IRIS

For those that are concerned with our email being saturated by spam, IRIS is going to be deploying a new generation of anti-spam management on Tuesday, Jan. 10th, at 12pm. For details and how-to’s, please refer to this link.

We will replace our existing servers with a new set of redundant anti-spam appliances, and as such, some new headers will be added to each incoming email. Like before, a spam rating will be tagged to each message, and for those of you using our IMAP service, appropriate folder (“Spam” under your “EECS-Filtered” folder) will be created and be used to file those spam messages. The new spam appliances are bayesian based, and are updated more regularly by the vendor as well as our staff. Our testing indicates that it is capable of correctly identifying up to 90% of the spam without any special settings.

In addition, the new appliances will now offer individually configurable whitelists and blacklists.

EECS users will have the ability to opt out of the new service. For those of you that have opted out of the old service can now opt back in to take advantage of the new service.

To summarize:

1. If you are using our IMAP service, starting 1/10/06, please go to “EECS-Filtered\Spam” to verify and remove your spam. You can opt in/out of this service. You can also set up your own personal whitelists and blacklists.

2. If you are not using our IMAP service, you can use the special headers to set up your own filters.

3. For details on our new spam service, faq, and instructions, please see the this announcement.

Please send your concerns and suggestions to help@eecs. Thank you for your patience and cooperation.

With Microsoft’s early release of a patch fixing the Windows Metafile (WMF) vulnerability, IDSG will be patching the terminal server, HERMES, as well as the Windows Domain Controllers today, Thursday, January 05, 2006.

HERMES will be down briefly at 3:30p to apply the patch. So if you’re using HERMES, please save your work and log-off before then. The downtime shouldn’t last more than a few minutes.

The Domain Controllers will be rebooted between 3:00p and 3:30p, however, this should not disrupt normal operation.

[Read more…] about Short notice: Patching HERMES and Windows Domain Controllers to fix WMF vulnerability

UNIX SWW will be moving to a new location on project.eecs. There are a couple of other minor changes in the layout.

The new layout is available at

https://iris.eecs.berkeley.edu/idsg/sww/announcement/SWW-layout

Aside from the obvious change to project, the following changes should be noted:

• Solaris 9 and 10 SWWs are now available.
• Solaris SPARC /usr/sww/opt is now solaris.opt.sparc
• New Solaris x86 /usr/sww/opt is coming into the picture (solaris.opt.x86).

On Monday, January 9th 2006 I will change the automaps to point to the new SWW location. If you’re using the automaps to mount SWW, you won’t need to make any changes on your side (but you might have to remount/reboot at some point after Monday).

The old SWW locations will continue to work ’till January 31st 2006, at which point the old system will be taken down.

You are welcome to use the new SWW on project as of now. Please contact IDSG if you experience problems.

[Read more…] about Additional Changes to UNIX SWW

A vulnerability in Microsoft Windows Metafile (WMF) handling was
discovered in December. This vulnerability affects all
versions of Microsoft Windows. Microsoft is working on a patch.

This vulnerability could let an intruder take complete control of
your system, install spyware and attack other systems.
Exploit code has been publicly posted and systems are being
compromised, including as of Monday January 2, 2006 41 systems
on campus of which 2 were in EECS.

Systems are vulnerable to WMF exploits via malicious web pages,
malicious email attachments and malicious attachments in instant messaging.

For more info please see
http://idsg.EECS.Berkeley.EDU/security/wmf.html
[Read more…] about Microsoft Windows Metafile (WMF) Handling Vulnerability Advisory

The following changes to platform support are going to happen on the UNIX SWW:

1. Solaris 7 SWW will be removed on January 31, 2006.
2. RedHat 7.2 SWW will be removed on January 31, 2006. This does NOT affect the Linux SWW (commercial/Licensed software only).
3. Solaris 8 SWW is in a security-only mode. Only security updates will be applied to it. Solaris 8 SWW will be frozen (no more updates) on June 13, 2006.
4. Solaris 9 SWW is the new active Solaris SWW.
5. Solaris 10 SWW is available.

Notes:

1. The Solaris SWW platforms mentioned above include both SPARCv9 and ia32 versions.
2. Another announcement will go out shortly with info on the SWW layout.

Microsoft will release their patches for the month on Tuesday, January 10, 2006. HERMES, PRINT, RIS and WINSWW will be down for patching the following Wednesday, January 11, 2006, from 3:00 – 5:00pm.

macserver.eecs.berkeley.edu, which hosts the Mac software warehouse, will be down for maintenance at this time as well.

As of Monday, Jan. 2, 9:20am, gateway.EECS is having problem with authentication, thus preventing users from sending email. Staff are working on this, and will restore service as soon as they can.
[Read more…] about Gateway.EECS auth problem

The unix/linux Software Warehouse fileserver sww.eecs suffered a power supply failure shortly after midnight last night, making /usr/sww unavailable for all clients which mount it.

As of about 12:45pm, all sww.eecs services have been restored, and clients which mount /usr/sww should be working as normal.

Due to the Winter Holidays, Energy Curtailment, and New Year’s Holidays, the Berkeley campus is officially closed for the period Monday 12/24/2005 to Monday 01/02/2006.

All departmental computing servers will remain on and should be available during the break, but there will be no staff on site to provide any computing support or handle any requests. Automatic monitoring systems will alert staff to critical infrastructure problems, and any such problems will be dealt with on a best-effort basis. We expect full service to resume on January 2nd.

The EECS Department’s Computer Helpdesk will be closed during this time. Problem reports can be left on the Helpdesk voice mail (2-7777) or emailed to help@eecs, but staff may not receive or reply to these messages until January 2nd.

During the break, Instructional labs will be locked, but the main servers should remain online (imail.eecs, inst.eecs, cory.eecs, mamba.eecs and fileservice.eecs). Instructional support staff will occasionally monitor inst@eecs over the break. If you are unable to contact inst@eecs, you can leave a message at 2-9543. Please be aware, though, that staff may not be able to respond or reply to messages until January 2nd.

We recommend that all desktop computers be shutdown during the Energy Curtailment Period. If your Windows computer needs to stay on during the break, we recommend that you check with your system administrator to ensure that Automatic Updates are enabled with the option ‘Automatically download the updates and install them on the schedule that I specify’, with a daily update schedule. For all windows systems, especially mobile laptops, we also suggest that you consider installing personal firewalls.

Computing support staff will be monitoring their email when possible, so please use standard email addresses to report any urgent problems. As a reminder:

• Instructional Computing Environment: inst@eecs
• Research / Staff Computing Environment: help@eecs

Enjoy your holiday break!

The BID center router will be down for repairs on Friday Dec. 23 from 8:00 AM until 8:30 AM.