College of Engineering EECS Instructional & Electronics Support Groups /usr/pub/reports/managers/Spring_2004 Sep 12, 2004 EECS Instructional Computing - Review and Plans ----------------------------------------------- Spring 2004 CONTENTS: Current Initiatives Recent Improvements Final Year for Nomadic laptop loan program Lab Space Allocations New Equipment installed in FY 2003-2004 Budget Priorities Further references Notable Events Current Initiatives ------------------- 1) new in June 2004: The EECS network group has extended the campus AirBears wireless network to floors 1-3 in Cory Hall and 2-4 in Soda Hall. EECS will upgrade the Instructional Computer Graphics lab (349 Soda) with 14 Macintosh G5s. These are being funded joinly by the Weiner Fund, EECS Instruction and faculty donations. EECS Instruction has purchased 2 new SUN V440 servers to improve the computing resources for classes such as EE141 (Cadence) and CS186 (databases). 2) 'named' accounts on Windows Instructional 'named' accounts are now created on Win2K as well as on UNIX (started in Feb 2004). Students who qualify for these accounts include all EECS ugrad and grad majors, as well as students in many EECS classes. The 'named' account is potentially a student's one and only Instructional account. For EECS majors, it does not expire each semester. (We do still create specialized 'class' accounts for some classes, notably the CS Lower Division and several EE lab classes). Instructional 'named' accounts have been on the Instructional UNIX systems for over 15 years, but we have only created 'class' accounts on Windows until Feb 2004. The Instructional and IDSG groups needed the time to establish procedures for coordinating our user entries in the shared departmental Windows database. Some of the benefits to this include: * Our Windows computers are now available to many classes (notably EE upper division) that were formerly limited to UNIX. They need this because their CAD software is increasingly available on Windows and we have reduced the number of UNIX seats as our lab space has shrunk. * These Instructional users will no longer be dependent upon UNIX labs. They can still login to UNIX from Windows labs if needed. * These Instructional users may not need an additional Windows 'class' account just to access Windows software. This will reduce the number of class accounts we have to create each semester. * For EECS majors, the Instructional accounts on Windows will remain active as long as they are here. For more information about the Instructional computer accounts, see http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/pub.cgi?file=Named-Account-Policy 3) Improved email services The Instructional email server was moved to a more powerful server ("Imail") in January 2003. It now provides a secure SSL-based IMAP service as well as the traditional UNIX NFS-based mail service. This is a step in our conversion from NFS-based to IMAP and WEB-based mail services. Anti-spam filtering is now running. Email is rejected if it is from a non-existent or blacklisted address. (http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/notices.html#imail-jan09) The Instructional email server ("Imail") will soon have a WEB site for individuals to read and post email, set email forwarding and set email filtering. This will make it easier for users to manage their email and to decrease spam. 4) Vodaphone Wireless Lab 111 and 117 Cory are being converted into a new lab for courses in wireless techlologies. EECS has received a large grant for this new curriculum. The classes will include: EECS117, EECS217, EECS221A, EECS226A, EECS224, EECS225x, EECS229, EECS290, EECS298, CS294. The lab is managed by Ferenc Kovac and may be shared with research groups. 5) NetApp fileserver IDSG and NetApp donated a NetApp file server to Instruction in Fall 2003 (postponed from Summer 2003). The NetApp has terabytes of storage and is fully redundant. It may allow us to: - retire our old Win2K home directory server ("Fileservice") - increase disk quotas for our long-term 'named' accounts - share a single home directory between UNIX and Win2K accounts The NetApp will be phased into service. We will have to implement a disk-to-disk backup scheme to provide timely daily archiving for the increased disk capacity. We will probably use one of our current home directory servers for that. We have purchased a new tape library ($12K) for the NetApp. 6) Previous semseter achives on-line CS faculty often need to review student files from the previous semester to resolve grading conflicts, etc. This has always been difficult once we have archived the data to tape and deleted it from the disks. So we will set up a new server ("last-semester.cs" or etc) that is a snapshot of the environment at the end of the semester, and make that available to instructors during the next semester. Recent Improvements ------------------- 1) hanging gardens in Soda labs Thanks to the efforts of Jeffrey Varga and other members of the CSUA, the second floor Instructional labs in Soda Hall now have an arboreal grace, due to the silk plants they recently installed. Jeffrey patiently sought the approval of the department bureaucracy and presented a convincing case for this. Our labs now rival the ancient Gardens of Babylon as one of the wonders of the world. 2) free Microsoft sofware for EECS students at home Free Microsoft software downloads are now available to students in EECS classes (started in June 2003). Microsoft donated a file server and software licenses so that EECS students can obtain copies of Windows, Visual Studio/.NET compilers and other applications. This service helps our students by allowing them to do assignments using Microsoft software on their home computers. It helps the department because it will reduce the demand for access to Win2K computers in our labs. The procedure starts at http://msdnaa.eecs.berkeley.edu. 3) Intel grant: new servers for Linux apps We received a grant from Intel in Fall 2003 for 4 new DELL 1750 servers for application software such as Cadence on Linux (EE141). We did not receive new PCs for 349 Soda (CS184, CS284, CS294). 4) InstCD v 4.0 The fourth version of the Instructional Software CD has been prepared. It has a new version of the "Stk" program that CS Lower Division classes use to implement "scm", as well as updates to several share- ware applications. We will have 1000 copies made in Spring 2004. It is free to all students in EECS classes. (http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/notices.html#instcd) 5) AirBears in Instructional labs Instruction funded the installation of several AirBears access points. AirBears is the campus-wide wireless network. Students with their own wireless laptops can access AirBears for free in the vicinity of the Instructional labs in Soda, Cory and Hearst Field Annex. (http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/pub.cgi?file=laptops.help) 6) Lab Fee for Excess Printing We have started a policy of enforcing printer page quotas. We were approved by COE to charge students for printer use beyond a free quota that is based upon the classes they are in. Our goal is to control costs (not to make money). Instruction has a 5% budget cut this year, and other student labs on campus (IS&T, Res Halls) already impose printing fees. Our current quotas for free printing are computed as: 100 pages per course credit, and 100 additional pages if you are a CS or EE undergraduate or graduate. We will charge $12 for an additional 200 pages. The quotas are reset each semester and purchases are not refundable. Students can check their quotas and authorize us to bill them for more pages via http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/webacct/. 7) CAD Tools Software Synopsys purchased Avanti! last year and now provides 3 major CAD tool packages that are used in EECS: SYNOPSYS, TCAD and HSPICE. Instruction has purchased licenses for all of these via the "University Bundle". We are sharing these licenses with researchers such as the Device Group. 8) Labs moved to Hearst Field Annex (HFA) Two Instructional UNIX labs (for CS3 and CS61A) and the CS SelfPaced Center moved to Hearst Field Annex (HFA) building C for the start of the Fall 2003 semester. HFA is between Barrows Hall and Bancroft Ave. We have been displaced from Davis Hall to accommodate construction of the new CITRIS building (see http://www.citris.berkeley.edu/). CS3 and CS61A labs will remain in HFA for at least 2 years, then be relocated again to new facilties, probably in Evans Hall. Final Year for Nomadic laptop loan program ------------------------------------------ Since August 2000, Instruction has maintained the 79-odd "Nomadic" laptops that were obtained by Prof Landay and are used by CS160 or CS169. Prof Landay's research group was collecting a $50 fee from each student to cover the cost of insurance. The laptop warranties expired in 2003, and we have decided not to continue the insurance. So the students are now required to pay only a deposit. Our request for a self-supporting laptop usage fee was rejected by COE in Spring 2003. We will not be able to maintain or replace each laptop as they fail, and there is no program for funding replacements. So the "Nomadic" program of laptops for CS160 and CS169 will end in May 2003. Lab Space Allocations --------------------- The shared labs are for classes without reserved labs. Sharing a lab is the most efficient use of the space, but the number of shared computers for EE classes has been reduced this year. In August 2003, 117 Cory (14 seats) has changed from a shared to a reserved lab (for EE100, which was displaced from 120 Hesse Hall). In December 2003, 111 Cory (14 seats) was changed from a shared a reserved lab (for the new Vodafone lab). To regain some shared seats, we will open up 105 Cory (30 seats) to shared access during evenings and weekends. But EE20N will continue to have exclusive use of the lab for 50 hours a week, so there is a net loss of access to shared seats. As a result, the ratio of students to shared seats is very high: Classes that use shared labs: EE classes, Spring 2004 (105,199 Cory) = 28 students per computer CS classes (271,273,275,277 Soda) = 13 students per computer Classes that use reserved labs: EE classes (105,119,125,140,204B,353 Cory) = 5 students per computer CS classes (330, 349 Soda) = 8 students per computer CS classes (C30, C50 HFA) = 8 students per computer New Equipment installed in FY 2003-2004 --------------------------------------- - NetApp file server (for Instructional UNIX/Windows accts) (donated by IDSG) - new Overland AIT-3 Tape Library (for NetApp home dir server) ($11,900) The NetApp will has 1.5-TB of active disk space. The Overland PowerLoader has 3.8-TB storage capacity. The dual drives raise the transfer rate to 86-GB/hour and permit tape duplication for off-site storage. Based upon our current rate of use, we need a tape capacity that is about 3 times that of the disk capacity to archive daily dumps for an entire semester. So we will probably also need to use some disk space for the incremental dumps. Budget Priorities ----------------- Instruction has overcome a $60K deficit from FY 01-02 and ended with a $20K surplus in FY 02-03. We reduced our expenses by hiring one fewer student staff member and no new large equipment purchases. Current large purchase priorities include: - 20 new chairs for labs ($6000) - 14 new PCs for 349 Soda Graphics lab ($45000) - 4 new SUN 2-cpu SunBlades for graphics "render farm" ($10000) - 1 new multi-processor CPU server for CAD applications ($45000) Further references ------------------ http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~kevinm/citris/ http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~iesg/iesglabs.html Notable Events -------------- May 18 - Computer downtime Fri May 28; Cory Hall closes May 28 5pm - June 1 8am On Fri May 28, computer systems will be down at times throughout EECS. On Friday afternoon, tests of the UPS in the the Soda Hall machine may cause the Instructional systems to lose connection to the /usr/sww, which stalls UNIX logins, etc. At 5pm on Friday, Cory Hall will be powered down and locked (until 8am Tuesday June 1) for work on the transformers. Our major servers will be switched over to an alternate power source and will continue to be available, but there will be some downtime around 5pm. These servers will be available throughout the Memorial Day weekend: inst.eecs.berkeley.edu WEB server imail.eecs.berkeley.edu Email server fileservice.eecs.berkeley.edu Windows home dir server mamba.cs.berkeley.edu UNIX home dir server cory.eecs.berkeley.edu UNIX login server nova.cs, star.cs, torus.cs UNIX login servers h30.cs, h50.cs UNIX login servers The computer labs in Cory, Soda and HFA C will be locked. Many Instructional accounts will expire at 9am on May 28. (See http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/End-of-Semester) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Apr 21 - Imail server and UNIX logins were out of service, 9:30-9:40pm At about 9:30pm, the Instructional email server (imail.eecs) froze up and was rebooted. It was back up in about 10 minutes. Besides lack of access to email, a major side effect of this is that UNIX logins were stalled. See below for a description of the symptoms. The cause of the problem was a database server malfunction that overwhelmed the system resources. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Apr 12 - Campus-wide power outage interrupted computing (2:30pm-4pm) At about 2:30pm, a fault occurred that cut electrical power to 65 buildings on the Eastern side of campus, incuding Cory, Soda and Hearst Field Annex. The power came back in stages over the next 30 minutes or so, but several servers in the department took longer. Logins and email on most Instructional computers were blocked until about 4pm while we waited for the servers to stabilize. The major Instructional computers (including the file servers Fileservice and Mamba) were kept running by their UPSes, and fortunately the outage was short enough that the batteries did not drain. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mar 30 - Printer usage quotas are now in effect Instructional UNIX and Windows accounts now have page limits on the Instructional shared printers in Soda, Cory and Hearst Field Annex. The print quotas this semester are computed at 25 pages for each course credit that the account is being used for. In addition, students who are EE or CS undergraduate of graduate majors are given an additional 25 pages per semster on their print quotas. The print quotas are reset each semester. Unused pages will NOT be credited to you in future semesters. If you exceed your print quota, your next print job will be replaced with a "QUOTA EXCEEDED" page. That page explains that you can logon to http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/webacct to view your print quota allocation and to purchase additional pages. Pages that you purchase will be billed to you, at a rate of $12 (non-refundable) for 200 pages. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feb 25 - Campus-wide power outage on Wednesday evening Power went off on Campus on Wednesday Feb 25 for about 6 minutes, from 10:41pm-10:47pm. The Instructional labs and servers were brought back into service that night by the after-hours efforts of dedicated staff. The UNIX server "h30.cs" and the HFA C30 lab remained down until Thu at about 10am. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feb 19, 2004 - Instructional Windows 'named' accounts are now available Instructional 'named' accounts are now available on Windows as well as UNIX. Students who are eligible for 'named' accounts include EE and CS majors (ugrad and grad) and students in many EECS classes. 199 Cory and 330 Soda are general access Instructional labs with PCs. You can request a 'named' account by logging in as 'newacct' (password 'newacct') in 199 Cory, 273 Soda or via 'ssh' to cory.eecs.berkeley.edu. If you already have an Instructional 'named' account on UNIX, you can run 'newacct' again to get a matching account on Windows. Note that several classes only get 'class' accounts, and some of those are only on UNIX. To see the type of accounts that are given to a class, please search for it on http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/labs/. For some technical tips about using your Windows account, please see http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/pub.cgi?file=microsoft.help. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feb 17, 2004 - newest EECS Instructional CD is delayed EECS Instruction provides the InstCD for students in our courses. The CD contains a collection of public domain software used in EE and CS courses. It is provided free by EECS Instruction for students to use on their home computers. We have run out the old version (v3.0) and the new version has been delayed. In the meantime, students can download the programs they need from the on-line copy of the CD, at http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~instcd --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dec 2002 - Non-SSL IMAP Support on imail.eecs has ended Non-SSL IMAP on imail was disabled on Dec 2, 2003. Now, imail.eecs only accepts IMAP connections that are using the SSL security protocol. This affects people who have setup Netscape, Mozilla, or any mail program using IMAP, but did not check the SSL option. Please see http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/connecting.html#email for information. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sep 12 - off-campus network access reduced because of attacks The UC Berkeley campus network security (SNS) group has announced that as of 12:00 noon, Friday, September 12, several network ports used by Windows are being blocked at the campus border. The ports that are blocked are TCP/135, TCP/139, TCP/445, TCP/593, UDP/135, UDP/137, UDP/138, and UDP/445. The impact of these blocks is that several Microsoft services including file sharing, access to Exchange mail servers, and remote desktop access will not function across the border of the campus network. This is necessary to stop the spread of several fast-moving and destructive viruses. At home, you may see error messages in Windows such as "Access denied" "The network path was not found" "Unable to connect because the RPC server is unavailable" when you try to access computers on campus. This does not prevent access to any campus WEB sites. Logins into UNIX systems are uneffected. So to transfer files between your Windows computer at home to your Instructional Windows directory on Fileservice, you can use your UNIX account as a transfer point: 1) Login to UNIX (such as cory.eecs.berkeley.edu) with SSH Secure Shell 2) Use the SSH Secure File Transfer program to copy files between your Windows PC at home and your UNIX account 3) Use the UNIX "smbclient" command to copy the files between your UNIX directory to your Windows directory. Please see http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/connecting.html#file_transfers for examples of how to do this. If you use a PC running Windows, it is critical that you apply patches regularly to protect yourself. Microsoft will automatically check your computer and install patches from http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com. SNS's IT Security Resources page lists additional ways to get help: http://socrates.berkeley.edu:2002/resources.html For more information about the problem from Microsoft, see: http://www.microsoft.com/security/security_bulletins/ms03-039.asp For more information on securing your computer, see: http://security.berkeley.edu/bestpractices.html For more information on email viruses, see: http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/pub.cgi?file=email.help --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fall 2003 - Forgot your password on the Instructional computers? For named accounts: Login as 'newacct' (password 'newacct') in 199 Cory, 273 Soda or 'ssh' to cory.eecs.berkeley.edu). Enter your Student ID number. Then select the new "p" option for resetting your password and reprinting a form. The form will be printed the next weekday and will be available in 391 Cory after 1pm. Named accounts look like 'gbush' or 'bclinton'. For class accounts: Go to the sys admin staff for the lab you are assigned to use (see http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~iesg/iesglabs.html). Bring your initial class account form or student ID card. There is no on-line procedure for resetting the password of a class account. Class accounts look like 'cs61a-aa' or 'ee141-agore'. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- May 2002 - your LOST+FOUND directory Mamba.cs, the Instructional UNIX home directory server, crashed on April 29 and was down for 33 hours. For an explanation of the circumstances, please see the Spring 2002 Managers' Report (http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~iesg/reports.cgi?file=/home/aa/staff/inst/public_html/reports/managers/Spring_2002) A number of files and home directories were not restored to their proper names and locations. When we couldn't determine where the files should go, we put them a directory called LOST+FOUND in your UNIX home directory. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Symptoms when UNIX email or home directories are missing: - "home directory is /" error message when logging in - 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 - new email deliveries will be delayed on imail.eecs We disable email receipt and relaying through imail.eecs when the home directory server (mamba.cs.berkeley.edu) 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. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- See http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/notices.html for current notices. For additional information, please contact us: Kevin Mullally, ISG Manager | Ferenc Kovac, ESG Manager EECS Instructional Support Group | EECS Electronics Support Group 378 Cory Hall, (510) 643-6141 | 380 Cory Hall, (510) 642-6952 kevinm@eecs.berkeley.edu | ferenc@eecs.berkeley.edu | http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/ | http://iesg.eecs.berkeley.edu/ | UNIX, Win2K computers and software | Win2K computers, software and in drop-in labs; email and UNIX | equipment in electronics labs, accounts; UNIX login servers; | AV services. class and student WEB sites. | source: ~iesg/public_html/reports/managers/Spring_2004