The CAT Front Desk will be closed – December 24th
We are giving our front line crew a chance to enjoy Christmas eve. We will be open again on Thursday, December 26th.
Change to the default VNC/xRDP desktop
[This only affects people using VNC or xRDP to access our Ubuntu Linux systems.] We have switched back to the MATE desktop as the default when you remotely access our Ubuntu Linux systems via VNC or xRDP. The desktop is the graphical user interface you interact with when you initiate a graphical session on a [...]
CS Penguin Lab (FAB 88-10) shutdown starting 12/10/2024
During Finals week, starting on Tuesday, December 10th, the CS Penguin Lab (FAB 88-10) will be going offline as we remove everything in there to facilitate furniture replacements. CS students needing to use Linux machines can use the adjacent Particle Lab (FAB 88-09). There are no lab reservations in either of these spaces for Finals [...]
Back-to-School Phishing campaigns are starting early this Fall
It’s only mid-September, classes haven’t even started yet but we’re starting to see phishing scam emails starting to land in email boxes. Fall term is when scammers try to get you to give up your login credentials. They assume you may be new to the College or have let your guard down after a nice [...]
Finally moving our Linux Lab proxies behind the firewall – 9/11/2024
At about the same time last year, we announced that we were locking off our LInux lab "proxy" addresses behind the firewall. Due to a number of factors, this task was postponed and we are finally going to make the change on Wednesday, Sep 11. Read the included message for details. Note, existing CS login servers (ada/babbage/quizors) are [...]
End of “Unlimited Storage” for PSU Google Drive/Apps
Over the past few years, Google has been trying to reign in runaway storage consumption for its Google Apps for Education tier. For faculty and research groups who found PSU’s google storage to be a convenient and limitless resource, that era is now over. OIT now has to ensure that the university stays below a [...]
Remote access to “high ports” on Linux now requires VPN
Starting Spring 2023, access to services running on "high ports" (ie: network ports numbered 1024 and higher) on remotely accessible MCECS Linux systems will be blocked to external users. You will still be able to ssh into those systems. However, if you are running any services (programs) on these systems that listen at high ports, [...]
Phishing campaigns hitting PSU
It looks like the Fall term phishing campaigns against PSU users (particularly faculty and staff) have really picked up in recent weeks. The scammers have been seen trying waves of the following: Payroll problems based message that leads you to a fake PSU credentials site that tries to capture Duo authentication Google drive or One [...]
Run cpu/memory/disk intensive assignments on babbage
CS Users! Please run resource heavy programs on babbage.cs.pdx.edu - not ada (linux.cs.pdx.edu). Some clarification of the lore about ada and babbage, the two primary multi-user Linux systems available to CS students. ada.cs.pdx.edu (aka linux.cs.pdx.edu) Used as a general workhorse. Designed to handle users going through the edit - compile - execute cycles of general [...]
phpPgAdmin and phpMyAdmin moving to Adminer
If you are a user of the web interfaces to the database services provided by the CAT, be advised that we are moving from the old phpPgAdmin and phpMyadmin to a new interface called Adminer (formerly known as phpMinAdmin). The functionality of the old interfaces will still be provided, although the graphical layout will be [...]