Medewerkers on C&CZ News

Self-hosted Jitsi update

Simon Oosthoek — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0100

For a long time, at least since before Covid-19, we have hosted a local jitsi meet installation.

The installation was becoming a bit old and stuffy, so time for a new version and a new name.

Meet is our new jitsi install for general use.
Jitsi Test is our test jitsi install, when we test new features here, so can you.

The *old jitsi will be retired soon, so please go try the new one.

Science Mail Update

Arnoud Thörig — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0100

Enhanced Email Security

We are pleased to announce we have completed the first step in the update to our email system. This will improve the security and reliability of your mail handling. As part of this upgrade, we have introduced new software at the start of our email flow (on the inbound MX servers). This advanced system now evaluates incoming emails to determine if they are legitimate.

If an email fails to meet the required standards or appears very suspicious, it will be blocked at the entry point, in accordance with RFC guidelines for mail transport. This is a crucial first step toward creating a safer and more secure email environment for everyone.

Science Mail Announcement

Arnoud Thörig — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0100

C&CZ was the first to implement e-mail (@sci.kun.nl) at the KUN (Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen), some 35 years ago. Some configurations we have used since then have not kept up with the changing landscape of e-mail implementations worldwide. In Dutch there’s a saying for this: “De wet van de remmende voorsprong”.

One of the major things that have changed over time is dealing with SPAM. For instance, there are now protocols that major e-mail players require and therefore became the de facto standard for email communication.

Overleaf

Miek Gieben — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Over the years we’ve had some requests to run an Overleaf instance for science users. To integrate this well in our environment we would need the enterprise version, which costs about € 8,- per user per month. This is prohibitive expensive for us to run, because we would need to pay for all science users, so we will not be pursuing setting up Overleaf any further in the science domain.

There are alternatives for this setup, they may or may not work for your use case:

Matlab R2025b available

Arnoud Thörig — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The latest version of Matlab, R2025b, is available. The software and license codes are directly available for Science accounts and can be requested by other entitled users by sending mail to the helpdesk. The software can also be found on the install-share. All C&CZ-managed Linux machines have this version installed, the older version (/opt/matlab-R2025a/bin/matlab) will be available temporarily. The C&CZ-managed Windows machines will not receive a new version during the semester to prevent problems with version dependencies in current lectures.

Cluster maintenance

Simon Oosthoek — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0200

August 5th we had a cluster maintenance day, the next cluster maintenance window will be on February 6th 2026. We will do updates to packages and reboot the nodes. We plan to do this on all cnXXX nodes, mlpXX and comaXX nodes.

We will not upgrade to a new version of ubuntu on this day, if you want your clusternodes to be upgraded, please arrange this seperately with us.

Home servers replaced

Ben Polman — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0200

We have been working on replacing the old home servers home1 and home2 for some time now and a lot of our users have already been moved to the new home servers, home4, home5 and home6.

If you login to dhz.science.ru.nl you can find your home volume path, for moved users this will look like

\\306a2a9df234234123123523c22054dfaf9.home.science.ru.nl\loginname

This path will not change in the future when we have to replace the home servers again. The first part is an alias for one of the new home servers. Every login will have an unique alias for its home path server.

Matlab R2025a available

Arnoud Thörig — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The latest version of Matlab, R2025a, is available. The software and license codes are directly available for Science accounts and can be requested by other entitled users by sending mail to the helpdesk. The software can also be found on the install-share. All C&CZ-managed Linux machines have this version installed, the older version (/opt/matlab-R2024b/bin/matlab) will be available temporarily. The C&CZ-managed Windows machines will not receive a new version during the semester to prevent problems with version dependencies in current lectures.

lilo9 running ubuntu 24.04, lilo7 turned off

Simon Oosthoek — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Lilo7 was running ubuntu 20.04 LTS (LTS=Long term support). Since the LTS support period has ended for ubuntu 20.04, we have turned off lilo7 on June 2nd, because there are no (free) security updates anymore for this OS release. We will repurpose the hardware for other tasks for the faculty.

We have a new lilo9 with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. We will make this the new lilo on August 1st 2025. Lilo9 will remain available until end of May 2029.

New version of Mathematica 14.2.1

Arnoud Thörig — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0200

A new version of Mathematica (14.2.1) has been installed on all C&CZ managed Linux systems, older versions can still be found in /vol/mathematica.

When connected wired or wireless on campus or through VPN, the software for Windows, Linux and macOS can be found on the C&CZ Install disc.

During the installation you must specify:

 License server: mathematica.science.ru.nl
 License: L4601-6478

According to the Mathematica Quick Revision History: “Version 14.2.1 includes critical updates for Chatbook and code captions along with other bug fixes and stability improvements.”

Maple new version Maple2025

Arnoud Thörig — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The latest version of Maple, Maple2025, for Windows/macOS/Linux can be found on the Install network share and has been installed on C&CZ managed Linux computers. License codes can be requested from C&CZ helpdesk or postmaster.

lilo access with managed SSH keys and ip range

Simon Oosthoek — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0100

We have updated the authentication process for login servers after a succesful test we announced in CPK#1383.

As of now, your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file on lilo is ignored!, instead you can send us your public ssh key (contents of the .pub file) to keep for your account. This change is designed to prevent bad actors from easily gaining persistent access. For convenience we have added the keys we have found in homedirectories that were added or modified after we restricted access to lilo, if your key is from before December 9th, you will need to send the public key to us.

New version of Mathematica 14.2.0

Arnoud Thörig — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0100

A new version of Mathematica (14.2.0) has been installed on all C&CZ managed Linux systems, older versions can still be found in /vol/mathematica.

When connected wired or wireless on campus or through VPN, the software for Windows, Linux and macOS can be found on the C&CZ Install disc.

During the installation you must specify:

 License server: mathematica.science.ru.nl
 License: L4601-6478

According to the Mathematica Quick Revision History: “Version 14.2 introduces a powerful tool in Tabular, which provides a very streamlined and efficient way to handle tables of data laid out in rows and columns, with hundreds of other functions enhanced to make use of its special features. Additional new functions and improvements have been added to enhance neural nets and LLMs, work with game theory, improve GPU computation, and expand images and videos.”

Science services behind VPN

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Due to a phishing attack targeting science accounts, and the subsequent abuse of RU mail servers to sent out spam and phishing from valid science e-mail accounts, we were forced to employ a set of defensive measure as evident from cpk/1381, cpk/1382, cpk/1381.

To prevent further abuse (and disruption) caused by compromised accounts, we have had to temporarily restrict access to some science services. These services include:

Anything related to e-mail: Roundcube, authenticated SMTP, IMAP, and POP3.
SSH access to the LILOs (see cpk/1383 for a workaround).
DIY as well as the new replacement.

Email services are now being reopened on a per science account basis. A set of approximately 1,000 accounts has regained normal access. To request access, please contact us.

New DIY website

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

C&CZ has been working to replace the current DIY website to make it easier to add new functionality to it.

This work included a rewrite of the website and a large part of our tooling to the Go language. Taking the Dutch term for DIY (Doe Het Zelf - DHZ) prefixing it with Go, this resulted in the codename “godzilla”.

A pre-release of this new website is running on https://godzilla.science.ru.nl. Note this site is fully functional (modulo bugs), so any changes made there are really being made to your science account. Eventually this version will run on https://diy.science.ru.nl.

Science VPN services to be discontinued

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The Science VPNsec and OpenVPN service will be discontinued as of ~~2024-12-01 (1 Dec 2024)~~ 2024-11-26.

To ensure continued secure access to our network, we recommend transitioning to eduVPN, our officially supported VPN service.

This was first announced in February 2024. If you have any questions or require assistance, feel free to contact us.

New version of Mathematica 14.1.0

Arnoud Thörig — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0200

A new version of Mathematica (14.1.0) has been installed on all C&CZ managed Linux systems, older versions can still be found in /vol/mathematica.

When connected wired or wireless on campus or through VPN, the software for Windows, Linux and macOS can be found on the C&CZ Install disc.

During the installation you must specify:

 License server: mathematica.science.ru.nl
 License: L4601-6478

According to the Mathematica Quick Revision History: “Version 14.1 introduces the unified Wolfram application and expands Wolfram Language by offering new tools for working with neural nets and LLMs, for finding differences in content, for working with images and videos, and for exploring scientific evaluations through biomolecules, astrophysics and more”

Hardware repairs

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0200

Recently, the Radboud news reported that students can have small repairs to their laptops done in the RUpair-shop without any labor time being charged.

For students and employees of FNWI, the C&CZ helpdesk provides a similar service. Stefan Reijgwart and Dominic van den Broek in particular are specialists in repairing laptops, among other things.

Matlab R2024b available

Arnoud Thörig — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0200

The latest version of Matlab, R2024b, is available. The software and license codes are directly available for Science accounts and can be requested by other entitled users by sending mail to the helpdesk. The software can also be found on the install-share. All C&CZ-managed Linux machines have this version installed, the older version (/opt/matlab-R2024a/bin/matlab) will be available temporarily. The C&CZ-managed Windows machines will not receive a new version during the semester to prevent problems with version dependencies in current lectures.

A bit more spam after ending use of Spamhaus

Fri, 14 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0200

The Science mailservice used Spamhaus for decades as one of the blocklists to filter spam in mail.

When we were notified that we would need a commercial license that would cost ca. 5kEUR/y, we investigated how much more spam would come through without the Spamhaus service. This showed that users would get more spam, but most of it would be delivered in the Spam folder. Next to that, we expect that the spam filtering of the also used Exchange Online Protection will improve.

New version of Bookings

Alexander Greefhorst — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0200

Last week, a new version of the Bookings Platform for Scientific Devices has been released.

Together with Emendis, we have given the application a total make-over: not only the look and feel have changed, but also the underlying technique has been revised. From now on, we will use SurfConext for authentication.

We wish to thank all colleagues who helped us to test the new application, and in particular, we thank for all his efforts in the last years.

Science software licenses URL

Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0200

All license info, including the license codes, are now readily available for all Science users at the Science license overview page for the Science software managed by C&CZ.

CephFS retired

Miek Gieben — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 10:05:14 +0200

After the storage downtime of CephFS in our Ceph cluster, we decided together with the users of this service to stop offering CephFS shares through SMB and NFS.

All data has been copied out of CephFS.

We have ended the CephFS service. We will only use the Ceph cluster to store our backups, using the S3 API.

Matlab R2024a available

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0200

The latest version of Matlab, R2024a, is available. The software and license codes can be obtained through a mail to postmaster for those entitled to it. The software can also be found on the install-share. All C&CZ-managed Linux machines have this version installed, the older version (/opt/matlab-R2023b/bin/matlab) will be available temporarily. The C&CZ-managed Windows machines will not receive a new version during the semester to prevent problems with version dependencies in current lectures.

Maple new version Maple2024

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The latest version of Maple, Maple2024, for Windows/macOS/Linux can be found on the Install network share and has been installed on C&CZ managed Linux computers. License codes can be requested from C&CZ helpdesk or postmaster.

NI LabVIEW license prolonged and new version

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The license for the LabVIEW from NI has been prolonged until April 16, 2025. This license is for the versions 2022Q3 and higher, that use a subscription model.

The new 2024Q1 software can be found on the C&CZ Install disc. The license server is:

labview.science.ru.nl:28000

In order to be able to check out a license, names of pc’s and/of users have to be entered by C&CZ in the license server. For remote pcs this DNS suffix has to be added to the IPv4 DNS configuration: science.ru.nl

Use eduVPN instead of Science VPNs VPNsec/OpenVPN

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

For RU students and employees, the SURF service eduVPN has many advantages over the older Science VPNs: VPNsec and OpenVPN. It’s very easy to install and use eduVPN on Windows/macOS/Android/iOS/Linux and you have access to all Science services that are also available through the Science VPNsec/OpenVPN. We list it on our VPN page as the primary VPN to use.

We advise users of the Science VPNs to move over to eduVPN.

New version of Mathematica 14.0.0

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

A new version of Mathematica (14.0.0) has been installed on all C&CZ managed Linux systems, older versions can still be found in /vol/mathematica.

When connected wired or wireless on campus or through VPN, the software for Windows, Linux and macOS can be found on the C&CZ Install disc.

During the installation you must specify:

 License server: mathematica.science.ru.nl
 License: L4601-6478

According to the Mathematica Quick Revision History: “Version 14.0 continues to expand the scope and breadth of our computational coverage while streamlining and polishing existing areas.”

SageMath on loginservers and JupyterHub, Digital Security and Math clusternodes

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The free open-source mathematics software system SageMath version 9.5 has been installed on Science loginservers and JupyterHub, Digital Security and Math clusternodes.

The mission of SageMath is to create viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab.

SageMath builds on top of many existing open-source packages: NumPy, SciPy, matplotlib, Sympy, Maxima, GAP, FLINT, R and many more. Access their combined power through a common, Python-based language or directly via interfaces or wrappers.

Large response survey services provided by C&CZ

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0100

We are pleased that we received 330 completed surveys. Many of these were very positive. Some contained suggestions for improvements or new services. We’ll analyze the results further in the next months.

Short survey regarding the services provided by C&CZ

Wed, 13 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

We would like to draw your attention to a short survey regarding the services provided by C&CZ.

We would really appreciate it if you would take a few minutes to provide us with feedback. Based on the results, we will determine how we can further improve our services for the faculty in the coming years.

Thank you very much in advance for your response!

Note

Policy changes for outgoing email (SMTP)

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

To counteract email spoofing, the following changes are forthcoming, affecting the way email can be sent.

Science SMTP authentication requirement from specific networks

Currently, it is possible to send emails via SMTP without authentication when connected to the campus network. For user devices, it has always been recommended to use authenticated SMTP. Starting from January 8, 2024, C&CZ will no longer allow unauthenticated SMTP from user networks. The first networks for which this policy will be enforced will be Eduroam and VPN.

Maple license continued for 2 concurrent users

Fri, 01 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The license of Maple has been continued in 2024 as a 2-user license. All FNWI employees and students are allowed to use Maple. If you want to use Maple, please contact C&CZ.

New A0 poster printer, twice as fast

Tue, 21 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Because the old poster printer broke down, we ordered an HP Designjet Z6 44 inch postscript. The new printer is twice as fast, so the speed of service will be even better. See the poster printer page for all details.

New Intel compilers (oneAPI Base and HPC Toolkits)

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0200

The newest versions of the Intel compilers, available under the name Intel oneAPI, do no longer require a license, they are freely available. The 2023.2 version has been installed on C&CZ managed Ubuntu systems, clusternodes with Ubuntu 22.04 and loginservers. When these compilers are available, the module command

module avail

will list among others “compiler/latest”. Then e.g. the Intel C (icc) and Fortran (ifort) compilers can be used after typing

module add compiler/latest

New version of OriginLabPro (2023b)

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 14:16:00 +0200

A new version (2023b) of OriginLabPro, software for scientific graphing and data analysis, can be found on the Install-disk. See the website of OriginLab for all info on the new version. The license server supports this new version. There is a support contract until August 2026. Departments within FNWI can request installation and license info from C&CZ, also for standalone use. Installation on C&CZ managed PCs is being planned. In case of questions contact C&CZ.

Matlab R2023b available

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

The latest version of Matlab, R2023b, is available. The software and license codes can be obtained through a mail to postmaster for those entitled to it. The software can also be found on the install-disc. All C&CZ-managed Linux machines have this version installed, the older version (/opt/matlab-R2023a/bin/matlab) will be available temporarily. The C&CZ-managed Windows machines will not receive a new version during the semester to prevent problems with version dependencies in current lectures.

Lilo and stitch will be swapped October 2. Lilo8 becomes lilo

Sun, 17 Sep 2023 23:03:00 +0200

On October 2, the newest login server lilo8, that runs the same version of Ubuntu as the pcs in the computer labs, Ubuntu 22.04, will become the default lilo.science.ru.nl loginserver. Lilo7, with Ubuntu 20.04, will then get tha alias ‘stitch’ for the alternate loginserver.

To prevent warning messages about changed fingerprints, read the page about servers and/or the SSH info page.

Science login accounts automatically disabled when end date reached

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

In accordance with new RU policy, from November 1, Science login accounts will be disabled automatically when the end date is reached. From that moment it is not possible to use that account for C&CZ services.

One month before the end date, the responsible contact person will be notified.
If the end date is only two weeks ahead, the account holder will be notified.
One month after the end date, the account will be removed from C&CZ managed services like the Science mailservice and homedirectory.

It is advisable for contact persons to take a more pro-active approach to maintaining the end-dates of the accounts they are responsible for, to prevent accidental disabling of accounts. Continuation of an account can also be a security risk, so end-dates should not be extended unreasonably long.

New version of Mathematica (13.3.1)

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0200

A new version of Mathematica (13.3.1) has been installed on all C&CZ managed Linux systems, older versions can still be found in /vol/mathematica.

When connected wired or wireless on campus or through VPN, the software for Windows, Linux and macOS can be found on the C&CZ Install disc.

During the installation you must specify:

 License server: mathematica.science.ru.nl
 License: L4601-6478

According to the Mathematica Quick Revision History: “Version 13.3.1 includes multiple critical bug fixes and improvements to Chat-Enabled Notebook stability and usability.”

Missed RU mail due to stopped external forwarding

Tue, 22 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0200

RU mail management let us know that yesterday the forwarding to external (non-RU) mail addresses has been stopped as announced earlier. Unfortunately, mail for several dozens of Science users was/is not forwarded to the Science mailservers. These mails can still be found in MS365 (RU mail), either in the Inbox or in the Deleted Items. RU mail management promised that the forwarding will be corrected tomorrow.

Automatic forwarding from Science mail by employees and students to external addresses has been stopped on August 22.

New 3D printer Prusa MK4 - faster and more precise

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0200

The 3D printservice has been upgraded with the addition of a Prusa MK4.

VPN service downtime

Tue, 04 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0200

The VPNsec service will be moved to a new server. This move will cause downtime and existing VPN connections will be destroyed. Downtime is expected not to exceed several minutes.

New version of Mathematica (13.3.0)

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0200

A new version of Mathematica (13.3.0) has been installed on all C&CZ managed Linux systems, older versions can still be found in /vol/mathematica.

When connected wired or wireless on campus or through VPN, the software for Windows, Linux and macOS can be found on the C&CZ Install disc.

During the installation you must specify:

 License server: mathematica.science.ru.nl
 License: L4601-6478

According to the Mathematica Quick Revision History: “Version 13.3 introduces new functions that utilize large language models, as well as expands functionality for machine learning, mathematical computations, foreign function interface and more.”

New computer lab pcs in summer break

Tue, 16 May 2023 00:00:00 +0200

During the summer break all pcs in the computer labs will be replaced, because they are between four and seven years old. The new pcs will again be dual-boot, with Windows10 22H2 and Ubuntu 22.04. Lecturers who want to test their Linux course software, can do so on the Linux loginserver lilo8, that has Ubuntu 22.04. The new pcs are Dell Optiplex 7400 All-In-One.

For employees with pcs with older versions of Ubuntu, this might be a good time to upgrade to Ubuntu 22.04 too. Please contact C&CZ to schedule the upgrade.

C&CZ awayday Tuesday March 28

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0100

An awayday for the C&CZ department is scheduled for Tuesday March 28. C&CZ can be reached in case of serious disruptions of services.

Matlab R2023a available

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The latest version of Matlab, R2023a, is available for departments that have licenses. The software and license codes can be obtained through a mail to postmaster for those entitled to it. The software can also be found on the install-disc. All C&CZ-managed Linux machines have this version installed, an older version (/opt/matlab-R2022b/bin/matlab) is still available temporarily. The C&CZ-managed Windows machines will not receive a new version during the semester to prevent problems with version dependencies in current lectures.

Maple new version Maple2023

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The latest version of Maple, Maple2023, for Windows/macOS/Linux can be found on the Install network share and has been installed on C&CZ managed Linux computers. License codes can be requested from C&CZ helpdesk or postmaster.

New version of Mathematica (13.2.1)

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0100

A new version of Mathematica (13.2.1) has been installed on all C&CZ managed Linux systems, older versions can still be found in /vol/mathematica.

When connected wired or wireless on campus or through VPN, the software for Windows, Linux and macOS can be found on the C&CZ Install disc.

During the installation you must specify:

 License server: mathematica.science.ru.nl
 License: L4601-6478

According to the Mathematica Quick Revision History: “Version 13.2.1 includes over a hundred bug fixes, feature enhancements, performance improvements and security updates.”

NI LabVIEW 2022Q3 and higher subscription license

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0100

There is a new version of LabVIEW from NI.com, version 2022Q3.

NI.com communicated that they will move to a subscription model for LabVIEW licencing starting with version 2022Q3. C&CZ manages a FlexNet license server for LabVIEW 2022Q3, with a limited number of licenses and a deadline in April for extension of the license. Earlier versions of LabVIEW work standalone and unlimited in terms of time.

The software can be found on the C&CZ Install disc. The license server is:

Unlimited Mathematica license in 2023 for RU staff and students

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The license for Mathematica has been expanded temporarily to an unlimited campus license for the whole of 2023: all employees and students may use Mathematica unlimitedly in 2023 on the RU network. For home use, one must therefore use a VPN.

The software can be found on the C&CZ Install disc. During the installation you must specify:

 License server: mathematica.science.ru.nl
 License: L4601-6478

The introductory course “Mathematica Basic Principles: An Introduction” can be taken for free at CANdiensten in Amsterdam.

Network maintenance Huygens, NMR, Nanolab, HFML-FELIX January-April 2023

Tue, 24 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

RU ILS Connectivity is replacing network access switches in FNWI. This causes short disturbances of network connectivity for wired and wireless systems on several evenings between 19:00 and 23:00 hours for affected wings/locations, i.e. connected to a specific SER (Satellite Equipment Room). For wired network outlets, one can check whether they will be affected by looking at the outlet number (starting with the SER number for affected systems) or visiting FNWI ethergids.

Science Jitsi Meet video conferencing only authenticated

Simon Oosthoek — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Science Jitsi Security

As of January 18th, 2023, starting a jitsi meeting room requires you to authenticate with your science login and password. Guests do not require any authentication once the session is running. Jitsi is a collection of free and open-source multiplatform voice (VoIP), video conferencing and instant messaging applications for the web platform, Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS and Android, of which Jitsi Meet videoconferencing is the most well-known.

New version of Mathematica (13.2.0)

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

A new version of Mathematica (13.2.0) has been installed on all C&CZ managed Linux systems, older versions can still be found in /vol/mathematica. The installation files for Windows, Linux and macOS can be found on the Install-disk, also for older versions of Mathematica. Installation and license info can be requested from C&CZ.

According to the Mathematica Quick Revision History: “Version 13.2 introduces new functionality in astronomy and compilation, as well as substantially enhancing functions for machine learning, trees, mathematical computations, video and more. This release also includes over a thousand bug fixes, documentation enhancements and significant performance improvements.”

Maple new version: Maple2022.2 and license continued

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

The C&CZ administered “4 concurrent user” license for Maple has been continued until December 31, 2023. The latest version of Maple, Maple2022.2, for Windows/macOS/Linux can be found on the Install network share and has been installed on C&CZ managed Linux computers. License codes can be requested from C&CZ helpdesk or postmaster.

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC license problem

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Since midnight there is a problem using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, you are asked to activate the license. ILS is working on a solution. You can open PDFs using Adobe Reader or some other PDF reader. See: https://meldingen.ru.nl/detail.php?id=1333&lang=en&tg=0&f=0&ii for the original notice.

Ceph storage interruption

Simon Oosthoek — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Just before 23:09 quite a lot of ceph storage nodes became unreachable. This seems to be due to one of the redundant links between two datacenter locations failing for about 4 seconds. This triggered a whole slew of ceph osd processes being killed off and not starting again. A generic configuration change made for all our servers generated an extra interface, which confused some of the osd processes (depending on interface ordering) when starting up. We are reasonably confident we can avoid this from happening in the future.

Donation to free and open source software: Project Jupyter and Mozilla

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

For the majority of the services C&CZ uses free software and open source software. Therefore, some time ago C&CZ decided that each year the employees vote which projects receive a donation from C&CZ. This year Project Jupyter was chosen as new recipient. Project Jupyter is a non-profit, open-source project, born out of the IPython Project in 2014 as it evolved to support interactive data science and scientific computing across all programming languages. C&CZ makes use of it in the JupyterHub for FNWI courses. As a second recipient Mozilla Foundation was chosen, just like in 2021. Many people will know the Mozilla Firefox webbrowser and the mailclient Mozilla Thunderbird and maybe use it hours a day. But the Mozilla Foundation does a lot more to try to ensure the internet remains a public resource that is open and accessible to us all.

Email

Bram Daams — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Tip

New C&CZ website

Bram Daams — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

We have given the C&CZ website a completely new look. The update makes the website usable on smartphones. We will also make it possible to inform staff and students through this website even when all RU services are down. The content of the old site has been transferred. The old website is still available at https://old.cncz.science.ru.nl for the time being. For questions or comments, please contact Postmaster.

Matlab R2022b available

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 23:09:00 +0200

The latest version of Matlab, R2022b, is available for departments that have licenses. The software and license codes can be obtained through a mail to postmaster for those entitled to it. The software can also be found on the install-disc. All C&CZ-managed Linux machines have this version installed, an older version (/opt/matlab-R2022a/bin/matlab) is still available temporarily. The C&CZ-managed Windows machines will not receive a new version during the semester to prevent problems with version dependencies in current lectures.

AVD/AVS Audiovisual Services for FNWI to central RU location

Bjorn Bellink — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 13:13:00 +0200

From Monday, October 3, Sacha Djuric and Jelle de Koter of AVD/AVS Audiovisual Services will operate from the RU central location Thomas van Aquinostraat 1.00.22 for all faculties and service departments. The new phone number will be [+31 24 36 12680](tel:+31 24 36 12680). The most frequent picked-up items can then be picked up at the C&CZ helpdesk: adapter cables, beamers for study associations, cables, batteries, remote controls and a a mobile USB camera on a tripod with microphone (e.g. for hybrid education). In case of questions contact C&CZ.

New version of DIY.science.ru.nl

Remco Aalbers — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 13:05:00 +0200

Today the new version of the C&CZ self service site DIY went live. This version also has a completely rewritten back-end, which allows new functionality to be added in the near future. The main new functionality that is available now, is the possibility of logging in with the Radboud ID (employee number or student number) in order to set a forgotten Science password. In case of questions contact C&CZ.

Terminal-rooms

Bram Daams — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 16:12:50 +0000

C&CZ manages a large number of machines that anybody with an Science-account can use. Students can also login to the PC’s in the computer labs, the study area and the library with their S-number and RU-password, in the RU-domain on MS-Windows. All computer labs are dual boot: during startup of the PC one can choose to boot Linux (Ubuntu) or Windows.

Available computer labs

The Science Faculty provides the following computer labs:

New version of OriginLabPro (2022b SR1)

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 14:16:00 +0200

A new version (2022b SR1) of OriginLabPro, software for scientific graphing and data analysis, can be found on the Install-disk. See the website of OriginLab for all info on the new version. The license server supports this new version. Departments within FNWI can request installation and license info from C&CZ, also for standalone use. Installation on C&CZ managed PCs is being planned. In case of questions contact C&CZ.

C&CZ day out: Thursday afternoon September 22

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 13:30:00 +0200

The C&CZ yearly day out is scheduled for Thursday afternoon September 20. C&CZ can be reached in case of serious disruptions of services.

Shredding/destruction of data carriers / hard drives at C&CZ

Thu, 18 Aug 2022 11:29:00 +0200

The Internal Affairs department manages a contract with an external specialized company for the secure destruction/shredding of data carriers. The secure metal container that is used as a temporary cache, can be found at C&CZ as of the new academic year. Employees and students of the Faculty of Science can put data carriers with sensitive data in the container themselves at C&CZ. The C&CZ helpdesk can help recognizing and removing data carriers from desktops, laptops etc.

CCZ moves back to HG03.055

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 10:43:00 +0200

Because there was too much noise in the new rooms, C&CZ will temporarily move back to the third floor of the Huygens building. We expect that the final move to the ground floor will be in December 2022.

New version of Mathematica (13.1.0)

Tue, 12 Jul 2022 16:21:00 +0200

A new version of Mathematica (13.1.0) has been installed on all C&CZ managed Linux systems, older versions can still be found in /vol/mathematica. The installation files for Windows, Linux and macOS can be found on the Install-disk, also for older versions of Mathematica. Installation and license info can be requested from C&CZ.

Website

Fri, 24 Jun 2022 12:55:42 +0000

There are three major types of web sites in use at the Faculty of Science:

LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) and MediaWiki based general purpose web servers (possibly offering some high level content management system). These sites are hosted, managed and supported by C&CZ. All content management tasks are performed by the respective web site owners: institutes and scientific departments, student organisations, service departments, etc. Please contact C&CZ for more information about WWW_Services.
Externally hosted web sites (including sites hosted by ILS) for which custom management and support agreements may be in place.
Web sites based on the Radboud University’s Content Management System (CMS) (also known as IPROX, which is the name of the management software suite).

Test of Ubuntu 22.04 on Linux login server lilo8

Tue, 24 May 2022 16:10:00 +0200

As a test of the new version of Ubuntu, 22.04 LTS, we have installed a new login server lilo8.science.ru.nl. In a few months it will replace the four year old login server lilo6. The name lilo, that always points to the newest/fastest login server, will then be moved from the two year old lilo7 to the new lilo8. The new lilo8 is a Dell PowerEdge R6515 with 1 AMD 7502P 2.5GHz 32-core processor and 64GB RAM. Because we enabled hyper-threading, it is showing 64 processors. For users who want to check the identity of this new server before supplying their Science-password to the new server, see the section about our loginservers. Please report all problems with this new version of Ubuntu Linux.

June 22, CCZ will move to HG00.051

Tue, 17 May 2022 15:05:00 +0200

To make room for the expansion of IMM departments, C&CZ will move June 22 to the ground floor of the Huygens building. The C&CZ helpdesk will still be directly accessible on the main street with an entrance at HG00.051.

Maple new version: Maple2022

Thu, 21 Apr 2022 21:39:00 +0200

The latest version of Maple, Maple2022, for Windows/macOS/Linux can be found on the Install network share and has been installed on C&CZ managed Linux computers. License codes can be requested from C&CZ helpdesk or postmaster.

New version of Mathematica (13.0.1)

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 12:35:00 +0100

A new version of Mathematica (13.0.1) has been installed on all C&CZ managed Linux systems, older versions can still be found in /vol/mathematica. The installation files for Windows, Linux and macOS can be found on the Install-disk, also for older versions of Mathematica. Installation and license info can be requested from C&CZ.

Survey computer labs and BYOD

Bjorn Bellink — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 16:49:00 +0100

FNWI asks lecturers and students to fill in a survey about the computer labs. The reason is that the Faculty of Science plans to remodel its teaching rooms in a multifunctional way, with computer labs that use ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD). This means that the existing computer labs (terminal rooms, TK’s) in the Huygens building will be phased out in the coming years. In order to plan the further implementation, we would like to request your input on the current use of the computer labs by means of a survey in order to determine the pace and which alternatives may be needed to replace the various current uses of the current computer labs. The project group will advise the Faculty Board based on this survey and the data from the actual use of the rooms and equipment (laptops and PC’s).

SUSE Linux 15.3 Eduroam doesn't work with U- or s-number, but does with Science account

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0100

February 14, ILS switched off antique versions of TLS (1.0 and 1.1) for the Eduroam authentication on ILS LDAP servers. From then on, SUSE Linux 15.3 clients can’t authenticate with U- or s-number. They only have TLS1.2 and the ILS servers offer TLS1.3 first, after that an error occurs. By using the Science-account to authenticate, these users succeed in connecting to Eduroam.

New version of Mathematica (13.0.0)

Ben Polman — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 15:15:00 +0100

A new version of Mathematica (13.0.0) has been installed on all C&CZ managed Linux systems, older versions can still be found in /vol/mathematica. The installation files for Windows, Linux and macOS can be found on the Install-disk, also for older versions of Mathematica. Installation and license info can be requested from C&CZ.

Malicious network traffic will be blocked

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 16:13:00 +0100

In the process of handling the Log4Shell vulnerability, it was decided to use the Intrusion Protection of the FortiNet firewall for all RU network traffic. Don’t hesitate to contatc us if you experience drawbacks.

vmhost07 poweroff

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 13:10:00 +0100

Vmhost07 was accidentally shut down. Cause: human error.

labservanttest neurotech2 printvm msql01 indicoimapp ldap2 eftw jupytervm

GitLab Docker Container Registry service enabled

Bram Daams — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 14:50:00 +0100

In the C&CZ operated GitLab service, GitLab Docker Container Registry service has been enabled. For more information, please have a look at the GitLab documentation.

Ceph storage expansion caused performance issues

Tue, 16 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0100

As a result of the expansion of the Ceph storage cluster, the cluster had performance and availability issues. The problems were resolved this morning.

Donation to free and open source software: Mozilla

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 16:38:00 +0100

For the majority of the services C&CZ uses free software and open source software. Therefore, some time ago the idea emerged that the C&CZ employees would vote each year which projects would receive a donation from C&CZ. This year the Mozilla Foundation was chosen. Many people will know the Mozilla Firefox webbrowser and the mailclient Mozilla Thunderbird and maybe use it hours a day. But the Mozilla Foundation does a lot more to try to ensure the internet remains a public resource that is open and accessible to us all.

Peage: workaround for PrintNightmare

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 14:58:00 +0200

C&CZ has a workaround that one can try if on a self-managed/BYOD Windows pc one has problems printing due to the RU Peage PrintNightmare issue. This workaround can be found at the C&CZ Peage page.

Server room network switch powerless

Tue, 12 Oct 2021 11:50:00 +0200

Two modules of an important switch in the main C&CZ server room lost power during the preparation of planned maintenance. This disconnected ca. 75% of the servers in the room from the network. Moving the modules to new PDU’s kimited the downtime to ca. 15 minutes.

License server problem

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 04:40:00 +0200

An error in the management software prevented all license processes from starting correctly at the reboot of the license server. After fixing this error, all licenses were available again.

FNWI network cable administration by ISC networks

Bjorn Bellink — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 18:15:00 +0200

As of October 11, 2021, C&CZ will transfer the management of the fixed data connection points (network outlets, switch ports) in the Faculty of Science buildings (Huygens, Mercator, HFML/FELIX, Goudsmit, Proeftuin) to ILS networks. This concerns both activating/deactivating an outlet (patching) and adjusting settings or solving malfunctions. Taking care of the IP addresses (DNS/DHCP) and the shielding/security by means of Access Control Lists will remain with C&CZ. All requests and malfunctions relating to data connection points can therefore be addressed to the Helpdesk of the ISC as of October 11.

BigBlueButton videoconferencing updated

Simon Oosthoek — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 15:40:00 +0200

The experimental BigBlueButton videoconferencing website has been moved and updated. The new URL is https://bigbluebutton.science.ru.nl/ , you can create your own login, or use the one you had on https://bigbb.science.ru.nl, which is being redirected to the new site. The status remains “experimental”; without warranty.

AVS Science now part of AVS Radboud

Bjorn Bellink — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 13:02:00 +0200

As of October 1, the Science AVS will be merged with Radboud AVS. This reorganization is a result of the improvement programme of facility management and real estate, with bundling of similar services on campus. This bundling creates a campus-wide AV service that will be controlled in its entirety by Campus & Facilities. For FNWI users, the existing contact options (email, telephone) and availability of local support will be continued for the time being in accordance with the existing situation. There will be further communication about any changes in the future. The AVD Faculty of Science resorted under C&CZ since January 2018.

Fileserver 'flock' overloaded

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 14:30:00 +0200

Course software that had been tested caused an overload of the fileserver when it was used by 100 students. The performance of the fileserver was impaired for all users of network shares of this server.

Major RU network maintenance October 9 08:30-15:00

Wim Janssen — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 16:42:00 +0200

ISC network announcement.

Saturday October 9, between 08:00 and 15:00, major RU network maintenance will be carried out. During the maintenance window there will be interruptions of maximum 15 minutes. For the FNWI buildings, the maintenance will end 15:00 hours, for the other RU buildings, it might continue until 19:00 hours.

Expansion of Science datacenter to Forum building

Simon Oosthoek — Fri, 18 Jun 2021 11:18:00 +0200

Because FNWI research groups are increasingly purchasing powerful computers/computing clusters with many CPUs and GPUs, C&CZ has expanded the data center to the existing server room of Radboud Services, in the Forum on the other side of Heijendaalseweg. As a result, there will be sufficient physical space, power and cooling for the servers purchased by departments in the coming years.

New version of Mathematica (12.3.0)

Sun, 23 May 2021 15:27:00 +0200

A new version of Mathematica (12.3.0) has been installed on all C&CZ managed Linux systems, older versions can still be found in /vol/mathematica. The installation files for Windows and Linux can be found on the Install-disk, also for older versions of Mathematica. Departments that take part in the license can request installation and license info from C&CZ.

VPN onbereikbaar

Sat, 24 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0200

A broken PDU has offlined a switch, which has caused the VPN server to be unreachable (and several other things, which don’t affect users).

Mailman lists sender address change: from sender to list address

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 11:22:00 +0200

DMARC is increasingly being used as a spamfilter, checking whether the sender ought to send mail via this route. To comply with this for mail sent through Mailman, we will change the From: sender address to the list address. The current:

> From: Some User <some.user@somewhere.domain> > Sender: "listname" <listname-bounces@science.ru.nl>

will be changed to:

> From: Some User via listname <listname@science.ru.nl> > Reply-To: Some User <some.user@somewhere.domain> > Sender: "listname" <listname-bounces@science.ru.nl>

If you filter or forward mail automatically, you might need to change the filter.

Linux login server lilo5 decommissioned

Simon Oosthoek — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 11:10:00 +0200

The support for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS ends on April 30th, 2021. Therefore we will turn off lilo5 with this version of Ubuntu on May 1st, 2021. The default login server (lilo.science.ru.nl) points to lilo7 with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, but lilo6 with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will remain available until support for this version ends in 2023. The signatures of the C&CZ loginservers can be checked. Please also check these tips for improving your SSH settings tips for improving your SSH settings.

Central E-mail/Calendar disruption (exchange)

Wed, 14 Apr 2021 09:30:00 +0200

Due to an emergency maintenance, the central microsoft exchange server is unavailable for 4 hours. This may also affect systems that are dependent on exchange. E-mail and calendar functionality is expected to be restored when the maintenance is done around 13:30 Today.

Maple new version: Maple2021

Tue, 30 Mar 2021 18:01:00 +0200

The latest version of Maple, Maple2021, can be found on the Install network share and has been installed on C&CZ managed Linux computers. License codes can be requested from C&CZ helpdesk or postmaster by departments that take part in the license.

Ceph problem

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 19:00:00 +0100

During a routine upgrade of ceph, a bug in the latest version manifested itself and made the ceph manager unreachable. After aborting the upgrade and with help from the ceph-users mailinglist, everything became available again using a workaround.

Windows 7 computers disabled in B-FAC domain

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0100

Because of security issues the last remaining Windows 7 machines wil be disabled, effective 24-03-2021, as member of the Active Directory Domain B-FAC. Please upgrade these computers to a more up-to-date OS.

Windows 7 computers disabled in B-FAC domain

Wim Janssen — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 10:22:00 +0100

Matlab R2021a available

Fri, 19 Mar 2021 18:36:00 +0100

The latest version of Matlab, R2021a, is available for departments that have licenses. The software and license codes can be obtained through a mail to postmaster for those entitled to it. The software can also be found on the install-disc. All C&CZ-managed Linux machines will soon have this version installed, an older version (/opt/matlab-R2020a/bin/matlab) is still available temporarily. The C&CZ-managed Windows machines will not receive a new version during the semester to prevent problems with version dependencies in current lectures.

Lilo7 restart

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 21:00:00 +0100

To change the network of lilo7, we need to reboot this loginserver. If you want a stable connection to a loginserver during this downtime, please use lilo6 or the soon to be taken down lilo5. For more info see the page on C&CZ loginservers.

Signed SSH keys for loginservers and compute clusternodes

Ben Polman — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 23:53:00 +0100

From now on, C&CZ signs the SSH keys of e.g. loginservers and compute clusternodes. That makes it possible for users, as explained on that page, to add the public signing key in the private .ssh/known_hosts, which makes one trust all C&CZ signed SSH servers. Whenever C&CZ deploys a new ‘lilo’, the question whether this might be spoofing will not occur then.

Site license for Gaussian 16 and GaussView 6

Ben Polman — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 23:20:00 +0100

Organic Chemistry purchased a site license for the use of Gaussian 16 and GaussView 6 with the GMMX Module on Linux. The software has been installed on the cn-cluster. Departments that want to use this, can contact Prof. Jana Roithova or Postmaster.

Host of several virtual servers broken: Roundcube, websites and others

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 07:45:00 +0100

Yesterday the SSD bootdisk of this VM host reported the first problems. This morning this had the effect of stopping all VMs running on this host. By moving the VMs to a different VM host, the problem has been solved. We will investigate how to best prevent this problem in the future or lessen its impact.

Major RU network maintenance Saturday Feb. 27 08:00-20:00

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 08:00:00 +0100

The ISC announced that Saturday February 27 08:00-20:00 major RU network maintenance work will be carried out. This will mean that all RU services will be unavailable several times for at most an hour. This concerns all RU services including those of FNWI/C&CZ: e-mail, VPN, wifi, BASS, OSIRIS, Brightspace, Syllabus+, Corsa, etc.

Lilo6 down

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 17:30:00 +0100

As of Thursday afternoon, the lilo6 is down due to hardware issues. Because lilo6 was the default linux login server (lilo referred to lilo6), this affected many users of lilo. The impact is limited, because we have alternative lilo’s, namely lilo5 and lilo7. As of March 1st lilo now refers to lilo7, ssh will warn about DNS SPOOFING, which is due to the difference host keys for lilo7 ECDSA SHA256:si3g2elo5m6TShx3PjX0+vF50pZ8NK/iXz/ESB+ZeP0

Major RU network maintenance Saturday Feb. 27 08:00-20:00

Wed, 24 Feb 2021 14:07:00 +0100

DNS problems from outside with ru.nl

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 07:10:00 +0100

The central DNS servers for ru.nl for external requests had problems, because they received too many requests, which resulted in science.ru.nl and others not being found. DNS names within ru.nl then will not resolve to an IP address. We enlarged some TTLs (Time-To+lives) to try to lessen the problem. These small TTLs were meant to be able to move a service to a new server in case of problems, but now they just make the problem bigger. After starting VPN you won’t notice this problem, because the internal DNS servers that you use then are not affected. Changes to the RU DNS servers hopefully lessened or removed the problems as of 2021-02-23 14:30.

DNS broken for subdomains of ru.nl

Thu, 11 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0100

DNS-servers for ru.nl did not serve information about subdomains such as science.ru.nl. Thus no DNS-name will resolve to an IP address at FNWI. A workaround is to use as DNS servers: 131.174.224.4 en 8.8.8.8. If you try to connect to a service for the first time after ca 11:15, you’ll get an error like: “No such domain” or “Cannot resolve”. Restarting RU DNS servers at 12:45 may have fixed the problem. Without a real explanation, the problem went away after a few hours.

End of Science OpenID service

Remco Aalbers — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:39:00 +0100

The Science OpenID-service, that was introduced in 2007 as authentication method for the wikis managed by C&CZ, will be terminated March 1, 2021. All wikis will be switched over to a more modern authentication method via SAML.

New improved installation methods for Matlab

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:28:00 +0100

The old installation method, used with Matlab R2020b, highlighted several problems for some users. The solution was found in a different installation method. Some users will prefer the new method, others the old one. Each has its pros and cons. The new installation method makes Matlab easy to install, also for older versions and can be done with a small download if you only want a few toolboxes. But it requires signing in at The MathWorks and thus has a more complex workflow. The old installation method does not require registration and has an easy workflow, but it always requires a large download and non-expert macOS users will find it troublesome because the newest macOS version will quarantine the download.

New version of Mathematica (12.2.0)

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 17:10:00 +0100

A new version of Mathematica (12.2.0) has been installed on all C&CZ managed Linux systems, older versions can still be found in /vol/mathematica. The installation files for Windows and Linux can be found on the Install-disk, also for older versions of Mathematica. Departments that take part in the license can request installation and license info from C&CZ.

CN00 Slurm master ubuntu 16.04 down

Mon, 18 May 2020 09:50:00 +0200

Due to a failed BIOS upgrade, the hardware of the database server appears to be bricked. We transfered the disks to another machine (cn00) and all database services are now up again, at the cost of not having cn00 running. When the hardware is working well again, we will swap it all back and restore the original situation.

Sperwer Database server storing

Mon, 18 May 2020 06:30:00 +0200

Update May 19th, 12:15 : hardware fixed, situation back to the original state.

Mailserver certificate problem

Mon, 13 Apr 2020 14:00:00 +0200

The new certificate of the Science mailserver hadn’t yet been placed in the right place. The expiration of the old certificate caused a problem for Science mail users, that was resolved by replacing the old certificate.

Unplanned GitLab security update

Wed, 11 Dec 2019 06:00:00 +0100

A critical security update for GitLab has been released and is being installed this moment. During the update, GitLab is offline.

Problems with a virtual host

Tue, 05 Nov 2019 05:30:00 +0100

The virtual machine host ‘oscar’ stopped running at 5:30am. The listed virtual machines are not running at the moment. We are working on it. Update: Resolved. Again, a broken LVM snapshot caused the problem.

Boot problems of virtual host

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 04:30:00 +0200

At the weekly reboot of vmhost ‘oscar’, it did not boot properly. The listed virtual machines are not running at the moment. We are working on it. Update: most probably, the problems where caused by full snapshots. After removal of the snapshots, the system booted properly.

Network interruption central RU network

Wed, 22 May 2019 18:55:00 +0200

Due to a faulty RU core network device, several service couldn’t be reached. This device is in a redundant setup. The ISC network department will start an investigation what exactly happened and how to prevent nuisance in the future.

DNS nameservice interruption for Science domains

Tue, 14 May 2019 16:13:00 +0200

Yesterday afternoon a DNS error with science.ru.nl (due to the introduction of the secure DNSSEC) made science.ru.nl disappear from the internet for many users, when viewed from outside campus. In the evening this error has been corrected. Because of the caching of DNS responses, the last problems should disappear tonight. In the meantime one can use workarounds like rebooting the home router and/or pc, using a different network (mobile provider) or using rainloop.science.ru.nl instead of roundcube.science.ru.nl for webmail access.

Dozens of Science websites down, also Roundcube

Tue, 14 May 2019 15:28:00 +0200

Because a web application used too much memory, all websites of this webserver had problems. After restarting the webserver, all websites could be reached again. We will make sure that web applications get memory limits, which will prevent this problem in the future.

Network interruption Huygens wing 4

Sat, 13 Apr 2019 05:15:00 +0200

Due to a faulty network switch, approx 40 network connections in Huygens wing 4 were temporarily unavailable. The switch has been replaced.

Matlab license server down

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 07:30:00 +0100

This morning, the Matlab license server stopped, because yesterday an error had been made in the upgrade to version R2019a. After the error had been corrected, the license server was restarted, which resolved the problem.

Poster printer "kamerbreed" broken

Tue, 26 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0100

The poster printer has to be repaired, but we can’t easily fix it. We hope to have the printer operational again in the near future. In the meantime you might use the RU copyshop.

No connections to Eduroam with science accounts

Sun, 10 Mar 2019 18:00:00 +0100

Due to a configuration fault in the Science radius server, many connections to Eduroam for users with a science account failed. It took two days of joint investigation by ISC and C&CZ to resolve this problem.

Informatiebeveiliging

Ben Polman — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 15:38:54 +0000

Information security

European directives and Dutch law prohibit the storage of personal data (persoonsgegevens) outside the European Economic Area (EEA). Most of the well known cloud services are US based: Dropbox, all Google services such as Gmail and Google+, Hotmail, iCloud. This implies that (data collections containing) personal data may not be stored on these cloud services. In addition to the law, Radboud University has issued an internal security policy that prohibits the storage of data that is classified as critical (this includes all personal data) on any (public) cloud service, even those which are EEA based. However, RU considers SURFnet’s SURFdrive, SURFfilesender and edugroepen as safe community cloud services for data exchange between RU employees, students, and external parties.

No Eduroam end for deprecated systems (Windows XP, Android 4.1, ...)

Mon, 10 Dec 2018 05:00:00 +0100

On December 10, the support for the security protocol TLS v1 and v1.1 was discontinued within the Radboud Eduroam wireless network. From that moment on, all wireless clients such as laptops, smartphones, tablets and the like must use TLS version 1.2 or higher.

Unfortunately, the outcome of this change was not as expected. After the change, there were more clients with connection problems than the number of clients using TLSv1. After a period of testing and research, the ISC decided around 12.00 to reverse the change.

Proquota

Tue, 27 Nov 2018 09:41:23 +0000

ProQuota, what does it do ?

When you log in on a managed PC, your private settings (Profile) of Windows and the applications are copied from the network to your current PC. During the session, these copied settings on the PC are used and changed if necessary. At logout, the (altered) settings are copied back to the network. When you log in, at a later point in time, on a different managed PC, these settings are copied to the new PC and your own settings are available again. You may locate these settings under C:\Documents and Settings\<loginname>.

SSH connections of older clients/servers

Tue, 11 Sep 2018 07:20:00 +0200

A configuration change was automatically put into production Tuesday morning which had been prepared the previous day on Ubuntu 14_04 LTS, Ubuntu 16_04 LTS and Ubuntu 18_04 LTS in order to increase the level of security of SSH connections within FNWI. The change had the side effect of crashing the SSH daemon on Ubuntu 12_04 LTS and preventing older SSH clients from connecting at all. Users are encouraged to update their SSH clients so that we can gradually increase the level of security again.

Disk problem milton fileserver

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 06:30:00 +0200

One of the data-disks has a currupted file system. During the time slot menioned above, the server was unavailable. At the moment the server is running without the defective disk (milkun16). At the moment, we are trying to fix the disk.

Host hardware of virtual machines broken

Thu, 23 Aug 2018 01:41:00 +0200

Last night the host for a number of vm’s (oscar) broke down. By using a replacement server (joule) this problem has been temporarily resolved. Tomorrow the machine will be repaired ans we will determine when the machines will be switched back.

Network problem IMAP-mailserver because of error during update

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 15:32:00 +0200

While testing a possible update to the IMAP mailserver, an error made the mailserver unavailable for ca. fifteen minutes.

Bug in new IMAP mailserver resolved

Thu, 09 Aug 2018 13:05:00 +0200

The new version of the IMAP mailserver software contained a bug in the handling of SSL connections, that led to connections being dropped and depending on the mailclient led to a mailserver that could hardly be used. This morning a patch for this bug has been installed.

Upgrade IMAP mailserver post.science.ru.nl: Thursday August 9 2018 13:00-13:05

Thu, 09 Aug 2018 13:00:00 +0200

The IMAP mailserver post.science.ru.nl is being replaced by a new server. Therefore connections to the IMAP mailserver post.science.ru.nl will not be possible during ca. 5 minutes.

Server maintenance shares: Friday 3rd of August 2018 12:00-13:00

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 12:00:00 +0200

Three of our main fileservers need firmware updates, this requires the servers to be rebooted several times. The shares will be unavailable for at most one hour.

Affected network disks:

45t acfiles acfiles2 acl-ru-nl$ acs4 aerochem afstudeertest afstudeerwerk akolkmandata albert amsbackup amscommon animal arb astropresentie avd bbb-priv beevee betadidactiek b-fac-backup bioalg bioexamencie bioexamencierw bioniccell bio-orgchem birds bko boltje botany-general carisma carta ccs4 ccz cczhelpdesk cczsecr cdalgemeen cdbiow cdisis cdoii cdomw cdwinst celbio1 celbio2 celbio2 celbio3 ces2017 chemprac chemstaff cncz coastoffon cudotest cursus cursusdossiers dbiwwr-ro dbiwwr-rw dcnadmin desda diafragma docent docenten ds ecogen ecologie ehef1 ehef2 ehef3 ehef4 embdata epsylon erhvedata evsf2data10 evsf2data15 evsf2data16 evsf2data17 evsf2data18 evsf2data19 evsf2data7 evsf2data8 evsf2data9 evsf2schijf1 exoarchief femtospin fsr geminstr geminstr2 gi1 gi2 gi3 giphouse gipsy gissig global global global gmi goudsmit1 goudsmit2 goudsmit3 goudsmit4 goudsmitoldusers grafting hfml-backup hfml-backup2 hfml-backup3 hfml-backup4 hfml-backup-inst hfml-data hfml-engineering hfml-secr highres honours huckgroup hybrids icis icisafstudeer icisbureau iciscop icislaquso icissec icisst ifl ifl-d1 IJSO imappdir imappsecr immbureau immstaff impuls introcie invbio iris isis isptinspec itt iwwr1 janvanhest kaartenbak kangoeroe khaj kolkteaching labservant lambiek leonardo licenses liquidhelium liquids mailmanincludes marcurkasco master mathematica mathsolcie mbaudit1 mbaudit2 mbaudit3 mbaudit4 mbaudit5 mbbioel mbbioel2 mbcortex mbonderwijs mbread mbscon mbsl mbwrite mercator mestrelab mi1 mi2 mi3 micord micro-bulk1 micro-bulk2 micro-labmembers mlf90 mlf90grp mlf90linac mlfalgemeen mlfsec molbiol molchem molchem2 molchem3 molneuro molphtec mol-secr morph mpcoldmol2 mpcoldmollab mpcoldsecr mppstaf multimedia mwstudiereis neuroinf neuroinf2 neuropi nmr500data nmrspectra olcbiocie olcbiow olccudo olcii-archief olympus onderwijskwalificatiedossiers onlyme ons orgdier orgdiermac owc owc1 parp pcb plantkunde-hgl poliepC poliepD pracnat practica project1mpp puc randomwalkmodel rotax ruversatest secrmolbiol secrthch share sigma sigmacies smol snn snn2 snn3 snn4 sofie software soheto solids sos spectra spectra-rw spibdossier spm spmdata1 spmdata3 spmdata4 spmdata5 spmdata6 spmdata7 spmmagstm spmnanolab spmstaff ssi ssiguest staff-hfml stroom studiereis2013 synorgchem tece teceleiding template-ru-nl$ template-ru-nl$ template-ru-nl$ tf2devices thalia thaliacies thchem tracegas tracegastemp tzacad ucm unl vcbio_prive vergader vsc vsc1 vsc10 vsc11 vsc12 vsc13 vsc14 vsc15 vsc16 vsc2 vsc3 vsc4 vsc5 vsc6 vsc7 vsc8 vsc9 vscadmin vscxray wallpaper wikis wiskalg wiskunde wiskundetoernooi wkru zeegras

RU network maintenance: Monday evening/night July 2 to 3 from 22:00 hours

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 22:00:00 +0200

Monday evening July 2, there will be maintenance on central RU network equipment. From 22:00 hours, central RU applications and network will not be available most of the time. For telephones no disturbance is expected. For the C&CZ services there is a possibility of disruptions: no Internet connection for some time. Please think which processes depend on connectivity to RU central services and prepare for this possible outage if necessary. Future maintenance windows can be seen on the ISC website.

Interruption of parts of the telephone service

Sat, 09 Jun 2018 08:00:00 +0200

Saturday june 9th from 8:00h until approximately 12:00h analog telephone communications via AudioCodes will not be possible. At this time the existing equipment used in the Huygens- and surrounding buildings will be moved and reconnected. Only traditional analog equipment such as DECT phones and such are connected to the AudioCodes. The green (emergency) phones are not connected to these AudioCodes but to the emergency telephone exchange.

The emergency telephone exchange wil go down for ten minutes during the afternoon due to an intteruption of the power supply. The bulk (if not all) of the emergency phones and elevators are connected to this emergency telephone exchange and will therefore not be operational at that time.

No Internet (DHCP problem for leased addresses)

Sat, 09 Jun 2018 07:00:00 +0200

Last week, the DHCP infrastructure at FNWI was changed, in order to move from old to new servers. An error was made when we had to move back because DHCP did not run well on a virtual interface. When the first complaints came in this morning, we quickly found and repaired the error. We try to avoid further service disruptions while improving the DHCP service.

FNWI DNS nameserver problem with ru.nl

Tue, 22 May 2018 14:24:00 +0200

Last week, the DNS infrastructure at FNWI was changed, in order to move from old to new servers and to prepare for the use of DNSSEC. A workaround for the internal/external view of ru.nl had an unwanted side effect. This made the FNWI DNS servers lose the info about ru.nl. We had to resort to a different workaround to fix this. We try to avoid further service disruptions while improving the DNS services.

Multiple backup server issues

Sat, 17 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0100

Backups were incomplete since March 17th. The tape robot couldn’t be used because a tapedrive failed, probably due to dry weather conditions. Therefore holding disks filled up. Only the backup of Tuesday upon Wednesday is possibly complete, but we lack backups of March 21st and 22nd, which is caused by a filesystem inconsistency of the holding disks, repairs already take two days. We’re trying hard to make backups this weekend, but please be cautious with your files, since restores of recently changed files might fail.

Homedirectories onbereikbaar op windows

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 12:00:00 +0100

During the process of restoring the homedirectory of the affected user of the ransomware, the samba server was restarted, however it stopped, but not start. This was noticed only 45 minutes later. We have ajusted our monitoring to help us notice this more quickly.

Gijzelsoftwware op IMAPP mappen

Tue, 06 Mar 2018 08:40:00 +0100

Due to an accidental opening of an e-mail attachment (called Resume.doc), which contained a macro-based ransomware, all the files and directories on the mentioned shares were either removed or encrypted and a message was left on the infected computer to contact a certain URL to get the files back. The files were restored from backup and the PC wiped clean and re-installed. NB. The f-secure software did not recognise this malware yet at the time.

Problem with outgoing mailserver (smtp)

Thu, 08 Feb 2018 02:39:00 +0100

Yesterday morning, we got an alarm because the smtp service did not work properly. The cause was found to be that from various PCs from, among other countries, China, connections were built up with one of the smtp servers, without actually sending an e-mail, as a result of which all these connections were left hanging. If the number of standing connections became too high, the server became unusable for others. This service has to be be accessible from the Internet, because of authenticated SMTP. After a few PCs had been blocked, at 15:39 Fail2ban was turned on, that is also used to protect other services accessible from the Internet, such as mailservers, Linux loginservers, WWW-servers and GitLab servers.

Fileserver maintenance because of reported disc problem

Mon, 22 Jan 2018 08:30:00 +0100

This morning the fileserver reported a disc problem. To diagnose this, we have to upgrade the firmware, which makes downtime necessary. We planned this for next Monday morning because of the Next Business Day support contract. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Affected disks:

acfiles aerochem amsbackup amscommon animal astropresentie avance500 avance600 beevee b-fac-backup bioniccell bio-orgchem boltje carisma celbio1 celbio2 chemprac cncz coastoffon csgi-archief desda ds ehef1 ehef2 ehef3 ehef4 femtospin geminstr2 giphouse gissig global gmi goudsmit1 hfml-backup hfml-backup2 hfml-backup3 hfml-backup-inst highres imappdir imappsecr impuls introcie isis janvanhest kaartenbak kangoeroe khaj linova500 linova800 marcurkasco mathsolcie mbaudit1 mbscon mbsl molbiol mwstudiereis neuroinf neuroinf2 nfstest olympus puc randomwalkmodel ruversatest secres2 secrmolbiol sigma sigmacies spectra spectra-rw spm spmdata3 spmdata4 spmdata5 spmdata6 spmdata7 spmmagstm spmnanolab spmstaff ssi ssiguest staff-hfml stroom thalia thaliacies ucm vsc vsc1 vsc10 vsc11 vsc12 vsc13 vsc14 vsc15 vsc2 vsc3 vsc4 vsc5 vsc6 vsc7 vsc8 vsc9 vscadmin wiskalg wiskunde wkru

GitLab temporarily unavailable during upgrade

Tue, 16 Jan 2018 23:00:00 +0100

Because of a planned upgrade, gitlab.science.ru.nl and gitlab.pep.cs.ru.nl will not be available. See also: 1

Expired certificate for IMAP mailserver

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 00:59:00 +0100

The new certificate for the IMAP mailserver hadn’t been put into place correctly. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Incorrect Adobe Acrobat Pro DC package on install disc

Sat, 02 Dec 2017 16:20:00 +0100

We placed an incorrectly packaged version on the install drive. After users reported this, the ISC has created a new package and we have replaced it.

Network maintenance at Science Faculty: upgrade router

Mon, 27 Nov 2017 23:30:00 +0100

New firmware will be loaded into the Heyendaal-East distribution router. During this period the wired and wireless network will be unavailable for approx. 30 minutes.

Homedirectory unavailable

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 07:30:00 +0100

After an update of the samba software, it appears that the smbd service didn’t start up again. The problem was resolved by either rebooting (home1) or manually starting smbd (home2).

SPIB, reviewapp, thesis submission, timetrex intermittent failures

Tue, 14 Nov 2017 20:50:00 +0100

Currently the hardware has problems, causing the machine to randomly turn off and on. We are in the process of resolving this with our supplier.

The problem doesn’t appear to be hardware related, but a problem with the configuration of the OS, which we changed and it seems to be stable now.

Homeservers rebooted daily

Sun, 01 Oct 2017 06:28:00 +0200

Due to a misinterpretation of the correct crontab syntax, the homeservers were rebooted daily since the beginning of this month, instead of, as we intended, once a Month on the first Monday.

Homedirectories unavailable on monday mornings

Sun, 01 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0200

Multiple Ubuntu 16.04 users are unable to access their homedirectories on machines that have been rebooted on monday morning. Keeping system clocks more in sync seems to have helped somewhat, but no definite solution has been found yet. Therefore we decided to reboot the homeservers only the *first* Monday of each month. In the meantime we still hope for a real solution.

DIY down due to hardware problem

Wed, 27 Sep 2017 15:00:00 +0200

The server of DHZ had a problem with the hardware, the hardware was fixed on 2017-09-29, the website DHZ could be restored more quickly on a different server, limiting the outage to a few hours.

Homedirectories unavailable

Fri, 22 Sep 2017 07:20:00 +0200

This morning, the homeservers were automatically upgraded with normal updates, after which the windows file servicewas not restarted. The problem was resolved by restarting the machines.

OpenVPN not started at reboot

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 06:31:00 +0200

For yet unknown reasons the OpenVPN service did not start at the Monday morning reboot. We started the service manually.

DIY down due to hardware problem

Thu, 10 Aug 2017 08:00:00 +0200

The server of DHZ is having problems, while we are solving this with Dell support, all changes can be handled via us (tel: 53535) or postmaster@science.ru.nl

GitLab temporarily unavailable during upgrade

Fri, 30 Jun 2017 09:00:00 +0200

Because of a planned upgrade, gitlab.science.ru.nl and gitlab.pep.cs.ru.nl will not be available.

LibreOffice problem using Ubuntu 14.04

Mon, 26 Jun 2017 06:30:00 +0200

LibreOffice and other software suites using Java (jvm) internally are affected by the Ubuntu 14.04 kernel update patching the Stack Clash. It seems that Linux kernel developers, Ubuntu developers and JVM developers are working hard world-wide in finding a proper solution. Work-around ‘JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS=-Xss1280k libreoffice’. Ubunti released a fix.

Fileserver needed reboot after fatal typo

Tue, 13 Jun 2017 10:45:00 +0200

Apologies.

Affected disks:

acfiles beevee bioniccell bio-orgchem celbio1 celbio2 chemprac csgi-archief csg-projecten csg-staf desda ds ehef1 ehef2 ehef3 femtospin geminstr2 giphouse gissig gmi hfml-backup hfml-backup2 hfml-backup-inst highres impuls introcie isis janvanhest kaartenbak kangoeroe mathsolcie microbiology microbiology2 milkun2 milkun2RenD milkun3 milkun5 milkun6 milkun7 milkun7rw mwstudiereis neuroinf neuroinf2 olympus puc randomwalkmodel secres2 sigma sigmacies spectra spectra-rw spm spmdata3 spmdata4 spmdata5 spmdata6 spmdata7 spmstaff ssi staff-hfml stroom thalia ucm vsc vsc1 vsc10 vsc11 vsc12 vsc13 vsc14 vsc15 vsc2 vsc3 vsc4 vsc5 vsc6 vsc7 vsc8 vsc9 vscadmin wiskalg wiskunde wkru

Server TCMR storing na disk-falen

Mon, 29 May 2017 06:30:00 +0200

Sunday evening, one of the archive disks failed. The data on it was lost, as it wasn’t in a redundant setup. After the weekly reboot, the server hung on this disk being broken. It took us a while to get the server up again.

Eduroam wifi behind firewall

Mon, 22 May 2017 22:00:00 +0200

Due to maintenance the wifi network on campus (Eduroam) will not be available for twenty minutes on Monday night between 10 pm and 8 pm. During those twenty minutes your mobile device appears to be connected with the wifi network but you will notice there is no internet connection. After this interruption the connection will be established automatically. During the maintenance period additional short interruptions may occur.

Monday evening the wifinetwork will be placed behind the new firewalls of the Radboud University. When this is done, users of Eduroam on our campus are no longer directly reachable from the Internet. We are doing this to protect wifi users against viruses like the Wannacry virus that was used for the worldwide ransomware attack last week.

Network failure server rack

Thu, 11 May 2017 09:05:00 +0200

Switch es7-huyg-04-070 of a server rack became powerless after maintenance in the computer room of C&CZ. Restoring power and powering up the switch resolved all problems.

RU network maintenance (mainly fixed phones)

Mon, 08 May 2017 23:30:00 +0200

Between 23:30 and 00:30 the fixed phones will be out of service for about half an hour. Between 00.30 and 02.00 hours, a few minutes of internet interruption will take place. At those moments, RU services can not be accessed from outside the campus.

Maintenance network Serverroom FNWI in Huygens building

Mon, 01 May 2017 07:30:00 +0200

The central network switch in the serverroom at the Faculty of Science will be restarted in connection with some software maintenance. Many servers and services are not available for approx 20 minutes.

Eduroam wifi maintenance

Mon, 24 Apr 2017 23:00:00 +0200

The RU wifi network (eduroam) will be unavailable on Monday evening April 24 between 23:00 and midnight for half an hour due to maintenance work.

Some virtual servers temporarily not available

Wed, 12 Apr 2017 07:22:00 +0200

An unattended update of the virtual hosting software (libvirt) triggered a netwerk stack restart. This made the virtual machines unavailable on the network. After a reboot of the virtual hosts (vos and wolf), the virtual machines were available again. Action was not taken immediately, because the alarm mails didn’t reach us, because the mailservers could not be reached. To improve this situation, steps are taken to route the alarms also via alternative channels (sms, whatsapp, signal, etc). Also the network configuration of the virtual machines has been changed, this will hopefully make it less vulnerable to these updates.

Poster printer "kamerbreed" broken

Mon, 03 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0200

The printer has to be repaired, but the engineer can’t easily fix it. We hope to have the printer operational again in the near future. A new one with service contract has been ordered, in order to make the poster service more reliable. In the meantime you might use the RU copyshop.

Crash coma00 server

Sun, 12 Mar 2017 22:17:00 +0100

Coma00 serves astro0, astro1, astro3 and astro4 volumes, the server crashed on a kernel-BUG, Monday morning the server was restarted and service resumed normally.

Science and RU Internet network maintenance

Mon, 06 Mar 2017 22:00:00 +0100

Monday evening March 6, there will be maintenance on RU network equipment. On March 7 between ca. 01:00-01:30 no network traffic will be possible at the Faculty of Science on the wired and wireless networks. From 23:00 until March 7 02:00 there will be a period where no traffic between RU and Internet is possible. Please think which processes depend on network connectivity and prepare for this outage if necessary.

Science Radius down

Tue, 28 Feb 2017 06:30:00 +0100

The Radius service didn’t start after the regular reboot, restarting the Radius service solved the problem.

VPNsec upgrade

Wed, 22 Feb 2017 15:30:00 +0100

Update of Strongswan server software with extra capabilities

Problem with mail delivery from RU Exchange

Mon, 06 Feb 2017 09:39:00 +0100

Monday morning several employees of FNWI were affected by a fault within the RU Exchange design whereby they could not send their mail to recipients outside of the RU Exchange (i.e. @science.ru.nl, @cs.ru.nl or elsewhere). ISC had added two additional servers to the RU Exchange service the week before, which were not yet allowed to drop their outgoing mail on designated servers for that purpose. Not all FNWI employees using RU Exchange were affected, however, since four out of six servers were still functioning properly and employees using e.g. Thunderbird use servers outside of the RU Exchange for sending their mails.

Maintenance network Serverroom FNWI in Huygens building

Mon, 30 Jan 2017 07:00:00 +0100

The central network switch in the serverroom at the Faculty of Science will be restarted in connection with an software upgrade. Many servers and services are not available for approx 20 minutes.

Network failure in Huygens wing 8

Tue, 24 Jan 2017 10:50:00 +0100

In Huygens wing 8 a network switchmodule crashed. Several users lost their connection to the data and telephone network for some time. The switchmodule has been replaced.

VPNsec (and RU VPN) problem with new RU firewall

Tue, 13 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0100

The new RU Fortigate firewall, that is in place since December 13, manages fragmented IP packets inconsistently. Depending on the VPN client and its settings, this can cause problems for VPN users. The ISC found a solution for the cenral RU VPN in changing the configuration of the RU VPN as of 2016-12-19 15:50 hours. While waiting for the final solution, a temporary workaround has been used in the Fortigate firewall on April 19, which makes the problem disappear.

Network failure in Huygens wing 5

Wed, 07 Dec 2016 21:15:00 +0100

In Huygens wing 5 a network switchmodule crashed. Several users lost their connection to the data and telephone network for some time. The switchmodule has been replaced.

Poster printer "kamerbreed" broken

Fri, 02 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0100

The printer has to be repaired. Spare parts have been ordered. We hope to have the printer operational again this month.

Medewerkers latexbrief

Wed, 21 Sep 2016 08:20:41 +0000

RU Corporate Identity Information

Starting September 1, 2004, a new corporate identity has been introduced in which the name and logo of the university changed, but also the layout of all printed material. For MS-Word, templates and manuals have been centrally developed. Information can be found elsewhere. For LaTeX C&CZ developed a new letter layout.

RU letter layout for LaTeX

The new version supports an English and a colored version of the logo.

RU network maintenance problem

Tue, 13 Sep 2016 01:00:00 +0200

After the maintenance activities as mentioned below, a large number of workplaces of Molecular Biology at RIMLS did not receive an ip-address. After a reset by ISC of a table in the central RU-firewall, the problem was solved.

RU network maintenance

Mon, 12 Sep 2016 23:00:00 +0200

In the night of 12 to 13 September, maintenance on the Radboud University network will be performed from 11pm to 03am. Several service interruptions may occur, like internet access via SURFnet, mail via Exchange, Bass, Osiris and Blackboard. We advise to check which systems might be affected by this and if possible shift network activity to a different time slot. You also might think about systems with alerts via Internet.

Network drives not available after reboot

Mon, 12 Sep 2016 06:30:00 +0200

After the Monday morning reboot, the Samba network drive service was not running on all Ubuntu 12.04 servers. Reinitializing all Samba configuration files solved the problem. Problems fixed at 08:30 for home servers, 10:25 departmental printers, 12:45 departmental server.

Atlas.ti reports: license (almost) expired

Fri, 17 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0200

When starting Atlas.ti, you get the message that the license expires in a few days or already has expired. There is, however, a three-weeks grace period during which the users will see a warning message but can still use the program normally. The vendor has promised to send the license June 24, and to send it earlier next years. The new license key can be requested from C&CZ.

License server reboot problem

Mon, 30 May 2016 06:30:00 +0200

Due to a problem with a new license the license server didn’t go down for the weekly reboot. When this came to attention, the server was rebooted and the problem was solved.

Altera Ansys Accelrys Genesys Hdlworks Idapro Xilinx IntelCompiler Ingr Maple Mathematica Matlab MentorGraphics Mestrelab Topspin Orcad Originlab StateaseRlm

License server (lepelaar) reboot problem

Wed, 25 May 2016 06:30:00 +0200

Matlab (until 08:45), Origin (09:00), Mestrenova (9:20), Mathematica (9:30) and Orcad (11:20) service not started. Cause yet unknown.

Both Science VPNs down for short maintenance

Wed, 18 May 2016 07:30:00 +0200

The Science VPNs will be down for short maintenance, in order to switch the IP ranges. After this maintenance, there will be enough IP numbers available for the growing use of the new VPN. The old VPN has not been switched off yet, because Ubuntu 16.04 still has problems with the new VPN.

Gitlab temporarily unavailable

Mon, 02 May 2016 21:30:00 +0200

Because of a major security update that will be released tonight, GitLab will not be available. We will update GitLab on Tuesday morning. After that, gitlab.science.ru.nl will be available again.

Gitlab backup accidentially restored on production server

Fri, 29 Apr 2016 14:30:00 +0200

A backup file, dated “Fri Apr 29 05:07:04 CEST 2016” has accidentially been restored on our production GitLab server, where it should have happened on a test server. This caused all repositories, wiki’s, issues etc. to be reset to the state of today 5.07 AM. Commits pushed between 5 am and 2:30 PM should be pushed again. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Server coma00 Monday morning reboot failed

Mon, 25 Apr 2016 06:30:00 +0200

The server comas1 did not start, probably due to some timing problems between the RAID array and OS. Solution: reboot - hardware reset.

RU mailserver blacklisted, for Science too

Tue, 19 Apr 2016 17:37:00 +0200

Yesterday the RU outgoing mailserver smtpout3.ru.nl got listed on the SORBS blacklist of confirmed senders of spam and phishing mails. The reason probably is that recently many students fell for phishing mails, which made their username and password known to Internet criminals. These criminals use that to send spam and phishing mails. Because also the Science mailservers use that blacklist, we did not accept mail from the RU mailserver anymore. The senders received an error message: “Your message wasn’t delivered due to a permission or security issue.” We solved this for our Science users by putting the RU mailserver on our own whitelist.

Power failure

Tue, 29 Mar 2016 10:43:00 +0200

Several services were inaccessible due to power loss of a rack switch caused by a failing PDU (power distribution unit). The PDU has been temporarily replaced.

Sevices include:

home directories, printing, authentication services, licenses, vpn, websites, databases, mailman and dns resolvers.

Hardware replacement webserver

Thu, 24 Mar 2016 12:19:00 +0100

Memory modules and or the motherboard of webserver ‘oehoe’ will be replaced. The mentioned web sites will not be available for a while.

Affected web services:

aerochem,akn,aqua,bgard,boekingen,bomen,cac,cafe,celbi,docenten,exo,filosofie,hfml iconic,ifl,irmacrash,itp2011,iwwr-boookings,kanboard,kndv,labservant,math,mbfys,mbp,mealab, nieuwescheikunde,nlt,pilab,printeger,probiomed,puff,pz,qpl,quantumcs,ra,refbase,rrl, scheikundeolympiade,siam,sigma-lustrum,smartech4health,sws,theorphys,tk,toernooi,tredd, trooster,vsc,w4kangoeroe,wortel,zwaartekrachtsgolven

Hardware failure webserver

Mon, 21 Mar 2016 14:00:00 +0100

A defective memory module caused spontaneous reboots. Since two modules where taken out, these reboots have not occurred anymore. Additional down time will be needed to resolve the problem.

Affected services:

Gitlab upgrade

Wed, 16 Mar 2016 21:40:00 +0100

Because of an upgrade of gitlab to version 8.5.7, the GitLab service was offline for a while.

Gitlab upgrade

Fri, 26 Feb 2016 09:00:00 +0100

Because of an upgrade of gitlab to version 8.5.1, the GitLab service will be offline for a while.

Virtual servers problem

Thu, 25 Feb 2016 07:25:00 +0100

Because of automated updates, Several virtual host had become unreachable. Server vos: gitlab3, bfacdc04, smtp2, redmine2 Server wolf: smtp1, bfacdc03, est2

Rebooted vos and wolf.

miii server problem

Tue, 23 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0100

For unknown reasons, the miii mail server was unavailable. Rebooted.

IMAP mail server problem

Mon, 22 Feb 2016 06:30:00 +0100

For unknown reasons, the IMAP mail server was unavailable. The service cyrus-imapd was not correctly started. Starting this service service cyrus-imapd start solved the problem.

IMAP mail server problem

Mon, 15 Feb 2016 11:20:00 +0100

For unknown reasons, the IMAP mail server was unavailable. Mail services were halted after some time because of logging activity. As a temporary workaround logging is now performed using UDP instead of TCP.

Fileserver problems

Tue, 09 Feb 2016 09:00:00 +0100

The Ubuntu 14.04 fileservers “flock” and “muckle” had problems a few times. After we reverted to the previous kernel version, the service seems to be stable again.

Matlab license server crashed

Mon, 08 Feb 2016 08:58:00 +0100

Last night the Matlab license server crashed, because the number of open file handles reached the maximum configured, because a user started a lot of Matlab processes. Because we do not yet monitor this properly and it was not reported to us, we could only repair it this morning. We increased the number of file handles by a factor of four. We assume that this will be sufficient to wait till the reboot of next Monday, when it will again be enlarged, this time by a factor of sixteen. We will also on short notice start to monitor the Matlab license server properly.

Server lilo4 Monday morning reboot slowed

Mon, 01 Feb 2016 06:30:00 +0100

The server lilo4 stalled at shutdown during the monday morning reboot. Solution: it continued its reboot after server wielewaal became available.

Webserver down: tftp & egw

Mon, 01 Feb 2016 06:30:00 +0100

Quite a number of websites of ICIS were not available amongst which was eGroupWare. Furthermore, the boot process of workstations was impaired (because of the missing tftp). A reboot of the server seems to be sufficient to solve the issue.

Affected websites:

blackgem brainhealth croatia14 croatia15 cs eduspec eduspecorg egw ethergids fbkr kickstart mhealth oni snn

Network failure in part of study area Huygens

Wed, 20 Jan 2016 12:57:00 +0100

In Huygens wing 2 a network switchmodule crashed twice. About 30 pc’s in the Study Area lost their connection to the network for some time. The switchmodule will be replaced on 2016-01-21 at 07:30 am.

Login servers down to activate safer kernel

Wed, 20 Jan 2016 09:30:00 +0100

Webserver down to add hard disks

Fri, 15 Jan 2016 17:00:00 +0100

Affected sites:

aerochem akn aqua bb2syllabus bgard boekingen boekwur bomengids cac cafe celbi dossiers est2b exo filosofie fnwi hfml iconic ifl irmacrash itp2011 iwwrbook kanboard kndv labservant leonardo math mbfys mbp nieuwescheikunde nlt notebooks olympus pilab piwik printeger projecten puff pz qpl quantumcs refbase resourceanalysis rrl scheiolymp setup siam sigma-lustrum sito smartech4health studiereis sws tango taskboard tk toernooi tredd trooster ubuntumirror vsc w4kangoeroe wortel

Virtual servers network interfaces broken after updates

Wed, 13 Jan 2016 07:16:00 +0100

The virtual hosts fret, wolf and vos received updates to libvirt packages, causing the network interfaces of the virtual machines running on them to fail. Solved after reboot (fret) or restart of the libvirt daemons and the virtual machines.

Affected virtual machines:

bfacdc03 bfacdc04 drukker est2 gitlab3 ms2 nwidc01 redmine2 smtp1 smtp2 ts2

Server lilo3 and lilo4 Monday morning reboot failed

Mon, 11 Jan 2016 06:30:00 +0100

The server lilo3/4 stalled at shutdown during the monday morning reboot. Solution: power cycle. Cause currently unknown.

RU Internet connection down

Mon, 23 Nov 2015 15:52:00 +0100

Yesterday at ca. 15:52 a SURFnet core router crashed, taking down the RU Internet connection. At 16:09 the connection was restored. This was reported yesterday on a temporary SURFnet service interruptions page and on the ISC/CIM service interruptions page. Details can be found on the SURFnet Network Tickets mailing list.

Print server printto problems

Thu, 19 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0100

After a reboot of the print server (and waiting ca. 10 minutes) printers could be attached again.

Problems availability wireless network eduroam

Mon, 16 Nov 2015 08:00:00 +0100

As a result of a short network service interruption last night, there were some problems with obtaining ip addresses on the wireless network eduroam.

Fileserver goudsmit problems

Wed, 04 Nov 2015 23:20:00 +0100

System crashed possibly caused by an erroneous harddisk causing all CPUs to lockup.

RU Internet connection down for maintenance

Tue, 20 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0200

The ISC has announced that on Tuesday morning, October 20, 2015 between 00:00 and 03:00 SURFnet and the ISC will perform maintenance on the connection of the RU with SURFnet/Internet. From 00:00 to 01:30 there is no connection. Between 01:30 and 03:00 short interruptions may occur. We advise to check which systems can be affected by this and if possible shift network activity to a different time slot. You also might think about systems with alerts via Internet.

Konica Minolta MFPs switched

Thu, 08 Oct 2015 08:00:00 +0200

In the morning of October 8, some KM MFPs will be switched, in order to have the faster/bigger machines at the locations where the print volume is te largest. The replacement of each machine will not take much time.

Affected printers:

pr-hg-00-011 pr-hg-00-089 pr-hg-00-627 pr-hg-00-825 pr-hg-02-038 pr-hg-02-556 pr-hg-02-832

Server lilo4 Monday morning reboot failed

Mon, 05 Oct 2015 06:30:00 +0200

The server lilo4 stalled at shutdown during the monday morning reboot. Solution: power cycle. Cause currently unknown.

Radboudumc buildings power switched off for test

Wed, 30 Sep 2015 16:00:00 +0200

Wednesday September 30, around 4:00 p.m., Radboudumc will carry out a test by switching off the power to almost all their buildings. For the RU buildings this test has no direct effect. Liander states that switching off and on again will have no noticeable effect on the rest of the power net in Nijmegen including Radboud University. However, switching high power always has the possibility of introducing a power problem elsewhere. If research, education or any activity will be seriously hindered by a power problem, you might consider ending this activity in time or taking measures to guarantee continuity with emergency power and UPS.

Brief network interruptions at FNWI

Sat, 12 Sep 2015 09:00:00 +0200

Saturday September 12, between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m., maintenance work will be conducted on the network router at the Faculty of Science and a number of server switches in C&CZ data centers. This means that between these points in time, a few brief network interruptions with a duration of approximately 1 minute will occur. Many FNWI servers will be unreachable at those moments. The Mitel IP phones will also go out of service momentarily several times. All other phones, however, will continue to operate normally. The maintenance work is necessary to enable resumption of the IP telephony rollout at the Faculty of Science. For further information, please contact netmaster@science.ru.nl.

Interruption public telephone network

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 14:00:00 +0200

Since 14:00 this afternoon it’s not possible to reach phones outside the campus. Also, only external phones on the KPN network and cell phones from all providers can reach the campus.

For central RU service interruptions and planned maintenance, see the combined ISC/CIM interruptions page.

Water damage for pr-hg-03-825

Mon, 31 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0200

A leak above the KM MFP hg PR-03-825 made this fail beyond repair. We hope to resolve this by replacing it by a little-used KM MFP of the same type.

Server vos (gitlab3/redmine2/smtp2) preventive maintenance

Fri, 31 Jul 2015 09:00:00 +0200

The server vos will receive extra disks and need to be reconfigured. Virtual clients gitlab3, redmine2 and smtp2 will be offline during maintenance.

Server homedcc had old homes after reboot

Mon, 15 Jun 2015 06:30:00 +0200

After the server reboot on Monday morning, the changes to the home directories of the last two weeks had disappeared. It is still not clear how this could have happened. The backups of Saturday June 13 22:55 have been restored.

SMTP server problem because of too short keys

Sat, 13 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0200

Starting a month ago, mail programs could get an update due to the vulnerability for a LogJam attack. After this update these programs refused connections with a server with a too short key. The old C&CZ authenticated SMTP server had such a short key. Users who reported this problem (with the latest versions of Pine, Thunderbird and recently also Apple Mail), were advised to temporarily use an alternative server. As of today using this alternative server is no longer necessary, because the server smtp.science.ru.nl has been replaced by a new server.

Services unavailable due to power outage

Thu, 11 Jun 2015 20:00:00 +0200

A short power dip interrupted desktop computers and some network switches without UPS backup power on the RU campus. It took approx. 20 minutes before the affected switches became fully operational again. A network switch at the Transitorium reported a failed module until it was reset around 8:30 am on Friday morning. For ca. 46 outlets/users the network didn’t function until 8:40. The UVB reported as cause a cable cut at the Kapittelweg. Liander reports a power disturbance an hour later at that location.

Fileserver tcmr problems

Fri, 05 Jun 2015 16:05:00 +0200

Resolved by a server reboot.

Ubuntu 10.04 cluster / cn99 server problem

Wed, 03 Jun 2015 12:10:00 +0200

The server (cn99) which serviced SUN Grid Engine on Ubuntu 10.04 is no more. It could not find its disks while booting. This will not be solved because the machine is already more than five years old. Clusternodes cn67, cn74, cn75 and cn81 are influenced. They can still be used by logging into them directly.

GitLab server problems

Sat, 30 May 2015 07:34:00 +0200

A configuration error caused the automatic installation of an older version of GitLab (7.7.1) over the the most recent version (7.11.4). Because the GitLab version did not correspond to the state of the underlying database, what caused multiple problems. Among which the gitlab shell for ssh access and inaccessibility of some parts of the web interface. The problems were solved after upgrading to version 7.11.4.

License server reboot problem

Mon, 11 May 2015 06:30:00 +0200

Today the license server booted without configuring the network. The cause of the problem was an error in a configuration file. This has been corrected.

Affected licenses:

Altera Ansys Accelrys Genesys Hdlworks Idapro Xilinx IntelCompiler Ingr Maple Mathematica Matlab MentorGraphics Mestrelab Topspin Orcad Originlab

IMAP mail server upgrade next monday night

Mon, 16 Feb 2015 23:00:00 +0100

The IMAP server will be replaced by a new server next Monday night. During the night, no Science mail can be read from the server, because then the most recent mails will be synchronized to the new server. Mail can be sent in this period, but new mail will start being delivered on the new server from 07:30. A word of warning, one could login on the old server with the first 8 characters of the password, the new server only accepts the full password.

Network maintenance in Huygens wing 8

Wed, 11 Feb 2015 18:00:00 +0100

The configurations in the network switches in the buildings/floors/locations mentioned above, will be replaced. This means that both wired en wireless networks at these locations will be interrupted and network traffic will not be possible.

Network switch problem

Wed, 04 Feb 2015 16:42:00 +0100

Due to a configuration fault in a C&CZ server switch it became unreachable. Therefore some servers and services were unreachable as well (nameserver, mail etc). After a quick fix the systems were up and running again.

Power dip Huygens building Saturday, January 17

Sat, 17 Jan 2015 07:54:00 +0100

Saturday morning, during maintenance by UVB and Liander, there were a few short unintended power dips in the Huygens building. A large part of the network switches does not have a UPS and thus restarted. After 09:11 all switches were operational again.

Background: January 10 and 17, maintenance has been carried out on the power transformers in the Huygens building. This work should be carried out once every 5 years. Because a power failure of 6-8 hours (duration of maintenance) is unacceptable for the Faculty of Science, last year bypasses have been constructed, to make the transformers able to replace each other. Beforehand, the chance that a power failure should occur, was thought to be particularly small. The next time such a service is planned, in 2020, everyone will be informed in advance.

Upgrade of license server

Thu, 08 Jan 2015 17:30:00 +0100

The license server still runs Ubuntu 10.04. This means that in a few months it would not receive security updates. Furthermore we want to use this server for DNS/DNSSEC/DHCP-service, which makes Ubuntu 14.04 necessary. Because this is a license server, we cannot switch to a new server, but we will place disks with the new OS in the existing server. Because this only means a small amount of downtime, users will hardly notice.

Fileserver bulk problems

Wed, 07 Jan 2015 14:35:00 +0100

Resolved by a server reboot.

Affected disks:

acfiles beevee bioniccell bio-orgchem celbio1 celbio2 chemprac csgi-archief csg-projecten csg-staf desda ds ehef1 ehef2 ehef3 femtospin geminstr2 giphouse gissig gmi hfml-backup hfml-backup2 hfml-backup-inst highres impuls introcie isis janvanhest kaartenbak kangoeroe mathsolcie microbiology microbiology2 milkun2 milkun2RenD milkun3 milkun5 milkun6 milkun7 milkun7rw molbiol mwstudiereis neuroinf neuroinf2 olympus puc randomwalkmodel secres2 sigma sigmacies spectra spectra-rw spm spmdata3 spmdata4 spmdata5 spmdata6 spmdata7 spmstaff ssi staff-hfml stroom thalia ucm vsc vsc1 vsc10 vsc11 vsc12 vsc13 vsc14 vsc15 vsc2 vsc3 vsc4 vsc5 vsc6 vsc7 vsc8 vsc9 vscadmin wiskalg wiskunde wkru

Again IMAP mail server problem

Wed, 24 Dec 2014 17:46:00 +0100

There was again a problem with another harddisk of the IMAP server. This made the server unusable. A reboot solved the problem.

IMAP mail server problem

Wed, 24 Dec 2014 09:20:00 +0100

The IMAP server got overloaded again which could not be due to user usage. The server was rebooted since all I/O processing was stopped and we could not kill any processes. Snapshots have now been completely disabled. It took quite some time before the server had all disks and filesystems in working order.

IMAP mail server problem

Mon, 15 Dec 2014 06:30:00 +0100

There was a problem with a failed harddisk of the IMAP server. This slowed the machine down so that it was practically unusable. The problem was solved by replacing the disk.

Network problem RU

Wed, 26 Nov 2014 09:45:00 +0100

As reported by the ISC, the RU was victim of a DDOS attack. As a consequence of this is the connection to the Internet was interrupted. Measures have been taken to prevent a similar attack having this result in the future.

Network maintenance in Mercator III south and low-rise buildings

Wed, 19 Nov 2014 18:30:00 +0100

The network switches in the buildings/floors/locations mentioned above will be replaced. This means that both wired en wireless networks at these locations will be interrupted and network traffic will not be possible. This includes the network for access control, climate control etc.

Server nachtwacht preventive maintenance

Mon, 17 Nov 2014 16:30:00 +0100

The server nachtwacht reports having a hard drive that will soon fail. We will replace the disk as soon as possible.

DNS resolver problem

Sat, 15 Nov 2014 11:29:00 +0100

The server that acts within FNWI as first DNS resolver crashed, probably because of a disk becoming defective. This made the network slow or even virtually unusable for a lot of computers in FNWI. Only after a reboot of the server, the problem1 was solved. Monday morning, at the weekly reboot of this server, it would only boot after manually acknowledging the defective disk (problem2), When other servers rebooted at 06:30, a lot of them had problems due to the missing DNS resolver. Further measures to reduce the inconvenience of such a crash have been taken. The move to new DNS servers is in preparation.

S-schijf

Fri, 14 Nov 2014 11:32:29 +0000

S-disk

On pc’s managed by C&CZ the S-disk (a network share) is available by default. On this share a large number of programs is available that can be run directly form this share (no local installation needed). These programs can also be used on pc’s not managed by C&CZ.

Attach the network share as \\software-srv.science.ru.nl\software using Drive letter S because some software might depend on the driveletter S.

Fileserver bulk problems

Wed, 12 Nov 2014 14:45:00 +0100

Resolved by a server reboot.

Affected network shares:

acfiles ARK-Backup Bargerveen Bargerveen-Gebruikers beevee bioniccell bio-orgchem B-Ware-Arnica B-Ware-Dotter B-Ware-Erica B-Ware-Knolrus B-Ware-Lobelia B-Ware-Stratiotes celbio1 celbio2 csgi-archief csg-staf cvi desda ds ehef1 evsf2dataoud evsf2schijf1 femtospin Floron geminstr2 giphouse gissig gmi hfml-backup hfml-backup2 highres impuls introcie isis janvanhest kaartenbak kangoeroe microbiology microbiology2 milkun2 milkun3 milkun5 milkun6 milkun7 milkun7rw molbiol mwstudiereis neuroinf neuroinf2 nfstest nwibackup olympus puc RandomWalkModel Ravon-Algemeen Ravon-Foto Ravon-Projecten secres2 sigma sigmaalmanak sigmacies sigmaexchange sigmasymposium splex spmdata3 spmdata4 spmdata5 spmdata6 spmdata7 stroom thalia ucm vsc vsc1 vsc10 vsc11 vsc12 vsc13 vsc14 vsc15 vsc2 vsc3 vsc4 vsc5 vsc6 vsc7 vsc8 vsc9 vscadmin wiskalg wiskunde

Network maintenance in Mercator III north

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 18:30:00 +0100

Network maintenance in server room Huygens

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 06:00:00 +0100

Because of a software upgrade of the network switches in the buildings/floors/locations mentioned above, these network switches will be rebooted at 06:00h (AM) exactly. This means that both wired en wireless networks at these locations will be interrupted for 10 to 15 minutes and network traffic will not be possible. This includes the network for access control, climate control etc.

Network problems FNWI

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 06:00:00 +0100

After the network maintenance of 20141111 a single user reported later a problem with the wired network. These problems intensified and grew faculty wide on 20141119 at 13:34 hours. The network switches in the Faculty of Science received so many topology changes of the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) that network traffic often stuttered. By curbing the STP traffic on 20141120 at 15:32 the stuttering disappeared. We still search for the exact cause, probably it is a housing move.

Network maintenance in part of Huygens

Thu, 06 Nov 2014 06:00:00 +0100

Locations:

Huygens wing 3 all floors
Huygens wing 4 all floors
Huygens wing 8 all floors
Huygens central street between wing 6 and 8 all floors

Network maintenance in peripheral buildings

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 06:00:00 +0100

Because of a software upgrade of the network switches in the buildings/floors/locations mentioned above, these network switches will be rebooted on Tuesday morning at 06:00h (AM) exactly. This means that both wired en wireless networks at these locations will be interrupted for 10 to 15 minutes and network traffic will not be possible. This includes the network for access control, climate control etc.

Locations: FELIX, HFML, Nanolab, Goudsmit pavillion (NMR), Lab DCN in A-2.002, Kinderopvang Heyendael (both buildings), Logistiek Centrum FNWI, Linnaeus building, Mercator 1, 6th floor

Network maintenance in Huygens wing 7

Wed, 29 Oct 2014 19:00:00 +0100

Because of an upgrade of the network switches in the buildings/floors/locations mentioned above, these network switches will be replaced. This means that both wired en wireless networks at these locations will be interrupted and network traffic will not be possible. This includes the network for access control, climate control etc.

RU network problem

Wed, 29 Oct 2014 09:38:00 +0100

Due to a short DDOS-attack the RU was virtually disconnected from the Internet during ca 7 minutes. All network connected systems may have had problems during that time. Until 15:30 some Eduroam users still had problems acquiring an IP address.

FNWI network problem

Wed, 15 Oct 2014 03:44:00 +0200

The router that regulates all IP traffic between subnets in the Huygens building and surrounding buildings, became too busy. All network traffic, especially UDP had problems. ISC network admins reduced the load by simplifying the ACLs and reducing logging. At about 12:00 the problem was temporarily solved. C&CZ will do a further inspection of all ACLs, with the aim to reduce the load on the router without reducing security for connected systems.

Disturbance of Vodafone VWO data traffic

Wed, 24 Sep 2014 08:30:00 +0200

On the ISC website we read:

Radboud University agreed on a new mobile telephone contract with - again - provider Vodafone. For this purpose, on Wednesday, September 24th during daytime the Radboud subscriptions will be adjusted. Employees with a Vodafone mobile wille have no disturbance in calling or being called that day. But the Vodafone data network might be temporarily unavailable. To restore the data connection it is necessary to turn the mobile phone off and then on again. Of course employees on campus can always use the eduroam Wi-Fi network.

DNS resolver problem

Sat, 20 Sep 2014 10:45:00 +0200

The server that acts within FNWI as first DNS resolver crashed. This made the network virtually unusable for a lot of computers in FNWI. Only after a reboot of the server, the problem was solved. Measures to reduce the inconvenience of such a crash and to make such a crash less likely, have been partly taken and are partly in preparation.

Webserver (klopjacht) disk problem

Tue, 09 Sep 2014 10:46:00 +0200

A defective disk made the server stop serving web requests. A reboot fixed the problem. The defective disk will be replaced soon.

Surfnet uplink offline

Mon, 08 Sep 2014 22:00:00 +0200

Due to an error during the planned maintenance by Surfnet of the RU network interface, the uplink of Radboud University to Surfnet was down.

Fileserver goudsmit problems

Mon, 08 Sep 2014 06:30:00 +0200

One of the filesystems contained errors and prevented the system from starting up.

SMTP server offline for half an hour

Thu, 21 Aug 2014 16:00:00 +0200

Both processor fans have failed and need to be replaced.

Fileserver bulk problems

Fri, 15 Aug 2014 12:04:00 +0200

The fileserver had problems, which were resolved after a server reboot.

Affected network shares:

acfiles ARK-Backup Bargerveen Bargerveen-Gebruikers beevee bioniccell bio-orgchem B-Ware-Arnica B-Ware-Dotter B-Ware-Erica B-Ware-Knolrus B-Ware-Lobelia B-Ware-Stratiotes celbio1 celbio2 csgi-archief csg-staf cvi desda ds ehef1 evsf2dataoud evsf2schijf1 femtospin Floron geminstr2 giphouse gissig gmi hfml-backup hfml-backup2 highres impuls introcie isis janvanhest kaartenbak kangoeroe microbiology microbiology2 milkun2 milkun3 milkun5 milkun6 milkun7 milkun7rw molbiol mwstudiereis neuroinf neuroinf2 nfstest nwibackup olympus puc RandomWalkModel Ravon-Algemeen Ravon-Foto Ravon-Projecten secres2 sigma sigmaalmanak sigmacies sigmaexchange sigmasymposium splex spmdata3 spmdata4 spmdata5 spmdata6 spmdata7 stroom thalia ucm vsc vsc1 vsc10 vsc11 vsc12 vsc13 vsc14 vsc15 vsc2 vsc3 vsc4 vsc5 vsc6 vsc7 vsc8 vsc9 vscadmin wiskalg wiskunde

M1.04 no network

Thu, 14 Aug 2014 16:09:00 +0200

While administering the network switchports for the move of ISIS to Mercator1 floor 0 to 3, ISC network management erroneously also changed the configuration of the network switchports of floor 4. When this was reported this morning, it could be readily remedied.

Failure cn56 disk

Mon, 07 Jul 2014 08:00:00 +0200

One of the mirrored disks failed. We didn’t manage to rebuild the raid set with a new disk. The system is reinstalled with two new disks. After that, data from /scratch could be recovered from one of the old disks.

Network drive migration

Thu, 05 Jun 2014 16:00:00 +0200

The network drives will be migrated to a new server. During the migration, the network drives will be unavailable.

Affected shares:

acfiles, bioniccell, bio-orgchem, celbio1, CSGI-Archief, Csg-Staf, ds, evsf2schijf1, giphouse, gissig, gmi, hfml-backup, hfml-backup2, highres, impuls, introcie, isis, kaartenbak, microbiology, microbiology2, microbiologyftp, milkun2, milkun3, milkun5, milkun6, milkun7, milkun7rw, mwstudiereis, neuroinf, olympus, permissies, puc, secres2, sigma, sigmaalmanak, sigmacies, sigmaexchange, sigmasymposium, Soheto, splex, spmdata3, spmdata4, spmdata5, spmdata6, spmdata7, stroom, thalia, ucm, vsc, vsc1, vsc2, vsc3, vsc4, vsc5, vsc6, vsc7, vsc8, vsc9, vsc10, vsc11, vsc12, vsc13, vsc14, vsc15,wiskalg, wiskunde

Reboot of login servers after network drive migration

Thu, 05 Jun 2014 16:00:00 +0200

The planned move of network drives from an old to a new server caused a lot of “stale NFS file handles”, which made it necessary to reboot some login servers.

IMAP mail server problem

Thu, 05 Jun 2014 14:05:00 +0200

The IMAP server got overloaded again. Restarting the IMAP service was required to bring it back in operation. We think it is related to snapshots and therefore regularly remove invalid snapshots from now on.

IMAP mail server problem

Tue, 27 May 2014 14:05:00 +0200

The IMAP server got overloaded. Restarting the IMAP service was required to bring it back in operation.

Data/file/vol server (heap) problem

Mon, 26 May 2014 06:45:00 +0200

The server had a problem, which had started at the Monday morning reboot. A reboot of the machine solved the problem. Soon all data will be moved to a new server. This will not cause much problems for users, because everybody uses the aliases something-srv.science.ru.nl.

Maintenance wireless infrastructure May 19

Mon, 19 May 2014 20:00:00 +0200

At Monday May 19, a major upgrade of the wireless infrastructure and its maintenance tool (called Prime) will take place by the ISC. Therefore the wireless service (i.e. Eduroam) will be interrupted several times from 8:00 pm. Existing wireless connections will be lost and new connections will not be possible for some time. Due to the complexity of this operation this maintenance will possibly be continued at Monday, May 26, again with interruptions from 8:00 pm.

Maintenance Goudsmit

Mon, 12 May 2014 13:00:00 +0200

One of the systemdisks reported SMART-errors and will be replaced.

lilo.science.ru.nl offline

Mon, 12 May 2014 06:30:00 +0200

Lilo did not shut down correctly during the planned weekly reboot. After a hardware reset, the machine booted just fine

And yet again Print/phpMyAdmin server problem

Thu, 08 May 2014 16:24:00 +0200

Just like yesterday, a reboot of the machine was necessary to restore the functionality. Tomorrow morning, the server will restart with a new kernel. It this doesn’t solve the problem, we will look into a new version of Samba.

Yet again Print/phpMyAdmin server problem

Wed, 07 May 2014 12:49:00 +0200

Just like yesterday, a reboot of the machine was necessary to restore the functionality. We will investigate if we can remediate this problem with newer software versions (Samba, Ubuntu, …)

Eduroam problem

Tue, 06 May 2014 13:40:00 +0200

Some Eduroam users didn’t get an IP number, because one of the IP ranges had no free leases. This ranges contained all @science.ru.nl users. The ISC networking department first decreased the lease time. Now they also make this range free for use by @science.ru.nl users. This will prevent the problem from occuring again soon.

And again Print/phpMyAdmin server problem

Tue, 06 May 2014 12:14:00 +0200

Again a reboot of the machine was necessary to restore the functionality. As a patch we will reboot this server each night.

U-number authentication problem Eduroam

Wed, 30 Apr 2014 13:00:00 +0200

The new RU IdM system erroneously rewrote the RU password hash when data about a person changed. This primariliy affected employees of FNWI, because for this group the Science email address had been incorporated in IdM. This will make it possible to use the Science address as an external mail address when resetting RU passwords. When the problem was recognized, it was fixed swiftly by restoring the RU password hashes from backup.

Peage MFP Huygens building in maintenance April 28/29/30

Mon, 28 Apr 2014 12:00:00 +0200

April 28/29/30, the Peage MFP and the Peage POS near the restaurant in the Huygens building cannot be used. The ISC will then investigate whether Peage can also be made available for employees instead of only for students. April 28, the MFP will be moved to the test location, April 30 it will be moved back.

Poster printer "kamerbreed" broken

Mon, 21 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0200

The printer has to be repaired. Spare parts have been ordered. We hope to have the printer operational again mid-May.

After replacement still Print/phpMyAdmin server problem

Thu, 17 Apr 2014 13:35:00 +0200

Although the hardware of the server was replaced, the server didn’t react for unknown reasons. A reboot of the machine solved the problem. We will think about ways to tackle this problem.

Print/phpMyAdmin server replacement Thursday April 17 08:30-09:20

Thu, 17 Apr 2014 08:30:00 +0200

Because of the recent problems with this server, we are going to replace the server, in order to prevent further service interruptions.

U:/ home server pile problem

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 17:42:00 +0200

The server had a problem with one partition, which had started during the creation of new snapshots. We waited with the reboot untill after working hours. A reboot of the machine solved the problem. To prevent these problems in the future, we will no longer make local snapshots of homeservers, but of course the daily backups of the homeservers by the backup server will be continued.

And yet again Print/phpMyAdmin server problem

Mon, 14 Apr 2014 13:05:00 +0200

Just like four days ago, the server didn’t react for unknown reasons. A reboot of the machine solved the problem. We plan to replace the server next Thursday 08:30-09:00 hours, in order to prevent further service interruptions.

Again Print/phpMyAdmin server problem

Thu, 10 Apr 2014 12:54:00 +0200

Just like two weeks ago, the server didn’t react for unknown reasons. A reboot of the machine solved the problem. Together with the supplier we will try to find out what to replace to prevent this in the future.

U: / home server bundle problems

Fri, 04 Apr 2014 11:35:00 +0200

From the moment of yesterday’s snapshots (13:00 hours), more and more processes were hung at the server. The first complaints arrived at C&CZ ca. 11:15 hours this morning. Therefore we decided ca. 11:35 to restart the server. The reboot resolved the problem. The number of snapshots will be reduced in order to try to prevent problems due to snapshots in the future.

Print/phpMyAdmin server problem

Thu, 27 Mar 2014 10:40:00 +0100

The server didn’t react for unknown reasons. A reboot of the machine solved the problem.

U:/ home server pile problem

Mon, 24 Mar 2014 17:25:00 +0100

The server had a problem with one partition. A reboot of the machine solved the problem.

Linux login server lilo3 reboot due to NFS-problems

Mon, 10 Mar 2014 12:31:00 +0100

The Linux login server lilo3 didn’t have the homedirectories of some users. It took a reboot to fix this.

File server heap problems

Mon, 10 Mar 2014 06:30:00 +0100

The fileserver failed to start after the Monday morning reboot, because of filesystem errors (LVmd2-7). Manually fixing the errors solved the problem and the machine started successfully.

U: / home server pile and Linux login server lilo/stitch problems

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 13:00:00 +0100

The server had a high load and stopped servicing users, probably because of problems with the creation of new snapshots at 13:00 hours. A reboot solved the problem.

Network interruptions in Huygens wing 5

Mon, 03 Feb 2014 19:00:00 +0100

On Monday evening, February 3rd between 19:00 - 24:00 (7:00 - 12:00 pm) maintanance will be carried out on the network devices in Huygens Wing 5. Therefore the wired and wireless networks will not be available at some moments at all locations in this Wing, on all floors.

Again network interruptions in Huygens wing 2

Tue, 28 Jan 2014 19:00:00 +0100

The announced proceedings on Tuesday, January 21st on the network equipment unfortunately did not take place due to a sudden instability of the network in Wing 1 the same day. In order to prevent further instability issues in Wing 2, it was necessary to solve the problems in Wing 1 first. These problems have been identified and corrected. The network maintenance in Wing 2 will now take place Tuesday, January 28th between 19:00 and 24:00 ( 7:00 pm to 12:00 ) during which the wireless and cabled networks will be off line for some time. This will affect all floors in Wing 2 and rooms along the corridors between wings 2 and 4 (all floors).

Network interruptions in Huygens wing 2

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 19:00:00 +0100

On Tuesday evening January 21 between 7:00 pm and 12:00 pm maintanance will be carried out on the network devices in Huygens wing 2. Therefore the wired and wireless networks will not be available at some moments at all locations in wing 2 and corridors between wings 2 and 4, on all floors.

Network interruptions in Huygens wing 1

Mon, 13 Jan 2014 19:00:00 +0100

On Monday evening January 13 between 7:00 pm and 12:00 pm maintanance will be carried out on the network devices in Huygens wing 1. Therefore the wired and wireless networks will not be available at some moments in many locations in wing 1 and corridors between wings 1 and 3, on all floors.

Network problems

Mon, 06 Jan 2014 11:29:00 +0100

Due to an error by an ISC network administrator, all internal and external RU network traffic was blocked for a short period.

Postponed replacement of home-server "bundle"

Mon, 23 Dec 2013 07:30:00 +0100

The replacement of the old home server “bundle” has been postponed and will now guaranteed take place on Monday morning December 23. Because the data have been synchronized with the new server, there will not be much downtime. The new server should be very dependable: hardware RAID-6, double processors and power supplies and a 5-year support contract from the supplier. The performance has improved, e.g. by using hardware RAID with a 1 GB write cache with battery backup.

Moving network shares to new servers

Mon, 23 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0100

In the course of these two days, above network shares will be moved to new servers. During the move action, a share will not be available. If you encounter any problems connecting to a network share using Windows, always connect using the “share-name minus srv” naming scheme: \\sharenaam-srv.science.ru.nl\sharenaam. See also Diskruimte#Naming.

Affected network shares:

acfiles2 botany botany-general carta comsol digicd encapson encapson2 exoarchief felix gi2 gi3 hfml-45t hfml-data hfml-engineering ifl iris mailmanincludes mbaudit1 mbaudit2 mbbioel mbcns mbcortex mbdata mbread mbwrite mestrelab mi2 mi3 milkun4 milkun4rw molchem molchem2 molphtec mol-secr multimedia neuropi ns3 nwi-backup onlyme owc pcb planthgl plantkunde-hgl sdisk/software share snn sofie spmdata1 tdisk/cursus tece teceleiding temp tracegastemp wallpaper xpcursus xpsoftware

Interruption of network in Huygens wing 1

Tue, 17 Dec 2013 19:00:00 +0100

Tuesday night December 17 19:00-24:00 hours, maintenance work will be done affecting the data network in Huygens wing 1. The wired and wireless network will suffer service interruptions a few times during that period. The main inconvenience will be on the ground floor.

Service interruption Konica Minolta MFP's outside of Huygens building

Mon, 09 Dec 2013 12:48:00 +0100

C&CZ changed the DHCP-configuration of the KM MFP’s, because KM had told us all KM’s had an identical configuration after the upgrade of the night of December 4. Soon thereafter the KM’s outside of the Huygens building showed problems. After changing the DHCP-configuration back to the previous version and restarting the MFP’s, the problem was resolved. The firmware upgrade of these machines still has to take place.

Konica Minolta MFP's firmware upgrade

Wed, 04 Dec 2013 02:00:00 +0100

Wednesday night, the firmware of the Konica Minolta multifunctionals will be upgraded. This should resolve existing problems, like the not waking up from sleep mode. Please report all remaining problems, for MFP-hardware and paper to KM via phone: 55955 option 4.

Power dip December 3

Tue, 03 Dec 2013 09:36:00 +0100

Tuesday morning around half past nine, there was a short power dip for RU/UMCN, probably due to a switch error at Liander. This power dip, that is not listed on the power interruption website, made all systems restart that were not on UPS power. Because only the network switches in Huygens wing 1 and 7 are on UPS power, a lot of users lost their connection to the network, including wireless and IP-telephony, for about 20 minutes. Apparatus that restarted faster than the network, might have needed an extra restart to restore the connection to the network.

BASS Java 7 problem

Sun, 01 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0100

The ISC let us know that after the installation of patches installed in BASS during the weekend of December 1, the possibility to use a recent version of Java (version 7) had erroneously disappeared. As of February 11, 2014 this issue has been resolved. The function in BASS to work with all versions of Java SE (JRE) on the client (PC) has been reactivated. Furthermore all JAR-files in BASS have received a security certificate (they have been signed), with which it possible for BASS to work with the latest Java SE versions (Java SE 7.51 en hoger). BASS users who work with Forms, will see pop-up windows asking “Do you want to run this application?”. Of this a description has been made on the RU Intranet.

U: / home server bundle problems

Tue, 29 Oct 2013 16:00:00 +0100

For unknown reasons the server had a high load and stopped servicing users. A reboot solved the problem.

Again IMAP mail server problem

Mon, 28 Oct 2013 13:35:00 +0100

Just like 3 days ago, the IMAP server got overloaded after noon. It took a reboot to bring the service back in operation. We suspect that our making of a backup-snapshot triggers this and now have disabled the snapshot during working hours.

IMAP mail server problem

Fri, 25 Oct 2013 13:23:00 +0200

During an extra backup the IMAP server got overloaded. It took a reboot to bring the service back in operation.

Wireless @ru.nl authentication problem

Wed, 23 Oct 2013 14:30:00 +0200

Yesterday afternoon around 14:30 the ISC conducted a seemingly innocent maintenance on the LDAP-server, but immediately after that auth-requests from Radius were no longer serviced. This made it impossible for wireless users to authenticate with their u/s/e number. Users in the realm @science.ru.nl were not affected by this.

Power dip October 22, ca. 11:00

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 10:55:00 +0200

Tuesday morning around 11 o’clock, there was a short power dip for RU/UMCN. This power dip, that is not listed on the power interruption website, made all systems restart that were not on emergency power. Because only the network switches in Huygens wing 1 and 7 are on emergency power, a lot of users lost their connection to the network, including wireless and IP-telephony, for about 5 minutes. Apparatus that restarted faster than the network, might have needed an extra restart to restore the connection to the network. A department reported that a departmental printer did not survive the power dip.

Scan to email sometimes doesn't work for Konica Minolta MFPs

Sat, 12 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0200

Update: we changed the configuration of the network switchports of the KM’s, which resolves the problem. This was necessary, because the KM’s do not try hard enough to make a connection with the SMTP-server.

Update: an alternative is scanning to a USB stick. Log in at the MFP with the scan-pin, put a document in the feeder or on the document glass, select Scan and then plug the USB stick into the USB port on the right side of the MFP , on the top side. After a few seconds the MFP recognizes the USB stick and presents the choice “Save a document to external memory”. Choose OK and press Start. See also [RU http://www.ru.nl/publish/pages/687597/uitrol-mf-scan.pdf manual] on the RU-page about the MFP’s.

Again mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Thu, 10 Oct 2013 00:04:00 +0200

Again a Science user supplied his Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam.

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

Printto/printsmb/phpmyadmin server problems again

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 15:18:00 +0200

The printserver crashed again, for yet unknown reasons. A reboot of the machine solved the problem.

U: / home server bundle problems

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 13:46:00 +0200

The server crashed. A reboot of the machine solved the problem.

Printto/printsmb/phpmyadmin server problems

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 11:02:00 +0200

The printserver crashed. A reboot of the machine solved the problem.

Poster printer "kamerbreed" broken

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 17:00:00 +0200

The motherboard of the printer had to be replaced. Because there is no maintenance contract for this old printer and spare parts were hard to get, repair has taken a long time.

Printto/printsmb server problems

Tue, 24 Sep 2013 11:41:00 +0200

The printserver crashed. A reboot of the machine solved the problem.

Sound on Linux dual-boot PC's disabled

Mon, 23 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0200

The availability of sound in Windows appeared to be depending on the state in which Linux had left it. Therefore the sound in Linux on dual boot PC’s has been disabled, in order to have it available on Windows. Sound under Linux will be available again once the HP Compaq Elite 8300 AiO harware has been phased out.

File server heap problems

Tue, 17 Sep 2013 16:25:00 +0200

The fileserver failed to see its disks. A reboot of the machine solved the problem.

File server chunk failed reboot

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 06:30:00 +0200

The fileserver failed the regular Monday morning reboot. Only after a rescue boot and a removal of all snapshots rebooting the machine worked.

Affected disks:

arb botgarden ccs4 excienwi exoarchief FIT gi1 gipsy isis-dhz itt iwwr1 leonardo mercator micord molspec olcwis ons pvs ratio tzacad vb vscxray WiskundeToernooi zeegras

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Fri, 06 Sep 2013 10:13:00 +0200

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

And again mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Wed, 04 Sep 2013 12:22:00 +0200

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

And yet again mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Tue, 03 Sep 2013 13:12:00 +0200

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

DNS nameserver problem

Mon, 02 Sep 2013 04:30:00 +0200

The DNS server on ns1.science.ru.nl didn’t start after the reboot, due to a syntax error in one of the zone files. When this had been corrected, it started without problems.

Fileserver chunk needs reboot

Thu, 29 Aug 2013 07:30:00 +0200

Affected shares:

arb botgarden ccs4 excienwi exoarchief FIT gi1 gipsy isis-dhz itt iwwr1 leonardo mercator micord molspec olcwis ons pvs ratio tzacad vb vscxray WiskundeToernooi zeegras

Yet again mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Thu, 29 Aug 2013 05:30:00 +0200

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

Again mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Thu, 22 Aug 2013 22:38:00 +0200

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Thu, 22 Aug 2013 01:45:00 +0200

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

Wireless access to BASS problem

Mon, 12 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0200

From August 12 the wireless network in the Science buildings is being replaced. The new IP numbers appear to not be able to connect directly to BASS. We expect that this will be changed soon.

Windows Roaming Profile problem

Thu, 01 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0200

An error in distributing a Group Policy Object (GPO) caused roaming profiles to fail for the last week. The start date/time of the problem is unknown, This is an estimate.

Lilo3 reboot for different IP number

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 11:00:00 +0200

Today lilo3 appeared to have an incorrectly chosen IP number. A reboot fixed this.

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Mon, 01 Jul 2013 23:50:00 +0200

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 17:48:00 +0200

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 17:48:00 +0200

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Mon, 24 Jun 2013 09:00:00 +0200

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Sun, 23 Jun 2013 15:54:00 +0200

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

DNS nameserver problem

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 04:30:00 +0200

The DNS server on ns1.science.ru.nl didn’t start after the reboot, due to a syntax error in one of the zone files. When this had been coreected, it started without problems.

Mail problem (IMAP server)

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:45:00 +0200

The IMAP server had a problem, which made a reboot necessary.

Maintenance Wireless@RU

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 22:00:00 +0200

On Thursday June 6th from 10:00 pm the wireless networks ru-wlan and eduroam will be unavailable for at least 2 hours. All existing connections will be cut off. The wireless network Science however will not be effected and will be kept available.

BASS RU problem

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0200

The central BASS RU environment has been updated last weekend. Part of this upgrade was a change of the web address of the second logon screen, as announced on our BASS page. This morning it became clear that access to the second logon screen via the Port Forwarder didn’t work anymore. Therefore the UCI rolled back the change of the second logon screen. This means that AFTER LOGGING ON TO THE PROXY at https://admin.ru.nl/ BASS is available again via https://bassruap01.uci.ru.nl:8010/OA_HTML/AppsLocalLogin.jsp

OpenID server problem

Fri, 24 May 2013 03:30:00 +0200

During the renewal of the OpenID server a configuration error was made. When users reported problems logging in, we started searching for the origin of problem. When it was found, it could easily be corrected and the server could be restarted with the correct configuration.

Homeserver bundle crashed

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:00:00 +0200

The fileserver crashed. After a reboot everything was back to normal.

Homeserver bundle failed reboot

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 06:30:00 +0200

The fileserver failed to reboot during the regular Monday morning shutdown schedule. It was possible to gain access to the system console only after having removed all power from the chassis. Snapshots were removed using the rescue reboot but rebooting the machine resulted in a faulty filesystem. We were able to boot the system after all filesystems had been checked offline. These actions resulted in a unusual long downtime.

Fileserver stack crashed due to failed hard disk

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:08:00 +0200

Problem: Crash due to defective disk Solution: Deactivated disk using hot spare and reboot

Homeserver bundle failed reboot

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 06:30:00 +0200

The fileserver failed the regular Monday morning reboot. Only after a rescue boot and a manual removal of all snapshots rebooting the machine worked.

Disk server stack offline

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 08:55:00 +0200

Problem: Stack: Crash due to failing disk. Solution: Deactivated disk using hot spare

Disk server pile offline

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 06:30:00 +0200

Pile did not shutdown properly during weekly reboot due to a kernel panic. Solution: Executed power-cycle of the system

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:45:00 +0100

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

Disk server pile offline

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 06:30:00 +0100

Was waiting for interactive input after reporting a warning (^d)

File server miii no private network

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:30:00 +0100

While performing maintenance (removing a network card) a network cable was not inserted correctly.

Network problems due to installation of Matlab R2013a

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 13:00:00 +0100

Yesterday Matlab R2013a has been installed. Today at 13:00 hours many servers started to automatically copy this 5.4 GB to their local disc. Some parts of the network were overloaded by all these copying, which made accessing the network slow for many users. The distribution of this software will now be scheduled to happen over a longer period, primarily outside of working hours.

More IP addresses for ru-wlan and Science (wireless)

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Monday, March 4th 2013 at 18:00 hours, the number of IP numbers that is available in the FNWI buildings for ru-wlan and Science will be doubled. Because ru-wlan moves to a new range, users of ru-wlan will lose connectivity for at most 15 minutes. There was already a plan to replace ru-wlan and Science within the FNWI buildings by the RU-wide Eduroam and ru-wlan, but the wireless network usage has grown so fast that we can not wait for this plan to be realized. Last week some wireless users at times could not even get an IP address, although the lease time had been brought down to 30 minutes. Therefore this temporary measure became necessary on such short notice.

Short interval in wireless network service

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0100

On Monday feb 18 at 6:00 pm there will be some maintenance at the wireless network which will effect the following locations at Toernooiveld:

FNWI cellar A1 FEL Huygens: Library of Science, terrace behind Huygens, cantine, room HG-1.132 KDV1 en KDV2 Linnaeus building Logistic Centre Mercator I Mercator II, ground floor and 7nd floor Mercator III, 2nd floor Transitorium FNWI (ACSW and FELIX) UBC

We expect the service will be completely available again within 30 minutes.

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0100

The last few days three Science users have supplied their Science password to phishers. We notice that because Internet criminals use these passwords to get into the Science mail servers (horde webmail, smtp) in order to send spam. This time they even used a fake copy of the horde Science webmail website. The big differences with the real horde Science webmail website are:

the URL is not within science.ru.nl
the connection is not a secure https connection, there is no lock
the username and password do not arrive at C&CZ servers, but in the hands of Internet criminals.

PLEASE: do not naively click on a link in an e-mail!

New Radius server for ru-wlan and eduroam (wireless)

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0100

On Monday, January 28th 2013 at 8:00 am, one of the servers that is being used by the wireless network of the RU, will be replaced. This replacement will affect you as a user of the wireless networks ru-wlan and eduroam: There will appear a new certificate when connecting. You can just accept this, after which the connection should work. If this appears not to be the case, then it’s best that you remove your old Eduroam- respectively your old RU-WLAN settings first to activate the new connection .

Homeserver bundle crashed

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Because the file server crashed, it had to be rebooted.

LDAP server vernieuwd

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Older Fedora desktop PC’s may experience startup problems after an upgrade of one of our LDAP servers. A fix is available and has been applied. If you still encounter this problem, please contact C&CZ.

Mail problems after supplying password to phishers

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0100

Horde webmail again appeared to be misused for sending spam. This could happen because a naive user gave the Science password to phishers/spammers. After first stopping horde, early Friday morning we disabled the account of the naive user and restarted horde. Saturday morning it appeared that this short spam-outbreak had caused administrators of hotmail.com to add our mail server to their blacklist. Therefore we switched the IP-number of this mail server Saturday morning.

Services unavailable due to power and network outage

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0200

During the night of wednesday on thursday a power outage resulted in a network outage in the basement computing facilities. The power was restored to the network equipment using a bypass thus circumventing the UPS at about 09:15. Further checks implied that most servers had not become powerless so that most services became automatically available again. Network drivers on “bundle” had to be restarted in order to get access to home directories for a large number of users. Furthermore, several websites had to be restarted which made it possible for PC’s to boot properly. During the day, an unrelated issue with the RAID storage of “plus” has been fixed as well granting access to the following network shares: sofie, ams*, molchem, mb*, encapson, milkun4, snn, neuropi, digicd. carta, … Since wireless devices were unable to acquire IP addresses, i.e. gain access to the network, a split-brain situation was diagnosed within the DHCP service which was resolved around 13:00.

Announced downtime: home server "pile" down for reboot

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0200

Next Friday morning, the home server “pile” will be rebooted. There are problems with the snapshots, which could make a reboot take more time. Therefore we schedule the reboot for early next Friday.

Horde webmail server down because of spam

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 23:05:00 +0200

Yesterday evening, horde webmail appeared to be misused for sending spam. This could happen because a naive user gave the Science password to spammers. First we stopped horde. This morning we disabled the account of the naive user and restarted horde.

Announced downtime: home server "pile" down for replacement

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 07:00:00 +0200

Next Tuesday morning, the home server “pile” will be replaced by a new, more powerful server. Because the data have been synchronized with the new server, there will not be much downtime.

Postponed: Announced downtime: home server "pile" down for replacement

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 07:00:00 +0200

The downtime below has been postponed, because we had a few questions on the new server, that could not be answered in time. To be continued…

Next Tuesday morning, the home server “pile” will be replaced by a new, more powerful server. Because the data have been synchronized with the new server, there will not be much downtime. The new server should be very dependable: hardware RAID-6, double processors and power supplies and a 5-year support contract from the supplier. The performance has improved, e.g. by using hardware RAID with a 1 GB write cache with battery backup.

Partly announced downtime for mailman + horde webmail server

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 09:09:00 +0200

This morning, horde webmail appeared to be misused for sending spam. This could happen because naive users gave their Science password to spammers. After we found out who the users were and had them change their password, we decide to also replace a defective cpu fan. Therefore also Mailman mailing lists will be down from 13:00 to 14:00 hours.

SMTP server blacklisted by MS Live Hotmail

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 03:08:00 +0200

This morning, users reported that mail from smtp.science.ru.nl to hotmail users was being bounced by hotmail. We have tried to let the hotmail administrators change this fast, but when this took too long, we changed the IP-number of our smtp-server.

Planned service interruption: file server with problems

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 17:03:00 +0200

A hardware failure of a boot disk of the fileserver stack was reported Friday morning June 22. We decided to repair this after working hours. Thus at approximately 17:00 the defective boot disk was removed from the machine and replaced by a spare one. Enabling the disk, making it bootable, restoring file systems and rebooting the machine (after removing all snapshots) took a lot of time. When this was resolved Friday evening, the NFS/SMB fileservice was not active on the mounted filesystems. It took a reboot Sunday evening to resolve all problems.

Tracelab server poly defective

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 14:12:00 +0200

A hardware failure of the server poly was reported at 2012-06-21 14:12. After a restart of the machine, it stopped working again. No more recoveries were attempted and an identical spare machine was outfitted with the disks from the defective server. Disks had to be synchronized before making the machine available again.

Servers without electric power

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 13:45:00 +0200

A power failure in a rack in a server room brought some C&CZ servers down. After less than two hours all problems were dealt with. Affected systems ware mainly: postvak (Science mail server), bundle (user homedisk), heap/stack (network discs), resser/kookpunt/brievenbus/rustug (mail transport smtp servers)

Planned Service: website-databases and maybe Linux clients

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:00:00 +0200

A defective hard disc has been replaced in a server, but the server needs to be rebooted to ensure that this is reboot proof. The MySQL database of roughly 70 websites will therefore be down for a short time. Since this server also provides the Kerberos authentication for Linux clients, Linux clients might encounter service interruptions during a short period.

Windows server "plenty" with xpsoftware unavailable

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:00:00 +0200

Thursday July 7, around 13.00 hours the server “plenty” could not be reached. Because this server serves the “xpsoftware” share for the Managed Windows PC’s, all these PC’s had a problem. After the server was restarted and the disks had been checked, it was available again at 14:26.

Downtime Science servers: Sunday July 3, 09:00 - 12:00 hours

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 09:00:00 +0200

In order to improve the cooling of a server room, we plan to move three racks of Science servers a few meters on Sunday morning, July 3. We will have to switch off a lot of servers temporarily. Therefore several services will be unavailable some time starting July 3, 09:00 hours. We expect the downtime will last until 10:00 hours for servers with a lot of different users. The cn compute cluster will probably be fully operational again at 12:00 hours.

Network outage

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:55:00 +0200

This morning, in the network hub for Huygens South a UPS (battery power supply) went down, which made a set of network switches loose power. Because of this, users in Huygens wing 1 and spin-off companies lost their connection to the network. After bypassing the UPS, everything was up and running again at 11:30. We are still searching for the exact origin of this outage.

Fixed phone problem

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100

You can’t reach certain fixed phones at the university right now, mobile phones and Skype do work ok though.

Planned Service: Limited computer services

Sat, 12 Feb 2011 07:00:00 +0100

A backup cooling system will be installed in our main computer room. Therefore the air conditioning system must be switched off, which means that most of the computer facilities in this room must be shut down. This includes the cluster nodes cn00 through cn53 and many of the web- and file- (network share) servers. It is advised to expect a very limited service level. We will try to keep all home directories and the mail system available. For detailed information about the impact please contact C&CZ.

Printer lp5

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Printer lp5 has been moved to HG00.089. You can’t use this printer at the moment, there’s a problem with the power supply unit.