On July 13th, the University web server will be upgraded to address several security vulnerabilities. The upgrades will take place between 4:00 PM and 7 PM. The components involved are:
A brief (ca. 10 second) outage may occur between 6:45 and 7:00 PM. Otherwise, no interruption in service should occur.
The MX record on DNS zones was changed to mx00.ups.edu and mx01.ups.edu in an effort to normalize the naming convention for our mail exchange servers. This change resulted in some mail delivery problems since not also external mail servers picked up the change in a timely manner. A workaround was implemented to allow mail delivery to continue. Mail messages sent between 10:00am and 11:45am (-8:00 PST) seem to have been effected.
The University doubled the bandwidth (speed) of its Internet connection from 12 to 24 megabits per second (mbps) on June 30, 2004. The cost for the new connection is only slightly more than the old connection. The unit cost of the connection has dropped almost by half because many carriers overbuilt their networks and are loaded with excess capacity.
The directory server was rebooted at 5:15pm to finish the OS upgrade.
Server back on-line at 5:25pm.
I changed formmail6.php to be XHTML compliant, as follows:
the two header calls now refer to /ssi/xpagetop.shtml
the <br> tag is now closed
Since we use this form for XML/XSL email this is a good thing.
We’ll want to be sure to make these changes to a new version, if that happens.
This morning the McAfee WebShield MailScan SMTP service was found to be unaccountably stopped. The service could be restarted, but would not stay running for longer than 10 minutes. After calling McAfee service, we applied the latest patch set, which had no effect.
After the service consultant mentioned some problems with corrupt SMTP headers, we found several messages in German similar to the following:
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Received: From hcjogg.pe ([200.121.127.144]) by gehenna.windows.ups.edu (WebShield SMTP v4.5 MR1a P0803.345);
id 1086899371171; Thu, 10 Jun 2004 13:29:31 -0700
From: tmatrix@t-matrix.com.pe
To: sleith@ups.edu
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 19:48:18 GMT
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: Libanesen in Berlin [Key:4463]
Importance: Normal
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
Message-ID:
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”us-ascii”
Habe eben im Fernsehen einen Bericht gesehen, in dem klar hervorging, dass libenesiche und kurdische Moslems in Berlin die Drogenszene und teilweise sogar das Rotlicht-Milieu beherrschen. Der Clou an der Geschichte ist jedoch, dass die Libanesen, die in kriminelle Aktivitaeten verwickelt und Millionen scheffeln, ebenfalls vor dem Sozialamt erscheinen um ihre Sozialhilfe einzufordern. In einigen Szenen im Berliner Sozialamt, konnte man vor lauter Kopftuecher nicht einmal mehr die Waende sehen!Wenn man da bedenkt, dass die Gruenen sich im Moment gegen ein strengeres Immigrations-und Asylgesetz querlegen, kann man nur noch mit Hoffnungslosigkeit und Kopfschuetteln reagieren. Interessant an dem Bericht war ebenfalls, dass Justiz und Politik bisher nicht mit der gebotenen Staerke gegen solche Umtriebe vorgegangen ist, aus Angst man koennte ihnen Auslaenderfeindlichkeit und Rechtslastigkeit vorwerfen! Die Auswirkungen von soviel Dummheit und falscher Toleranz werden wir noch alle bitter bereuen muessen!
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These messages were removed from the AVG SMTP queue, and the SMTP service operated properly.
McAfee service has been given exemplars of the offending messages. We have blocked the relevant IP addresses in the Firewall.
The RESOURCES domain will be decommissioned between 8am and 9am on Tuesday June 1, 2004. RESOURCES is the last Microsft Windows NT domain supported by OIS. All easily identifiable workstations have been removed from this domain. Any workstations in the this domain after June 1 will experience problems logging in to the active Microsoft Windows 2000 and 2003 domain structures. If you experience problems logging in and believe your workstation may actually be a member of the RESOURCES domain please contact the OIS Help Desk, helpdesk@ups.edu, (253) 879-8585.
Security reported problems viewing the Lenel security cameras at approximately 11:30am. The camera windows would appear to open, but there was a problem with connecting to the server. The video server was rebooted at approximately 12:45pm. This corrected the problem.
The problems with the Blackboard server was traced by Blackboard support to some configuration parameters that were not set to optimal levels. these parameters were adjusted, and the problem should be resolved.
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I’ve replaced PHPBb with SMF (formerly YABBSE) because it has better user management.
There have been intermittent problems with the new Blackboard 6.1 server, starting this past weekend. At random intervals the server returns a “500 Internal Server Error”. This can happen on any page.
Blackboard service has been called, and is looking into the problem now.
Additional disk space will be added to the University’s web server during the OIS scheduled Preventative Maintenance window, 6-8 AM, Wednesday, 19 May. The web server will be down approximately from 6-6:30 AM.
Blackboard migration from version 5.5.1 to version 6.1 is complete. The new Blackboard system is now in service.
The Blackboard server will be unavailable starting at midnight, Monday, 17 May. During this time, OIS staff will upgrade the existing server from Blackboard version 5.5.1 to version 6.1. Three days have been reserved for the upgrade process: 17, 18, and 19 May. Blackboard services will be restored by midnight, 20 May, but may be restored sooner. Check the OIS maintenance site for details during the upgrade window.
The Anti-Virus Gateway was reboot after updating to the 4359 DAT file. This DAT file allows the AVG to detect the W32/Bagle.ab virus. The server was out of service for about ten minutes as it rebooted.