February 9th, 2015

Today's topics:

CLASSE Managed Computers: Flash updates

Adobe has had many updates in the last two weeks. Each time there is an update, Mozilla will block access to Flash in Firefox. This can affect web videos playing. Sometimes, you can work around this issue by clicking on “Allow” in a toolbar Firefox will display at the top of the web page. For detailed information about the security patch, please see https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash-player/apsb15-04.html

We are working to process Flash Updates during our normal update cycle on each Monday night. This can lead to a delay between an unannounced and unplanned update and our ability to push the update to CLASSE Managed systems.

Flash update on CLASSE Managed Windows computers tonight

We are pushing the latest FLASH update as of 2/4/2015 today, 2/9/2015 to our Windows computers.

Linux Adobe Flash Firefox Plugin Security update on Tuesday 10-Feb-2015

The patched Adobe Flash Firefox Plugin Security update (version 11.2.202.442) will be pushed to all CLASSE Linux SL6 systems on Tuesday 10-Feb-2015.

TotalView Debugger Update on Tuesday 10-Feb-2015

TotalView is being updated to version 8.15.0-15 and will be the default version on all CLASSE Linux systems (both CESR and off-line). The TotalView Documentation wiki will be updated in the afternoon of Tuesday, 10-Feb-2015. Please see our Linux TotalView wiki for information about using TotalView on a CLASSE Linux system.

Bogus Phishing messages from "helpdesk0" and "help.desk@alumni.com"

If you responded to or clicked on a link in recent messages claiming to be from "helpdesk0@cornell.edu" or "help.desk@alumni.com", contact Cornell's HelpDesk at 607-255-5500. You need to change the password associated with your NetID immediately. Those messages are what's known as "Phishing" messages. They're attempting to obtain your Netid and password for illicit use. Nobody legitimate will ever ask for your password in email.

More information about those messages is available at http://www.it.cornell.edu/security/phishbowl.cfm

A Flash video explaining Phishing messages is available at Email Phishing 101

Changes to the ACC Build System enviromental set up file, acc_vars.sh, on Tuesday 10-Feb-2015

• To work better with the CLASSE Compute Farm, the soft stack ulimit in acc_vars.sh will be lowered to 10240K. This will avoid errors when sourcing the ACC Build System environment to execute ACC binaries on the CLASSE Compute Farm. It also will conserve resources when multiple large jobs are queued on the same Farm node.

• To assist users in running the appropriate TotalView binary, the path to the TotalView binary will now be included in the PATH variable defined in acc_vars.sh. The path will be set based on whether the user is logged into a CESR system or an off-line system.

Announcing the CLASSE Computer Group Blog!

The CLASSE Computer Group has started a blog. It will include occasional discussions of ongoing CLASSE computing projects, suggestions for home digital devices, and other topics of general interest.

See: http://blogs.cornell.edu/classeit/

More details are available at http://blogs.cornell.edu/classeit/2015/01/30/welcome-to-the-classe-computer-group-blog/

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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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