Attendees:
Nevil Bromley Arts
Stephen Sempson Applied Health Science (AHS)
Marko Dumancic Environmental Studies
Jim Johnston Mathematics
Erick Engelke Engineering Computing
Bruce Campbell Engineering Computing
Tim Farrell Information System and Technology (IST)
Topics
Password rule scheme
Discussion centered around what level of security system administrators want for network passwords. There are two primary solutions available, Bruce Campbell's authentication system or Reg Quniton's CheckPW. CheckPW, albeit configurable requires more complex rules. On the plus side, CheckPW would provide increased security but WPAG members felt it would probably lead to increased user frustrtion and the practice of people writing passwords undermining security integrity. Some members said they would prefer the option in Bruce's system for slightly stronger passwords. The overall concensus was to use Bruce's scheme with slightly stronger rules, or at least the option for stronger rules. WPAG recommends that if there are objections to using Bruce's system and a desire to use a stronger scheme then the matter should be deferred to UCIST.
Report of IST backups of NetApps
Tim reported on discussion with Mike Borkowski as to the status of backup procedure of network appliances. Legato has just released a product for the net apps for $5,000.00. IST has a thirty day evaluation copy of the software and was going to attempt a test on UWFILE and would need a couple of days to confirm success of backup. Bruce suggested that faculties delay mass migration of users until the backup issue has been resolved hopefully in the next couple of days. Currently Math is being backed up and Engineering and AHS are backing up their NetApp file spaces to other machines in their faculty.
Deadline for NetApp readiness
Bruce proposed that he would like a deadline as to when the faculties would be NetApp ready for student users. This would assist with the progression of other aspects of Phase II. Arts and some departments in Engineering are not quite ready. WPAG members agreed that the deadline for NetApp readiness is November 1, 1999 and also that undergrad accounts should be migrated to new file space on the network appliances by January 1, 2000.
Request for assistance
Engineering Computing has asked for volunteers from WPAG and other faculty computing support staff to assist with some of the smaller projects for example, a mass netapp account mover, self move netapp mover, a web win95 reset or any number of other netework features that the faculties want.
Items submitted by Arts (Nevil)
Q. Does a Polaris Account reset webpage interface require the NetApp and when can we expect it? When can a web form scratch be expected?
A. The web W95 reset will be a function of the default GUIBoot screen and will employ the strategy as developed by Stephen Carr. As mentioned in the previous item, this feature will appear earlier if someone volunteers to undertake this task. As far as when a web form scratch can be expected Bruce said we are "not there yet."
Q. Better write performance to Polaris accounts and disks this may be a problem with the network and I am going to ask Vic to get switch info from IST
A. Nevil said he is still waiting for switch info.
Q. Can the SMC 9432 inf and USB support files be added to the Polaris installation disk
A. Have to ask Ray.
Q. What are the rules for zapping f drive on Guiboot eg) 109@artsml guiboot lab testupdate is not zapping
A. Several suggestions were offered including adding a line in station's autoexec.bat such as 'format /q'.
Q. Sysctl rules question? Why would a machine sysctl when station.doc is changed even when booting off floppy eg)22@artsml
A. Erick reported that GUIBoot machines are now running their nightly updates based on a time that he is controlling and not by the setting in the Station.doc file. This was a necessary part of GUIBoot.
Q. Is there a problem with putting polaris\flags\debug on all machines
A. (Erick) Today? No problem, although it is a tiny bit slower because of the file i/o. Future? I may dump a lot more into the logs over time, and so this could slow down logins.
Q. Is there a mechanism in place for moving mass amounts of students/accounts to the netapp? If not when can we expect one?
A. This was answered by previous discussion in the meeting.
Q. A problem has been noticed by one of our co-op students with respect to the web based email checking directly from the Polaris logon screen.
If you fill in the "To:,Subject and message fields" (not everyone know the SMTP server field should be filled in) and click on send it fills in the SMTP server field with engmail and gives two attach file fields. You then have to click on send AGAIN to send it.
The questions are: a. Why the second send? b. How do we fill in the SMTP server the first time? c. When was and why was this option changed to allow use during prime time?
A. (Erick) Originally we did fill in and hide that field, but not since we upgraded. Task has been passed onto Paul McKone who is maintaining that package.
It was disabled at the start of term because we had to find a non-busy machine to host all the mail sessions. Once we found it, we enabled it. It had nothing to do with Polaris load.
Q. Can the Q:\faculty\etc directories be added for printer use?
A. (Erick) Not until everyone is GUIboot. Because until you are guiboot, the Q: drive is not available until *AFTER* printers are added.
Q. Old accounts that log on to guiboot machines have path problems. The path is set to e:\w95;w:\w95\command. The current fix is del n:\w95, run scan disk on n and reset machine and then they are fine. Can old accounts be fixed for this or should we wait until we move all staff and faculty to the netapp/guiboot and fix them one by one? Does anyone know why this happens?
A. Erick said he has not seen this but will examine.
Q. Mapping a read/write drive with samba to M: or L: comes up in read only. Why?
A. I: through N: are reserved for the Watstar server.
The following are questions submitted by Nevil "seeking an update on or commenting on the following items from my meeting with Erick and Ray Fri Oct 8."
Q. At the login prompt. An hour glass cursor appears instead of the test entry I beam cursor.. Alt Ctrl Del indicates Signon not responding.
A. Solution not known for sure. Suggestions included reformatting the D: disk
Q. After network connections are finished, system waits until the task manager is used to end Polaris the Polaris not responding task.
A. This now appears to be fixed. Has anyone seen it since Tuesday Oct 12? (None reported seeing this since Oct. 12)
Q. GUIboot: Cannot logon to a Polaris computer because Login is not responding. Solution: Reboot the workstation The following ML-109 computers regularly produce the LOGON not responding problem Computers at positions 1, 3, 4, 5, 9 Almost all computers have an extended lreboot time as they wait for what I do not know. Moving the mouse around until the hourglass cursor appears speeds up the reboot process. Erick was going to ask Jim??
A. Erick suspects it may be a video or network misconfiguration.
Q. Windows 95 fails to start because there is not enough disk space or files are missing. Even when there is more than enough disk space. Solution: Reinstall Win95 on the user N: drive.
A. New solution passed out by Steve Carr appears to work. Thanks
Q. Long logoff times. If a user logs off machine one and attempts to logon to machine two, the logoff delay from machine one may be up to 15 minutes, Even when machine one has the logon screen displayed or has been logged into by another user. Logging back on to the same machine is the usual pokey time.
A. Waiting for info from Vic.
Q. Appfiler is not being updated on the hour, every hour.
A. Fixed.
Q. GUIboot:. If a computer has a ZIP drive and there is no disk in the drive, the route * langlab@artsml fails with an error reading (in my case ) drive H: Solution: Make sure there is a disk in the Zip drive. ?) I have a zip drive in my machine, routed lpt2 to langlab@artsml, ran polman /auto and did not have a problem. Can you try that or is it isolated to route * langlab@artsml?
A. Move devices below N: drive designation.
Q. GUIboot: printers added in the Privexec.bat sometimes fail to initialize.
A. Solution: Reinstall Win95 on the user N: drive. New solution or suggestion is use SMB print in station.doc
Q. Excruciatingly long copy times to Polaris drives mounted on a Polaris server.. Average through put to a Polaris drive is 5 - 10KB/sec.
A. Waiting for switch info from Vic/IST regarding this.
Other topics in brief
- Engineering Computing, in particular Erick will be giving a big picture presentation of where Polaris is going originally scheduled to be given at IST's Friday morning seminar on December 3rd. Prof. Duane Kennedy, associate dean of computing for the faculty of arts writes "I would prefer to see it earlier in the term and I would prefer to see it scheduled on a non-UCIST meeting date in case the discussion extends beyond the usual 9:45 ending time." This message was also forwarded to Beth Jewkes.
