Author Archive

DHCP Server Upgrade on Wednesday 5pm

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

On Wednesday, the 6th of April 2011, starting around 5pm we will upgrade the operating system on the two D-PHYS DHCP servers. This should not cause any interruptions for computers which are already online, but computers which connect to our network between 5pm and 6pm may not get an IP address assigned immediately. As these computers mostly will be mobile devices, we suggest to switch to the wireless network instead for that evening.

Clarification of Usage Policies for our Terminal Servers plimpy and plompy

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

Following recent incidents we would like to remind you as well as stress that our terminal servers plimpy.ethz.ch and plompy.ethz.ch must not be used for long running or resource demanding computation jobs. Please use our computation node plumpy.ethz.ch instead.
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New SSL and HTTPS certificates for many ISG D-PHYS services

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

In the past all HTTPS secured web sites hosted or provided by us used certificates issued by ourselves. This caused unsettling warnings in most browsers as the user had to manually add the root certificate of our certification authority (CA) to his web browser.

To allow SSL certificates other than those signed by ourselves, namely certificates automatically accepted by all browsers, but also community-backed CACert certificates issued by ETH ID, we will change the configuration of our web server zwoelfi this evening. This may cause some short interruptions to some of the hosted sites, but should not be of longer duration.

Some of these web sites will get already new SSL certificates issued by QuoVadis (accepted by nearly all browsers by default) this evening.

Update Friday, 1. Oct. 2010, 21:00h: Due to several unexpected issues with the new QuoVadis certificate, for now the webserver runs again with the old ISG signed SSL certificate on all virtual hosts.

Update Thursday, 7. Oct. 2010, 23:00h: Most of the issues with the new QuoVadis certificate are solved now and all virtual hosts planned for the QuoVadis SSL certificate use it now again.

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No more Mailman password reminders in the future

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

Since the monthly password reminders of our mailing lists software Mailman have caused more confusion and unnecessary work than they seemed to help, from now on they are globally disabled on our mailing list server.

If you lost or forgot your password for the subscription of any of our mailing lists, you can always go to https://lists.phys.ethz.ch/listinfo, choose the appropriate list, scroll down to the bottom of that page, enter your e-mail address, click on "Unsubscribe or edit options", and then click on "Remind". Your password will be sent to your e-mail address.
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Maintenance Downtime of IDL License and Condor Master Server on 14. April, 5 pm

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

Because of hardware problems with one of our infrastructure servers we couldn't perform the planned software upgrade on the IDL license server and Condor master server during the big maintenance downtime last week.

Those hardware problems are fixed now and so we will install the software upgrade on the IDL license and Condor master server tomorrow, Wednesday, 14th of April 2010, starting at 5 pm. Duration of the maintenance downtime will be approximately two hours.

Update, 20:20h: IDL License and Condor server are both back online.

Maintenance Downtime of all Services on Wednesday, 7th of April 2010

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

On Wednesday, 7th of April 2010, starting at 6pm and lasting until approximately 9pm, there will be several maintenance downtimes for nearly all of our services due to several software upgrades and relocation of servers.

So if you're using one of our managed workstations or thin clients, or use data residing on group drives, please save all your work and preferably log out/disconnect before Wednesday, 6pm. And even if the services seem back after the first short downtime, don't expect to be able to work again from that point on since we will have several short but also some not so short service downtimes in a row.

Update, 20:30h: Most servers and workstations are back online. Not yet ready for usage are: fatboy, the IDL license server and the Condor master server. They will be back later tonight.

Update, 22:45h: fatboy is back online again. But two infrastructure servers (which haven't been touched by today's maintenance) seem to have hardware issues. Because of that the maintenance of the IDL license server and the Condor master server have been postponed until further notice.

Mail Server Migration Part 3: Webmail + SMTP

Monday, March 1st, 2010

On Thursday, 4th of May 2010, starting at 5pm we will migrate our webmail service to the new mail server. Since there are no version upgrades of the webmail applications Roundcube and Twig, it will be a smooth transition and you shouldn't even notice the migration. The only thing which can happen is that you get logged out of webmail if you use webmail while the DNS entry changes to the new server address.

Update, Thursday morning: As yesterday morning's unexpected outage of the old mail server showed further hardware problems, we rescheduled moving the incoming (SMTP) mail server functionality to the new mail server to fit into today's maintenance window, too.

This will also be done by switching DNS entries, so you should not experience any interruption nor do you need to change any configuration. However this may cause some temporary issues (e.g. delays) since it does involve new software versions as well as new authentication backends.

Update, 22:45: New webmail and incoming mail server seem to work fine, nearly all users already use the new service installation.

Mail Server Migration Part 2: Mailing Lists

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

On Thursday, 18th of February 2010, starting at 5pm there will be a mail service downtime for migrating the D-PHYS and FIRST mailing lists to the new mail server. During the downtime, no new mail can be sent or received and neither access to the mailing lists' web interface nor to the archive will be possible. E-mails sent to D-PHYS during the migration will be held back on the sender’s e-mail servers. Already received mail will be still accessible via IMAP or POP3. Update 9pm: Mailing lists moved to lists.phys.ethz.ch, everything should work fine again.

Together with the mailing list migration, there will come a policy change with regards to mailing lists:

All future mailing lists will be only "@lists.phys.ethz.ch" instead of "@phys.ethz.ch" as before.

Already existing mailing lists will be reachable under both, old "@phys.ethz.ch" or "@first.ethz.ch" as well as new "@lists.phys.ethz.ch" addresses.
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Unexpected Mail and Xen Server Downtimes

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

At around 8am we noticed (different) hardware issues with our SMTP server wiggis as well with one of our Xen hosting servers. This also affected the IDL license server. The problems have been temporarily solved and since approx. 10:30am both systems are working again as before. Expect though maintenance downtimes for those services within the next week.

Maintenance Downtime of Mailserver on Monday late afternoon

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

To prepare the next big step in our migration to the new mail server we will have a minor maintenance downtime of our SMTP server on Monday, the 1st of February 2010, starting on 5pm. During the downtime it won't be possible to send or receive new mails via SMTP nor will it be possible to use the mailing lists administrative interface. Mails sent to the Department of Physics during the downtime will be held back on the sending side and will be received afterwards. Mails already stored on our IMAP or POP3 server are accessible during the downtime though. Update, 17:25: Everything back to normal again.