Change in authentication for the VPN and Dialin Services

Effective noon on Monday, December 5th, 2005, you will need your Windows password instead of your email password to access the campus Virtual Private Network (VPN) service and the campus dialup modem service. You will still use your email name. If you are connected to one of these services around this time, please log out before this time and date. This change is part of the larger effort to reduce the number of usernames and passwords we now use, culminating with the replacement of the current email system with Microsoft Exchange.

Those users of the dialup modem service who have pre-saved their passwords will need to change them. To do so, double click on the UPS dialup icon you have created on your desktop. In the User name field enter your e-mail username (your e-mail address without “@ups.edu”). In the Password field, enter your Windows password and check Save password if you want Windows to remember your password for future connections.

E-mail problem: 5550 5.3.0 Can’t create output

Some user reported this morning the inability to send messages to users. They received a common error,

Final-Recipient: RFC822; username@ups.edu
X-Actual-Recipient: RFC822; username@ups.edu
Action: failed
Status: 5.3.0
(reason: Can’t create output)

This error was the result of poor deactivation of the quotaing system. The quota system had been turned off, but not removed from the fstab file. When the system was rebooted yesterday, the quota system was re-enabled and locked account in excess of their time limit. This issue has been corrected.

Network upgrade

The planned OS upgrade of core network equipment on Sunday was not as smooth as planned. Two systems had difficulty with the upgrade and required a reboot: the mail server, and the Oracle development server. Otherwise, the upgrade was a success.

As a result of the problem, we have a better understanding of the upgrade process for future upgrades.

Dial-in Failures

The radius daemon and portmaster were reset to address several reported issues with dial-in access. The core reason for users not being authenticated is not completely clear, but there are indications that the portmaster or the radius daemon became confused about the appropriate share secret. Once all entryies were reset authentication started to be validated correctly.

During the process, four modems were identified as failing to respond properly and were removed from service.

MX record change

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.