University of California at Berkeley Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Instructional Systems Support Group /usr/pub/reports/manager/Fall_1995 Report on EECS Instructional Computing Facilities ------------------------------------------------- Fall Semester 1995 by: Kevin Mullally, Manager of EECS Instructional Systems Ferenc Kovac, Manager of EECS Electronic Support For a desciption of the current status of Instructional UNIX labs and file servers, please read /usr/pub/EECS.facilities (also accessible via Mosaic and gopher). For decriptions of additions and changes to software availability, please read /usr/pub/Instructors.Guide, /usr/pub/software.help and other specific files in the /usr/pub directory (also accessible via Mosaic and gopher). DUE-DATES utility ---------------- There is a new program called '/share/b/bin/due-dates' on franklin.cs. The program is an interface that can display and edit a text file in which instructors can add the due-dates and other information about assignments for their classes. This may help to balance the usage of the workstation labs. When an instructor runs '/share/b/bin/due-dates -edit', the text file is opened in an editor (as specified by the user's $VISUAL or $EDITOR environment variable). When a student runs '/share/b/bin/due-date', the contents of the file is displayed (using the user's $PAGER environment variable, or 'cat'). Please ask "root@cory.eecs" for help if you wish to use 'due-dates'. June-August 1995 ---------------- UNIX: 275 Soda was rearranged to suit hands-o instruction for CS61A. Workstations were cleaned of grime and internal dust. Several new UNIX utility programs were produced, including an improved "grade" database application, an due-dates scheduler for instructors and improved downloading of TeleBears class enrollment data. This data is used by the "roster@cory" program and it is given to the cardkey staff so they had class enrollment lists at the start of the semester. Our old Silicon Graphics Iris systems (the "Torus" cluster in 199 Cory) have been retired from service. They have been given mainly to research groups in Soda Hall. PCs: PCs in 123 Cory were upgraded to Intel-donated Pentium 90s, with larger Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint) were installed on all the PCs to aid students in writing their reports and prepare their presentations. A Windows NT server has been installed. Self-Paced Center: In August, 2 UNIX workstations and 2 Macintosh Performas were installed in 345 Davis. These and older Macs in there were put on the ethernet, replacing serial connections. This is in support of the CS3 and CS9 series classes. September 1995: -------------- 4 PowerMac 8500s have beene installed in 111 Cory. These will provide computing resources for multimedia and animation design classes (CS39A, CS294-6). Also under discussion is the aquisition of some high-end PCs for the lab in 111 Cory. Instruction purchased a Mac Powerbook 520c last year for use by faculty in campus lecture halls that have projection equipment for the computer screen. We anticipate buying another portable (probably a Intel-based system running UNIX) for similar use next year. Prof Sequin has received 10 new Indys in a donation from Silicon Graphics. These arrived in late August. Seven of these are installed in 347 Soda for use by CS184, CS284 and CS285. Grants proposals are under discussion for donations from both DEC and HP. October 1995: ------------ Po.eecs crashed early in the morning of Sat Oct 7 and was back in service by 6am on Saturday. However, users could not "rlogin" to po.eecs because the Ultrix license server failed to start. Users could login using "telnet", and home directories on po.eecs were accessible via NFS from all the other systems. "rlogin" was working again by about 7pm on Saturday. December 1995: ------------- Pasteur.EECS, the Instructional mail server, crashed and was rebooted on Sunday 12/03 at about 8pm. (end of document)