6/3 – Database Systems Temporarily Offline

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The database systems went offline sometime of 3 June this weekend when rainier and crystal lost connections to several disk volumes. The disks were remounted, and the databases were restarted. The DBA was called at 9 AM this morning.

The www2 webserver also became unresponsive because it lost connection to the database. The webserver was restarted once the database came online, restoring service.

5/30 – License problems with the FTP server on www2

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Sometime during the weekend, the ftp server on www2 decided that its license had expired. Until a new license could be obtained, the standard ftp server (wu-ftpd) was run. This led to some slow response (wu-ftpd operates under the xinetd master daemon) for much of the day. The vendor provided a new license key at 4:30 PM. This was installed, and ftp service was restored to normal.

5/24 – MERLIN2 failure

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Merlin2 became unresponsive to fileshare access today at 5:30 PM. The console was still responding, and we were able to log on. Access to the disk arrays appeared to be impaired – we were unable to list the disks or view their contents. No pertinent events were logged in the Event Log. The system was rebooted, and was back to normal.

We have made an adjustment to the antivirus software (changed vendors), and will keep monitoring.

Change in authentication for the VPN and Dialin Services

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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.