Monthly Archives: October 2004

Electronic Library Catalog Failure

File Server

The library electronic catalog system (Sadie) is not functioning. It appears that a catastrophic hardware failure may have occurred about 7:30pm, Fri, 10/29. Information Systems techs are aware of the problem but have limited resources available to diagnose and fix the problem during weekend hours. It is likely that the server will remain off-line until sometime on Monday, 11/1. This outage log will be updated as new information becomes available.

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Sirsi back on line by 11:15pm, 10/29. Work-around found for the server startup problem. Further testing needed, but for now the system is running.

UPS hardware, UPS software or UPS control cable may be cause of problem. Server is currently running WITHOUT UPS control cable connected.

Residence Hall Internet Poor Performance Issue

Internet

A new piece of hardware was placed into production last week that seems to be creating a problem with performance for students in Residence Halls connecting to the Internet. Info Systems verified the problem late today (Wed, 10/27) and will be working to diagnose the problem on Thu, 10/28. We apologize for the inconvenience.

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Problem found in the new NetEnforcer configuration file. Fixed by 9:00am, 10/28/04.

Internet VPN Network Implementation October 22,25,26

Internet

Information Systems will be implementing an enhanced Virtual Private Network (VPN) system during the fall break (Mon-Tue, 10/25-26/2004). We will actually begin the work on Friday, 10/22. This work primarily involves the EMU Internet connection. While the work is being done there will be periods of time that the EMU Internet connection will not be available. This is likely to involve several hours of downtime for the Internet connection. To the best of our knowledge the outages will only involve the EMU Internet connection.

When the EMU Internet connection is "down" the following systems are affected:

  1. Web Browsing: Users will not be able to reach any off-campus web servers. The on-campus servers such as www.emu.edu, webmail.emu.edu, blackboard.emu.edu, campusweb.emu.edu and calendar.emu.edu will still be available to on-campus users.
  2. Email: Email messages going to and coming from the Internet will be temporarily unavailable. However, no messages will be lost because all will be held in "queues" until the Internet connection is restored.
  3. Off-Campus Users: Students and employees who are away from campus and attempt to connect to on-campus resources such as email/webmail, Blackboard, CampusWeb and the EMU web server will be unable to do so.
  4. Lancaster Users: Persons at the Lancaster campus who use the WinTerm/Terminal Server system (which is all employees) will not have access to the Terminal Server. They will not be able to use their WinTerms. The only computers that will operate are the standalone student computers and the classroom teacher station computers (however no computer will be able to connect to any computing resources at the Harrisonburg campus).

We will do everything possible to minimize the EMU Internet connection downtime but we cannot accurately determine how much of an outage will occur on 10/22,25,26. Any outages that occur on Friday, 10/22, will be as late as possible in the afternoon. The Critical Information Alert system will be used to keep on-campus users informed of the status of the Internet connection while the work is being performed.

Internet VPN Network Implementation October 22,25,26

Internet

Information Systems will be implementing an enhanced Virtual Private Network (VPN) system during the fall break (Mon-Tue, 10/25-26/2004). We will actually begin the work on Friday, 10/22. This work primarily involves the EMU Internet connection. While the work is being done there will be periods of time that the EMU Internet connection will not be available. This is likely to involve several hours of downtime for the Internet connection. To the best of our knowledge the outages will only involve the EMU Internet connection.

When the EMU Internet connection is "down" the following systems are affected:

  1. Web Browsing: Users will not be able to reach any off-campus web servers. The on-campus servers such as www.emu.edu, webmail.emu.edu, blackboard.emu.edu, campusweb.emu.edu and calendar.emu.edu will still be available to on-campus users.
  2. Email: Email messages going to and coming from the Internet will be temporarily unavailable. However, no messages will be lost because all will be held in "queues" until the Internet connection is restored.
  3. Off-Campus Users: Students and employees who are away from campus and attempt to connect to on-campus resources such as email/webmail, Blackboard, CampusWeb and the EMU web server will be unable to do so.
  4. Lancaster Users: Persons at the Lancaster campus who use the WinTerm/Terminal Server system (which is all employees) will not have access to the Terminal Server. They will not be able to use their WinTerms. The only computers that will operate are the standalone student computers and the classroom teacher station computers (however no computer will be able to connect to any computing resources at the Harrisonburg campus).

We will do everything possible to minimize the EMU Internet connection downtime but we cannot accurately determine how much of an outage will occur on 10/22,25,26. Any outages that occur on Friday, 10/22, will be as late as possible in the afternoon. The Critical Information Alert system will be used to keep on-campus users informed of the status of the Internet connection while the work is being performed.

FS outage

File Server

FS Novell file server needed to be rebooted.

CPU was at 1%, disk requests were very high. Initially there was console access, then that hung as well. Disk lights showed no activity even though disk requests were high. Sweep was not loaded.

Had to power off the server and restart it. All seemed well after that.

Novastor was reloaded, sweep was not.

FS server unavailable

File Server

Server FS was unresponsive, and utilization was high for one processor. Timesync was lost, and NovaNet couldn’t contact the database server. Busiest threads were “NN Sup 2”, “DB Monitor” and “Server 23”. The last file scanned by Sweep was at 3:03 a.m. The server appeared to be fine after rebooting. Sweep was not reloaded.