Minutes Waterloo Polaris Advisory Group July 18, 2001

Attendees:

Regrets:

Submitted items:

1) Prevent multiple logons
This feature is working now on lab machines. Student labs can now be configured so a user can only log onto one machine at a time. Attempts to log onto a second machine will pop up a web page for 15 seconds and then log the user off the newly logged on machine. The original machine stays logged on.
If the user's machine crashes and he attempts to logon to the same machine after it reboots, the logon works. But if it crashes and the user moves to another machine, he must wait about 5 to 10 minutes before a new logon will be permitted. There is no feature yet to determine where someone is logged on.
There will be no User-kick-off mechanism in place, only an Administrator can kick someone off.

2) Syslogging and free-stations monitor
Nexus machines do syslogs upon reboots, logins and logoffs. They also do local logging to check if someone is logged on.
Syslog by default is written to engprint, under /var/log/license.

The local syslog on the C-drive could be used to see if someone is logged on to a station or not. Someone in Eng.Comp. will write a program to setup such a monitor.

3) Software on Nexus
Update of the software available on Nexus: Corel Office 2002. This includes a mail program, Corel Central Mail, which is very similar to Eudora, but without the advertising.
Default is IMAP, but POP is also possible. The license fee is $25 concurrent or purchased for each computer.

There was a brief discussion about moving to Corel Office 2002 only, which would save the university approx. 0.5 million dollars in licensing fees for MS Office.. The major problem is the amount of users using Excel and PowerPoint. However with W2K we have more flexibility in which programs we make available for which user(s). The new agreement that Jay Black signed with Microsoft gives us a free license for almost all of Microsoft's programs except Office. (This includes MS Project, OS, Visual Studio, etc...). No restrictions, available for all faculties for every computer being used for academic use.

4) Math Students logging on to Nexus in Arts
Nevil gave a brief update that he worked together with Jim to map the N-drive from the Math NetApp. He still needs to deal with Environmental Studies.

5) Map Q drive
The Q-drive, which holds departmental specific software will be mapped automatically at logon. Ray and Erick will set this up. We kept the Q-drive to make sure it didn't get confused with the S-drive, which will hold software sources for user initiated installs (IST).

6) Quota tool & Logoff icon
The Quota Tool is working on Nexus for everyone who upgraded the NetApp. Only Math needs to upgrade their system, which should happen sometime in August.

Erick will create a logoff icon.

7) Folder redirection of "My Documents" and corrupted profiles
The folder "My Documents" on the desktop cannot be removed. Since this is part of the roaming profile it gets copied from N to C at logon and back to N at logoff. This is causing problems unless you place the NetApp in the Nexus domain. Engineering will test this once Bruce is back. In the meanwhile Erick will write a tool that will warn the user, once per session, if he/she tries to save to 'My Documents" folder.

Related to the "My Documents" problem is a corrupt profile, when this folder gets to big. The solution is to delete the Windows2000 folder in which your profile is kept. Before deleting the folder check for documents!

8) September update of Nexus and faculties
-Scratch will not work on Nexus for September, but will be in place for January.
-Science is going to wait another year, before opening a Nexus student lab.
-The Network Calendar will be made available on Nexus through WebView

Information items:

1) GPO's and naming conventions
Ray is creating a generic GPO usable for all student labs. The naming convention for GPO's is as follows: OU_servername_policyname.
We are trying to keep the user GPO's to a minimum. These GPO's are only useful for blocking. The main User GPO is the folder redirection. Science and Arts have a couple more User GPO's

2) What needs to be done is a user changes lastname
awful process to start with. First contact IST to change the uwdir userid, then change the userid on the different systems. The easiest and safest way is to create a second userid, otherwise the user will loose access to any of the previous backups.

3) Password Sync Problems
Changing the password on Nexus through the CTRL-ALT-DEL does not work. Password synchronization doesn't work yet.

4) Netscape Bookmark
Netscape 6 stores the bookmarks in a file called bookmarks, not in bookmark.html

5) CMD and BAT
There are some differences and problems between the 2 types (i.e. with CMD file, looking for null file, you cannot use spaces for the directory names, so use the short file name). The CMD file is still the preferred way because it happens in the background. For Nexus the first time a user logs on the CMD file will be big and take some time to process, however later logons will be faster. Any changes to the user settings later, will be implemented with wserv2.exe

Created by: delattre@uwaterloo.ca 2001/07/18
Revised by: delattre@uwaterloo.ca 2001/08/07