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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Today we are pleased to announce the D-PHYS eGroupware collaborative calendar solution http://groupware.phys.ethz.ch. We have put a lot of effort into the task of finding a groupware package that works with as many different clients as possible and offers the widest range of features. So if a synchronized calendar service could be interesting for you, give it a shot. Please also consult our readme detailing the different sync solutions.

If you're still using our much older https://webcal.phys.ethz.ch/, please move on to eGroupware as soon as possible. This service will eventually be discontinued.

Our managed workstations (especially the ones running Linux) feature a very wide range of software packages. Most of these programs are supplied directly by the distribution (Debian, Ubuntu), but some others (most of them proprietarily licensed) have to be manually maintained by us. Sometimes, upgrading one of these software packages to a new major release might cause problems for expert users of that program - for instance if they rely on a function specific to one version. In order to prepare those pro users for upcoming major upgrades, we have created a new mailing list on which we'll announce these updates.

So if you're heavily using programs like Maple, Matlab, Mathematica, IDL, the Intel C and Fortran compilers or DS9, please go to

https://lists.phys.ethz.ch/listinfo/software-updates

and subscribe to this mailing list.

A firmware update on the RAID controller of our file server requires a reboot of this server. We schedule the reboot on Wednesday August 4, at 22:00. The downtime should take no more than 30 min. Please make sure all your data has been saved at that point.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Update, 22:20: The server has rebooted and everything should work again.

On Monday, August 2nd, starting at 18:00, we need to modify our LDAP user database to incorporate structural changes needed for a new service we're currently setting up. This will cause a downtime of about 1 h, probably even shorter, that will affect user logins, email and file server access. We will post an update when things are back to normal. Update, 18:30: Things are now back to normal. 🙂

We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this service interruption might cause.

On Monday, August 2nd, starting at 07:00, our terminal server / computation nodes plempy, plompy and plumpy will be moved into the water-cooled racks in the HIT server room. This will cause a downtime of said machines of about 30 min. If your thin client connects to plompy or if you're performing calculations on plempy or plumpy, please make sure your data has been saved by Monday morning. After the move, the trio will enjoy the amenities of our most advanced server room that only another thunderstorm could disrupt.

Update Mon Aug 2 08:40 All servers have reached their final destination.

Our terminal server plimpy (uptime: 47 days) is slowly clogging up with runaway processes, eating up memory and CPU. Since we cannot tell apart good processes from bad ones, we schedule a maintenance reboot for the Weekend, Saturday night June 19th in order to give the system a fresh start. We ask all users to save their data and log out of their thin clients.

BTW: Users of second generation thin clients (named tc00xx) are kindly invited to test our new ubuntu based terminal server plompy. If you're interested to give it a try, please let us know and we will configure your client.

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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Because of performance problems on our Homefileserver we need to reboot the server tomorrow Wednesday, 28th of April 2010. This will cause a downtime between 07:00 and approximately 07:30.

This will result in a short service interruption for the home directories!

To protect you from losing or corrupting any of your files, it is best to close all open files on the home directories.

Update, 07:20: the homes are back...

Update, 09:45: various people experience login problems. We're working on it.

Update, Friday 10:00: problems resolved!

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.