Notices

Revision as of 13:44, 24 October 2021 by Steve410 (talk | contribs) (→‎PLANNED CS IT SERVICE OUTAGES)


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 & 24, 2021

UPDATE: 10/24/21 at 9:45am Unfortunately, BGE (the city's electric company) was delayed in restoring power to Malone Hall, so our service restoration was therefore delayed as well. But at this time, all networked CS services should be functioning properly again, with the exception of ugrad Linux clients ugrad1 through ugrad12. There appears to be a problem with the Malone 122 lab; no computers in that room can connect to the network. (The WiFi doesn’t work either.) JHU is looking into the networking problem.

WHAT: There will be no CS IT computing services available during an upcoming major power outage for ALL of Malone Hall.
WHEN: (RESCHEDULED FOR THIS NEW TIME-FRAME) Saturday, October 23, 2021, starting at 3pm and running until Sunday, October 24, 2021, sometime around 6am.
DESCRIPTION: JHU is planning an a power outage for Malone Hall, and all of our computing services will be unavailable during that time.
(REVISED TIMING) The actual power outage is now planned to start at 4pm, Saturday afternoon, October 23, and will continue overnight until Sunday morning, October 24 at 4am. 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 3pm that Saturday afternoon. And although the power should be up around 4am Sunday morning, we will not have all our systems back up and running until approx. 6am, so plan on about 2 hours after the power outage is deemed over until our servers and services are available again.
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 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
(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.



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.