🚀 go-pugleaf

Date:		May 1, 2000

* We finally have a means to allow for vacation messages for those
  who use ece.cmu.edu as their mail server. To set up a vacation
  message you need to create a file in your AFS space named .sieve
  (i.e. (period)sieve). The contents of the file should look like the
  following example:

require ["vacation"];
vacation :addresses ["xyz@ece.cmu.edu"] text:

This reply to your recent mail message is being sent automatically. 
I will be out of the office until Friday, April 21, 2000.
You can contact my assistant, Joe Random, at 555-1234 for random assistance.

.
;
keep;

  The xyz@ece.cmu.edu should be your e-mail address and the text can
  contain any information you wish.

* The ECE web site now has a search function available. Look at the
  bottom of any page for the keyword search. Indexing  occurs weekly.

* Backups:

  * Released new backup clients for all platforms and operating systems.

  * A beta version of a Windows 2000 backup client is now in testing.
    We hope to have this available sometime in mid May.

  * Generated quarterly epoch for the month of April.  We currently have
    775 gigabytes of data on this tape set for Unix, Windows, and AFS.

  * We are once again performing a backup audit.  If you have any questions
    about whether a specific machine or disk drive on a machine is being
    backed up please send a message to jmck@ece.cmu.edu

  * Windows 95/98 users, please remember that you must initiate your
    backups, facilities cannot do those remotely for you.

  * Once again, windows users, please make sure to leave your machine on 
    at night when leaving.  It is OK to log out, but do not shut your
    machine off because it prevents the backup software from running.

    When leaving at night make sure to choose "Log Off <user name>" 
    or "Login as a Different User" rather than "Shut Down" from the 
    options available.

* AFS Security:  Once again there are reports of various sites putting
  web gateways to AFS up.  As you may know, AFS is a global, shared file 
  system and security restrictions are up to the individual sites and
  users.  As a result if a web search index, such as google, altavista,
  lycos, or a host of others, uses that gateway it can index all of 
  AFS.

  Because of the way several services inside ECE are set up the default
  permissions on user volumes are set to "system:anyuser rl" which means
  that anyone with access to AFS can get a listing (l) of the contents of
  these directories and actually read (r) those files.  They cannot modify
  them in any way with this setting.

  As a result we are currently making the following recommendations:
    * your home directory, /afs/ece/usr/<your login> must have
      "system:anyuser rl" for the reasons stated above.  If you remove
      those accesses various services *will* fail for you
    * beneath that directory we recommend having a Public directory
      and a Private directory.  The Public directory can have whatever
      permissions you feel appropriate on it.  Our recommendation is
      "system:anyuser rl" be included.

      Your Private directory should not include "system:anyuser rl" as
      part of the permissions.

   Newer accounts have been set up with these directories and permissions 
   set as the default. 

   One final note on this subject. Please remember that as you create
   new sub directories in your AFS space they inherit the permissions of
   their parents.  For example if your home directory has "system:anyuser rl"
   and you create a "Research" subdirectory beneath it ~/Research will
   also have "system:anyuser rl" permissions unless you take steps to
   remove them.

   If you have questions or concerns send e-mail to gripe@ece.cmu.edu.

* Windows tips for the month:
  It's amazing how you'll try to do ONE thing with Windows and it'll
do something else. "I needed you to close, but if you intend on
maximizing, I can't do anything to stop ya." I got tired of using the
upper right-hand corner 'X' one night, so I used the classic method of
double-clicking the upper left-hand corner icon in Explorer. During
this process, my cursor drifted (effectively, dragging while still
keeping the left mouse button pressed). To my surprise, when I let go
(hovering over the Desktop), a shortcut was created! You can do this
in the Windows or Internet Explorer; double-click then drag & drop
that upper-left hand icon to the Desktop to create a shortcut for the
current folder/page.

Low back pain is a common problem for those people who
sit for long periods of time. Experts recommend keeping your
knees slightly above your hips to reduce your risk of back
pain. To do this, place your feet flat on the floor while
you are sitting and make sure your knees are above your
hips. If not, rest your feet on a book or low stool. This
will ease the pressure on your lower back

* Please remember that Windows NT machines reboot every Friday morning
  in order to do upgrades and software installations.

* Following are the gripe system statistics:
  In April we processed approximately 518 gripes
             Gripe Status Report for 04/01/2000 to 04/30/2000

User              Closed Current  30-60d  60-90d   Older  (Open)       Total

alan                  13       5       0       0       0       5          18
allbery               94       2       1       0       0       3          97
cof                    1       0       0       0       0       0           1
dwilhelm              28       9       0       0       0       9          37
egadd                  0       3       0       0       0       3           3
grosland              36       3       0       0       0       3          39
henson                48       5       2       4       3      14          62
jferro                16       3       4       4       2      13          29
jmck                  75       9       2       0       2      13          88
lou                  146       1       1       1       0       3         149
mmh                    8       0       0       0       0       0           8
rburgett               1       2       2       0       0       4           5
tardis                 5       4       0       0       0       4           9
zoog                  31       4       3       0       0       7          38

TOTAL                502      50      15       9       7      81         583

The oldest open gripe is 184.4 days old.  The median is 13.6 days.
The most idle gripe has been idle for 165.6 days.  The median is 12.2 days.
The oldest unacknowledged gripe is 36.3 days old.  The median is 2.5 days.

Average gripe acknowledgment time: 1 days (median: 0)
For gripes older than 1 day, the average is 6.5 days (median: 3.9)
Average gripe resolution time: 3.4 days (median: 0.2)
For gripes older than 1 day, the average is 10.9 days (median: 5.4)

- Virtually all the news below this point is related to UNIX 
users. Please read on, but be aware that is more technical and
may not apply to all users.

* Anyone requesting license keys from vendors please contact ECE
  Facilities before placing the order for the host id.  We have purchased
  a new license server for the department and as we obtain new licenses 
  or updates to existing licenses we would like them installed on this 
  machine rather than encore.ece.cmu.edu as in the past.

* Installed and licensed silvaco software, winter 98 version.

* Continued to generate archive CDs for expired accounts

* For those wondering why StarOffice is not available on the new Linux:  it
  hangs with AFS 3.5 when the person running it has a home directory in AFS.
  (The StarOffice 5.2 beta has the same problem, and it affects the new
  installer as well.)  We may have to wait for a new AFS client or for the
  source code release of StarOffice 5.2.

* A problem has been found with kvt (the command prompt for KDE) on Solaris:
  the AFS "klog" program doesn't work.  You may prefer to use xterm instead.

* New releases:  MySQL, DBI, DBD::Mysql, pilot-link, Data::ShowTable,
  Parse::Yapp, Parse::Lex, HTML::Parser, cscope (on Linux; other Unixes should
  already have it)

* Updated packages: ImageMagick, BerkeleyDB, Guile, Cyrus, CPAN

* Windows print jobs should now have correct host and user names on banner
  pages.

* We now have full Zephyr capability, including crossrealm with Andrew and CS.

* A problem with SSL-encrypted POP3 and IMAP prevented users of those services
  from sending mail through the mail server.  This has been fixed.

* A recent change to mail configuration may have caused some machines that
  should accept incoming mail to stop doing so.  Please send mail to gripe
  if you believe this has happened to you.

--
Lou Anschuetz, lou@ece.cmu.edu
Network Manager, ECE, Carnegie Mellon University