CS Staff Gazette, volume 3, number 1, March 2006

March 2006  --  Volume 3  --  Number 1
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* Cycle Server Update
     We are pleased to announce the availability of 4 new cycle
     servers.  These are Sun X4100 servers with dual, dual-core
     2.2GHz Opteron 275 processors (four 64-bit processing cores)
     with 16GB RAM running the CentOS distribution of Linux.
     Collectively, they are known as "cycles" and can be reached via
     ssh to cycles.cs.princeton.edu.  Individually, the machine names
     are soak, wash, rinse, and spin.

     IMPORTANT:  Because we received complaints in the past that the
     penguin machines can be sluggish for interactive applications
     (e.g., reading e-mail with pine), we are requesting that CPU
     intensive, non-interactive applications be run exclusively on
     "cycles."  To help enforce this, we won't be installing things
     like pine or firefox on the new servers.


* Sun Ray Server Update
     We recently upgraded the Sun Ray Server.  This is the server that
     runs the Sun Rays throughout the building.  It's a faster machine
     that occupies 1/6 the rack space of the retired machine.  With
     this upgrade, all of our Solaris cycle servers are running
     Solaris 10.


* Emergency Status at status.cs.princeton.edu
     We now have a website for emergency status messages at
     status.cs.princeton.edu.  This page is hosted outside of the
     university infrastructure.  If you are having trouble connecting
     to the department, you can check there to see if there are any
     announcements.


* Image Gallery
     It's been a while since we've added new photos to the rotation
     on the department's web page.  If you have any photos to add to
     the gallery, please send them (or provide a link) to csstaff.
     Photos can be of the building (in different seasons), of people
     in the department, or related to projects.  Be sure to include a
     caption indicating the subject, the photographer, and the date
     (minimally, the year) it was taken or created.


* New Backup Policy/Schedule for Project Filesystems
     We have completed our evaluation our new backup infrastructure
     and are happy to announce that we are now backing up more of the
     project space.  We have implemented the following policy based on
     the size of the project filesystem:

     - For Project Filesystems (size < 5G):
          * Nightly incremental backups with a 3 month retention
          * Weekly backups with a 1 year retention

     - For Project Filesystems (5G <= size < 50G):
          * Weekly backups with a 1 year retention

     - For Project Filesystems (50G <= size < 100G):
          * Monthly backups with a 1 year retention

     - For Project Filesystems (100G <= size < 500G):
          * Quarterly backups with a 1 year retention

     - For Project Filesystems (500G <= size):
          * NO regularly scheduled backups.

     For details, see: https://csguide.cs.princeton.edu/docs/backup.php


* Logs for Virtual Web Hosts are Now Available
     If you maintain a virtual web host in the cs.princeton.edu
     domain, weekly logs are now available in /n/fs/weblogs.  For
     example, if the virtual host is foobar.cs.princeton.edu then the
     logs are available as /n/fs/weblogs/foobar/foobar.log.gz.  The
     logs are created early Sunday morning and overwrite the previous
     week's file.  If you wish to preserve/archive your logs, it is
     up to you to copy them from this staging area each week.  For
     details, see: https://csguide.cs.princeton.edu/docs/weblog.php


* Power Mailing List
     As a service to people in the department with equipment on
     battery backup, we have created a read-only mailing list called
     "power" for notifications of actual (as opposed to planned) power
     events in the CS Building.  These include power failure and power
     restoration as well as On-/Off-Battery events for the main UPS in
     room 218.  (We will add events for the Friend Center UPS that
     powers the Friend Center lab and CS 002 in the future.)

     The primary benefit of the list is to let people know when their
     equipment is on battery power.  They can then decide if they want
     to remotely login to their servers and cleanly shutdown equipment
     before the batteries discharge.  To subscribe, visit:
     https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/power


* Wiki
     As an experimental service, we have created a Wiki for the
     benefit of our department and our research collaborators.
     (A Wiki is a website that lets people collaboratively edit the
     content.)  Our Wiki is located here: http://wiki.cs.princeton.edu
     Before using the Wiki, please read
     http://wiki.cs.princeton.edu/index.php/CSWiki:About which
     emphasizes the experimental nature of this service.


* Moodle replaces Whiteboard
     The open-source course management system (CMS), Moodle, is now
     available to CS instructors as an alternative/extension to
     Blackboard.  This replaces our previous, home-grown system called
     Whiteboard.  Our local page is at http://moodle.cs.princeton.edu/
     and is supporting COS126 and COS226.


* Security Updates
     And finally, this is a reminder to keep your machines up-to-date with
     respect to security patches for both the operating system as well as
     applications.  If you are a Mac OS X user, you'll definitely want to
     check out the Apple Security Update 2006-001.  See this CERT alert
     for details: http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA06-062A.html