.cs, derby.cs, hearst.cs, gilman.cs
 
	Linux Ubuntu servers ashby.cs, derby.cs, hearst.cs, and gilman.cs are
	denying logins now, apparently due to loss of their NFS connections
	to the departmental home directory server.  Our other computers are 
	not affected.  Students can find lists of the other computers at 
	
	https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/connecting.html#labs.

	We expect to have this fixed on Monday morning.

Mar 15 - WEB mail client (http://imail.eecs) is down through Wednesday
 
	The instructional email server (imail.eecs.berkeley.edu) is up.  It
	is receiving incoming messages and relaying outgoing messages for
	our UNIX computers as normal.

	However, our WEB mail client (http://imail.eecs.berkeley.edu) 
	will be down for maintenance until Wednesday afternoon.  You can still 
	read your email using an IMAP client such as Thunderbird or pine.  We
	expect to have it running again by 5pm Wednesday (March 16).

	Please see https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/connecting.html#email
	for more information about our email server.

Mar 11 - network downtime, Fri @10pm - has been completed
 
	It lasted less than 2 minutes, and no computers needed to be rebooted.

	The posting was:

	Save your files often while working on Friday night.

	On Friday March 11 at 10PM the EECS department network staff will 
	upgrade the switch that provides connectivity to our file servers.
	All access to your home directories on UNIX will be unavailable for 
	5-10 minutes.  The IT staff may need to reboot some computers after
	that to re-connect to the file servers.

	For details, please see
	https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/news/15374-scheduled-storage-outage-fri-31116

Jan 7 - UNIX logins were blocked until Fri afternoon
 
	Update Jan 8 3pm:  This is complete; all UNIX logins are re-enabled
	(some of our computers will remain down until classes start on Jan 19).

	--------------------------------------------------------------------
	All logins to the Instructional UNIX computers will be blocked from
	6pm Thursday - 2pm Friday while we migrate the home directories to
	a new department file server.  Existing users will be logged out.

	The old home directories will become read-only at about 10am Friday.
	We will need to log everyone out of the UNIX systems and reboot some
	of them.  When we allow logins again, it will be using the new home 
	directories, with all of the contents of the old home directories.

	The instructional email server (http://imail.eecs.berkeley.edu) will
	be turned off from about 10am-2pm on Friday.  Email sent to it during
	that time will be queued by the sending mail server and delivered when
	imail.eecs comes back up.

	Questions to inst@eecs.berkeley.edu or 510-643-6141.

Dec 15 - Holiday staffing: EECS is closed from Dec 23-Jan 4
 
	 The depertment will be closed from noon on Dec 23 through Jan 4.
	 During the winter break, we will monitor inst@eecs periodically.
	 Non-critical requests will be deferred until Jan 4.

	 Instructional labs will be locked, but several login servers will
	 remain accessible from over the net.  For details, please see 
	 http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/End-of-Semester.

Dec 8 - network outage 9pm-10pm, rebooted cory.eecs and this WEB server
 
	After a planned network outage
	(https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/news/14334-network-maintenance-outage-tuesday-128), 
	we had to reboot cory.eecs and inst.eecs (this WEB server).

Dec 7 - License server has been restored to service (LabVIEW, Sypopsys, Mentor Graphics, Xilinx, Renderman)
 
	Dec 7, 11:25am: 
	The license server has been restored to service.  It's RAID controller
	had crashed.

	Dec 6:
	The instructional license server scotland.eecs (aka license-srv.eecs) 
	went down earlier today (Sunday).   The server runs these licenses:

	LabVIEW (for campus)
	Sypopsys, including Sentaurus, SWB, HSPICE (for EECS)
	Mentor Graphics, Xilinx, Renderman (for EECS)

	Instructional staff will be on site to look into it starting at 9am 
	Monday.  

Nov 17 - Cory Hall Network Maintenance Outage tonight 9-9:10pm
	The network in Cory Hall will be down tonight from about 9-9:10pm.
	This will disconnect the lab computers and servers from your
	home direcories, so PLEASE SAVE ALL YOUR WORK before that.

	This includes the wireless network.

	For details, please see
	https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/news/14174-cory-hall-network-maintenance-outage


Oct 20 - This WEB server was down, Mon 10pm - Tue 11am
	The root drive of this WEB server (or more specifically, the root 
	drive of its host server) filled up at about 10pm last night and 
	stalled the WEB server.   Service was restored at 11am today.

Oct 1 - What if you are threatened in a lab?
	Please see http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/pub.cgi?file=lab-safety.help
	for information about seeking help while you are in one of our labs.  

Sep 20 - campus network: intermittent outages since Fri 7pm
	On Sep 18 7pm, the campus network started having intermittent outages.
	Calnet was restored the morning of Sep 19.
	Some campus network sites are still inaccessible.
	For more information, please see http://systemstatus.berkeley.edu/.

	CS and EECS systems have remained accessible to one another.

Apr 7 - CalNet login campus-wide scheduled downtimes: Apr 12, May 17
	The campus IT group (IST) has announced scheduled downtime for all
	CalNet logins on Sunday Apr 12 (6-8am) and Sunday May 17 (time TBA).   
	For more information, please see http://systemstatus.berkeley.edu/.

Jan 28 - old .profile prevents logins in Soda labs
	If you find that you can't login at the graphics consoles in the
	Soda Hall labs (rooms 271, 273, 275, 277, 330, 349 Soda), that may
	be caused by an old .profile file in your home directory.  The new 
	Ubuntu 14 operating system on those computers is intolerant of some 
	bash commands in older versions of that file.  You can safely rename 
	that file to archive it (ie "mv .profile .profile-old").

	Users with this condition are able to login to the same computers
	using 'ssh' from another computer and using the text-based console 
	(type ctrl+alt+F1 to kill the graphics console).

Jan 18 - renovations to 330 and 349 Soda
	Rooms 330 and 349 Soda have been renovated and will be re-opened on 
	January 25, 2015.  These rooms are intended primarily for EECS upper 
	division classes and student collaboration.  This work was funded by 
	the Dept of EECS along with the renovations to 337 Soda, which was 
	recently converted to a collaboration space with cafe-style seating
	for upper division classes.

	The renovations in 330 and 349 Soda include:

	* new paint, new whiteboards
	* new carpet, network, tables, overhead projector (330 Soda only)
	* new Dell Optiplex 9020 PCs, 
	  with quad-core HT 3.4GHz i7 cpu,
	  32GB RAM (4x8GB), 500GB SATA drive,
	  GeForce GT 740 1 GB DDR3 PCI Express 3.0 x16 Cuda GPU,
	  ASUS 24" LCD with integrated speakers

Jan 4 - most EECS computers will be inaccessible until Monday


	This WEB server and the EECS Instructional computers were inaccessible 
	from Jan 3-7 during a network upgrade that took longer than expected.  
	For status updates, please see
	http://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/,
	http://status.eecs.berkeley.edu/.

	Email sent to imail.eecs was rejected from Jan 3-7; the sending 
	computer will queue the email and resent it when the mail server 
	can back up (at about 2pm on Jan 7).
EECS Instructional Support inst@eecs.berkeley.edu

Dec 22 - computers available during the break; all computers down Jan 3
	Between Dec 22 and Jan 19, the instructional labs will be locked and 
	most of the workstations will be turned off.

	For a list of servers that will be available, please see
	http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/share/b/pub/html/End-of-Semester.html.

	On Saturday Jan 3, most of our computers will be inaccessible during 
	network maintenance.  This includes the Imail mail server and the Inst
	WEB server.

Nov 19 - WEB server, ISVN server downtime 8-11:30am
	The Instructianal email/SquirrelMail server (https://imail.eecs) and
	the SVN server (https://isvn.eecs) were down from about 8am-11:30am.
	Email that is sent to the mail server during that time is queued by 
	the sender for later delivery.

	Some workstations in the labs also denied logins.  
	
	These problems were on systems that had not been fully decoupled 
	from our LDAP service, which went down again this morning.  We
	are working to snuff out the remaining dependencies on LDAP.

Nov 17 - WEB server planned downtime: 10am Tuesday
	(10:30am) This work has been completed.  "inst.eecs" has been moved
	to a new server. 

	We we plan to shut down this WEB server down for maintenance for a 
	few minutes between 10am and 10:30am tomorrow (Tuesday Nov 18).
	This is to swap the disks to another server, in response to several 
	recent crashes of the existing server.  We suspect from the kernel 
	logs that it's caused by bad memory, or possibly a bad motherboard.
	The server is a Dell 1850 circa 2007.

	The server rebooted itself 3 times on Nov 17 (9:30am, 1pm, 4pm) and 
	once last Friday (6pm), with downtimes of 10-30 minutes each.

	This was unrelated to the LDAP problem (below), which has not 
	reoccurred since Nov 12.

Nov 14 - analysis of the repeated downtime this Fall
	Nov 14: For an analysis of the severe downtime events this semester, 
	please see "Analysis of the Repeated Downtime Events" in 
	https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~inst/reports/?file=Fall_2014.pdf.

	Please post any questions to inst@eecs.berkeley.edu.
	Thank you for your patience.

Nov 13 - back to normal (?)
	Nov 13:

	We still have a delay in changing passwords, so we recommend that 
	you keep using the one you have for another week or so (we'll 
	update that here.)

	Nov 12:

	(12:30pm) The EECS Instructional UNIX systems are stable again, 
	after several weeks of periodic downtime.

	If you were unable to login to any of our UNIX systems recently, 
	please try it again.  If it still fails please tell us 
	(inst@eecs.berkeley.edu) which computer you are trying.

	Our password server has been down a lot lately, and that confuses 
	people into thinking they have forgotten theirs.  We are updating
	local password files on our computers for the time being.

	We are testing a new LDAP service (retiring SUN LDAP, impementing
	OpenLDAP) and will order new servers for it.  The current servers
	are circa 2002, which has contributed to their instability.

	See below for the symptoms and history of the problem.

Nov 12 - course WEB pages are not accessible via this WEB server
	(10:45am) An ongoing problem with NFS is preventing the course 
	WEB pages from being accessed through this WEB server.  

	(12:30pm) This problem has been fixed. 

Nov 11 - this WEB server was down from 9pm-10:30pm
	The http://inst.eecs WEB server was down from about 9-10:30pm 
	tonight because the inst.eecs server rebooted itself.  This
	seems to be unrelated to the LDAP problem (below), which has 
	not reoccurred since 10:30am today.

Nov 11 - UNIX logins, WEB pages were down again this morning
	(Tue Nov 11) The LDAP server went down again this morning and, 
	although we thought we'd eliminated the dependence of our 
	computers on it, that still (unexpectedly) broke the NFS link 
	to the home dirs.  We'll get that fixed tomorrow.  In the 
	meantime, we'll try to keep LDAP running.

	(Mon Nov 10) The LDAP service was up and down this afternoon 
	We have installed local, static files on all of our UNIX systems 
	so that we can take the load off of the LDAP server.  While this 
	will impose delays in any password changes, we hope it will keep 
	things stable while we diagnose or replace it.   

	The Imail mail server and SquirrelMail (http://imail.eecs) hang 
	up when LDAP or NFS are down.  Email that is sent to the mail 
	server during that time is queued by the sender for later delivery.

Nov 9 - UNIX systems were frozen again (5pm-12am)
	The Instructional UNIX systems lost LDAP and NFS (user identification
	and home dirs) again on Sunday Nov 9 from about 5pm - midnight.   The 
	Instructional UNIX computers (Linux, Solaris, MacOSX) and WEB servers 
	(Inst, ISVN, SquirrelMail) were also down.  Please see below for 
	symtoms and explanation.

	It has been a recurrent problem of the server failing; LDAP just stops 
	answering, and it takes 30-60 minutes to restart it.  We don't know 
	why it got so bad this semester.  We have tried tuning the timeouts
	and monitoring the client connections.  We are testing a new version 
	of the LDAP server software, on a newer computer with more RAM.

Oct 22 - UNIX systems were frozen again...
	The Instructional UNIX systems lost both LDAP and NFS services 
	(passwords and home directories) at about 3:45pm on Wednesday and
	were unstable until about midnight.  The effect on our users was 
	frozen UNIX login sessions or the inability to login, inaccessible 
	home directories and inaccessible WEB sites on http://inst.eecs.

	The next day, we implemented work-arounds while we debug it.
	We regret the negative impact that this has had on our students.

Oct 19 - UNIX systems were frozen (logins and home dirs are inaccessible)
	The Instructional UNIX systems lost both LDAP and NFS services 
	(passwords and home directories) from about 11am - 10:45pm today.

	The effect on our users was frozen login sessions or the inability 
	to login.  We had to restart a jammed LDAP server, which can take an 
	hour as it rebuilds its database.  This has occurred previously this 
	semester, and we are trying to debug it.

Sep 26 - UNIX accounts were frozen, noon-2:15pm
	The Instructional UNIX systems lost their LDAP password service
	at about noon today.  The service was restored by 2pm (changed 
	from 1pm...), as the redundant LDAP servers rebuilt their databases.

	The effect on our users were frozen login sessions or the inability 
	to login.   It also caused loss of access to some WEB pages on
	http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu and delays in email delivery through
	imail.eecs.berekley.edu.

Sep 12 - UNIX systems froze, 10am-10:20am
	The Instructional UNIX systems lost both LDAP and NFS services 
	(passwords and home directories) from about 10am-10:20am today.  

	The effect on our users was frozen login sessions or the inability 
	to login.

	This was caused by a loss of connection to one of our LDAP servers 
	and the time delay for the NFS server to automatically cutover to 
	our redundant LDAP server.

July 29 - intermittent network problems
	(July 29) There was a network problem from about 9:50am to 10:55am
	today that prevented our users from accessing their UNIX homedirs and 
	Airbears.   For more information:
	https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/news/11953-unplanned-outage-wired-and-wireless

	(July 14) EECS network staff are performing load testing today to help 
	prevent additional incidents as below.   There will be intermittent 
	moments of poor network performance at the EECS border as this occurs.
	For more information:
	https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/news/11893-intermittent-network-slowness-today

	(July 9)  The EECS Instructional systems experienced intermittent lost 
	connections (for periods of a minute or so every few hours) to the UNIX 
	home directories between July 3 and July 8.  The symptom was that it
	would be slow to login while waiting for initial access to the home 
	directories, then you might get 'command not found' errors if the "dot"
	files in your home directory had failed to run and set your path.  The 
	server support staff corrected this at about 3pm on July 8.  For more 
	information:
	https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/news/11813-degraded-performance-for-some-project

	(June 25) EECS computers experienced intermittent network interruptions 
	of up to several minutes between June 23 and June 25.   There were 
	dropped connections between the EECS network and the outside world 
	(including the rest of campus and users on Airbears who are connected 
	to EECS computers). This affected communication in both directions.
	The EECS network group posts updates at
	https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/news/11673-packet-loss-at-eecs-network


Apr 28 - Windows users: Internet Explorer security hole
	A major security risk has been identified in Microsoft Internet 
	Explorer.   Please use Firefox or another broswer until a patch
	has been released.   More information:

	https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/2963983.aspx
	http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2014/04/26/more-details-about-security-advisory-2963983-ie-0day.aspx
	http://www.fireeye.com/blog/uncategorized/2014/04/new-zero-day-exploit-targeting-internet-explorer-versions-9-through-11-identified-in-targeted-attacks.html
	http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/04/28/internet-explorer-bug-homeland-security-clandestine-fox/8409857/

Apr 14 - 199 Cory: renovated SanDisk lab opens April 15!
	On Tuesday April 15, 199 Cory will reopen as the newly renovated
	SanDisk Computing Lab.   

	All students in EECS classes are welcome to use this comfortable and
	collaborative space, which includes 8 new PCs (Windows, 16GB RAM),
	seating for groups and laptop users and a large LCD display that you
	can use with your own portable device.

	Please also join us for the Opening Ceremony with SanDisk on Friday 
	April 18 at 11am.

Mar 29 - network access has been restored, 9pm March 29

	The EECS networks were restored to service at about 8:45pm.
	WEB pages on http://inst.eecs were accessible again at 9pm.
	star.cs.berkeley.edu was rebooted at 12:30am (Sunday) to reset NFS.

	The original announcement (March 27):

	All EECS computers will be inaccessible on 
	Saturday March 29 from about 10AM - 6PM
	during scheduled maintenance to the EECS networks.

	The EECS network will be down for maintenance on Saturday, so our
	computers will be inaccessible from the network and from each another.
	Any users on our systems would experience interruptions and possible
	loss of data.

	This includes our email server (imail.eecs) and WEB server (inst.eecs).
	Email that is sent to our server during that time will be queued by the 
	sender for later delivery.

	For more information about the EECS network maintenance, please see
	http://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu.

	Here's the sign for the labs.

Jan 9 - all computers will be down, Jan 10-12
	All EECS instructional computers will be offline from 

	Friday Jan 10 at about 5pm 
	through
	Monday Jan 13 at about 10am

	Exceptions: 
	Our email server (imail.eecs) and WEB server (inst.eecs) will be
	down only on Saturday Jan 11 from 10am-6pm.  Email that is sent
	to the server during that time will be queued by the sender for
	later delivery.

	The EECS network will be down for maintenance on Saturday, so our
	computers will be inaccessible from the network and from each another.
	Any users on our systems would experience interruptions and possible
	loss of data.

	For more information about the EECS network maintenance, please see
	http://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu.

Dec 19 2013 - unable to login to some UNIX systems
	Starting the morning of Dec 19, some of our UNIX systems have denied 
	logins or been missing the home directories.  This is caused by a
	failure in LDAP authentication caused by some new certificates.  
	This was fixed by 1pm today; please notify "inst@eecs.berkeley.edu"
	(510-643-6141) if you are still unable to login to our systems.

	You can list our login servers at
	http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/clients.cgi?choice=servers.

Dec 5 2013 - delays with logins, browswers, logouts
	Starting the morning of Dec 5, logins at some workstations on 200 SDH 
	(Macs) and 2xx Soda (Linux) experienced delays and timeouts.  It is 
	most noticable with Firefox and Chrome WEB browsers.  If the WEB site
	you want times out, you can usually get it after clicking "Reload" a
	few times.  The browsers may refuse to close when you try to logout.
	The sypmtoms are more severe on the Macs than on the Linux systems.

	We are trying to diagnose this will get help from the dept network
	staff on Friday.   We'll post updates here.

Dec 3 2013 - network problem is causing general slowness
	The EECS network has been restored to service.
	Thanks to the EECS network staff for discovering the cause.
	
	The network problem occurred from 1:30am - 3:30pm today.  It caused
	delays and timeouts for logins and for access to WEB servers and 
	email servers on EECS computers.  AirBears was down.  
	
	For updates from the EECS network staff, please see
	https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/news/10633-eecs-network-in-a-degraded

Nov 13 2013 - phishing spam from "EECS at UC Berkeley" - don't answer!
	If you have received this email, please DELETE it without clicking on 
	the link:

	=====================================================================
	From: UC Berkeley EECS
	Subject: validate and upgrade to our new Mail hub system.

	This Email Is from the UC Berkeley EECS  Support. We Will Be Making 
	Some Vital E-Mail Account Maintenance Today 12th of November 2013.  
	To avoid your e-mail account been terminated during this upgrade, 
	Kindly Click Here and follow the instructions to validate and upgrade 
	to our new Mail hub system.
	=====================================================================

	This is a phishing scam and is NOT from EECS administrators.  You may 
	have found that obvious because of the addresses in the full email
	header:

	From intpa@mta.ca  Wed Nov 13 16:59:23 2013
	To: Recipients <admissions@txstate.edu>
	From: UC Berkeley EECS  <admissions@txstate.edu>

Nov 4 2013 - some printers were down over the weekend
	Printers that are spooled via the "iprint.eecs" server were down
	from about 8am Saturday (Nov 2) through 10:30am Monday (Nov 4).

	This includes the printers:

	lw199@iprint (lw199a@iprint, lw199b@iprint) in 199 Cory
	lw119@iprint in 119 Cory
	lwh30@iprint in 200 Sutadja Dai 
	lw274@iprint (print274a@iprint, print274b@iprint) in 274 Soda
	lw330@iprint in 330 Soda
	lw349@iprint in 349 Soda

	All print jobs that were queued during that time have been canceled,
	and will not count against the user's print quota.

Oct 9 2013 - new Synopsys licenses: Svisual replaces Tecplot
	We are transitioning to new Synopsys licenses during October.  The 
	TecPlot program is replaced by the Sentaraus Visual (Svisual), and 
	some functions of the INSPECT scripting language will no longer work.  
	For details please see 
	http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/pub.cgi?file=synopsys.help.

	To give GSIs, researchers and students time to test the new Svisual
	features, we'll run the new licenses from about noon-6pm each weekday 
	until Oct 25, 2013.  After that, Tecplot will become obsolete.

	Please report questions or problems to inst@eecs.berkleley.edu.

Oct 4 2013 - The imail.eecs mail server was not accepting incoming mail from about 8pm Thurday - 10am Friday.
	The Instructional email server refused incoming mail from 8pm on 
	Thursday until 10am on Friday.  All backlogged mail seems to be
	delivered now (10:30am Friday).

	Email that is refused is cached on the senders' computers and
	retried periodically until it gets through, so emails  were 
	delayed but not lost.

Oct 1 2013 - EECS Instructional services have been restored after the power outage
	There was a campus power failure yesterday.
	(http://newscenter.berkeley.edu)

	EECS Instructional services were restored by noon today (Oct 1).
	Please report any problems to inst@eecs.berkeley.edu

Sep 12 2013 - major power failure & computer outage, 8am-2pm
	At about 8:15am, a transformer near Evans Hall broke and caused a
	power outage in Cory, Soda, Etcheverry, Sudarja Dai and other 
	buildings.   Soda Hall was closed until about noon.  The computers,
	servers and networks for the instructional labs were restored to
	service by 2pm.

	There is a notice about the power failure on the campus IST Service
	Status page at http://ucbsystems.org/.

	This power outage was a result of an explosion in a manhole outside 
	of Evans hall which damaged several high-power electrical cables.
	Campus reported that up to 15 buildings lost power completely and up 
	to 30 more lost partial power.

Apr 23 2013 - National Instruments Campus Tour, LabView experts: Soda Hall, April 23
	The National Instruments bus came to campus for the day and was
	visited by about 75 faculty, students and staff.

Apr 16 2013 - Yahoo! donated 24 servers to instructional computing
	Yahoo donated 24 servers to instructional computing 
	and bought pizza lunches for EECS students!

Nov 15 - What if you are threatened in a lab?
	Please see http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/pub.cgi?file=lab-safety.help
	for information about seeking help while you are in one of our labs.  

Can't Login?

Symptoms when UNIX home directories are missing:
	- when you try to login the screen freezes 
	- you see the error message "home directory is /" 
	- session hangs up if you try to 'ssh' into an Instructional computer
	- unable to read WEB pages from the http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu 
	- lots of annoying "NFS timeout" error messages on your screen

	While the server is down, you may not be able to logout in our labs
	because you can't type any commands.  On a SunRay, even turning it
	off doesn't log you out.  The support staff check the labs after 
	events like this to be sure everyone gets logged out.  We also post 
	information about the problem at http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu to 
	help students find out when the problem has been fixed.   So all you 
	can really do in this case is to wait until the problem is fixed, go 
	back to the lab (or login to the SunRay server for that lab) and log 
	yourself out, or let us log you out.

	We disable email receipt and relaying through imail.eecs when the 
	home directory server is down.  No mail is lost.  Computers that 
	send mail queue messages that are not accepted by a remote server, 
	and they resend the messages periodically until they are received.