Minutes of the Arts Computing Department meeting held on January 11, 2018
Present: S. Hartung, R. Park, K. McGowan, H. Balagtas, S. Speers, N. Bromley, S. Paterson, J. Schildroth, G. Parks, T. Marshall-Taylor
Co-ops: A. Sanchez, L. Ma, S. Luckhurst
Regrets: B. Baer (on secondment), W. Lewis, M. Byerley, C. Wallace
Attendees:
- Sherry
- Fall 2017 course evaluation results were released on Friday, January 5th. I received a few questions about when results would be released prior to the 5th as instructors were anxious to do their performance reviews.
- Will be doing CALMS training for co-ops in the afternoon.
- My focus this month is preparing finances for budget discussions, so some requests / email responses may be delayed a bit.
- Will be starting to determine eligibility for staff rollover 2018 this month so computers can be purchased.
- Keith
- The wireless survey of HH 180 and front hall has been completed and two new APs are being installed.
- A final modification to the StarRez email configuration to use the bulkmail server was made and tested successfully.
- The SPSS VDI and workstation licenses have been renewed.
- A web server has been configured for use by students in the GBDA 228 course at Stratford.
- The English department wants to look into installing an overhead projector in one of their rooms and I had someone from ITMS generate a quote.
- The HeForShe group wanted to hold a Python coding workshop in PAS 1237. We booked the lab and Scott had some additional requested software installed but they have had to postpone the event. Haven't received the new date yet, but this allowed us to re-book the lab for an RS comprehensive exam instead.
- Over the break, a pipe burst in the ECE area and caused some localized damage. The water apparently reached the central staircase but there was no evidence of water below the machine room floor.
- Some Media Services material can only be streamed to systems on the UW main network which is causing an issue for faculty teaching at BSIA. The only solution I can see is to RDP through the VPN to a UW system. I'm going to set up a Windows VM to test the quality.
- Discussion:
- The SSL certificate for the Nexus web email server has expired and was not renewed by Engineering. Users were getting security warnings when trying to connect. The only other web email interface on campus is the SquirrelMail program on mailservices. It is not up to the load and it is questionable whether IST will continue to support it. An alternative to using SquirrelMail will be have the user install and use an email client such as Thunderbird, Outlook or the Mac Mail App. ACO may need to provide additional support and the Help Desk will receive more calls to set up these email clients. This is a reputation issue. We need to identify Grad students affected and move them to Connect. Same with Sessionals. IST has advised that alumni and retirees will stay on mailservices – at least for now.
- The Email Technical Working Group: Findings and recommendations report was presented at the last CTSC meeting CTSC meeting of how to manage outgoing and incoming email on campus. With recent security protocols being implemented it is difficult to forward email to another account and possibly email will be rejected. Advancement would like to retain Alumni email accounts, and we need to determine how to support retirees in some way. Further discussion is needed. Mail client may be the best route.
- Lee
- Michael Boehringer returned a very old MacBook Pro laptop as a result of an asset update request from Marco last term. Sherry is helping to determine what is to be done with it as it was never reported to ACO to include in assets. Will need an IDE hard drive adapter to wipe it.
- Janice Aurini's MacBook is ready to be given back since December 20th according to Marco’s notes, but she has not responded to my email yet.
- Completed initial training (WHMIS, Workplace Safety, etc.).
- Researching Newsletter Articles and working on Lynda.com courses.
- Samuel
- Researching newsletter topics and watching Lynda.com courses to help reach three set goals.
- Department photocopier connectivity issues using High Sierra OS on a personal MacBook for Michael Boehringer (Germanic & Slavic Studies) and Kathleen Pierce. Personal machines do not have Munki installed. Herbert has been helping trying different solutions but no success yet. Will continue to research a solution.
- Take-Home laptop setup for Dani Marcheeva, experiencing Bitlocker Encryption issues.
- SLP: Principles of Leadership course (5:00 pm-7:00 pm January 10th) to be completed by January 11th.
- Completed all other initial required courses (WHMIS, Workplace Training, Accessible Customer Courses).
- Angelica
- Updated the contact information for Help Desk assistants on the ACO website.
- Will work with Sherry on RT Ticket #736714 to update CALMS "take home" systems status in CALMS.
- Will update the weekly Help Desk schedule on the ACO website, as soon as a firm lunch break schedule is determined. Times to be staggered, 12:00, 12:30 and 1:00.
- Attending the first IST Seminar on Friday for the Winter term.
- Assisting Samuel and Lee by answering phone calls and emails while they step in-and-out of the Help Desk office.
- Conducting research on my chosen topics for the ACO Newsletter Spring 2018.
- Signing up for Lynda.com courses that can help improve my three goals for the work term.
- Courses:
- SEW099, WHMIS 2015, AODA, Workplace safety, and Violence Awareness (completed)
- SLP: Principles of Leadership on 01/10/2018 (in progress)
- SEW100, 101, 026, 016 (in progress)
- Herbert
- Duplicate items are tuning up on CALMS. This may result from previous duplication of information in the past and copy and paste errors. Working through these duplicates and keeping the updated and accurate information.
- Looking into FileVault encryption issue on Michael Boehringer’s iMac. It is taking a very long time to encrypt. Sean advised that this is normal.
- Will be working with Juli-Ann Sannuto to setup OFAS for the Deans Office.
- Sean
- safanalytics server created (Windows 2016) for SAF. I'll need to create an OU to allow custom administrator group for Colin and Iv Kieng.
- New Arts Mail Database application deployed (written using RoR and developed/deployed as a docker container).
- cte-blog compromise - had user guest with password guest that had ability to create content, so spam was created.
- Firefox, Thunderbird & Chrome updated for Macs.
- Ubuntu patches for Meltdown deployed. Meltdown patches for esxi (on artsvc2) done. Also upgraded artsvc2 vCenter. Spectre patches (with microcode update) deployed on 66% of artsvc2 cluster so far. Should be finished by weekend. Firmware update not required. All Windows will need firmware because of Spectre. Bios updates required. Try it out on the test machines first before deploying. Patch cygnus2 to be scheduled.
- arts-xibo server setup for Jameson to test, using Docker and on IST prod VMware server
- Installed physically Economics server with Keith to our machine room. Setup with Server 2016 for packalen in Economics. Then switched to Ubuntu at packalen request. 48-core platinum Xeons, very fast. Named nonrival.uwaterloo.ca
- Nevil
- Jameson been through security clearance to be a new backup for SWORDC.
- Windows Advanced Update Group - 1703 available to Vanguard, to WAUG next week. Working on 2 task sequences but the one with the RSAT tools broke so it was removed. Updates are taking 45 minutes to two plus hours. Upgrade will be made to small subset after Vanguard. After a two or three week period then upgrade becomes mandatory. Labs will also be done, but PAS 1237 and HH 280 to be done at end of term.
- Need to review GPOs for Servers. Advanced Firewall nearly done. Local Administrators is an issue for some servers. Will talk to Sean to determine how to handle.
- Scott
- Completed co-op on-boarding .
- Un-linked or linked to empty OU GPO's and security groups cleaned up to make it easier to read and less confusing.
- Photoshop CS6 cleanup.
- St Paul's upgrade from Win7 to Win10.
- Jameson
- Packaged up LearnLock with a Task Sequence. Testing deployment before deploying to production.
- Installed and set up a laser printer in Ann Marie Rasmussen office.
- [GI-IT] Setting up new Xerox VersaLink printer from Retail Services. Set up Standard Accounting and working on getting it working between Nexus and Watgamer.
- [GI-IT] Computer Moves and account creations.
- Greg
- Continuing to move Psych printers in DNS and on the print server.
- Beginning to look into different VDI options.
- Travel claims with Concur are a lot easier than the old paper way! Thanks to Sherry for helping it get through the system and getting paid so quickly.
- Todd
- New hires for the term for language lab. Three are new and one is returning from a previous term.
- Access to labs and ML 117 classroom sorted out. TA’s to get access to ML 109 and ML 113.
- Temperature issues in ML 117 seemed to have been resolved.
- Keith Peck from AccessAbility Services installed ZoomTech on one machine in ML 113. Will need to ensure that machine gets proper updates.
- Will
- IST is deploying Windows 10 1703. New machines now with 1703. Planning testing for version 1709.
- Starting a project to promote Bomgar usage for remote support.
- myWaterloo decommissioning produced lots of traffic to the IST Service Desk.
- Working on moving the IST Webstore to a new server.