Internal News

Ubuntu Linux Firefox update

Due to a security hole, Firefox needs to be updated on all Linux machines today. The updates will occur on all desktops between 5pm and 10pm today. There is no action required, but you might notice that you get error messages when browsing the web. In this case simply close all Firefox windows and restart Firefox again. That should clear all the problems.

Last updated by Waldemar Schlackow on Wed, 29/04/2009 - 5:15pm.
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Subnet move

We moving our services to a new address space. The following services can be affected:

Home directories on homes0 -- Mon, 16th March 13:00 until approximately 14:00
print0 -- Thu, 19th March 10:30 until approximately 11:30
VPN -- Thu, 19th March 13:00 until approximately 14:00
SOCRATES admissions system -- Thu, 19th March 17:00 until approximately 17:30
MINERVA class database -- Thu, 19th March 17:00 until approximately 17:30
tcc.maths.ox.ac.uk -- Thu, 19th March 17:00 until approximately 17:30
y2k.maths, roadsolutions.maths, sag.math -- Thu, 19th March 17:00 until approximately 17:30
webmail.maths.ox.ac.uk -- Fri, 20th March 10:00 until approximately 11:00
www.maths-in-medicine.org / mmsg.maths.ox.ac.uk -- Fri, 20th March 11:00 until approximately 12:00
rt.maths.ox.ac.uk / help [-at-] maths [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk -- Fri, 20th March 12:00 until approximately 13:00
www.maths.ox.ac.uk -- Fri, 20th March 13:00 until approximately 14:00
wiki.maths.ox.ac.uk -- Fri, 20th March 13:00 until approximately 14:00
people.maths.ox.ac.uk (www2) -- Fri, 20th March 14:00 until approximately 15:00
maths.ox.ac.uk mailserver (cheesecake) -- Thu, 25th March 10:30 until approximately 11:30

Successfully moved services are in green. If you still have any problems with services that are green, please email help [-at-] maths [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk.

We are trying to keep the downtimes as short as possible. If you have any queries please email help [-at-] maths [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk .

Last updated by Waldemar Schlackow on Mon, 30/03/2009 - 4:55pm.
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The 5th Oxford-Princeton Workshop on Financial Mathematics & Stochastic Analysis is held in Princeton, 27th-28th March 2008

Last updated by Waldemar Schlackow on Wed, 21/10/2009 - 7:16pm.
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Keble College - Research Fellow and Tutor in Logic

The College proposes to elect a Research Fellow and Tutor in Logic for a period of four years (fixed-term, non-renewable) from 1 October 2009. Scholars in receipt of another source of income, who would like a college association, are welcome to apply. The research interests of the person elected should include Logic or neighbouring areas of philosophy or mathematics, and there will be a requirement to teach Logic at undergraduate level. The teaching may be carried out in the joint school of Mathematics and Philosophy, and/or in any one of the other schools whose syllabus has a formal logic component. In addition the post holder may be involved in departmental class teaching. The teaching stint will be four hours per week averaged over the academic year. The Fellow may be asked to help in a limited way with the academic and pastoral organisation of the Philosophy side of the Mathematics and Philosophy joint school. Informal enquiries may be made to Dr Edward Harcourt at edward [dot] harcourt [-at-] keble [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk.

The Fellow will not be a member of the College Governing Body, but will be a full member of the Senior Common Room and be entitled to lunch and dinner at the Common Table as well as to an academic allowance of £464 p.a. and a student allowance of £217 p.a. (both current rates, reviewed annually). A shared teaching room will be available. The stipend for up to 4 hours of teaching per week averaged over the year will be £4,256 p.a. (current rate). In addition, a Fellow not in receipt of other significant financial support will receive a housing allowance of £4,018 p.a. (current rate). The Fellow will be eligible to join USS. Selection will be made on the basis of research potential and teaching ability.

The closing date for applications is 20 March 2009. Candidates should submit a curriculum vitae (including the names, addresses and telephone numbers of two referees) and a statement of their research activity and teaching experience to Mrs Trish Long, Warden's PA, Keble College, Oxford OX1 3PG (e-mail: trish [dot] long [-at-] keb [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk.), and should ask their referees to write directly to the Warden's PA by the same date.

Keble College is an Equal Opportunities employer committed to excellence in research and teaching.

Last updated by Matthew West on Thu, 26/02/2009 - 5:59pm.
This page is maintained by Waldemar Schlackow. Please use the contact form for feedback and comments.

University Matlab License Server Upgrade

Please see the announcement below from OUCS about changes to the matlab license server.

The MATLAB License server at OUCS is going to be upgraded on Tuesday 24th February. The old server will be switched off and replaced with a new server between 7:30 to 8:00.

If everything goes to plan, it is possible that you will not even notice the switch over. However, it is also possible that your MATLAB session will crash and you will loose all your work. For this reason, OUCS recommend that you do not use MATLAB in the period between 7:30 to 8:00.

The main reason for the upgrade is to introduce idle session time outs. Matlab will return all licenses to the server if it is unused for more than 4 hours. Please note that :-

A time out cannot occur while a program is running. For a time out to occur, MATLAB must be completely idle with no input and no calculations for 4 hours.

If your session times out, entering a new command will restart the session straight away. There will be a message in the MATLAB command window to tell you that the license has timed out. A new license will automatically be requested as soon as any activity is detected.

At the moment we are running out of Matlab licences on a regular basis. We hope that the time outs will reduce the load so that everybody that wants to use MATLAB can. Therefore, it is desirable that all sessions running on the old server are closed and restarted on the new server after 8:00.

Can you please make sure that all MATLAB sessions are terminated before 7:30 on Tuesday 24th February. If you do have a MATLAB session that is working through this period, can you please restart it as soon as possible.

Last updated by Keith A. Gillow on Tue, 17/02/2009 - 12:47pm.
This page is maintained by Keith A. Gillow. Please use the contact form for feedback and comments.

New Windows Terminal Server

A new Windows Terminal Server will be in place between the Wednesday and Thursday. An exact time of the update is not available as it depends on the internet provider of the end-user. The new Terminal Server will offer several innovations including:

16 CPU Cores
64GB of RAM
Windows 2008
64bit mathematical applications (Maple, Mathematica, Matlab)
Updated software for everyday use, as it is available on the new Windows desktops.
Visual Studio 2008

You will automatically be redirected to the new terminal server if you connect to

wts.maths.ox.ac.uk

The old Windows Terminal Server (pandora) will still be available as a backup for a short period of time on

wts1.maths.ox.ac.uk

Please note, that due to a limitation in the current version of the Linux Terminal Server Client (rdesktop) you need to select a normal RDP (as opposed to RDPv5) session when connecting to the new Terminal Server. We hope to resolve this issue in the near future.

Please send any feedback and comments to help [-at-] maths [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk

Last updated by Waldemar Schlackow on Wed, 04/02/2009 - 6:04pm.
This page is maintained by Waldemar Schlackow. Please use the contact form for feedback and comments.

New Subversion Farm

We are now offering a Subversion (SVN) service by maintaining a subversion farm. Subversion is a version control system and makes it possible for collaborators to share a codebase (for any type of plaintext files like program code, latex documents, etc).

Further details can be found on

http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/help/faqs/programming/subversion

Last updated by Waldemar Schlackow on Sat, 10/01/2009 - 12:25pm.
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Printserver update

In order to get the printing back into a transparent structure, the printserver print0 has been reinstalled today. In the first instance this should not affect anyone, but if it does, it will only affect people who have been using print0 in the past.

The idea is that print0 will become the main printserver for Linux and Windows users. Currently print0 is tested by several people across the department and is the recommended printserver for Laptops. If the test is successful, then we will be transferring everyone onto this printserver.

If you have any questions concerning this or are experiencing printing problems, please email help [-at-] maths [dot] ox [dot] ac [dot] uk .

Last updated by Waldemar Schlackow on Tue, 16/12/2008 - 6:07pm.
This page is maintained by Waldemar Schlackow. Please use the contact form for feedback and comments.

Electrical work, offices ground floor St Giles.

This work has been completed.

To removed old cables following the work in St Giles' server room, there will be no power from 8 am until approximately 9 am in some offices on the ground floor of St Giles. Computers in these offices will be shutdown from 7 am. This will effect G5b through to G13 including the graduate study area. Parts of reception and the computers in the common room.

Last updated by Daniel Walrond on Tue, 16/12/2008 - 3:36pm.
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Electrical work in St Giles server room

This work has been completed.

On Monday 15th December 2008 the final part of the electrical work in the St Giles server room is to be completed. The potentially most disruptive work will take place before 9 am.

The following services will be given a backup power feed due to having dual power supplies:

Homes server Jam-tart
Main unix mail server Cheesecake.
Windows terminal server Pandora aka WTS.

The following services will be given preference to being powered up throughout the work but are at risk of being shutdown due to running on UPS battery power:

Homes server Battery
New unix mail server Mail-new.
Web application server Diode including Socrates and Minerva.
Main web server www.maths.ox.ac.uk.
Auxiliary web servers.
Administrative shares server magnetron including DFS.
Unix printing.
Unix webmail.
Eprints server.
External firewall.
Managed network.
VPN server Big-brother.

The following services will have to be shut down, have their power feed changed, and then be powered back up again thus giving the above services more battery power. This work will be done between 7 am and 8 am.

Windows Exchange server Rosemary
Windows printing
Laptop NAT firewall / router

The following computers may have to be switches off due to lack of UPS battery power:

Epimetheus.
Prometheus.
Electronic Notice Board (ENB) in St Giles' foyer.
Skylab.
Web-woman.

Wednesdays work was completed within 40 minutes with more than 20 minutes of UPS battery runtime left. More work has to be completed but two rather than one electrician can be working on the final part of the installation. Mains power will be turned off at 8 am with a target of completing the work by 9 am. The requirement for UPS power will be less on Monday than the previous power shutdown on Wednesday.

This work will give the server room independence from work in the new year which would have caused many interruptions to the server room for long periods of time. This is due to the technical difficulty of the work required in the riser rooms on the ground and first floor. Also this work reduces electrical load on the phase currently loaded much higher than the others.

We are aware of the admission process taking place next week and hope that this work with not disrupt that. All efforts will be made to have essential services running on mains power by 9 am Monday morning. If time is limited with running on batteries plan B is to defer the work until Tuesday morning at a similar time.

Last updated by Daniel Walrond on Mon, 15/12/2008 - 4:07pm.
This page is maintained by Daniel Walrond. Please use the contact form for feedback and comments.