Waterloo Nexus Advisory Group minutes August 17, 2005

Present

Department Advisor name
Arts
 Nevil Bromley
Applied Health Science (AHS)
 Lowell Williamson
Computer Science
 Steve Nickerson (chair)
Information System and Technology (IST) Tim Farrell (secretary)
Science
 Steph Sempson
Engineering Computing
 Daniel Delattre
  Erick Engelke
  Ray White
Math Jim Johnston
  Naji Alamrony

Regrets

Departments Advisor names
Engineering Computing
 Hon Tam
Environmental Studies (ES)
 Marko Dumancic
ESAG Peter Routledge
IST Steve Carr

Agenda

Standard Firewall for student computing labs

  • Erick suggested a product called IPFW.
  • Some of its benefits are:
    • does logging
    • very robust
    • rules are numbered and rule sets make sense
    • have experience from FreeBSD
    • open source port from FreeBSD Source Forge
    • command line interface
  • There was agreement in principle this should be standardized across all public labs.

Packaging Maple X

  • Daniel has it packaged up but is just waiting for the license codes
  • Daniel reports he has the following packaged and ready for deployment for the fall term.
  • Nexus Common Apps
    • Active Perl 5.87.813
    • Adobe 7.0.2 (upgrade)
    • Eudora 6.2.3
    • Ghostscript 8.15 and Ghostview 4.7
    • Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6
    • FireFox 1.0.6
    • DivX 6.0
    • Real Enterprise version 6
    • ExpressView 4
    • Flash
    • QuickTime
    • ShockWave
    • Adobe SVG
    • WinAmp Lite
    • Java RunTime 1.4.2.08
    • No Netscape
  • Other Nexus Common Apps remain the same
    • SAS 9.1.3
    • Contribute 3.0
    • SPSS 13.0.1 (no Amos)
    • MathCad 12
    • Femlab 3.1i inside Matlab R14SP1
  • Other Software for Engineering
    • SolidWorks 2005-2006
    • MasterCam 8.1
    • Adams 2005 (fixed)
    • CFX 5.71 (fixed)

New adman features

  • New Help command

PowerPoint problem AVPC podium computer

  • Tim mentioned that for some users on the e-classroom AVPC podium computers their graphics do not show up in PowerPoint presentations. Problem is linked to an inappropriate IE cache setting. Registry hacks do not solve the problem as the improper settings get re-asserted. Group policy has been ruled out. Problem appears to come from one image used in the E-classroom OU. Computers with the hyper-thread image do not exhibit this behaviour.
  • Workaround is to install the Office 2003 PowerPoint viewer. The graphics do show up for users who previously had problems.
  • Looks like re-imaging is the only real solution so Tim will get a new image from Daniel but the new image will not be installed before the fall term.

Asynchronous/synchronous setting

  • There was consensus that for now the global setting for this should be synchronous to avoid problems that were experienced a few months ago.
  • This needs to be revisited to achieve better performance.

Computer lab exam experience

  • Stephen asked if anyone had any experience with running exams in Nexus labs.
  • The School of Accountancy has been doing this but there have been problems every term.
  • Can be used in conjunction with uWaterloo Angel

Vista

  • Lowell asked where to get beta version of Vista. It was mentioned that he should contact Manfred Grisebach of IST.

Break-Ins again

  • Lowell reported that there have been more acts of vandalism and theft of computer components. More computers have been forcibly opened and damaged.
  • AHS is now locking labs at 4:30 p.m. They will re-evaluate in the fall.
  • Jim mentioned MFCF has a new computer case with security features. Meeting adjourned for a field trip up to MFCF to see this case.