Computer Services @ Davis

Wow, time goes so fast anymore.
Tuesday the rest of the network was switched over to the new ISP. Doug from CyberCity came over and configured the Cisco router to work with the cable instead of the T1. Now, how many people understood any of that gibberish?
Simple terms - we have a faster connection, the Internet, web site, Moodle, etc should work much better now.
For those that use the Road Runner service, your email should work better now. I'll be trying out mine tomorrow to see if it works.

Clements still has problems, so I shall go with plan "b" over there. The experiment time is over.
Life groups will be fun, I have the rest of the History of Youth Ministry downloaded and that will be shown.
I am doing this late nite so my mind is going blank. So much to do, so little time.
Good nite.

OK, it has been way too long since I posted here. So here is the download:
1. We have a faster connection through Time Warner Road Runner and some of the conversion is done. I hope to have the servers for web and email over to it soon.
2. Replaced the routers in Patterson and Clements Halls with PC's running opensource router software. Now this software gives us more options on how the connection is used. For instance, soon after installing the one, we found someone using almost %25 of the bandwidth. One person, using up one quarter. So now they are blocked until the offending computer is repaired. The advantage? Now others can have access to a faster connection. Should take care of the limited connection problems.
3. Tracking down more problems with various services on our network. Thank you for those that have reported them to us and helped with error messages and what not.

The main thing to remember is that we all have to share the same connection. If you had broadband at home, you had up to 5mbps all to your self. Here, we had 1.5mbps and that included the web and email servers. No wonder the web site was down at times! But with the new service, we have 4mbps, but it still has to be shared with 200 people. So that is why file sharing programs and the like are banded from our network. While the liability and moral issues of downloading copyrighted materials are important to us, the idea of appealing to your sense of sharing would be more effective.
OK, enough yacking.

As some of you may have noticed, I've been sick with a chest problem. Found out it broncitus (sure it's mis-spelled). But I did manage to get some things done and this week has been full of computers with very bad problems. I think they are done for now. Wow.
I am a little scrambled due to some excitment at home with the storm last thursday night. Check out my online Google album for more shots:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ptreaster/StormDamage_2006

Yes, this is going to be short.

Well, let's see - on Monday our web server choked, as I've already outlined in a previous post. Pretty much the rest of the week was spent doing various things to get everything back up and running. At present I believe everything is fixed with two minor(?) exceptions. First, we need to do some cosmetic work on EZProxy (that is the program that allows you to login to Ebsco and Firstsearch, among others). Second, some files in some classes on Moodle are gone. My mission on Monday is to go through the process of restoring those files. Please bear with us as we work through this process. I guess the silver lining is that we've never had a complete webserver failure before. Therefore we weren't really sure how long it would take to restore, we now have a much better idea. I'd like to sort of put together a "response plan" so that in the future we can have a much faster turn around if (let's be honest - when) something like this happens again.

Have a great weekend everyone. Hopefully come Tuesday we'll only have to deal with minor cosmetic fixes to EZProxy.

--
Calvin Park
System Administrator

Well, the past few days have been Interesting to say the least. We just got the new drives in the backup server, the new email server just went online and then the web Server decided to puke on us. As you read from Calvin's post, it took a great deal of things down.
Most everything is up and running as of today, so let us know if something doesn't work. Bugs are the word of the day.
I went home not feeling very well today, figured I would mention that since no one would have noticed because everything runs so well...
Yes, just joking.
Have a good day.