Waterloo Nexus Advisory Group minutes January 21, 2009

Present

Department Advisor name
Applied Health Science (AHS) Lowell Williamson (Chair)
Computer Science Steve Nickerson
Engineering Computing Erick Engelke
  Hon Tam
  Ray White
Faculty of Environment Bernie Rutter
Math Naji Alamrony
  Gordon Boerke
Science Steph Sempson

Regrets

Department Advisor
Arts Nevil Bromley
Engineering Computing Daniel Delattre
Information System and Technology (IST) Steve Carr
  Tim Farrell (Secretary)
Math Jim Johnston

Agenda (PDF) items this month

Agenda Items

Corrupt User Profiles

AHS has reset several profiles without finding repeated requests from the same user. Need time to investigate further.

  • There are questions as to the real issues causing this problem. These problems could not be duplicated.
  • Logs have been sent and are being examined.
  • These problems have been seen on multiple machines, and multiple operating systems (Windows XP, Vista).
    • Math has been resetting profiles and has not heard back further problems from the users.

Symantec AntiVirus (SAV)

  • SAV needs to be uptodate and patched. See to the listed machines needing attention.
    • Current functional level of the SAV program is 10.1.6.6010. Admins may be installing older or more vulnerable versions. Please patch up. To go to version 7. requires an upgrade to the parent server. For now, 6010 is adequate.
  • Arts Faculty Domain machines have been moved on to Clipper.
    • With Arts redeploying SAV, some communication issues have been found. These problems may be associated with firewall rules.

Report

  • Visit UCIST
  • Recap to the 20 minute UCIST presentation.
  • Question about the distribution of student to staff Nexus client machines.
    • This depends on the Faculty, each has a distinct profile.
  • Capabilities of Vista and Microsoft (MS) Testing
    • Vista is just another Operating System (OS). There are problems with any OS. MS typically structures OS testing with beta versions and release candidates.

Faculty updates

Engineering

  • Engineering Vista Lab
    • This project has been delayed, but is happening now. Monitors are being updated at this time. The only caveat is that ESQ uses this lab. Early software testing for use with Vista must be considered

AHS

  • NA

Computer Science

  • Request from instructors to install software packages on the podium machines i.e. DrScheme-4.1, Python-2.6.1, and wingide101-3.1.6-1
  • Some software packages are still reinstalling on machine bootup.
    • Determine if software is needed at the station, and if not, remove the package. Further investigation may be required.

Environment

  • New Co-op with the faculty this term. Priority willl be dealing with collecting data associated with computer power usage and system shutdowns.
    • Typically, systems are setup up with utilizing the BIOS automatic power on feature. Shutdown is usually done with WMI scripts to see if users are logged on, and if not, the system is remotely shutdown.

IST

  • NA

Math

  • Printing problems. Some machine not producing print outs to server queues. Erratic at times.
    • Possible DNS issues. This may happen if different servers are used, say NS1 or NS2, which do not recognize domain names in Nexus. Problems like this can manifest depending on the setup of primary names.

Science

  • Sciapp app server being rebuilt. Server moving from 129.97.4 subnet to 129.97.66 subnet.
  • Sciclps app server to be rebuilt. Server moving from 129.97.4 subnet to 129.97.66 subnet.
    • Supermicro servers with mirrored 250GB HD ran out of space on the 214GB /exportfs slice. Replacing drives with two 1.0TB disks and upgrading the OS to FreeBSD 7.0 Stable from 5.4 Release.

Other business

Nexus Domain Controllers (DCs)

  • Nexus DCs are currently running Windows Server 2003 in native mode.
  • These servers should be updated, with newer 64bit hardware platforms, and MS Server 2008.
    • Currently, there are seven production servers. At approximately $3,000.00 per server, there is a need to spend over $21,000.00 to upgrade the current DCs. This is an all or nothing venture, as native mode requires all servers to be functionally the same. This is regarded as a Faculty Project, as all the faculty units are inherently involved in this update.

Nexus DC update request should be mentioned to Alan George, Chair, Associate Provost, Information Systems & Technology with the possibility of using Faculty Project Funds.

ONBase

  • Some issues with instructor problems installing and using ONBase have been heard.
    • These problems are strongly linked to using IST's software depot. Daniel Delattre, of Engineering Computing, has put together some documentation and software installs which work properly.

Next meeting scheduled for February 18th, 2009.