Dispatches from the geeks

As part of the effort to retire the old web servers, the Systems blog has moved to its new home on press.mcs.anl.gov.  You can still get to it via http://www.mcs.anl.gov/systems/blog but the new URL is http://press.mcs.anl.gov/systems.

If you use RSS, you’ll want to update your feed to point to the new blog.

Hey, folks, we’re planning to upgrading the wiki servers on Tuesday.  Please see this attached note from Ken.  As always, if this presents a problem, please let us know and we’ll reschedule.

All,

We’re going to move the MCS core wiki services to new hardware and
operating system next Tuesday, 10/14, at 5:00pm.  This will bring us up
to date with the latest version of Mediawiki (1.13.2) and increase the
stability and security of each site.  The list of vhosts affected by
this move is the following:

wiki.mcs.anl.gov
wiki.alcf.anl.gov
bionet.mcs.anl.gov
cgat-wiki.mcs.anl.gov
igsb-core.mcs.anl.gov
wiki.bgl.mcs.anl.gov
wiki.lcrc.anl.gov
reu.cogkit.org
water.cogkit.org

I estimate 2-3 hours for the work to complete, with wiki.mcs.anl.gov and
wiki.alcf.anl.gov having the longest downtime due to the number of wikis
per site.

If anyone has any objections to a wiki being down at this time, please
let us know so we can schedule a separate upgrade.

Thanks,
Ken

Thanks!

Hey, folks!

We’re in the process of rolling out the new mailing list server, and to give it a good test run, I’ve set up a new list.

In the spirit of the mac-users@mcs.anl.gov mailing list (which is used for trading tips, tricks, and general discussion on Macs), I’ve created an iPhone-users list.  Since not every Mac user is an iPhone user, and vice-versa, this seemed a reasonable thing to do.

If you’d like to subscribe, visit:

https://lists.mcs.anl.gov/mailman/listinfo/iphone-users

or send an e-mail to iphone-users-request@lists.mcs.anl.gov with “subscribe” as the subject.

More details on the new mailing list server coming this week, including docs on how to use it.

Enjoy!

The Zimbra upgrade portion of today’s work is complete.  The network reorganization is mostly done, expect an all-clear later.

Expect a brief Zimbra outage tomorrow morning while the disk server gets a firmware upgrade.

With the new server upgrade in place, you can now wirelessly sync your iPhone with Zimbra, and never tether it to your computer again for Contacts and Calendar syncing — you’ll still connect it for iPod Music/Video/etc syncs.

First, the caveats:

• Your iPhone’s Calendar and Contacts will no longer sync with your computer.  The only calendars you can sync are the ones on the Zimbra server.  If you have calendars elsewhere that you’d like to sync with your phone, you may be able to automatically add them to Zimbra.  More on that later.
• If you choose to sync your calendar with this, it will erase the current calendar.  Ditto for contacts.  So make sure you’ve got everything all backed up on the iPhone before you do this, just in case you change your mind.  If your Zimbra account is current with everything, it’ll all fill back in pretty quickly.

Now, how to set up your phone to sync wirelessly with Zimbra:

• Go to Settings, then Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
• Add an account.
• Choose Microsoft Exchange (yeah, I know)
• Fill in the info as follows:
  • Email: Your e-mail address (usually user@mcs.anl.gov)
  • Username: <your MCS/LCF/CELS username>-mcs (eg. stace-mcs)
  • Password: <your ANL domain password>
  • Description: Whatever you like.
• Click Next, it’ll try to connect and fail, then open a new section, called “Server”.  Use zimbra.anl.gov and click Next.
• Choose which items you want to sync with this account.  I’ve turned on Mail, Contacts and Calendar on mine, but maybe you prefer to keep your contacts local to your phone.

That’s it.  It takes a couple of mins for everything to sync up (over WiFi, longer over Edge or 3G, I’m sure).

I will post more on what you can expect out of this new feature later, but here a Zimbra blog post to prime the pump: http://www.zimbrablog.com/blog/archives/2008/07/zimbra-mobile-for-iphone.html

Have fun!

For those who have a need to access internal-only sites via the web, and don’t want to install or use the Cisco VPN client, there’s a web-based VPN proxy you can use to access these internal sites.

It’s not quite a production service at this point, hence the weasel words in the subject. But it works well for getting to many of the things behind inside.anl.gov.

You can find it at: https://vpn.anl.gov

In order to use this, you *must* have a VPN account. Not everyone does by default, it’s given out only to users who request it. And once you get this VPN account, you have two weeks to fill out a survey documenting whether or not you have access to Protected PII (the link to which will be in the e-mail you get when you get access). If you don’t fill out the survey, they turn off your VPN access.

You can request VPN access by sending an e-mail to systems@mcs.anl.gov requesting it.

Your login information to the VPN is your Argonne domain username and password.

Once you login, you’ll get a page from which you can browse to any site (for example, https://inside.anl.gov).

Hoping this will make things easier for those random tasks you have to do on the internal systems once or twice a month.

Zimbra 5.0.9 is released, and will be the installed version on Saturday.

After the install, login to the web interface at https://zimbra.anl.gov, go to Preferences, and try out some of the new themes.  The Yahoo and Zmail themes are great for people who are used to Yahoo Mail or GMail, respectively.

Executive summary for those who don’t want to read anything beyond the bare details: On Saturday, August 23rd, both the MCS Mail & Calendar (aka Zimbra) and the MCS Production network will be undergoing maintenance and will be unavailable from 6AM until 6PM. Also, on Sunday, August 24th, Zimbra will be offline from 8:30 to 10:30 AM.

For details, read on.

(more…)

Hey, folks.  Hope everyone’s having a great summer.  I was going to put this note into the next Dispatch from the Geeks, but I’ve had some requests on the matter recently, so I figure I’d send along this note right now.  Today’s lesson comes in the form of a parable of the Happy Little Bug.

There once was a happy little bug.  His name was Desmond.  Desmond, the happy little bug.

Desmond sent large print jobs to the printer and then never went to check on them.  Then the printer ran out of paper.  Then all the other bugs who went to use the printer had to load it with paper but then had to wait a long time for their jobs to come out because of Desmond.

So they squashed him with a rock.

The end.

The moral of the story: if you’re sending a big job to the printer, make sure you check on it to make sure it came out okay.  If you’re using a Mac or Windows machine, you can send the job with a password so it won’t print until you get there.  See http://mcs.anl.gov/faq/Printers for the latest drivers with this capability.

Thanks!

If you use iCal and sync your calendar with Zimbra, or would like to start, I’ve posted detailed instructions on how you can do this with CalDAV here:

http://wiki.mcs.anl.gov/IT/index.php/Mail#Zimbra_and_iCal

I’ve seen enough failures and sync issues with the Zimbra iSync connector that I’ve lost faith in it for Calendar syncing. It’s okay for Contacts syncing between Zimbra and Address Book (and is the only way to accomplish that right now), but I’ve had enough users complain about appointments not making it up to the server or not make it from the server to their own calendar that I just cannot in good faith recommend using it anymore.

But this new method requires running OS X Leopard (10.5). Tiger users will have to continue to use the connector.

Now, that being said, there’s a small change in how you interact with your calendars, especially iPhone users (though iPhone 2.0 should pretty much solve that). However, the difference in reliability, in my opinion, more than outweighs the burden of slightly changing your operating mode. This is, by far, the most reliable way to make sure the server is up to date short of just switching to the web interface exclusively. The details on the changes are on the wiki page above, but the short story is that every calendar you have on your Zimbra account, including shared ones, will be synced to iCal, and by default all alarms on all calendars are turned on, though you can turn them off individually or all at once.

If you have others who manage your calendars or regularly rely on the server view being up to date, you should strongly consider switching to this mode of operating. No more silent failures, and instant updating of your appointments to the server when you enter them on your local calendar. Plus, I’m told it will also help prevent hair loss and random cranial explosions.

If anyone wants any help setting this up, I or someone else in the group should be able to assist, though it’s not that difficult. Also, if you have suggestions on improving the documentation, please pass them along.

Thanks!