Snippets:Notice Templates

Templates to use for the Notices page. Copy the appropriate code into Notices, and then change the info as needed within the Notices page. Removed from Notices when completed.

Planned JHU Service Outages TEMPLATES

Template JHU Service Outage

Planned JHU outage with Malone Hall

• WHEN: Friday, March 10, starting around 11am and lasting until completed
• WHAT: Wi-Fi access point replacement

• DETAILS: JHU Networking will be swapping out all of the Hopkins-managed Malone Hall wifi access points in the building. They plan to start work around 11am that Friday, and they expect it could take 4 hours, more or less, to replace them all. During that time, wifi access might disappear and reappear. Additionally, when your wireless device tries to reconnect to the newly-replaced access point, you might be prompted to accept a certificate, and we were informed that you should do so.
  
  After the wifi outage, if you continue to have issues with your device, please contact JHU IT directly... Visit Wireless Networking for details on who to contact for assistance.

Template JHU Service Outage 2

JHU Networking has indicated they are testing power transfer equipment in Mason Hall that will affect several buildings, including Malone and Hackerman. They will be cycling power to the buildings, perhaps several times. They expect their outages to be < 10 seconds each.

Our CS IT servers that provide you most of our IT services should remain up and running, since our servers have backup battery power. Unfortunately, the JHU network in the building does not. So, you will probably experience brief network interruptions when the power is cycled by Facilities. And each time the power is out, CS services that you interact with (email, web, home directories, etc.) will be inaccessible due to the building's network being unavailable during the outage times.

Faculty who run their own servers in the CS Server Room (MH G-29), please note that if you do not have UPS units in your racks (and most of you do not), you can expect your systems will power cycle each time Facilities cycles power in Malone Hall. Please be aware. PhD students who maintain those systems (and perhaps other systems in the building), please keep that in mind as well.

The CS computing labs' systems (currently, for the summer, all located in G-61), those computers are not on UPS systems, so those computers will power cycle and should boot back up on their own. But, if you're planning to use our lab systems, because they might go up and down several times during the electrical work time period, you might not want to do your school work on those systems during that time.

Planned JHU Outage 3. BGE Outage

JHU Facilities is preparing for BGE to test electrical equipment that affects several Homewood buildings. They will be performing this test on Saturday evening, June 26 at 8pm. If you recall, back on May 6, there was a very short power outage that affected our building and others. The testing BGE will be doing is part of their troubleshooting what happened in May.

In the case of the upcoming 6/26 testing, there is a potential for another short power outage (1 to 2 minutes) that evening.

A short outage of this type will affect our CS servers and IT services in the following way: Although our servers should physically stay running, as they are on battery-backed equipment, because our services require network connections that are controlled by JHU (and not on battery backup), all of our CS IT services will be unavailable during the expected brief outage.

Once the power returns, our services should be available again, because the network should be available again.

Also, if there is indeed an outage, the CS Grad and Undergrad Lab systems (that currently, you can only access remotely) will power off. However, when power is restored, those lab systems should automatically reboot.

Other notes: WiFi and other networking in the building would be unavailable during the outage. Most likely, lights would be unavailable. My group does not maintain J-Card systems, so we do not know how the J-Card readers will perform during a power outage.

For your own equipment, whether it be in your office or the server room, please prepare as for any other planned power outage.

If there are additional details that we hear of, we will update here.

UNPLANNED JHU SERVICE OUTAGES TEMPLATES

9/29/23 MAJOR JHU email outage and delays

JHU is experiencing email issues with it's @jhu.edu mail services due to a global outage at Cisco. This affects both incoming and outgoing email messages to external recipients. It also impacts systems that send email through JHU's email gateways. Expect major mail delays until this is fixed. (We suspect that those with @jhu.edu addresses can still send and receive to others with @jhu.edu addresses.)

UPDATE: JHU has implemented a work-around to the email problem, and email delivery has returned to normal.

CS IT SERVICE OUTAGES (Unplanned & Planned) TEMPLATES

Printer Unavailable

Issue with MH-122's MH122PRT printer

• WHEN: Started Aug 15, 2022 around 7am
• WHAT: The HP printer in MH-122, mh122prt, is down due to a fuser error. Service has been called.

• DETAILS: In the meantime, please use the printer in MH-G61, mhG61prt.
  
  Other available printers can be found at: Available Printers

Phishing TEMPLATE

PHISHING EMAIL AND OTHER ACCOUNT ISSUES!

5/5/20: We are currently receiving a large number of phishing emails directed at the CS Department. If you receive an email with links in it and have any doubts about the email, do not click the link. You do not need to send the emails to us at this time, as we are actively tracking the situation.

Also...

Because of these phishing attacks, if you've followed the phishing links and provided your account credentials to others, and then find you are unable to login to your CS account get your CS email, then, please see our password reset procedures. If your CS email account has been disabled, and you need you need to contact us, you will need an alternate non-CS email address to do so. Also, if you did follow a phishing link and enter your account credentials and then realize what happened, please email support@cs.jhu.edu right away, and let us know.

PLANNED CS IT SERVICE OUTAGES - TEMPLATES

TEMPLATE - MAJOR OUTAGE RTFM

OUTAGE: MAJOR CS IT SERVICES OUTAGE

WHAT: Most CS IT Grad Net services will be unavailable due to file server maintenance.

WHEN: Thursday, August 15, 4am to 7am.

UPDATE: As of 5:30 am, all services have been restored. If you encounter any problems, please email us at support@cs.jhu.edu and let us know.

DETAILS: We will be performing upgrade maintenance on our servers, including the department's main file server (named "rtfm") that services the Grad Net (affecting all Faculty, staff, instructors, and CS grad students), and will require downtime for several major CS IT services. The affected IT services will be unavailable on Thursday morning, August 15, from 4am to 7am. Please see below for the list of affected services.

CS IT Services That Will Not Be Available During The System Maintenance:

• 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 CS mail will not be available to Grad Net users, but since CS Ugrads can send through the JHU mail server, CS Ugrads might still be able to send email during the services outage (just not one of our lab computers or compute servers.)

• IMAP, POP, and webmail (for both Grad/Research and Ugrad accounts) will be unavailable.

• No locally-stored CS webpages will be available. The main CS website (run by WSE) may or may not remain accessible. If you have a personal or lab CS page that we maintain locally in the dept, those will be unavailable. The CS IT Support Wiki and its Notices page will remain available.

• The CS staff documentation website will be unavailable.

• All CS Linux user accounts and home directories will be inaccessible during the service outage.

• ssh service to our Linux clients (masters1 through masters16, ugrad1 through ugrad24, gradx, ugradx, gradz, and ugradz) will be unavailable.

• Console (desktop) access at any of our Masters Lab Linux client systems will be unavailable.

• 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 will be unavailable.

TEMPLATE - File Server Maintenance Outage (compare with earlier RTFM one)

Planned outage with most CS IT services

• WHEN: Tuesday, December 27, 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
• WHAT: Most CS IT services will be unavailable due to file server maintenance.

• DETAILS: We will be performing maintenance on our several of servers. This will require downtime for several major CS IT services. The affected IT services will be unavailable on the morning of Tuesday, December 27, starting at 9:00 am. Most services should be restored before 10:00 am, but services depending on the ugrad file server will remain unavailable for longer. Please see below for the list of affected services.
  
  CS IT Services That Will Not Be Available During The System Maintenance:
  

  • CS mail service, both incoming and outgoing, will be suspended for CS Grad/Research Net users. 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 CS mail will not be available to Grad Net users. CS ugrads can send through the JHU mail server, which will remain available. We expect mail service to be restored by 10:00 am, but see below about mail retrieval for ugrad accounts.
  • IMAP, POP, and webmail (for both Grad/Research and Ugrad accounts) will be unavailable. We expect Grad Net email to be full operational by 10:00 am. Ugrad IMAP, POP, and webmail should be available by 12:00 pm.
  • No locally-stored CS webpages will be available. The main CS website (run by WSE) will remain available, but some individual pages may fail to load. Personal webpages (both grad and ugrad) will not load. Other websites hosted by us for department affiliates (e.g. lab websites) will be unavailable. The CS IT Support Wiki and its Notices page will remain available. We expect all service interruptions for the main webserver (www.cs.jhu.edu) and hosted websites to be completed before 10:00 am. Ugrad personal webpages should be available again by 12:00 pm.
  • Grad/Research Net and Ugrad Net user accounts and home directories will be inaccessible during the services outage. We expect Grad Net services to be restored by 10:00 am and Ugrad Net services by 12:00 pm.
  • 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. We expect Grad Net services to be restored by 10:00 am and Ugrad Net services by 12:00 pm.
  • Console (desktop) access at any of our lab Linux client systems will be unavailable. We expect Grad Net systems to be available again by 10:00 am and Ugrad Net systems by 12:00 pm.
  • SMB (Samba) file shares (the CS office staff and some others use these) will be unavailable. We expect them to be available again by 10:00 am.
  • MySQL service via the mysql.cs.jhu.edu server and the dbase.cs.jhu.edu server will be unavailable. We expect mysql.cs.jhu.edu to be available by 10:00am and dbase.cs.jhu.edu by 12:00 pm.

TEMPLATE - Major Malone Power Outage

Major Malone Power Outage Planned (Affecting CS IT Services) - Saturday, March 30 from 6am to 2:30pm (CS IT Services Outage before and after Power Outage as well)

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

WHEN: Power Outage - Saturday, March 30, 2024, starting at 6am and running until 2:30pm (so, roughly, 8.5 hours.)

Loss of CS IT services - Saturday, March 30, 2024, starting at 5am (one hour before the power outage) and lasting until 4:30pm (two hours after the power outage is completed.)

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

The actual power outage is planned to start at 6am, Saturday morning, March 30,, and will continue for approximately an 8.5 hours. 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 that morning around 5am. And although the power to the building should restored around 2:30pm that same day, we will not have all our systems back up and running until approx. 4:30pm, 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, keep in mind the expected length of the outage (8 hours) and plan for a longer period of time, just to be safe. 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 in Malone Hall, 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 (served at an off-site facility):

https://csstatus.jhu.edu We will update that page soon with this information.

(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 do so after the outage, we'll also make this Notices page available again.

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

• DNS resolution (hostname lookups) for all cs.jhu.edu hostnames will be unavailable. This will affect all websites with cs.jhu.edu domain names, even if the website is hosted by someone other than the CS department.

• 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 mail server, CS Ugrads might still be able to send email during the outage (just not from a Malone Hall–based computer.)
  • IMAP, POP, and webmail (for both Grad/Research and Ugrad accounts) will be unavailable.

• 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.

• 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 therefore not be available.

TEMPLATE - Lab Systems Upgrade Schedule

OUTAGE: CS Linux Lab Systems Downtime/Upgrade Schedule

WHEN: Monday, August 19 through Friday, August 23

WHAT: Subsets of the CS Linux clients will be down for upgrades over the course of the week.

DETAILS: In prepping for the new semester, we will be upgrading the CS Dept's Linux clients (our lab systems and others that are remotely-accessible-only) from Fedora 38 to Fedora 40. This will require having the clients offline during the upgrades. We'll do this in stages, so there will always be some clients available at all times.

The upgrade schedule for these systems will be as follows:

• On Monday, August 19, ugrad1 through ugrad12 (in MH 122) will be upgraded.

• On Tuesday, August 20, ugrad13 through ugrad24 and masters1 through masters16 (in MH G61) will be upgraded.

• On Wednesday, August 21, ugradz and gradz (remotely-accessible only) will be upgraded.

• On Thursday, August 22, ugradx and gradx (remotely-accessible only) will be upgraded.

• On Friday. August 23, any systems that had to be skipped during the previous days will be upgraded. Our Notices page will have information about any such systems.

TEMPLATE - VM Server (vmserver) Shutdown

WHAT: The dept's Virtual Machine will be shutdown.

WHEN: Wednesday, January 11 from 6am to 3pm (or earlier)

We need to do some work on the VM server and will be taking it down during the above date and time.

As part of the shutdown process, we will suspend most or all of the VMs; some VMs might have to be shutdown all the way instead. And when the VM server is back up and running again, we will restart or unsuspend all VMs. In all cases, VM owner intervention should not be needed; we can handle this remotely.

After the VM server is up and running again, VM owners will receive an announcement (and updates will be posted here), and, we do ask that VM owners check to make sure their VMs are running as expected. Please email support@cs.jhu.edu if there are issues.

TEMPLATE - Barley/Ugrad server outage

OUTAGE: MAJOR CS UGRAD NET IT SERVICES OUTAGE

WHAT: Most CS IT Ugrad Net services will be unavailable due to file server maintenance.

WHEN: Wednesday, September 18, from 5am to 8am.

DETAILS: We will be performing a required upgrade on our Ugrad Net's file server that affects all our CS Ugrad Linux systems including all those in the CS Ugrad Labs, the Ugrad compute servers (including ugradx and ugradz) and some additional CS Ugrad IT services (and will ultimately affect CS Ugrad students and their instructors who use those systems.)

The affected IT services will be unavailable on Wednesday morning, September 18, from 5am to 8am. Please see below for the list of affected services.

CS IT Services That Will Not Be Available During The File Server Upgrade:

• CS Ugrad Mail service, both incoming and outgoing, will not function properly during the outage. Incoming mail should be queued during the maintenance window and should be delivered when service has been restored.

• CS Ugrad Net webpages will be unavailable.

• CS Ugrad Net user accounts/home directories will be inaccessible during the downtime.

• ssh service to our CS Ugrad Net Linux boxes (ugrad1 through ugrad24, ugradx, and ugradz) will be unavailable.

• Console (desktop) access to ugrad1 through ugrad24 will be unavailable.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are logged into a Ugrad Net Linux system after the server upgrade window begins, the Linux system you're on will be shut down and you could lose your active data, so please do not be logged in during the times listed above.

• MySQL service via the dbase.cs.jhu.edu server (Dr. Yarowsky's class) will be unavailable.

If there are any unexpected complications during the reboot process that will delay the restoration of services, we will update this Notices page.

Signs are posted outside the labs announcing this outage.

TEMPLATE - Specific Client Shutdown

WHAT: ugradz.cs.jhu.edu (one of our CS Dept Linux Ugrad Net compute servers) will go down for a memory upgrade.

WHEN: Thursday, April 6, from 9am to 11am.

DETAILS: ugradz will be taken offline so that its memory can be upgraded. While ugradz is down for its memory upgrade, you can still access our other Ugrad Net Fedora 25 systems (ugrad1 through ugrad24 and ugradx.) Info about our Fedora systems can be found at: https://support.cs.jhu.edu/wiki/Category:Linux_Clients

Please make sure you are logged off of ugradz before the upgrade time.

Any updates will be posted here.

CS Lab Availability TEMPLATES

TEMPLATE - MH 122 Closed for HLTCOE Workshop

WHAT: MH 122 (and its breakout rooms) will be closed for due to a Human Language Technology Center of Excellence (HLTCOE) workshop being held there.

WHEN: Monday, Jan 8 through Friday, Jan 19, 2024.

NOTES:

• The G-61 Masters/Ugrad Lab will remain open and available during this time period. The G-61 printer will remain available as well.
• The MH 122 Linux systems, ugrad1 through ugrad12, will continue to be available, but only remotely via ssh. Please see our page on: Linux_Clients_on_the_CS_Undergrad_Net

TEMPLATE MH-122 Closed for CLSP Workshop

MH 122 UNAVAILABILITY

WHAT: MH 122 (and its breakout rooms) will be closed for the summer due to a CLSP workshop being held there.

WHEN: Wednesday, June 5 through Monday, August 5. On Tuesday, August 6, the room becomes available to CS again, with ugrad1 through ugrad12 and the lab's printer returning to the room on sometime during August 6 and August 7.

NOTES:

• The MH 122 Linux systems, ugrad1 through ugrad12, will continue to be available, but only remotely via ssh until they are moved back into MH-122 sometime during the Tues Aug 6 and/or Wed, Augu 7. There will be some downtime for those systems on 8/6 and/or 8/7 as the systems are transferredback to MH 122. Please see our page on: Linux_Clients_on_the_CS_Undergrad_Net https://support.cs.jhu.edu/wiki/Linux_Clients_on_the_CS_Undergrad_Net for a list of our remotely-available Ugrad Linux systems.

• The printer in MH 122 will be unavailable during this time, but it too should be back in MH-122 on 8/6 or 8/7.

• The G61 Masters/Ugrad Lab will remain open and available during the summer, and its Linux systems will be available for in-person and remote work, as usual. The G61 printer will remain available as well.

Malone MH 122 and G61 Ugrad and Masters Labs Closure

WHAT: Malone Hall MH 122 and Malone Hall G61, both the Masters and Ugrad sides of the lab, and all the lab Linux computers, will be closed to CS students due to an ACM Programming Contest.

WHEN: Starting Friday evening, Feb 23, 5pm through Saturday, February 24, 9pm.

DETAILS:

Both the MH 122 and G61 Masters and Ugrad Labs will be used for an ACM Programming Contest and will therefore be closed to those not participating in the contest.

Additionally, all of the labs' Linux computers (grad1 through grad16 and ugrad1 through ugrad24) will be unavailable during the time period referenced above.

• During the lab closure times, compute servers, gradx.cs.jhu.edu, gradz.cs.jhu.edu, ugradx.cs.jhu.ed, and ugradz.cs.jhu.edu will continue to be available remotely, via SSH.

• We have to take down the lab systems late that Friday afternoon. At the end of the ACM contest that Saturday night, the coordinators of that contest will be turning our lab computer systems back on. Most should boot normally. But, if some do not, just trying using an alternate one in the lab. We'll be back in the Monday afterwards and can check on any systems that didn't boot normally. (And don't forget, as mentioned above our compute servers -- gradx, gradz, ugradx, ugradz -- will continue to be remotely available, even if the lab systems are not.)

• The printers in MH 122 and MH G61 will remain online, but, please pick up your printouts outside of the contest hours.

TEMPLATE - ACM Contest for G-61 Only

Malone G61 Masters Lab Closure

WHAT: Malone Hall G61, the Masters side only, will be closed to CS Masters students due to a local ACM Programming Contest.

WHEN: Saturday, February 4, from 1:30pm to 7pm.

DETAILS:

The G61 Masters side of the lab will be used for an ACM Programming Contest and will therefore be closed for non-contest use during the 1:30 to 7pm time period on Feb. 4. The Ugrad side will be unaffected, and Ugrad students may enter through the Master's side of the lab to get to the Undergrad side of the lab.

During the Masters lab closure times, the Masters computers in G61 will continue to be available remotely, via SSH.

Please see our Labs page for further information about our labs.

Malone G61 Masters Lab/Ugrad Lab Closure

WHAT: Malone Hall G61, both the Masters and Ugrad sides of the lab, will be closed to CS students due to the ACM Programming Contest.

WHEN: Saturday, February 26, from 11am to 7pm.

DETAILS:

The G61 Masters and Ugrad Labs will be used for an ACM Programming Contest and will therefore be closed for non-contest use during the 11am to 7pm time period on Feb. 26.

• During the lab closure times, the Masters and Ugrad Linux computers in G61 will continue to be available remotely, via SSH.

• Ugrad Lab, MH 122 will not be affected and will remain open during this time