Present
| Department | Advisor names |
|---|---|
|
Arts
|
Nevil Bromley |
|
Applied Health Science (AHS)
|
Lowell Williamson |
|
Computer Science
|
Steve Nickerson (chair) |
| Information System Technology (IST) | Tim Farrell (secretary) |
| Steve Carr | |
|
Science
|
Steph Sempson |
|
Engineering Computing
|
Daniel Delattre |
| Erick Engelke | |
| Ray White | |
| Environmental Studies | Marko Dumancic |
| Bernie Rutter | |
| Math | Jim Johnston |
| Naji Alamrony |
Regrets
ESAG Peter Routledge
Start of term review
- Engineering Computing reported problems with account creation process. What had worked in the spring term did not work now. Adman could not add home directory. It is possible the problems were a result of Service Pack 3 for W2K3.
- Environmental said their application server would not deploy software. Resolution was to upgrade their version of Samba. ES students also experienced password problems where the password would work one day but not the next. Problem was related to the Nexus/UNIX password split capability and how a default password rule was set for ES.
- IST had to reload a couple of applications, Acrobat Reader 7 and the Java Tools after the fall software upgrade.
- MFCF mentioned they had .Net problems.
- Daniel said he has a tool that will sort the assigned software installation sequence of MSI's within a GPO.
- Stephen Nickerson reported some class administrators had trouble resetting student passwords. Ray indicated the some students were setting the password properly but not creating their account and therefore no resources.
- Lowell mentioned that occasionally Q: drives are not being mapped.
- Erick encouraged groups to bring students in to create their accounts before classes start.
Documentation
- Lowell requested better documentation for Nexus System Administrators. This documentation should include concrete examples of how to do things.
- A committee was struck to determine the best vehicle for this as well as start seeding the documentation repository.
NIPFW
- With this type of firewall we would be able to have different rules for on and off campus environments.
- This product is also throttling capable.
- NIPFW also understands the 'toilet tank' concept so that after a lot of usage the system can cut back and then slowly trickle things back to normal.
Expiration of old accounts
- It is difficult to determine who is no longer a student here at uWaterloo.
- There are other indicators that one can use to make intelligent guesses based on last signon, last access, and such but there are always exceptions to these. Needless to say there is no information accessible to Nexus system administrators that definitively says whether a student is no longer at uWaterloo.
WSUS
- Hon has installed and is testing WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) as a future replacement for the SUS (Software Update Services). Microsoft is phasing SUS out by June 6, 2006.
Signon message
- Tim reported that the interim signon screen message solution is working well. You are able to assign a small message to either the OU or machine level or both.
- There was some discussion about the possibility of signon message window as well.
Screen resolution
- Erick mentioned that it will be possible to force a machine back to a default screen resolution.
Disk space
- There was some discussion around which faculty should provide the required disk space for students' course work. Course like some fine arts ones require lots of user disk space for each student. Some faculties contend that the department hosting the courses should provide sufficient disk space but others argue that it is up to the home faculty to provide this space. Nothing was resolved and this has been an on-going issue.
