ACO Meeting Minutes June 13, 2019

Minutes of the Arts Computing Department meeting held on June 13, 2019

Present:  B. Baer, K. McGowan, H. Balagtas, S. Speers, N. Bromley, J. Schildroth, T. Marshall-Taylor, W. Lewis

Co-ops:   J. Lam, J. Li, C. Hinton

Regrets:  S. Hartung, R. Park, S. Paterson

Attendees:

  • Bill B.
    • Working on setting a new standard for base computers, namely 16 GB memory and using SSD (instead of spinning hard drives).
    • Dual monitors should be more of a standard offering.
    • During the transition year (from a 4 to a 5-year roll-over) we should touch those devices and offer:
      • Memory
      • SSD
      • New keyboard, mouse
      • Monitor(s)
  • Jayden
    • Windows 7 to Windows 10 upgrades.
    • Second monitor deployments.
    • Deploying hot spares and creating new hot spares.
    • Set up coding project environment.
    • Various client appointments.
  • Jackie
    • Attended Professor Spotlight interview with Sheila Agar.
    • Decided to do Ergonomics for my topic for the Lunch Session.
    • Started the production of the Scinage videos.
  • Cameron
    • Skype PHD Defence with Jameson.
    • Familiarizing with Laravel (set-up environment).
    • Deploying iMac for jlschule.
    • Creating more hot spares.
    • Windows 10 upgrades.
    • Second monitor deployments.
  • Herbert
    • Patstat - provided help to Joel and Chris on how to improve the speed of their query. IST provided us with a VM.
    • Provided one of the ECH lab iMacs to Michael Boehringer (GSS). He was saving the same issues after upgrading to Mojave. Also replaced his old 17" Dell monitor with one of our spares.
    • Spoke with Shana MacDonald (COMMARTS) and she's quite happy with the replacement we provided.
    • Mentioned to both of them our plan to upgrade their old rollover and add additional memory, Michael insisted on keeping the replacement, Shana has no preference.
    • Helping out John North (ENG) consolidate and recover data from his old research drives. Will advise that he needs a more secure and reliable way of backing up his data. Keith used an app called Spinrite - does anyone have a copy? Sherry - licensing info?
    • Annik Bilodeau (SPAN) re-imaged her laptop after she reported several issues with it before she takes it with her on her trip to Mexico.
    • Glen Campbell (COMMARTS) hard drive died after being dropped. Jameson got a replacement and re-imaged the drive. He is no longer having issues with the machine.
    • Met with co-ops to discuss coding project.
  • Sean
    • Took a couple of older spares to replace the AUO thin clients. Running Ubuntu and a stripped down X11 setup with Chromium. A good solution for kiosks or digital displays.
    • inter-americanmemoryproject.uwaterloo.ca research Linux server built for Mario Boido.
    • j4doucet Excel freezing when saving or going to options issue. Fix was a new profile and resetting UEV settings for Excel.
    • CrashPlan server upgraded to latest version and new clients pushed out.
    • Tested PatStat data running on SQL server via a docker container to compare performance to MySQL. SQL server is about 6-8 times faster on typical queries for the dataset; but researchers can't afford to buy SQL Server.
    • artsonline and acoxy certificate's renewed.
    • Course Approval application opened and running.
    • Fixed bug in St. Jerome's evaluation processing application.
    • While updating acq-evaluate mailing list discovered small bug in evaluate.uwaterloo.ca that Mirko will fix next term; instructors in joined courses do not all get included in the list.
    • Cantus XSS issue detected by Texas University. I put in place modsecurity2 to protect against it while site maintainers patched their flaw, which is now done. Left modsecurity2 in place though.
    • IST gave us a little extra space that isn't backed up for hosting patstat, created patstat.private using that 650GB disk they gave us. Herbert is importing the data to MySQL.
    • Updated arts-grad database with bug fix and updated Winter 2019 funding data.
  • Nevil
    • Nexus Default Domain policy has changed to remember the last six passwords.
    • Solved two St. Paul's issues with changes in OU due to workday. Both had their N: drive changed and thought they had lost files. One is a part time undergrad and the other cross appointed in Econ.
    • Started investigating WorkDay WatIAM mapping due to renamed departments. Nexus / WatIAM users listed as Communication Arts in WorkDay are still listed as Drama & Speech Communication in Nexus and WatIAM. This also affects CALMS ldap lookups, extract file.
    • RDCs across Canada struggling with Windows 10 updates during upgrade to Windows 10. Helping investigation.
    • Trying to solve slow Active Directory for SWORDC.
    • CTSC Notes
      • Mattermost is being maintained upon request otherwise moving to Teams.
        • Typical reasons for requests are on premise storage.
        • IST will pay for licensing for requests.
        • Custom Teams training is available upon request, typically in MC teaching lab (hands on).
        • Teams Planner is also being looked at and currently available in Teams.
      • Steven has placed a draft storage document on the Wiki.
        • Ignore the last modified date on the document, it is not currently accurate.
        • It is not for public consumption due to some financial / cost values in the document.
        • It is missing some info for proposals that were rejected primarily due to cost.
        • Findings from visit to U of T and another location to be added.
      • MySharePoint is being shutdown to move towards cloud services / OneDrive.
        • 120 current active users.
      • OneDrive auto activation.
        • UCIST has added a cloud services item to computing use guidelines.
        • One further thing for UCIST to discuss before able to preactivate all accounts.
        • Some areas have been preactivated based on acceptance of terms by department head.
      • Currently no timeline nor official decision to merge O365 tenants.
      • A 2FA message will be sent notifying of Learn, Unit4, Concur, Quest and Workday will use 2FA for anyone already enrolled in 2FA.
      • A new ISP OpenFace has been implemented.
        • Current providers 10Gig OpenFace, 10Gig Rogers, 10Gig limited Orion.
      • A Scantron replacement has been decided upon.
        • It will be used for Spring mid/final and Fall mid to work out the bugs for a full launch planned for Fall 2019 final exams.
      • There is a single signon project.
      • UW Emerge is not working on the newest Mac OS, looking for a replacement.
      • Trevor asked for access to logs on ???? to be able to audit group membership changes.
      • Arts noticed issues with staff / faculty reverting to alumni / expired.
        • IST is aware of the issue and working on it.
  • Scott
    • Met with Elizabeth Rogers to map out further collaboration with our Technical Writer. Randy Harris web site move to Scholar, etc.
    • Received iPads and cases (cases needed to be returned for ones that fit). Using acocoop4 and acocoop5 for eduroam access).
    • Fixed a permissions issue for St. Paul's on their Star$ share.
    • Contacted Anindya Sen about W7-W10 upgrade. Wasn't responding to co-ops emails.
    • Contacted Craig Hardiman with same issue.
    • Goetz Hoeppe 'lost' old email from 2007 from his former institution. Emails in his Inbox only go back to 2012 while he was looking for an email from 2007. No solution found, even after contacting IST.
    • FACCUS: minutes are here (note the scantron/marking replacements).
    • Requested IST remove Arts collections from 'Common Skype'. The version they're pushing out (7) no longer functions and simply prompts to upgrade to version 8.
    • Helped Mark Byerley recover a folder on a user’s W7 desktop after upgrading to W10.
    • Installed O365 on my production system. Checked that Antidote does work. Slightly different look and feel from O2016. Went through one update process (no reboots - Apps close but don't automatically restart).
  • Jameson
    • Games Institute - Computer moves and re-images. Setting up new monitors and PC's for a VR lab that is being set up.
    • Assisted SAF with getting their Digital Signage working for their Reunion weekend.
    • Created initial layout for documentation in MS Teams.
    • Identified issues with the AD group monitoring on nxsartsws. Found that the D drive had filled up completely preventing any new changes from being recorded. Had a new 50 GB drive added and will work on moving the scheduled tasks over to it.
    • Set up BIOS update to go out to Dell computers in HH on 6/12/19 @ 10:00 pm.
    • Glen Campbell dropped his computer while moving it and the PC started to have 100% disk usage. Replaced the HDD and re-imaged the computer.
    • Set up NUC for digital signage for SAF to replace the Retail Services one being used. Waiting for Colin to provide a PowerPoint deck so I can make a demo slideshow to help bring them on board with using it.
  • Todd
    • Met with Grit Liebscher (GSS) and Adam Toplician about ML 109/ML renovations.
    • David Kang (lab assistant) away the rest of this week and next week.
    • We are checking frequently, and sound in ML 117 working well.
    • Toured the new Student Services Centre in Needles Hall.
  • Will
    • Testing Office 365 ProPlus. Functionality appears similar to Office 2016, but it has a much newer/fresher look to it. It fixes the issue of blurry text on high-DPI laptops when switching between the internal display and external monitors.
    • Tentative timeline for ACO Lunch Session is August 12-15. Bill will speak about the rollover program. Please advise of any news/changes that could be covered or other potential topics.