Linden LAN : Home

Campus Network outage due to power spike	July 18, 2008 02:24PM
This morning at 11:40 ish a large portion of the campus network fell victim to a power spike. Although the network equipment in Russell Labs didn't seem to be directly affected, our connections - both within the building and to the outside world - are now part of the whole campus 'organism' which is the 21st Century Network. This is mostly a good thing but it does lead to some strange situations - like today - where some people in the building lost connection and others didn't. Anyway, as far as I know we were all back on line within minutes. Our servers were not effected since they are (nearly) all protected by UPS (battery backup power). If you are still having trouble connecting you are probably connecting through one of those little hub/switch boxes (that split one connection into many). Try unplugging this box and plug back in to reset the switch. If you are still having trouble contact one of your friendly IT people. Stuart For more information from DoIT web site: http://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/news.php?id=1815 http://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/outage.php?action=5&caseID=080718-0220
— Stuart Baker

BackScatter: SPAM "Delivery failure" messages filling your inbox?	May 12, 2008 02:31PM
Why am I getting bounced messages for email I didn't send? Spammers commonly forge the headers of messages they send, making it appear as though they originated elsewhere. Spammers harvest vast numbers of email addresses, or even guess common email addresses, and then put these addresses in the "To:" and the "From:" fields of the millions of email messages they send out. Some of the messages they send will end up bouncing, and when they do, they bounce to the forged address in the "From:" field, which may be yours -- more....
— Stuart Baker

Dell docking station questions:	May 08, 2008 09:38AM
1. We're thinking about getting a Latitude D630 with a Docking Solutions D/Port Advanced Port Replicator DPORT [310-7278]. This unit has both a DVI and a VGA connector. Has anyone tried using two monitors with this replicator in both clone and none cloned mode? 2. How about connecting a monitor to the port replicator and using the laptop screen as a second monitor. Answers: 1. I'm typing this email on monitor 1 that is driven from the D/Port. This monitor is vertical. Monitor 2 is horizontal. Haven't had any issues with either. 2. I have used that same solution many times on the dell. Using the docking station to set up two monitors and you can do them in both modes if the video card supports it. Since it is the video card in the laptop that drives the interface. I know non-cloned or spanned works I have not tried cloned in that mode. 3. Yes it does work with both modes with the NVIDIA Quadro 135 graphics upgrade. One caveat though is to have it reliably restore the monitor settings (clone or dual view) you need to shut the laptop down before you dock. 4. I have not used it with the D630, but I have used it with earlier D5xx and D6xx series and used both clone and dual screen modes, so I'm confident that it would work. I have definitely used it with the DVI connector and I think the VGA also. The challenges I encountered: a. Drivers for the various video cards vary in terms of whether you set dual monitor mode through the Windows part of the Display settings or through the video card specific driver interface. This can make it a pain to teach users how to get back to dual monitor mode after they have been undocked. b. Most often in dual screen mode the laptop will default to the primary monitor and the external will become the secondary. However, the more natural office config is to have the big external monitor as the main monitor in front of you and the place where new app's launch. Again, getting Windows and the video driver to agree on how to set the external as the primary so that the icons, task bar, and new windows appear there can be tricky and confusing for new dual screen users. Sometimes the driver will show the external as primary and Windows will show it as "1" (primary).
— Stuart Baker

Network News and Events	March 27, 2008 10:46AM
Last week (March 17, 2008): - Upgrade Russell Labs firewall. -----Problems with Netware client connections outside of building. - Switched PPath over to new file server (H: and I: drives). This week( March 24, 2008 ): - Phone screening of candidates for Network Support Tech. Next week: - Interviews for Network Support Tech posn. - Ento H: and I: drives switch over to new file server (PEN to PEN3) ---- PC users – no change. ----Mac users will login to ento.pen.wisc.edu (or 144.92.198.12). - “Re-worked” ento web site will go up end of next week. ----Structural changes only ----minor visible changes June 30: - Turn off POP access to department mail system.
— Stuart Baker

Illegal characters in file names will prevent backup of data

February 15, 2008 02:02PM

Please note that the following characters must not be used in the naming of files
to be stored on any of our file servers:

? [ ] / \ = + # < > ; : “ , | * and leading periods

Files with any of these characters in the name will NOT be backed up by
our backup system.

Files with any of these characters in the name will be lost when we migrate H: and I drives to new hardware (newer, faster, and larger servers and disk storage systems)

Just because it's an available key, doesn't mean you should use it in the
name of your document.

— Stuart

Office 2008 for MacOS available at DoIT	February 05, 2008 04:19PM
Microsoft Office 2008 for Macintosh for UW-Madison departments is available now at the DoIT Tech Store (http://techstore.doit.wisc.edu/) and through WISC (www.wisc.edu/wisc). Office 2008 is licensed for installation on all UW‑owned computers under the Microsoft 2007-2010 Desktop Campus Agreement. For more information, see the Tech Store listings for either the single DVD: http://techstore.doit.wisc.edu/product.asp?login=D&itemnum=C49583 or 5-DVD pack: http://techstore.doit.wisc.edu/product.asp?login=D&itemnum=C49584
— Stuart

Printing with iPrint and Leopard (Mac OS 10.5)	January 31, 2008 01:56PM
When you install Leopard you may lose all your iPrint printers. You can re-install these printers by browsing to the Linden LAN web site and selecting each printer from the list of printers. We are sure this works with Firefox. When installing a printer, a user name and password dialog is presented. Enter the admin user name and password for the Macintosh the printer is being install on (just like installing any piece of software on a mac). This will allow the printer driver to be installed. You may want to re-install the iPrint client to insture that you have versioin 4.27. Prior versions will not work with leopard.
— Stuart

Scam Alert: Beware of Recent Phishing Attempt

January 29, 2008 12:18PM

Note from DoIT:

Many campus users received an email today advising them to change the password associated with their wisc.edu account by replying to the sender's email. This is a phishing attempt. Do not respond to it.

Both Yahoo, from which the email appeared to have originated, and the WiscMail team have been made aware of this event. In addition, our campus has blackholed the IP address in question from which the email originated.

As always, you should never respond to unsolicited emails requesting personal information such as financial accounts, social security numbers or other identifying information. In addition, look for digital signatures as one level of assurance that an email is legitimate. And finally, if you're not sure if an email or correspondence is legitimate, ask someone in your IT department or report the incident to the UW Office of Campus Information Security (OCIS) by visiting

http://www.doit.wisc.edu/security/report\_incident.

— Stuart

Scheduled Network Outage for maintenance of PEN August 25 - 26, 2007	August 22, 2007 11:15AM
We will be taking the Linden LAN off line between 6 PM on Saturday, August 25 and 12:00 Noon on Sunday August 26, 2007. This will allow us to complete the upgrade process for the PEN file and email server. The network services that are hosted on PEN will be moving to a new system: 1. File systems for Ento and PPath (H and I drives for all users and groups) 2. Groupwise post offices for Ento and PPath (message, calendar, and address book storage for all users) 3. Domain (MTA) for Groupwise for the whole network (PPath, Ento and Nutrition). The thing that takes the most time in these migrations is the file transfers. We have already done the pre-migration move for all these file systems and configurations so the bulk of the move has already been done. The final step in the migration is to do an 'update' copy of all files form the old server to the new and then transfer control to the new server. This has to be done while the system is off-line (of course) so that nobody changes their stuff during the update. The file system updates are quick because only a very small percentage of files will have changed between now and the weekend. The Email system is a relational database so this pretty much changes all the time. This means that the 'update' is not that much different from the full copy. From our tests we have found this to take between 12 and 14 hours. The email system needs to be down during this final copy so we will schedule this for Saturday night and Sunday morning (people should be out dancing and then in church - respectively). This move will allow us to make much more space available to users and groups as well as provide improvement in performance.
— Stuart Baker

Email Phishing	August 22, 2007 08:14AM
There's a new email 'exploit' making the rounds that looks soething like this (Details change daily): Welcome Member, Thank You for Joining Mobile Fun. Account Number: 123334981667 Temorary Login: user1430 Temorary Password: cr825 For security purposes please login and change the temporary Login ID and Password. This link will allow you to securely change your login info: http://xx.xx.xxx.xx/ Clicking on this link will download a program that will infect your machine. This is an EXE file so it won't infect Mac OS's unless you are using a windows guest OS running as a virtual machine (Parallels or VMware, etc). Current version of Symantec Antivirus for windows that has latest versions of definitions will catch this worm/trojan. <Download current version here> Web sites are becoming a popular way to spread viruses now that email filters are getting better and more prevalent. So as always, be careful what you click on.
— Stuart Baker

Microsoft Office 2007	June 29, 2007 12:45PM
We have several copies Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise (PC) for distibution under the UW license agreement with Microsoft. At this time Jim Hoey and myself are testing and becoming better-acquainted with the software. This software is available immediately to anyone who wishes to install it on UW owned equipment. It is also available for use on personally owned computers under a "work at home" privision of the license discribed in the document: http://wiscsoftware.wisc.edu/wisc_dept/incFiles/WAH_Accept_021004.doc Though this software is currently available, we are discouraging its use for the time being. This is a result of several differences in the software... 1: Office 2007 defaults to a different file format than previous versions of Office, and those previous versions cannot read the new format without a special converter provided through Microsoft. Though this isn't a serious issue, we've heard of many cases of people being unable to access their word documents on other computers simply because of this file format issue. 2: There has been discussions concerning the security of the new file formats (.docx, .xlsx, etc.), which store information based on a web technology known as XML. 3: The Office 2007 user interface is drastically different to previous versions of Office, presenting a steep learning curve to people who are very familiar with previous versions of Office. If you wish to learn more about this software stop by and talk with Jim Hoey (rm 436B). I would not be a good person to talk to in this matter, as I was not a strong user of previous versions of Office, and from my perspective (as a person who didn't know where things were before) the new interface makes perfect sense.
— Jordan Baker

Groupwise upgrade to version 7.0.2	June 08, 2007 09:30AM
The current version of Groupwise software is version 7.0 2. Everyone should be using this version of the software to insure the best performance, security, and compatibility accross the system. Windows users (XP and Vista) will be prompted the next time they run Groupwise to upgrade. Accepting this request will start the installer and the new version will be placed over the old. No other action should be needed. If problems arise you should try plan B which is to download and run the following program at this link. Macintosh users: Simply log in to the software distribution page (LAN login is required) and select installer that cooresponds to your macintosh system. [ intel mac ] [ powerpc mac ] Click on the DMG files to download and install.
— Stuart Baker

Research Computing Workshop	April 11, 2007 05:48AM
A Research Computing Workshop was held on April 11, archived streams of the two national speakers are available at: http://www.cio.wisc.edu/events/researchconf/stream.aspx Part I is the presentation by Daniel Atkins, with local respondents. Part II is the presentation by Clifford Lynch, along with local respondents. Some of the resources and links referred to in their presentations will soon be available on this same workshop web site.
— Stuart Baker

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