For reasons that are not entirely clear, Ohio State has revoked the license on Prosepero version 2. The only information available is on their web site at http://bones.med.ohio-state.edu/prospero/.
This morning, the version of Prospero on the main web server was dropped to version 1.4.
Prospero 3 is on the way, and should be available in mid-October.
The sendmail configuration files on the University’s mail server have been upgraded to version 8.12.10. The early problem with the configuration files and the vacation program have been resolved. The vacation program has also been upgrade to prevent rev-lag.
The sendmail configuration files were also modified to use the currect os_type.
Problems were encountered with the sendmail 8.12.10 configuration file and the auto-responder (vacation) message. The configuration file has been rolled back while further investigation in being done.
The University mail server was upgraded from Sendmail version 8.12.9-20030924 to version 8.12.10. This was done as a more proactive step to maintain better version levels. The previous version was patched to address a OOB issue which was a temporary fix. The daemon and configuration files have been upgrade to the current release level of 8.12.10.
Sendmail on the University mail server was patched to prevent a buffer overflow condition as reported by CERT.
CERT Advisory CA-2003-25 Buffer Overflow in Sendmail
The patch used was taken from sendmail.org
A number of people in Resnet, mostly centered in the Langlow subnet, but not restricted to that area, had been reporting receiving invalid IP addresses, even though they had successfully registered their machines. The dhcpd.conf file had valid bootp entries for these machines as well. An astute student gave us a crucial piece of information – students that had registered after a certain time (unclear, but probably last week) were having the problem, while students resgistered before that time were working properly. This led me to believe that the dhcpd daemon was not running with the current version of its .conf file, and that a restart of the daemon would resolve the problem. When we attempted to restart the dhcpd process, it was found that the restart_dhcpd perl script was not running, whihc would explain the problem. Upon restarting the dhcpd, the problem was resolved.
HERMIONE had an unusually high CPU utilization (100%), and has for the past few days. This caused response times on Webmail become extrememly long, and the machine in general to become unresponsive. This was apparently caused by the presence of two FlexLM processes on the machine. Paul Monaghan gave me the history of this – he changed versions and apparently the old version did not get disabled.
Paul disabled the old version, and CPU utilitzation returned to more reasonable levels. Webmail response times lowered dramatically.
Measures taken against the Nachi worm, namely the blocking of TCP ports 135 and 139, caused the Best Lock and Video monitoring systems to fail. Apparently, theses systems use these ports to communicate with the Lenel Communication Server Process.
The blocks were lifted and the Communication Server was restarted, which restored the connection.
Majordomo which has failed to work since September 3, 2003 as the result of unknown reasons has been replaced. Mailman is now up and functional. Most lists that previously existed in majordomo have been recreated in mailman.
These lists can be viewed at, http://mail.ups.edu/mailman/listinfo.
The University’s network, and particularly the ResNet, continues to suffer from random Blaster worm attacks. Network traffic slowed to a crawl about 11 AM this morning when a number of ResNet computers started looking for other vulnerable machines to infect. OIS personnel had to shutdown all the ResNet subnets to mitigate the load. ResNet personnel are in the process of visiting the infected computers to apply patches and clean the machines. The subnets will come back up when the infected machines are cleaned.
We want to remind everyone in ResNet that it is mandatory that all Windows computers attached to the Universitys network must up-to-date with Microsoft critical updates. In addition, current anti-virus software must be running on all computers.
Call the Help Desk at x8585 for help or questions.