Page not found – Computer Action Team https://cat.pdx.edu The CAT Website Tue, 26 Mar 2024 21:38:42 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.6.13 https://cat.pdx.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/cropped-favicon-32x32.png Page not found – Computer Action Team https://cat.pdx.edu 32 32 NETWORK DOWNTIME: 3/28/2024 – 7pm – EB All Wired Hosts https://cat.pdx.edu/2024/03/26/network-downtime-3-28-2024-7pm-eb-all-wired-hosts/ Tue, 26 Mar 2024 21:38:42 +0000 https://cat.pdx.edu/?p=9728 We will be patching some core network gear that feeds EB. The work will begin at 7pm on Thursday, March 28th. The outage is expected to affect all wired computers and other devices in EB. Wireless devices should not be affected.

We hope to complete the work by 9pm although it may be done sooner if we don’t run into any problems.

 

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UPDATE: SECOND POWER OUTAGE – 1/19/2024 – 9:34am – FAB/EB https://cat.pdx.edu/2024/01/19/second-power-outage-1-19-2024-934am-fab-eb/ Fri, 19 Jan 2024 19:29:59 +0000 https://cat.pdx.edu/?p=9632 At this time, we are proceeding to ensure essential IT operations (desktops, computer labs, classwork services). We are holding off on bringing research systems in the data center back online because there isn’t a guarantee that this won’t happen again over the weekend. OIT is doing the same with their HPC systems. Slight power bumps on the PGE feeds are continuing to be registered in FAB/EB as well as across campus.
The root cause of why the newly redesigned control system failed in some obscure ways isn’t known yet. Facilities/Tross will bring in the vendor to look at what happened.
At this time, all our regular computer lab operations (on site and remote) are up. We are slowly working through the offices of people who reported their downed computers and making sure they are turned back on.

Original Message:

We have just gone through a second major power outage affecting FAB/EB. The building was dark for an extended period of time. Power has been restored after some work by Facilities/PREM but they are working on why the generator didn’t switch this time.

We shed substantial load in the data center to accommodate the extended building downtime so some services may be out for a while.
We’ll let you know when Windows desktop services are stable. Then we’ll work on downed computers for remote folks.
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POWER OUTAGE – 1/19/2024 – 1:55am – FAB/EB https://cat.pdx.edu/2024/01/19/power-outage-1-19-2024-155am-fab-eb/ Fri, 19 Jan 2024 12:24:28 +0000 https://cat.pdx.edu/?p=9630 FAB/EB experienced a simultaneous outage on both of its power feeds at 1:55am on Friday morning, January 19th. The outage was long enough that it required the FAB generator to come online. The generator was activated by PGE and ran for over 10 minutes. During that time, both buildings experienced a few minutes of complete loss of power while waiting for the generator to spin up

There are bound to be some office computers that didn’t come back up cleanly after power was restored. Depending on how icy things are, we’ll try to have someone on site in the morning to help turn on computers for remote users. 

We have verified that the Windows remote lab, MCAE lab remote, and various linux lab systems seem to be operational.

During the outage, we had to shed some load to combat rapidly rising temperatures in the data center. As a result, users may notice that some servers will be down until the morning. (babbage.cs.pdx.edu is one of them)

People running any critical experiments in research labs will need to check on their systems and appropriately reset them if they were not protected by UPS systems. 

Our thanks to CPSO for sending an officer to check on the building. He communicated with us, contacted Facilities On-call, and worked with City personnel who assisted in getting some critical hvac systems operational after the power outage. 

 

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Remote access to “high ports” on Linux now requires VPN https://cat.pdx.edu/2023/04/03/remote-access-to-high-ports-on-linux-now-requires-vpn/ Tue, 04 Apr 2023 01:08:24 +0000 https://cat.pdx.edu/?p=9300 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, you will need to connect to the VPN first.

Systems affected by this change:

  • ada.cs.pdx.edu (aka linux.cs.pdx.edu)
  • babbage.cs.pdx.edu
  • ruby.cecs.pdx.edu and rita.cecs.pdx.edu
  • sftp.cecs.pdx.edu (aka warpgate.cs.pdx.edu)
  • quizor systems

 

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Phishing campaigns hitting PSU https://cat.pdx.edu/2022/11/16/phishing-campaigns-hitting-psu/ Wed, 16 Nov 2022 20:05:58 +0000 https://cat.pdx.edu/?p=9216 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 Drive “shares” that take you to phishing links that try to harvest your credentials

  • Fake invoices for tech products

  • Email from dept head/director/etc to other department personnel, asking for a callback (this used to be very popular in recent years but has dropped in volume this Fall)

Please make sure that you are treating most emails with clickable links that lead to authentication requests (login/password) with extreme caution. If there are google drive documents that claim to have been shared to you, visit Google drive directly and see if you can find them there. When in doubt, we recommend directly contacting the source using a prior communications method (or the campus directory) to confirm if the email is legitimate.

And please feel free to send us a specimen to investigate if you suspect something.

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Run cpu/memory/disk intensive assignments on babbage https://cat.pdx.edu/2022/10/10/run-cpu-memory-disk-intensive-assignments-on-babbage/ Tue, 11 Oct 2022 06:48:12 +0000 https://cat.pdx.edu/?p=9170 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 purpose classwork.
    • Users like to park their shells here because the system is usually quite stable.
    • Often has lots of users.
  • babbage.cs.pdx.edu 
    • A place for assignments that may be hungry for cpu, ram, or disk (eg: learning fork(), allocating large amounts of memory, resource heavy recursion).
    • Inadvertently making a mistake with potentially catastrophic side effects will only affect other babbage users who are working on similar assignments.
    • Keeps regular ada users happy.

If you are working on an assignment that may tax cpu/ram/disk, please move your work to babbage.cs.pdx.edu. We have already started running into some service issues on ada due to resource heavy processes. We’d like to see those users moving to babbage.

 

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News for new and returning MCECS computer users in Fall 2022 https://cat.pdx.edu/2022/09/27/news-for-new-and-returning-mcecs-computer-users-in-fall-2022/ Wed, 28 Sep 2022 07:50:48 +0000 https://cat.pdx.edu/?p=9143 The CAT has been busy preparing the computing infrastructure at MCECS for both onsite and remote users for the new academic year. Here are some of the highlights:

The front page of the CAT website includes a “Back to Campus Toolkit” and updated “New (Attend Anywhere) Students” section, where you will find links to the following guides and more:

Computer Labs (onsite)

  • Many computer labs have returned to onsite operation only.  To learn which labs can only be accessed onsite and which can be remotely accessed, as well as how to remotely access these system, see:
    • https://cat.pdx.edu/2022/09/26/fall-2022-remote-windows-lab-access/
    • You can also look at the current computer lab reservation schedule at:
    • EB 325 (the Cad Lab) has ALL NEW COMPUTERS. They are the fastest we have in our computer labs.
    • Computers in the FAB 55-17 Intel Lab have been equipped with dual displays.
    • EB 325 and FAB 55-17 reduced to a single BW printer in each lab. 
    • Lab rules for food and drink in MCECS general labs are returning their pre-pandemic state – store food on designated tables only, sealed drink containers allowed at workstations. Departmental labs may have more restrictive policies. 

Computer Labs (remote access)

A dedicated MCECS Windows Remote Lab has been set up to replace the ad-hoc mixture of remote computers taken from the general computer labs used during the pandemic. They have a software load that is similar to that of systems in the MCECS general computer labs.

Software

 

Student volunteers in the CAT assisted in the preparations for Fall 2022 and generated much of the documentation you are reading. If you are interested in joining the CAT, visit the Braindump website:

https://braindump.cat.pdx.edu/

 

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Fall 2022 Remote Windows Lab Access https://cat.pdx.edu/2022/09/26/fall-2022-remote-windows-lab-access/ Tue, 27 Sep 2022 00:22:20 +0000 https://cat.pdx.edu/?p=9134 New to Fall 2022 is our MCECS Windows Remote Lab (currently numbering 27 systems and soon to grow to 37 systems). These systems are dedicated to remote use and do not reduce the seat count of our onsite computer labs. We are hoping that this remotely accessible service provides sufficient capacity for remote Windows lab use for the term.

These systems are accessible using the same remote lab interface we set up during the pandemic. For instructions, see:

https://cat.pdx.edu/users/facilities/remote-labs/

Many of the labs we ran in mixed-mode are switching back to ONSITE OPERATION ONLY. This includes:

EB 325 “CAD” lab – open to all MCECS students – with ALL NEW computers

FAB 55-17 “Intel” Lab – open to all MCECS students – with dual monitor configurations

Many departmental Windows labs are following this lead with the exception of the MME MCAE Lab (EB 420) which will have a mixture of onsite and remote computers.

If we notice that the remote lab is frequently reaching saturation, we’ll look at returning some lab computers to remote mode.

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phpPgAdmin and phpMyAdmin moving to Adminer https://cat.pdx.edu/2022/08/25/phppgadmin-and-phpmyadmin-moving-to-adminer/ Fri, 26 Aug 2022 00:18:29 +0000 https://cat.pdx.edu/?p=9086 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 somewhat different.

The switch will happen on Tuesday, August 30th.

We are making this change after running into problems with the old interfaces. 

 

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Self-upgrade to version 21H2 of Windows 10 https://cat.pdx.edu/2022/08/03/self-upgrade-to-version-21h2-of-windows-10/ Thu, 04 Aug 2022 05:53:33 +0000 https://cat.pdx.edu/?p=9067 For MCECS faculty, staff, and grad students using a CAT supported Windows desktop in offices or research labs:

The version of Windows 10 currently installed on CAT-supported desktops (version 20H2) will be reaching end-of-life in Spring Term 2023. 

If you are using one of our Windows 10 desktops in your office or in other FAB/EB workspaces, we would like you to self-upgrade to the latest supported version – 21H2. 

This upgrade can also be performed on computers that you are accessing remotely.

We recommend that this upgrade be done at your earliest convenience – best scheduled at the end of the work day. It involves several reboots and can take up to two hours. 

To self upgrade your system:

  • Click on the Start Menu and scroll down to the “M”s, click on Microsoft Endpoint Manager, and then run the Software Center application.
  • From this application, select the “Operating Systems” tab – you should find a choice called “Upgrade to Windows 10 – 21H2”.
  • Click on “Upgrade to Windows 10 – 21H2”, then click on the blue “install” button.  You will be logged out automatically after a short time.
  • DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LOG IN FOR 2 HOURS.  Attempting to log in during this 2 hour span could cause the update to fail.

This could be something you do when you are done for the day. Make sure you do not shutdown or turn off your computer.

 To find out what version of Windows 10 you are running: 

https://cat.pdx.edu/platforms/windows/how-to/windows10-version/

If your machine is idle and not in use, we may run the update for you.  If this has happened, the update will no longer be visible in the Operating Systems tab in Software Center.

Please take this opportunity to upgrade your computer on a schedule that works for you. At some time close to the deadline (Winter Term 2023), we will force update any remaining systems.

 

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