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Introduction to Facilities 2005 IC slides

These are the slides from the "Introduction to Facilities" talks given for 2005 SCS Immigration Courses. Off-site links in these slides will open in a new browser window.

Main Computer Support Groups

  • SCS Computing Facilities
    • Wean Hall 3613
    • help@cs.cmu.edu or 268-4231
    • 9 am - 5 pm, Monday - Friday
  • CMU Computing Services
    • Andrew accounts
    • Clusters
    • CMU Computer Store
    • advisor@andrew.cmu.edu or
    • Call the CMU Help Center at 268-HELP

What We Do

What We Don't Do

  • Personally Owned Equipment
  • Cell Phones or Pagers
  • PDA's

Other Support

  • Contact skees@cs.cmu.edu
    • Furniture
    • Light bulbs
    • Telephones
    • Keys
    • Other non-computer things

Operating Systems Supported

  • Windows XP, 2000
  • Redhat Linux 9, Fedora core 3
  • Solaris
  • MacOS 10.4 (Tiger)

Your SCS-supported Workstation

  • If it breaks, we'll fix it.
    • Do not make hardware repairs/swaps/upgrades yourself
      • It may void the warranty, among other reasons
  • Do not change the IP address
  • Do not relocate your machine, we will do it for you
    • Contact help@cs.cmu.edu and we'll move it for you
  • Do not turn it off at the end of the day
    • Backups and Software updates will NOT happen
  • If you customize it and break it
    • We will re-install the facilitized environment
    • We will NOT debug your customizations
  • It is CMU property, not your property
    • Don't give it to someone else
  • UPS stays with office
  • Plug all computing equipment into a UPS
  • Beeping UPS will indicate a bad battery or loss of input power:

Accounts and Passwords

  • You should already have:
    • An Andrew account and password
    • A SCS Kerberos identity with password
    • A mailbox on our Cyrus (IMAP) server
    • A SCS Windows domain account
    • To login to Windows hosts in the SCS domain:
      • Choose the SCS Domain from the domain dropdown menu
      • To change your password:
        • Press ctrl+alt+del after logging in and choose the change password button

Other Kerberos Instances

  • SCS .mail Kerberos instance password
    • To access SCS POP and IMAP servers
  • A SCS .ftp Kerberos instance password
    • To use our FTP servers
    • Can be put on AFS access control lists
  • A SCS .root Kerberos instance password
    • For root access to Unix hosts
  • A SCS .remote Kerberos instance password
    • For dialing into SCS from remote sites
  • Create and change these with jeeves (Help Desk must create root)

Your Andrew account

  • To see that you have an account
    • finger first.lastname@andrew.cmu.edu
    • Password is probably first 8 digits of SSN (change it!)
  • To change your mail forwarding
  • Use a cluster machine or telnet to unix.andrew.cmu.edu
  • Your Andrew account will work on virtually all Andrew machines

The SCS Unix environment

  • We've made many modifications to "standard" Unix:
    • Replaced vendor login, su, telnet, rsh, and ssh; these utilities were changed to support our Kerberos authentication and authorization methods.
  • All supported platforms use AFS for central file storage
  • SUP and depot for software distribution
  • Many configuration files globally maintained
  • You can customize your system, but will need root to do so
  • Before changing anything

AFS file storage

  • Main central file storage in SCS (and Andrew)
  • Maximum quota is 10GB per user volume
  • Use jeeves to raise your quota
  • If you run out of quota when writing a file, you lose
  • AFS permissions are not the same as Unix permissions
    • Access is generally per-directory
    • Your top-level directory is readable by default
  • Accessible from Windows XP, 2000
    • Via OpenAFS client (pre-installed on Windows)

The Jeeves Service

  • Perform routine administration tasks yourself
    • Change mail forwarding
    • Create .mail, .ftp, .remote and .root Kerberos instances
    • Change .mail, .ftp passwords
      • Can also use Unix kpasswd command (must for main Kerb password)
    • Change AFS quota
    • AFS misc collection volume maintenance
    • Create a symlink in /afs/cs/Web/People to your WWW area
    • Create a CorporateTime calendar server account for yourself
  • To use jeeves, telnet to jeeves.srv.cs.cmu.edu with a CS-supported Kerberized telnet (authenticated)

SCS E-mail

  • You have a mailbox on our Cyrus mail server
  • Most IMAP and POP mail clients will work
    • supported clients: Outlook, Thunderbird, Evolution, Pine, OSX "Mail", MH
    • server is imap.srv.cs.cmu.edu
    • 2GB mail quota
  • Use webmail client for remote mail access

SCS Mail Addressing

  • You can use either of the following formats to address mail:
    • Userid+@cs.cmu.edu (preferred)
    • Firstname.Lastname@cs.cmu.edu
  • To find addresses:
    • On a Unix machine, use "lookup name"
  • You can set up a cmu.edu mailing address
  • Forward your Andrew mail to SCS
    • These are two separate mail drops

Backups

  • We do nightly network backups of:
    • Unix (small partitions for consistent backups, preferable 15GB)
    • Windows 2000/XP (100GB max per machine with 20GB partitions)
    • Macintosh 10.x (30GB machine max)
    • AFS
  • If dual-boot, only the OS that is on the network and running overnight will be backed up
  • Keep your machine running and on the network overnight
  • For Windows and Mac users, close your apps overnight
  • Open files will not get backed up

Getting Software

  • On Unix:
    • Most software (aka "misc collections") is volunteer maintained. Volunteers needed!!!
    • Located in /usr/local/bin (depoted from AFS)
  • On Windows:
    • Monolith is the software distribution server that contains our baseline software install packages
      • Browse \\Monolith\PC_DIST to see what's there
    • My Andrew is the distribution server for many campus licensed packages
  • On Macs:
  • Pick up install media from the Help Desk

Licensed Software

Printing

  • Complete Printing Information:
  • Use color printers only when necessary
    • Color printers are for color printing
    • Expensive - $0.50/page
  • Preview your output before printing
  • Use SCS printers for SCS work
    • Not for your new company
  • Toner Replacement, Printer Problems
    • Call SCS Operations (x8-2608) at anytime

Connecting to the SCS Network

Internet Connectivity

  • Commodity internet
    • Use CMU's internet connection
    • 120 Mb in each direction
    • CMU Computing Services enforces bandwidth quotas
      • Limit of two (2) Gigabytes of either inbound (from the internet) or outbound (to the internet) bandwidth in a single day.
  • Internet 2
    • OC-48 connection
    • Computing Services does not enforce bandwidth quotas for Internet 2

Security and the SCS Network

  • No firewall, with the exception of XP SP2
    • We are constantly scanned for security holes
  • Symantec antivirus and Spysweeper anti-spyware installed on all Windows machines, updated regularly
  • All hosts need up-to-date security patches
    • On Windows XP/2000, Patches will be automatically installed and prompt for a reboot
      • Reboot when prompted; updates will not be active otherwise
    • This includes software you install yourself
    • Accept updates when notified (Globe with Windows icon inside of it)
    • Run Windows update regularly
  • World-writable anonymous FTP areas will quickly become warez sites
  • Patch third-party/open source software immediately after installing it!
    • DO NOT install IIS on your Windows box without patching it!!!!!
    • Utilize the URLScan ISAPI filter and IIS Lockdown Wizard
  • Set passwords for everything
    • Especially Microsoft SQL Server, and local Administrator passwords
    • Use good passwords

Acceptable use of the facility

  • No commercial use
  • Do not hack or scan other machines (even if they are scanning you), or violate people's privacy
  • Just because something is readable doesn't mean it's polite to do so
  • You are responsible for abuse of your machine caused by local modifications or account creation
  • Web servers should not provide unrestricted access to AFS
  • FTP servers should not have writable anonymous areas for download
  • Acceptable use of the facility (cont.)
  • Keep security patches up-to-date if you install or maintain software
  • Do not create accounts for untrusted people
  • Be reasonable wrt use of shared resources
    • Printers
    • Shared Unix machines
  • Do not hook anything up to the network without netregistering it with Facilities
  • Do not consume excessive bandwidth
    • Distributing movies, etc
  • Network use policy

Sources of Information

Getting Help from SCS Facilities

  • Send mail to help@cs.cmu.edu
    • Include all relevant information
      • Hostname, asset number, OS, machine location
      • Brief problem description
      • How to contact you (if email is part of the problem)
      • Put URGENT in title if problem is time critical
        • Best to call if it's an emergency
      • Avoid sending mail to individual staff members
        • ...people go on vacation...
  • Call the SCS Help Center (x8-4231), 9-5, M-F.
    • Evenings/weekends, forwarded to SCS Operations (x8-2608)
  • Visit the SCS Help Center at Wean 3613



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