The University e-mail service has been reconfigured to route as many messages as possible through the anti-virus gateway before they are sent off-campus or recieved by the University’s mail servers.
This additional stop for messages increases the delivery time, but in necessary to reduce the propogation of e-mail viruses and worms.
File shares on the new ALEXANDRIA academic file server had incorrect share permissions set. This caused users to be locked out of their file space. The permissions were reset to the proper values.
ALEXANDRIA, the academic file server wnet live this morning.
Due to the problem with the DHCP server today, students in Greek Row subnet had problems registering, which caused them to back up in the wounded IP range, exhausting the wounded pool.
The wounded pool was increased in all subnets to relieve the problem.
As on 15 September, 2003, the auto-restart script on the Resnet DHCP server failed. The script was restarted, and this solved the problem.
The SurgeFTP ftp server replaces WU-ftpd on the main web server. This is to limit viewing of files outside users’ home directories.
This was performed as part of normal monthly Preventative Maintenance.
As of 13:30 on January 12, 2004 the University mail server had received over 40,000 messages that were rejected or deferred based on the anti-spam rules. In an attempt to reduce this unnecessary load, the mail exchange (MX) records for the mail server in the external DNS were commented out. This will help to send all smtp traffic to the anti-virus gateway. Secondly, the ups-benjamin and mailserver objects were removed from the pix’s smtp group.
In order to get the latest features and to patch a security vulnerability, the Movable Type weblogging system was upgraded to 2.65 from version 2.64.
An atom 0.3 feed was added to the Maintenance blog.
The SmartSwitch 6000 chassis and blades were reconfigured for VLAN operation.
We also reconfigured the 2200’s for VLANs, but are having trouble with those.
Library server room is down as a consequence.
All network equipment in Wheelock Student Center was replaced. Cabletron equipment was replaced with Cisco equipment.
The Google search appliance was upgraded to operating system version 1.17.
The Search software was upgraded to version 3.4.14
The Cbord server reported to not be responding to inquiries from the cash registers at approximately 12:30 PST. Upon inspection of the server, it was discovered that pcAnywhere was hung waiting for a connection. We received a VFEP error when tring to access the Odyssey Control panel.
It is our belief that C-Bord support encountered errors when doing routine maintenance that hung the server.
RESOLUTION: We rebooted the Odyssey server and had the cash registers re-inquire.
Serveral users have recently reported slow response from the Corporate Time server. During the course of our investigation of the problem, several orphaned ssh process were found on Big Ben and the log files were found to be quite large.
The orphaned processes were dealt with at 16:00 PST. The Corporate Time service was stopped at approximately 20:30 PST. The log files were rotated and the service restarted. The University web server was restarted to allow users to access the Corporate Time web interface.
The University’s proxy server hung this morning. the server was restarted, and returned to normal operation.
The University’s internet connection was inoperable this morning from about 7 AM until about 10:30 AM. The problem was isolated to the PIX firewall. A number of logged outbound connection attemps (ca. 97000) from forged class A source addresses to a destination in Northern California were discovered. The sheer number of such attempts constituted a denial of service situation for the firewall.
The true source of the connection attempts was traced to a student computer in Todd/Phibbs. The students network port was inactivated, and the firewall was rebooted. This restored internet service.
Continue reading