01-Jun-2021

Campus network outages: Saturday, 05-Jun-2021 and Sunday, 06-Jun-2021 [CIT]

This weekend, on both Saturday, 05-Jun-2021, and Sunday, 06-Jun-2021, between 4:00 AM and 7:00 AM on each day, there will be a 10-minute campus network outage in each building at CLASSE. During the Wilson Lab outages, CLASSE computing resources will be unreachable from off-site, including (but not limited to): remote access to on-site CLASSE computers (via SSH, NoMachine, X2Go, ScreenConnect, etc.), VPN, wiki, and websites. For more information on the outages, please see here and here.

New Windows VPN Installation

In preparation for a future Windows VPN migration, we have installed a new VPN application known as Pritunl (pronounced Pre-Tunnel) on CLASSE-managed Windows computers. As a result, the Pritunl icon will appear on the desktop of Windows CLASSE Managed computers. Instructions for using Pritunl from CLASSE-managed and personal computers are available at ClasseVPN, but for now the existing CLASSE OpenVPN remains available. For enhanced security, our Pritunl deployment includes two-step login via Duo, which should be familiar to Cornell users (although a separate CLASSE registration will be required).

Firefox Deprecation and User Installations (Windows)

As previously announced, Vivaldi is the primary web browser on CLASSE computers, and Firefox is now deprecated. Windows users who wish to continue using Firefox may replace the CLASSE version of Firefox with a user-installed version by following these instructions. On Tuesday, 13-Jul-2021, we are planning to uninstall the CLASSE version of Firefox from CLASSE-managed Windows computers. There are no plans for uninstalling Firefox from CLASSE Linux or Mac computers at this time. Please submit a ServiceRequest with any questions or concerns. In particular, please notify us of any job-related websites that still require Firefox, so that we can attempt to reproduce your problem and work towards a solution.

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General network and server maintenance will occur every Tuesday from 12:00 noon to 2:00 PM. The CLASSE-IT group will always announce any expected disruptions in our NewsLetter and via CLASSE-IT-NEWS-L, but with the size and complexity of our network there is always the potential for something to go wrong. We will do our best to contain all network maintenance and planned outages to Tuesdays from 12:00 noon to 2:00 PM.

Unless other arrangements have been made, CLASSE-managed Windows systems may be updated and rebooted on Tuesday morning at 2:00 AM, so please avoid critical or lengthy operations at that time. For more details, please see SystemExpectations.

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Questions or problems? Submit a service request.

Other resources:

• CLASSE IT Home Page
• Previous newsletters

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