December 21, 2015

Today's topics:

Major milestone reached: 40,000 tickets!

Well, it took us almost 16 years, but on December 16, 2015, we received our 40,000th service request ticket. That's over 2,500 tickets annually. Thanks to everyone who has participated over the years!

For tips on using our ticketing system and a reminder of why we need it in the first place, please see ServiceRequestTips.

As always, we read our email over holiday breaks, so please don't hesitate to contact us with any problems or questions during that time (service-classe@cornell.edu or ServiceRequest). Happy holidays to all!

Network Maintenance - 10:30am Tuesday 12/22

At 10:30am Tuesday 12/22, several switches will be reconfigured to optimize performance and reliability in our environment. From our tests and understanding of the steps required, this should be transparent and there should be no disruption or outage.

CHESS_AUXILIARY Maintenance - 11:00am Tuesday, 12/22

From approximately 11-11:30am Tuesday, 12/22, the CHESS_AUXILIARY file system will be unavailable. This is required to free up space and allow us to expand the main CHESS_DAQ file system before the next cycle. Any clients mounting the CHESS_AUXILIARY file system over NFS will need to unmount and remount the file system after this maintenance.

In addition, at this time we will remove the \\chesssamba\aux mount point - forcing everyone to use \\chesssamba\auxiliary. Microsoft applications, both on Windows and on OS X, will not work when the filesystem is mounted using "aux" instead of "auxiliary."

Powering Down Your Computer (Winter holiday, December 25, 2015 - January 3, 2016)

As in recent years, the CLASSE computer group is making the following recommendations for the holiday period from December 25, 2015, through January 3, 2016:

1. If you will be leaving for the holidays and have a desktop computer used only by yourself in Wilson, Newman or the Physical Sciences Building, please do a "graceful shutdown" of your computer before you leave.
2. Of course, if you expect to use your desktop computer from a remote location, then you should turn off only its display and not the computer itself.
3. Turn off only your computer's display if you will be away from your computer only for a night or weekend. Do not turn off the computer itself. Leaving it on makes it possible to install software patches and security updates while the computer is unattended.
4. Please use a blank screen saver when your computer is idle. Dynamic screen-savers increase power consumption and do not further the goals of the Lab.

If you have any questions about these recommendations, please contact the CLASSE IT group.

CLASSE Managed Windows computers Firefox update

• Firefox is being updated to ESR38.5.0 tonight.

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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 (or email service-classe@cornell.edu).

Other resources:

• CLASSE-IT Home Page
• Previous newsletters

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