Here are some of the highlights of that license agreement.

• The agreement covers the latest (or downgraded) versions of Word, Access, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Excel for both the PC and Mac. The agreement also covers "upgrades" to the Windows XP operating system.
• The agreement includes "Work at Home" rights so that covered products can be installed on personally owned home computers that are used for University business.
• The agreement applies to anyone who receives a UF paycheck.

The following services will be interrupted on Sunday morning for about 3 hours, between midnight and 3:00am:

receipt and delivery of e-mail

access to departmental web pages

domain name service

The agreement covers the lastest (or downgraded) versions of Word, Access, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Excel for both the PC and Mac. Basically MS-Office Professional. Some differences between the PC and Mac versions exist.

The agreement covers "upgrades" to the Windows XP operating system. The agreement does not cover new installs of Windows without an existing prior version of Windows. The agreement also does not cover any server based products.

The agreement applies to all Faculty and Staff but does not cover students. "Faculty & Staff" is defined as anyone who gets a paycheck. Our graduate students who receive a UF paycheck are covered.

The agreement includes "Work at Home" rights which gives faculty and staff the right to use the covered products on personally owned home computers that are used for University business.

Microsoft products not covered under the new Campus License Agreement can still be purchased under the Microsoft Select contract administered through Dell Premier.

The University is working with Microsoft on a separate agreement to also cover students. This "may" be available as soon as mid-January.

For more details please see: http://www.it.ufl.edu/projects/microsoft.html.

This new license agreement covers upgrades to the latest version of Microsoft Windows as well as the Microsoft Office Professional software suite which includes MS-Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, and Outlook.

For details please see http://www.it.ufl.edu/projects/microsoft.html.

A replacement switch was installed and the networking should be fully operational as of 3:30pm.

UF Computer Network Services, CNS (formally NERDC), will be moving the network core router that connects our buildings to the campus network to a new location in their equipment room. They expect this move to last no longer then 1 hr.

This will cause network connections between our subnets to be lost and the internet and other campus network resources to be unreachable.

There was no data loss. All services provided from Pooh are fully functional.

The department's SMTP (outgoing e-mail) server was down for about 30 min after power was restored because of special attention needed to bring it back up and fully operational. There may be a delay in e-mail being sent out.

The department's administrative Windows fileserver (pooh) is still off because of complications in the file system. IT Shop staff are currently working on restoring that service.

We are in the process of changing the uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) that power networking equipment in each of our 16 communication closets. The network switches will have to be powered down during the change to new UPS's but should be functional again with in 2 minutes.

If your computer is not connecting to the network after we have worked in your area, please reboot your system before calling the IT Shop as this may correct the problem.

Sending e-mail to chem@chem.ufl.edu ensures that your message goes out to all faculty, staff, postdocs, and students.

The server that is running the network license for the earlier versions is nearing its end. We have the system limping along after sustaining damage during this weekends power outage but it will not last too long so we will be removing it from service in the coming weeks.

You can check out the Hyperchem install disk from the IT Shop in room 116D.

This power outaged affected all IT services. E-mail and web service was restored at around 7:30am, access to our outgoing mail server was restored about 8:00am. Due to hardware failure incurred as a result of the power loss, DHCP service was not restored until about 10:20am. Access to the HyperChem license server is still down due to additional hardware failure.

Users having connectivity problems should reboot their computers before calling. There were some power dropouts over the last several days and some systems may need to be restarted to function correctly again.

The UF policy concerning software usage simply states:

All faculty, staff, and students of the University of Florida are required and expected to obey the laws and legal agreements governing software use. Failure to do so can lead to monetary damages and/or criminal penalties for the individual violator. Because such violations are also against University policies and rules, disciplinary action will be taken as appropriate.

The IT Shop is available to assist users with the purchase of whatever software products they need. The IT Shop will also gladly help any user or research group work to ensure that the software installed on their PCs is installed in compliance with its license and that the proper documentation of compliance is in place. On occasion, IT Shop staff will be conducting random reviews of Department owned PCs to ensure compliance with UF's software usage policy.

Due to equipment failure, there was an unscheduled network outage on the 4th Floor of CRB beginning sometime early Monday evening (5-24-04).

The faulty network switches were replaced and connectivity should be restored to all affected areas as of 7:30am 5-25-04.

Some computers may require a reboot to reconnect to the network.

In an effort to cut down on the amount of unwanted e-mail that comes through our departmental e-mail distribution lists, we are now only accepting e-mail from senders who's From address ends with ufl.edu (UF users) for the following lists:

chem@chem.ufl.edu
faculty@chem.ufl.edu
staff@chem.ufl.edu
students@chem.ufl.edu
postdocs@chem.ufl.edu

The announced change is simply a quick-fix response to the growing problem of unsolicited e-mail. The IT Shop staff are continuing efforts to bring SPAM tagging for all incoming messages.

Beginning today (May 5th) the University is implementing a new Gatorlink password management policy. For the majority of our users, nothing will change today but new strong password requirements will have to be followed the next time you need to change your Gatorlink password.

The most important thing to note is that your Gatorlink credentials are now the University's standard for authentication to the myUFL web portal and the new Peoplesoft applications. Because of that, it is more important than ever to secure your Gatorlink username and password.

Your Gatorlink userid and password should never be shared with anyone.

Work performed under Peoplesoft will be attributable to the person associated with the Gatorlink ID that performed it. Chemistry staff will not be allowed to perform work associated with another user's Gatorlink credentials and should not be asked to do so.

The new Gatorlink Password Management Policy can be found at:

http://www.it.ufl.edu/policies/passwords.html

IT Shop staff have updated the "Updating Microsoft Windows" web page that we host on our website and which can be found at:

http://www.chem.ufl.edu/itshop/helpdesk/windows-update

This page provides step-by-step instructions on how to run the Windows Update procedure on demand and now includes instructions for how to configure your PC to automatically download and install updates from Microsoft.

Security updates help shield your computer from vulnerabilities, viruses, worms, and other threats as they are discovered. The IT Shop recommends that all Windows 2000/XP users enable the Automatic Update feature of their PC and configure the product to download and install any updates on a daily basis.

UF Bridges has recently discovered that a patch must be applied in order for for the myUFL systems to work properly with Internet Explorer 6. Using the browser without the patch will result in poor navigation and potential loss of work.

Most Chemistry staff PCs, including those in the business office and those used by divisional secretaries have already been patched. All other myUFL users will need to install the patch to ensure that their systems will operate correctly.

The easiest way to install the Microsoft Internet Explorer patch is to use the Windows Update procedure and install all "Critical Updates and Service Packs". If your PC has been configured to automatically update Windows then the patch you need has probably already been installed for you.

For complete details about the problem read on.

Problem Summary:

Programs that use Wininet functions to post data (such as a user name or a password) to a Web server retry the POST request with a blank header if the Web server closes (or resets) the initial connection request. This can cause the POST to fail. This problem occurs after you apply the 832894 security update (MS04-004) or the 821814 hotfix.

For more details about the patch please read Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 831167 http://tinyurl.com/3yurv.

Manual Fix:

Download the Q831167 patch and apply it to all machines exhibiting this problem. The 32-bit version can be downloaded from http://tinyurl.com/3a5ag.

Once downloaded, the Q831167.exe file will need to be executed at each workstation with an administrative logon. A reboot is required.

If you have any questions or problems related to this notice please address them to support@chem.ufl.edu.

The electronic journals and databases offered to Chemistry users represent an enormous benefit to our department and a significant amount of money is spent by the University to make these resources available. Each publisher's license agreement outlines specific terms and conditions under which the resource may be used, stored, and transmitted. Although each license is unique, some of the common restrictions include the following:

• The content may be used only for non-commercial educational or research purposes.
• Individuals who are not affiliated with the University may not use the content.
• Users should honor the intellectual property of others by not participating in activities that violate the copyright associated with the content they download.
• Altering, systematic or programmatic copying, reselling, or republishing of electronic content is typically prohibited.

We are currently experiencing a problem with one of our file servers, Devnull. No Data has been lost.

If you are a user of this file server, the system will not allow you to access the file shares (The symptom of the Problem). We are currently moving the files from that system to other systems and will contact those people to inform them of their new file location.

This Sunday, beginning at 6:00am, UF Network Services will be performing network maintenance on the core router that connections the Chemistry network to the rest of the world. Chemistry users may experience up to 30 minutes downtime during this time.

Post outage note for Network Outage to Servers 6am 3-23-04.

The outage is complete and all networking is functional.

The cause of our problem was traced to a "new" and apparently partially defective Fiber optic Patch Cable. This cable has been removed and communications to and from our server room are again functioning normally.

There will be a networking outage to the majority of our servers on Tuesday Morning between 6am and 7am 03-23-04.

The outage should be limited to our server room but will cause some internet access problems from with-in the Chemistry Complex.

The outage will not last the entire length of the hour but will be comprised of several 1-2 min outages during the course of the hour block.

The outage is to allow time to test some equipment and cabling that is suspected of causing some file transfer and access problems.

In a continuing effort to curb SPAM and virus e-mail distribution, UF Network Services will begin restricting all outbound e-mail traffic on March 23rd to only registered campus mail servers. The IT Shop has registered smtp.chem.ufl.edu as the e-mail server for the Department of Chemistry and have received approval for its use.

All users who use the Chemistry network to send outgoing e-mail will need to be sure that their e-mail client's SMTP (Outgoing) Server setting is configured as "smtp.chem.ufl.edu". Users who login to the mail server and use Pine have already had their SMTP server changed for them.

In the past, users may have had their mail client configured to send e-mail using "chem.ufl.edu" or "mail.chem.ufl.edu". The correct server setting for SMTP (outgoing) mail is "smtp.chem.ufl.edu".

To assist in this change, we have put together a web page that provides concise instructions on how to change the SMTP server setting in some of the most common e-mail clients used in the department. That information can be found at:

http://www.chem.ufl.edu/itshop/helpdesk/smtp/

If you have any questions or problems checking or changing your SMTP setting please let us know and we'll be glad to help.

Reference:
- OIT Standard - Authorized Email Flow https://net-services.ufl.edu/security/public/email-std.shtml

There will be the below listed Server Outages from 6-10pm 03-18-04. --- To allow for system maintance the following Chemnet Servers will be rebooted during the maintance window:

Father, Pooh, Elvis, Devnull, Zaphod, Condenser, Mortar, Bunsen and Burner

File access to shares on any of theses systems will be unavailable while the system reboots.

Due to the redundant nature of the domain, this should not affect workstation login. If you have trouble connecting after the maintance, logging out and login back in to your workstation or restarting your system should fix the connection problem. --- To make room for new equipment in their server rack, the following systems will have a 5 min outage during the maintance window.

Sunny and Share

These systems being down will effect departmental e-mail lists and outgoing e-mail from the chemistry complex for that 5 min period. The only error you should see is: smtp.chem.ufl.edu was unable to be contacted if you try to send e-mail while the system is down. --- There will be a 10 min outage to the following servers to allow for instillation of a new server in their rack:

Pestle and Tux

During this time any computer configured to use DHCP to get an IP address will be unable to get a new address. Computers will start getting addresses again when the server restarts. --- There will be a 1-2 min outage to the following servers at 7pm while networking to their rack is reconfigured:

Mailey and Orange

This will cause any connections to the mail server to be temporarily lost, any mail received during that time will be delayed by a few minutes but not lost. All department web pages will be unavailable as well as FTP access and DNS resolution.

All mail, web, ftp and DNS traffic should resume as normal as soon as the networking is reconfigured. --- All systems should be up and working again no later then 10pm.

There will be 5 min Network Outage at 6:30am on 03-18-04 in CLB 1st & 2nd Floors. The outage is to allow for equipment reconfiguration.

In an effort to help you better distinguish valid e-mail from harmful e-mail worms, we've reconfigured our e-mail sanitizer system to now include the body of the message, not just the headers, in the SECURITY WARNING messages that are sent out in response to quarantined mail. We hope that this change will make it easier for you to determine if the message and its attachment should be trusted and unquarantined.

If you receive a quarantined e-mail notice and you know the sender and were expecting the attachment, please let us know by sending e-mail to support@chem.ufl.edu and we'll deliver the quarantined message to your mailspool as soon as we can.

Please read the following announcement from the University's Office of Information Technology (OIT) concerning a change in how outgoing e-mail is processed for Gatorlink Dialup, campus wireless, and walkup connection users.

Please note that this announced service change does NOT affect our users who send and receive their e-mail on our chem.ufl.edu network. Although, there will be a service change announcement coming soon that does effect all chem.ufl.edu users and how they send outgoing e-mail. That announcement will be addressed in a separate e-mail in the near future.

If you have any questions, after reading through the announcement and the provided FAQ, feel free to address them support@chem.ufl.edu.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Beginning Tuesday, March 16, 2004, in an effort to curb spam originating from compromised hosts on the UF campus, outgoing email traffic from UF dialups, wireless, and walkup connections will be restricted to the main UF email server, smtp.ufl.edu. Also, Gatorlink authentication will be required to send email from these networks. This means that if you connect to the Internet via a UF dialups, wireless, or walkup connections and you want to send email, your email software must specify smtp.ufl.edu as your outgoing mail server and it must be configured to use authentication.

This only impacts outgoing email; incoming email is not affected. UF dialups, wireless, and walkup connections can still read incoming email from any provider. For instance, computers connecting from UF dialups, wireless, and walkups will not be able to use UF departmental email servers for outgoing mail, but they can still use departmental and other email servers for incoming mail.

This new standard impacts only UF dialups, wireless, and walkup connections. It does not impact other campus networks. It also does not impact connections from home to non-UF service commercial providers such as Cable, BellSouth, or GRU.

This new standard only impacts email software such as Outlook, Eudora, Netscape, and other email software that use POP and IMAP protocols. It does not affect UF Webmail or commercial web-based email, such as Hotmail or Yahoo.

If you use Gatorlink email and followed setup instructions from the UF Help Desk, you might already have your email software configured to use smtp.ufl.edu. If not, and you want to send email from UF dialups, wireless, or walkups, change the outgoing email server setting in your email software to use the UF email server, smtp.ufl.edu. See the Help Desk web site, http://helpdesk.ufl.edu/handouts/index.html, for more information.

If you connect via UF dialups, wireless, or walkups and read mail that is delivered to your departmental mail server, you probably will need to change your outgoing email configuration to specify smtp.ufl.edu as your outgoing mail server. Again, this will not affect your ability to read incoming email from your departmental email server; it only impacts outgoing email.

Your email software might already be configured by default to use authentication for outgoing email. If not, the change should be a simple checkbox setting associated with the outgoing mail server.

If you need assistance configuring your email software to use smtp.ufl.edu and authentication, please contact the UF Computing Help Desk. Their consultants will be happy to talk to you and can be reached at 352/392-4357 (2-HELP) or by email at helpdesk@ufl.edu.

Read more about this change at https://net-services.ufl.edu/security/public/email-std-faq.shtml.

Below is a summary of what is affected by this new email standard.

Outgoing email only.

Not incoming email.

UF dialups, wireless, and walkups only.

Not other UF networks.
Not non-UF providers such as Cox, BellSouth, GRU.

Email programs such as Outlook, Netscape, Eudora, and others that use POP and IMAP.

Not UF webmail.
Not Yahoo.
Not Hotmail.

There was a short network outage on the 3rd floor of CRB starting around 8:30am 02-24-04. The outage was caused by the failure of one of our network switches serving that floor. The faulty equipment has been bypassed and will be replaced.

At about 1:55 this afternoon we experienced an unexpected DNS (domain name service) service failure. This service failure may have resulted in some users not being able to access various network resources due to the inability to do proper name resolution.

IT Shop staff restared our DNS server at 2:24pm and network name resolution was restored at that time. We are continuing to investigate the cause of this outage.

Because of the recent MyDoom e-mail worm outbreak, we have been forced to now quarantine all e-mail containing .zip (ZIP) attachments. In the past we were only quarantining e-mail that contained executable attachments (exe, bat, cmd, etc). Once this particular wave of virus activity subsides (MyDoom is due to expire mid-Feb) we will reconsider removing the filters on .zip attachments.

As a reminder, if you receive a message from our e-mail sanitizer that suggests that it quarantined a message that was addressed to you, you can contact us (support@chem.ufl.edu) and let us know and we'll be glad to deliver the message to you. We recommend that you only submit such requests if you know the sender and were expecting the message and attachment.

FYI: This evening 01/14/04 we will be rebooting several of the Chemnet domain controllers to finish some software installs and apply security patches.

Because of the redundant nature of the domain, most people should not notice any difference during this time. If your computer was logged in to the domain and was authenticated through one of the systems that is being rebooted, you may be forced to relogon when accessing network resources.

The IT Shop staff will be rebooting mailey today (12/09) at 9:00pm in an effort to clear a persistent memory problem and resolve a SMB file sharing issue. Downtime for the server is expected to be less than 5 minutes.

Incoming and outgoing e-mail, e-mail retrieval, the departmental web site, and DNS (domain name service) will all be briefly interrupted by this work.

In accordance with UF procedures, the Chemistry IT Shop will be closed from Thursday, December 25th, 2003 through Thursday, January 1, 2004. We will continue to monitor e-mail sent to support@chem.ufl.edu during this period of time.

The IT Shop will reopen at 8 am on Friday, January 2, 2004.

We wish you and your family a happy and safe holiday season. Best wishes for a successful New Year!

Several users reported problems this morning when trying to access the network. The IT Shop staff has identified the problem and resolved it.

The problem was a rogue DHCP server that was passing out invalid IP addresses to computers as they attempted to renew their leases. The rogue DHCP server was discovered to be a personal router brought in and connected to our network by one of our users. It was removed from the network.

Please consult with the IT Shop before purchasing or connecting any type of network hardware to our network.

We experienced a problem earlier today with the server that dynamically assigns IP addresses to computers wanting to join the network. As a result, some users may have experienced problems connecting their computers to the network. This problem has been resolved.

Our DHCP server ran out of available IP addresses to assign until we were able to increase the size of our lease pool. This occured as a result of an increase in the number of network devices in use simultaneously on our networks. As of about 2:30 this afternoon we registered 544 active devices on our network, an increase of about 100 systems over this time last year.

For about an hour last night the mailspool partition on the department's e-mail server filled to capacity preventing the server from accepting new mail. It is believed that no e-mail was lost to this condition but some messages may have been delayed in delivery.

To relieve the condition, IT Shop staff was forced to relocate some user's mailspool files to an alternative location. Those users will be contacted in a separate e-mail so that we can coordinate returning their mail to them as soon as possible.

The mailspool partition on our mailserver, which is used to hold all incoming e-mail, reached capacity sometime late last night which may have prevented some messages from being delivered. The problem was addressed and resolved at about 6:15 this morning.

No e-mail should have been lost because of this condition but some messages may be delayed. If you feel that you did not receive a message that you should have, please let us know by sending e-mail to support@chem.ufl.edu

The network problems we experienced earlier this morning have been resolved for the moment. We were able to isolate the problem to a disruption on the network coming from the 3rd floor of CRB. We will continue to investigate this disruption to find the actual cause.

We are currently experiencing a problem this morning with network access to sites outside our departmental network and to the Internet. IT Shop staff are looking into the problem now and hope to have a resolution soon.

The Department's Football maillist has been recreated and is now being hosted on our web-based maillist management server. The maillist was created for those wishing to sell or buy UF Football tickets and for ChemBlock ticket holders to maintain discussions related to Gator Football.

All users who are interested in getting this e-mail should subscribe to the maillist by either going to:

http://lists.chem.ufl.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/football

or by sending e-mail to football-request@chem.ufl.edu with the word "subscribe" as the subject.

All prior football-l@chem users will need to register and all subscriber requests will now need to be confirmed before they are added. Only subscribed user can currently post a message to this list.

It has been brought to our attention that the departmental football e-mail list, used for requesting/selling tickets, has been accepting subscriptions from users that did not wish to be subscribed and dropping users that were once subscribed. Because of this we've shut down the football maillist until we can move it to our new maillist server software. The new software should give us more control of the list subscriptions.

All football-l@chem maillist users will need to resubscribe once the new maillist has been setup. Instructions for how to do that will accommodate the announcement of the new maillist once it is ready.

The Department's DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) server ran out of available IP addresses earlier this afternoon which caused several computers throughout the department to have problems making network connections (web, e-mail, etc).

IT Shop staff were able to add about 25 IP addresses to the DHCP pool at about 4:00pm to alleviate the problem. Please report any continued problems with the network to support@chem.ufl.edu.

Several of our users have reported problem with network access to the Internet. Please see the e-mail below from UF Network Services for details of the cause.

If you have questions, please address them to support@chem.ufl.edu.
--
------------------------------
Derrius Marlin
UF Chemistry - IT Shop Manager
http://www.chem.ufl.edu/itshop
352.392.7885

       ------- Forwarded Message

       Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2003 12:12:30 -0400

       From: Network Services 

       Subject: [NETMGRS] Network Status Update

       To: NET-MANAGERS-L@LISTS.UFL.EDU



       Campus NAT pool is running at capacity. NS is working on

       adding address space to the pool.



       The campus NAT router is running at 99% of pool capacity.

       Some users of private IP space on campus are seeing delays

       and difficulty connecting to offcampus sites. Net Services

       staff are working on reconfiguring the NAT router to add

       public IP space to the NAT pool.



       If you have questions or concerns regarding this matter,

       please reply to this email as soon as possible.

       Thank you,



       Network Services

       Net-Services@lists.ufl.edu

       (352) 392-2061 suncom 622-2061

       ------- End of Forwarded Message

      

As a result of the e-mail flood generated by and related to the W32/Sobig.f virus yesterday (see the e-mail below), it became necessary to take our departmental mail server down several times during normal operational hours in order to accommodate all the mail that was coming in. The virus scanning component of our mail server failed under the heavy load which, in turn, cause the mail server to become mostly unresponsive.

No e-mail should have been lost because of this but many messages were delayed in their delivery. There was a case where e-mail sent to the student@chem.ufl.edu mail list was deliberately intercepted because of the number of messages and additional load that was being incurred on the server at that time. Any e-mail that was addressed to the student's mail list should be resent.

Also, many users are reporting that they are receiving e-mail which indicates that their PCs may be infected because of messages supposed sent from their accounts contain a virus. In most cases this is false and is rather just a characteristic of the W32/Sobig.f virus in that the virus can forge the From: address header. Any such e-mail can be ignored. For more detailed information about the W32/Sobig.f virus please see:

http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_100561.htm

All users are highly encouraged to update their virus scanning software as soon as is possible. An update for McAfee virus scan was release yesterday. If your software didn't auto-update you can update it it manually using the VirusScan Console or download the latest SuperDAT file from the IT Shop software website at:

http://www.chem.ufl.edu/itshop/software

If you have any questions about the mail server problems we experienced or about the W32/Sobig.f virus, please address them to support@chem.ufl.edu.

The IT Shop is making available the Microsoft Service Packs and patches against Blaster Worm for Windows NT4, 2000, and XP available for download off our software download webpage which can be found at:

http://www.chem.ufl.edu/itshop/software

These patches are being made available on a temporary basis and will be removed for download once Microsoft's Windows Update site becomes more easy to access and use.

Please direct any comment or questions to support@chem.ufl.edu.

The following systems will be taken down at 4:30am 8-12-03 for movement back to their replaced Uninterruptible Power Supply:
Devnull, Mother, Bunsen, Pestle, RT3, Mortar, Condenser and War.

Following that at 4:45am, the following will be taken down and restarted on their new UPS:
Father, FKZ, Elvis, Burner and Physical36

At 5:00am server.chem.ufl.edu (AKA mail, ftp, www, SMTP), Tux and orange.qtp.ufl.edu will have their UPS batteries changed. There should be no down time associated with this unless there is a very untimely power failure.

Several systems may be restarted up till 5:30am to allow for system patches.

If you have any questions or concerns about this scheduled service, please direct them to support@chem.ufl.edu.

The IT Shop will be upgrading the mail list management software on the new mail server (sunny) at 7:30pm tonight (07/14). Email distribution lists hosted by Mailman on Sunny will not be available during the upgrade process.

Specifically, access to the following maillists will be affected during the upgrade period but should be available again after the completion of work.

2045l-instr-l
2046l-instr-l
analytical
benner-group
chm2045l-l
chm2046h-l
chm2046l-l
support

Mailman is a email distribution list system that includes a web based management interface for creating and managing e-mail lists. This upgrade is being done in preparation of our efforts to move all existing departmental and instructional maillists to this new system.

We will be upgrading Python 2.2.1 to 2.2.3 and Mailman 2.0.13 to 2.1.2.

If you have any questions or concerns about this scheduled service, please direct them to support@chem.ufl.edu.

One of our uninterruptable power supplies (UPS) died, without advance notice, at 9:22am this morning taking out 5 of our Microsoft Windows file servers; specifically the server known as "devnull". Power was rerouted and services restored at 10:08am.

Unfortunately, we lost one particular server known as "mother" which will not power backup at this time. This system was used for the Fiscal office's web based OE reports. We will restore this service as soon as is possible.

If you access the "devnull" file server for server based file storage and cannot access your network shares, please reboot your PC and authenticate again to the CHEMNET domain.

If you have any questions about this unscheduled service outage please direct them to support@chem.ufl.edu.

The Departmental E-mail server began refusing mail connections sometime after or about 4:30 this afternoon (Sunday). E-mail service was restored at about 9:30 this evening.

The problem was caused by a local user's e-mail account that was setup to forward to a non-existent account which caused a mail-loop situation which in turn filled up all available diskspace on the mail server.

No e-mail should have been lost because of this interruption in service but you may find that certain messages were delayed in their delivery.

If you have any questions concerning this service outage please address them to support@chem.ufl.edu.

The IT Shop staff was forced to reboot the server known as "mailey" at about 12:03 this afternoon because the machine had become unresponsive due to a memory overload situation. The following services were unavailable for about 5 minutes at that time:

• e-mail services
• web services
• domain name resolution (DNS)

No e-mail should have been lost by this interruption but you may have noticed that some e-mail was delayed in its delivery to your account.

If you notice any particular problems associated with this unscheduled service interruption please let us know by sending e-mail to support@chem.ufl.edu.

The IT Shop has coordinated the license renewal and upgrade for the X-Win32 software. If you have X-Win32 installed you will need to apply the latest license key in order to continue uninterrupted use of the software.

For the 2003-2006 license keys and the latest version of the software, go to the IT Shop's Software Download web page which can be found at

http://www.chem.ufl.edu/itshop/software

X-Win32 is an X server for Windows 95, 98, NT4.0 and Windows 2000. X-Win32 allows Windows users to connect to Linux/Unix servers on a network and run the applications from those servers on their Windows desktop, right along side Windows applications.

If you have any questions about accessing the upgrade or applying the latest license keys please address them to support@chem.ufl.edu.

FYI! -- We are observing network problems this morning across each of our subnets which would cause your access to our servers and any Internet connection to appear slow.

We are investigating the problem now and hope to have a solution in place soon.

The IT Shop is now equipped with an HP DesignJet 500PS large-format printer suitable for printing posters, banners, signs, and displays. This printer is connected to a PC in the IT Shop and is now available to service for our users. For details, please see the Poster Printing link off the IT Shop webpage located at:

http://www.chem.ufl.edu/itshop

The Designjet prints on 24", 36", and 42" wide roll feed or single sheet paper at up to 1200x600 DPI. We are currently stocking and using HP's Heavyweight Coated paper in 36" rolls. Printing is currently being charged at $8.00 per poster up to 10 foot in length.

The IT Shop staff have the responsibility to oversee printing operations and we can provide general assistance but, we do not have the experience nor expertise to provide detailed instruction on how to create, format, and print research posters. We'd like to make this printer available as a walk-up, self-service operation where our users are responsible for printing their own jobs with minimal reliance on the IT Shop staff.

The basic process for using the printer is something like this:

1. Prepare your poster using Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, MS-Powerpoint, or some other supported application.
2. Save your file to networked file space, zip disk, or CD.
3. Fill out the online Printing Sign-up web Form to schedule a time to come in to the IT Shop to use the computer and printer.
4. Visit the IT Shop during the scheduled service time where you will be able to use the computer and printer to print your poster.
5. After printing, complete the online Printing Charge web Form before you leave the IT Shop so that we can account for your use and charge the appropriate grant or department account.

If you have any questions, please address them to support@chem.ufl.edu.

On Monday at 7:56pm we experienced a 24 minute interruption in e-mail delivery due to a diskspace shortage caused by a mail loop condition between a local account and a remote account held by one of our users.

No e-mail should have been lost due to this condition but some e-mail may have been delayed in delivery while being queued up by remote servers. If you have any questions about this service interruption please address them to support@chem.ufl.edu.

Sunday evening 16 February 03, there was a network outage to our server room that caused wider spread network connectivity problems and refused connections to all of our services.

Connectivity has been restored as of 7:30 pm although in a slightly reduced state which should not hamper access to our services. Network equipment failure seems to be to blame, but it requires further testing.

Some computers may require a reboot before they work properly on the network.

The IT Shop is glad to announce that we've updated our shop website. We've got a lot more to do to fill it out but we hope you will find it a useful resource. Feel free to give us feedback on what you think we can do to improve this.

The new website address is:

   http://www.chem.ufl.edu/itshop

Over the next couple of days the IT Shop will be initiating a series of network inventory scans of the subnets under our domain.

The network inventory scan will test your computer for open network ports and open services running on your machine and attempt to identify the operating system that you are running. This proactive action is being taken in order to help us gain information that can be valuable to us in trying to identify systems on our network that may be vulnerable to compromise.

Any network device attached to our Departmental network is subject to this security scan.

The network scans will be conducted by a authorized scan machines such as "netscan-16-pub", "netscan-32-prv", etc in order to be easily recognizable as benign activity in your system logs.

If you have any question about this procedure please direct them to support@chem.ufl.edu.

The IT Shop has recently received SciFinder Scholar 2002 from the UF Library. SciFinder is available for both the PC and the Mac. We are making this software available for download from our Software web page which can be found at...

http://www.chem.ufl.edu/chemnet/software

For more information about this software and its features please see the CAS SciFinder Scholar website at:

http://www.cas.org/SCIFINDER/SCHOLAR

If you're upgrading from a prior installation of SciFinder Scholar you can install this version right over the top of the old version. Because the IT Shop does not have access to Macintosh equipment we have not tested the Mac install. Download access to the software is restricted to just the Chemistry and QTP networks and use of the software is restricted to systems on the UF network.

If you are using a computer that has a private IP address (10.227.*) or want to use the software from home then you will need to install the UF VPN (virtual private network). A link to the UF VPN client is available from our Software web page.

If you have any questions please address them to support@chem.ufl.edu.

The e-mail virus scanning software installed last week has been reconfigured to now allow MS-Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and RTF documents to pass through the filter unaltered. Attachments of these types will NOT be "defanged" and their filenames will NOT be mangled. Other types of files will still be subject to scanning and processing by our e-mail sanitizer.

We continue to fine-tune the e-mail sanitizer's configuration in order to provide a balance between usability and protection. This announced change an effort to make it more convenient for those of you that transfer these type of files on a regular basis.

Please note, the file types identified above can contain macro viruses which can infect your PC if not protected. Because these files will now will pass through our sanitizer unaltered it is important to be sure that you have the latest virus scanner installed on your PC. McAfee VirusScan, and the latest virus definition file, is available for download from our software web page at:

http://www.chem.ufl.edu/chemnet/software

We welcome your comments, suggestions, or questions about the e-mail sanitizer we have installed and how we might improve it. Please direct them to support@chem.ufl.edu.

On January 30th from 0300h to 0700h, CRB will have all electrical power shut off as the contractors for the University reroute and hook CRB to a new switching unit. ALL electrical activity should be shut down in anticipation of the OUTAGE.

The IT Shop announces a change in shop hours. In response to user requests, the IT Shop staff will make every effort to ensure that the shop is staffed and open for walk-ins between 2:00 and 3:00pm during regular workdays.

The IT Shop office hours will still remain 8:00am - 4:00pm Monday through Friday, with an hour for lunch (generally at noon). Despite those hours there are times that the office is unmanned because our work can many times take us out of the office. This announced change of service is an effort to ensure that there will be a regularly scheduled time of day that you can stop by the shop with walk-in questions or problems with the chance of missing us. This doesn't mean that this is the only time the shop will open, it will just be the best time to catch us.

We still encourage and prefer users send e-mail to support@chem.ufl.edu to report problems, ask questions, or submit work requests whenever possible. E-mail is generally the best way for us to respond to user requests. If you prefer, you can also submit work requests over the web using our online work request form which can be found at:

http://www.chem.ufl.edu/chemnet/workrequest