Notices

CS IT STAFF AVAILABILITY

Beginning Fall semester, 2021,...

• The CS IT Support staff will be back in Malone Hall. Our group will be working a hybrid schedule with some of us working remotely on certain days, while others of our team will be on campus.
• We will continue being available M-F, 8:30 to 5pm, but there may be certain times we might be online only.
• Therefore, please remember to email support@cs.jhu.edu for assistance.
• Also, please have Zoom available on your device(s), so that we can arrange to contact you using that method, as an alternative to in-person communication.
• For the time being, Steve DeBlasio, our accounts liaison, is providing a virtual version of his daily office hours for accounts, etc. Email support@cs.jhu.edu for details.

CS IT SERVICE OUTAGES

UNPLANNED CS IT SERVICE OUTAGES

Issue with Grad Net Self-Service File Recovery

• WHEN: Started around October 30, 2020
• WHAT: Intermittent errors while using self-service recovery

• DETAILS: The /users/backup directory used for Self-Service File Recovery on the CS Grad Net Linux clients may be sporadically unavailable, due to a software bug. Although you may still attempt the self-service recovery, until further notice, if you need a file restored and are having issues accessing the /users/backups directory, please request restoration from our offline backups.
  
  We are working on getting a fix for it, but it might be some time before that fix is available.
  
  NOTE: Self-Service File Recovery continues to be available on the CS Ugrad Net.

PLANNED CS IT SERVICE OUTAGES

Major Malone Power Outage Planned, Affecting CS IT Service - October 23, 2021

WHAT: There will be no CS IT computing services available during an upcoming major power outage for ALL of Malone Hall.

WHEN: Saturday, October 23, 2021, all day, from 6am until sometime after 10pm.

DESCRIPTION: JHU is planning an all-day power outage for Malone Hall. As such, all of our computing services will be unavailable during that time.

The actual power outage is planned to start at 7am and end at 8pm Saturday, October 23. However, we need to safely bring down our computer servers and clients earlier than that (before the power goes out.) We plan to bring our systems down around 6am that morning. And although the power should be up around 8pm, we will not have all our systems back up and running until approx. 10pm, so plan on about 2 hours after the power outage is deemed over until our servers and services are available again.

Please read all of the notes below regarding Malone Hall Residents, CS Server Room users, and a list of the CS IT services that will be unavailable during the outage.

NOTES TO MALONE HALL RESIDENTS: During the time of the outage, we're assuming most building lights will be out and the J-Card system might be out too. That might make it more difficult to get into the building during the outage. But with the power out, we're not sure how much need there will be for anyone to be in the building during that time anyway. If you have an office refrigerator, expect that to be out too. If you are counting on your UPS (battery-backup) systems to continue powering your office equipment, please realize that this is an expected over-12-hour outage. And keep in mind that your office phones may be inoperable during the outage. So please plan in advance for this outage.

NOTE TO CS SERVER ROOM (MH G-29) SERVER OWNERS: Our server room will be out of power, so our servers will be unavailable. If you host servers in the server room, your servers will be down as well. Plan ahead of time to shut down and to bring back up your servers. Your group is responsible for any systems you choose to shut down before the outage or boot back up after the outage.

Tracking Our CS IT Services Status Updates During The Outage

Because we will not have power to our servers, the CS IT Support Wiki, and especially this Notices page ( https://support.cs.jhu.edu/wiki/Notices )will be unavailable during the outage. Instead, during the outage, we have arranged for status updates to be available at the following website:

https://csstatus.jhu.edu

(Bookmark that link ahead of time, in case you can't access your CS mail during the outage.)

As soon as we're able to after the outage, we'll also make this Notices page available again.

CS IT Services Unavailable During The Power Outage Include...

• CS DNS-based lookups (hostname lookups) will be unavailable.

• CS Mail service, both incoming and outgoing, will be suspended for CS Grad/Research Net users. And some CS email services will not be available for CS Ugrad Net users.

• Incoming mail should be queued by the sender until our mail service is back up again. Outgoing mail will not be available.

• Outgoing CS mail will not be available to Grad Net users, but since CS Ugrads can send through the JHU webserver, CS Ugrads might still be able to send email during the outage (just not from a Malone Hall-based computer.)

• IMAP, POP, and Webmail from our CS (Grad/Research Net) Mail server will be unavailable. Although CS Ugrads can send CS email through the JHU mail server, their @cs.jhu.edu incoming mail arrives at CS, so CS Ugrads will not be able to see their incoming email.

• No CS webpages will be available. This includes the main CS website. And, as mentioned above... because we will not have power to our servers, the CS IT Support Wiki, and especially its Notices page will be unavailable during the outage. Please refer to https://csstatus.jhu.edu for status updates during the outage.

• Grad/Research Net and Ugrad Net user accounts and home directories will be inaccessible during the power outage.

• ssh service to our CS Grad/Research Net & Ugrad Net Linux boxes (masters1 through masters16, ugrad1 through ugrad24, gradx, gradz, ugradx, and ugradz) will be unavailable.

• Console (desktop) access at any of our lab Linux client systems will be unavailable (But, our CS labs remain closed for now, so there should not be any direct console access anyway.)

• SMB (SAMBA) File Shares (the CS Office Staff and some others use these) will be unavailable.

• MySQL service via the mysql.cs.jhu.edu server and through the dbase.cs.jhu.edu server will be unavailable.

• Network switches in the building will be without power, so no network connections in Malone Hall.

• Wifi access points in Malone Hall will be without power, and will not be available.

CS COMPUTING LAB AVAILABILITY

UPDATE - July 19, 2021 - The CS Computing Labs are once again available for in-person access...

MH-122 (CS Undergrad Lab/Collaboration room): Is now available for in-person access.

All CS Linux systems in that room (ugrad1 through ugrad12) are available for use in-person or remotely, via ssh. Masks are required for entry.

G-61 (CS Masters/Ugrad Labs): Is now available for in-person access.

The Linux systems in this lab area (masters1 through masters16 and ugrad13 through ugrad24) are available for use in-person or remotely, via ssh. Masks are required for entry.

Please see our Labs page for further information.

AUDIO/VISUAL (A/V) OUTAGES

None at this time.