March 8, 2011.
Today's topics:
Windows 7 SP1 has been released
- This past Wednesday, Microsoft officially announced the availability of Service Pack 1 for Windows 7. It only provides bug fixes and no new functionality. We will evaluate it over the next few weeks before we decide on a schedule to update the Lab's Windows 7 computers.
- The Service Pack is available to personally owned computers through the automatic Windows Update service. Make sure you backup all critical files to external storage before you apply the update to your home computer(s).
64-bit SL5 Farm Nodes
The first 64-bit Scientific Linux 5 farm nodes are now available. Jobs submitted using the
lx24-amd64 architecture will run on a 64-bit SL5 node, while jobs submitted using the
lx24-x86 architecture will be run on 32-bit SL4 nodes. Please note that for historical reasons all 64-bit queues appear as "lx24-amd64", regardless of whether they use Intel or AMD CPU's. In general, all LEPP batch nodes use Intel processors.
For more information on submitting batch jobs at LEPP, Please see
https://wiki.lepp.cornell.edu/lepp/bin/view/Computing/GridEngine . For more information on using 64-bit SL5, please see
https://wiki.lepp.cornell.edu/lepp/bin/view/Computing/ScientificLinux5 and
https://wiki.lepp.cornell.edu/lepp/bin/view/Computing/Lnx64Bit.
Reminder: University Confidential Data Cleanup Mandate
We all must develop good habits and clean up, remove, or secure confidential data on our computers and in our workplace. Officially, Cornell employees are all required to comply with the university's new "Data Cleanup and Inventory Initiative." Please see
https://wiki.lepp.cornell.edu/lepp/bin/view/Computing/DataStewardship for more information.
To aid in the process of searching for confidential data, Identity Finder is available for Windows and Mac OS X, and Find_SSNs is available for Linux. Please see the following links for more informaiton on using these tools.
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.
Other resources: