Computing
and Telecommunication
Center
Newsletter
December 2001
CTC News and
other bytes. . .
INSIDE
Computing and Telecommunication Center
Fort Hays State University
The CTC publishes a newsletter periodically throughout the year.
If you would like to write a guest article contact
Viv Zimmerman at vzimmerm@fhsu.edu
or
Jane Rajewski at jrajewsk@fhsu.edu.
If you have questions or comments about this newsletter, contact
Dr. David Schmidt at 4487.
Viv Zimmerman and Jane Rajewski, co-editors.
From
Dave’s Desk
by Dr. Dave Schmidt, Director
We would like to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season.See
all of you next semester!
Mirabile
dictu! FHSU made Yahoo's list called The Hot 200.Yahoo works with Peterson
Publishing to survey the "most wired" campuses.They used to list only the
top 100 campuses, but they found that many campuses have done a good job
of supporting computing on campus, so they expanded the list.
FHSU
and K-State are the only two Kansas schools that made the list.FHSU ranks
137th on the list.At the top of the list are the usual suspects:Carnegie
Mellon, Stanford, MIT, the University of Delaware, and others. Harvard
is 58th and the University of Notre Dame is 92th.We have bragging rights
over the U. of Nebraska at Kearney (146th), U. of Massachusetts (139th),
Brown University (143rd), Auburn (147th), Oklahoma State University (170th),
and many others. To see the full list go to
http://www.wiredcolleges.com
.
Why is this survey important-I believe it is important because student
expectations of computing resources are important. Larisa Barry believes
that students are "guiding the University's path into the changeable, wired
world of the next century." (
www.itc.Virginia.edu/virginia.edu/fall01/students/home.htmlin
an article forwarded to me by Provost Gould). Even though the expectations
may be unspoken and unconscious, students generally have high expectations.
The survey
attempts to measure resources and services available to students, specifically
in computing, networking, telecommunications. It also assesses the
types of services available to students over the web (including course
work, student data, and library database access). The fact that FHSU
provides the following services helped our cause: free dialup access
to full-time students, a centralized HelpDesk, 51 Mediated Classrooms,
a large number of PC labs, Internet-based student E-mail, Ethernet in the
dorms, many courses on Blackboard, voice mail accounts for students, and
reasonably fast Internet access. Because technology and student expectations
about technology keeps changing and advancing, staying current is a moving
target.
We should be well-positioned for next year's survey. The new Sungard
Bi-Tech system will provide additional student (and faculty) services.
For example, the DegreeWorks module will enable students to perform a number
of what-if scenarios when selecting their majors. This kind
of self-service activity is important. Web registration will also
be nearer to reality and access to student financial information will be
enhanced. On the infrastructure side, during the spring and summer
semesters, the CTC will be installing single-mode fiber for Gigabit Ethernet
bandwidth between academic buildings. Further, the Library and CTC
will initiate a wireless project for portions of the Library, and the Networking
staff are already laying the groundwork for a secure wireless LAN that
can be expanded to other locations on campus. ITPAC (the Instructional
Technology Policy Advisory Committee) will examine other ways to improve
services to students in upcoming meetings. These improvements should
also assist the University in meeting some of the AQIP goals.
Behind
the scenes we are making progress with the Sungard Bi-Tech administrative
system.
-
Bruce Shubert, Larry Getty, and Phil Toepfer went to Chico, California,
to complete set up work on the General Ledger.
-
Karin Neuman from Bi-Tech worked with key staff members on the Accounts
Payable, Purchase Order, and Accounts Receivable. She is scheduled
to return in December to work on the Purchasing module.
-
Some preliminary work has been done on the Human Resources and Payroll
module.Lee Gross, Tom Kuhn, Phil Toepfer and others have reviewed its functionality
and believe that this module should fit our needs well.
-
The latest version of IFAS (Financials) will be installed in early December.This
version is their thin-client, web-enabled version.We are pleased to get
this version scheduled for installation because we wanted to avoid being
trained on an earlier version and then on this later version.
-
Daryl Carswell plans to have the student data converted for RIM (the Registar's
Module) before Christmas. Completing this conversion will be a meaningful
milestone because it is the most complex to be done.
-
The Sungard Project Managers have scheduled many training and consulting
activities starting in January.
30
Years of Internet E-mail
I do not know if the recently opened time capsule contained any E-mail.
It probably did not (but it could have). In 1971 Ray Tomlinson of
Bolt Beranek and Newman (in Woburn, Massachusetts) sent the first message
from a computer on one network to a computer on another network.
He chose the @ symbol to indicate that the destination of the E-mail was
another network. I do not have a top ten reasons list, but I have
included simple-minded reflections and then I raise the issue of E-mail
management. If anyone would like to reflect on the impact of E-mail
in a more serious (or humorous) way in a guest column in the CTC Newsletter,
contact Viv Zimmerman at
vzimmerm@fhsu.edu.
Reasons to like E-mail:
-
We do not have to seek it out. It comes to us; it is a push
technology.
-
It's asynchronous. We can answer it in our own time. I like
this quality of E-mail very much.
-
It's one-to-many; we can send the same message to many people at once.
-
From the point of view of the user (not necessarily the point of view of
the CTC), it's almost free.
-
It's quick.
-
It handles many different kinds of attachments.
-
It is less formal than the paper memo format.
-
It cuts across institutional silos.
Reasons
to dislike E-mail:
-
It's one-to-many. Some use it to create spam.
-
It's informality. Some decry the writing style of E-mail because
there are many abbreviations and many spelling and grammar errors.
-
It's quick. Most E-mail systems do not let you recover a message that you
may have sent in haste.
-
It's forever. Somewhere on some backup tape your E-mail may be archived.
An
Issue - E-mail Management
At the
state level there is a board called the Information Technology Advisory
Board (ITAB). This board represents many state agencies and it reviews
a variety of policies, vets information technology projects, and approves
the Kansas Statewide Technical Architecture, among other things.
FHSU represents the regional universities at this board.
ITAB
has recommended some helpful guidelines for managing electronic mail in
order to comply with Kansas laws concerning the creation of, retention
of, and access to public records.For example, the Kansas Open Records Act
has implications for the retention of and access to E-mail documentation.ITPAC
will review these guidelines at the next meeting.
From
my reading of the recommendations, those E-mails or other electronic records
of meetings that document policy are some of the most important records
to retain. So if you serve on a committee that makes policy, one
practice you might follow is to put the minutes of the meeting in a special
folder or in a designated place on the web. These minutes should
be retained and archived in either electronic or paper form.
The University
should probably review who (this may be plural) will serve as official
custodian(s) of important records. The policies emphasize that E-mail
management is not just deleting everything at periodic intervals or archiving
everything. Certain E-mails (and other electronic records) should
be kept for defined lengths of time depending on importance.
The CTC
is currently in the process of rolling out some software that will provide
us with a hardware inventory. The product is called Audit Wizard.
This will only provide hardware information and operating system versions,
not software inventories. This program will run when a user logs
onto the FHSU network domain. The first time it runs, the user will
be prompted for the Make of his computer (eg. Microtech, Dell, etc.),
his office location, department, and inventory number of the computer.
This will only run once. After the first time setup, the user should
not notice anything different about the way the computer is setup.
Please answer these prompts, do not Cancel or Escape out
of the program. Essentially, the program will create a small text
file that describes the installed hardware and the operating system, place
a copy of the file on the server and on the PC.
Some
of the reasons we would like to install it campus-wide are:
-
When a user reports a software or hardware problem, the Micro staff can
see what operating system and hardware the PC has. Sometimes the
staff knows of an operating system patch that can solve particular problems
and suggest solutions over the phone. Also, before visiting a particular
machine, they have some knowledge of it in advance.
-
When a virus attacks the campus through the operating system, we can know
which machines are most vulnerable and warn users.
-
When we consider upgrading Notes clients, operating systems, MS Office,
or other applications, we know which machines have enough RAM, CPU speed,
and hard drive space to run the client or application well.
-
For Action Plan purposes, better decisions can be made for replacement
PCs if we have an inventory of existing hardware.
The
name, Audit Wizard, may conjure up images of nefarious things, but
all that we are using it for is the following information: Make/Model
of PC, Motherboard Type/Processor, BIOS, Operating System,
Amount of RAM, Peripherals, and Hard Drive Space.
This
utility is quite limited in what it does. It does not report software
on the PC, Internet activity, or other uses of the PC. We are using
it only to report the above items. If you have any questions or concerns
about this, please contact Mark Griffin.
Dr.
David Schmidt, Director, and Tom Webb, Manager Telecommunication
Services attended ITAB and RCAC meetings October 16-17 in
Topeka. Dave also attended ITAB and Citrix meetings
in Topeka November 20-21.
Cheryl
Helget, Network Administrator, Mike Nease, Micro System Support
Manager, Mike McLain and Mark Orth, Micro System Support
Technicians, attended a Supporting, Troubleshooting and Optimizing Windows
2000 workshop in Hays on October 3-4.
Numerous
CTC staff and others from various offices across campus have
attended several Sungard meetings the past few weeks.
Congratulations
Congratulations
to Jackie (Leikam) Ruder, Applications Programmer/Analyst, on her
marriage to Chad Ruder on November 10th at St. Nicholas of Myra Catholic
Church in Hays.
Palm
Pilots, HandSprings, IPaq's, Oh my!!!
by
Mark Griffin, Manager of Servers & Desktop Systems
Technology
is not only expanding at a faster rate than ever before, but it is also
shrinking at the same time. Say that again... Obviously, there are
more technical advances being made now than ever before, but the really
amazing thing is that our existing technologies are being made more compact.
Computers are one of the best examples. Having a computer at your
desk used to be really cool; then we had laptops that we could carry with
us, and now we have personal digital assistants (PDA's, the generic term
for Palm Pilots, HandSpring Visors, IPaq's, etc.). I'm sure that
in the future, we will have even smaller computers with even more capabilities.
For
a little over a year now, FHSU has been getting more and more of these
PDA's on campus. For those of you that don't have a PDA, you might
be wondering what all the hype is about. For myself, the best part
of the PDA is that I can take my calendar and address book with me.
But, there are other uses as well. I can read my E-mail, write an
E-mail, or take some notes at a meeting that I can later upload to my PC.
All of these items easily interact with our Lotus Notes system too.
You can also add attachments that will allow you to dial into our network
for sending the E-mail (this is great when you travel), or you can add
a GPS, or you can even attach printers. Who knows what we'll be able
to do with these devices in the future?
For those that have a PDA or for those interested in learning more
about PDA's, we have a couple of excellent resources here at FHSU.
First, a Blackboard course has been setup that has lots of information
regarding PDA's. For example, a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
document has been placed in the course. Here are a couple of the
items in that FAQ:
What types of PDA's are supported at FHSU? We have been
supporting all of the various Palm Pilot brand of PDA's and the HandSpring
brand of PDA's, so far. Any PDA that runs the Palm operating system
should work fine with our system. We have not done much with Windows
CE PDA's (eg. Ipaq brand), but I expect that they will work with our systems
and fully expect to start seeing them on our campus soon. CTC support
is restricted to basic setup and Lotus Notes synchronization issues.
We cannot support all the various applications that are available.
How do I synchronize (sync) my Palm Pilot or Handspring PDA with
Lotus Notes? There are a few software packages available that will
allow you to do this. The CTC supports Lotus Easysync. Put
in a CTC Request for Computing Services to have this software installed.
The cost for this software license through the CTC is $20.
If you wish to have access to this Blackboard course, please contact
David Renteria of TELT at 628-5833. There are a number
of Palm Pilot troubleshooting tips listed in this FAQ. Rather than
waiting on me to come solve your problem, the FAQ may provide the solution
for you! Another good resource with more of a human touch is U-HUG
(University Hand-held User Group) that meets over the noon hour on the
second Wednesday of each month. Dennis King, Interim Director
of CTELT, is the organizer of this group and the response has been very
good. I highly recommend attending this to see what others are doing
with their PDA's.
ID
& Password Responsibilities
by
Andrew Fleming, Asst Unix/Asst Network Adm
In making appropriate use of FHSU computing resources, each user must
accept responsibility for his/her behavior and protect his/her user ID's
and passwords from unauthorized use, recognizing that each individual is
responsible for all activities on his/her user ID's.
Individuals Will Not...
Disclose
his/her passwords or use another person's user ID's or passwords.
Even
if the individual feels that there is nothing of value stored in their
account, the account can still be used as a gateway into a system and other
unauthorized activity could be conducted from the account. The
account owner is responsible for whatever is done with their account.
Not
only is password disclosure against the FHSU
Acceptable Use of Computing
Resources Policy, it is against Kansas State Statue 21-3755 (which
can be found by going to
http://www.accesskansas.org/legislative/statutes/index.cgi
and entering the statue number 21-3755). Within the statue it states:
(C)(1)
Computer password disclosure is the unauthorized and intentional disclosure
of a number, code, password or other means of access to a computer or computer
network.
(2)
Computer password disclosure is a class A nonperson misdemeanor.
There
is no reason to disclose an individual's ID and password, particularly
to students. While there might not be anything of value to the owner
in the account, the students will have access to other information and
resources that they would not normally have.
If
faculty, staff, or your student employees need access to certain resources,
we will be happy to create the appropriate IDs or security. For example,
if an instructor needs to distribute files to a class of students, we can
achieve this via other means, such as giving them space on an Anonymous
FTP server. If a staff member or your student employees need access
to CICS, this can be accomplished by either setting them up with an individual
CICS ID or creating a generic student ID for your department with the appropriate
security levels and approvals. Computer/Network security is a constant
battle and it is important that we not add to the problem by disclosing
passwords.
Everyone
needs to take a moment to review this policy. The policy will remind
all of us about the responsibilities that we have in relationship to the
use of computing resources.
Network
ID Information
by
Cheryl Helget, Network Administrator
When users submit a request for a network ID, the following information
is needed: the first and last name, the last 4 digits of the SSN, the department
name and number, what rights the ID needs in regard to what shared directories
they will need to be accessing, and very importantly, if they are
replacing anyone.
It makes the administration much easier if we can just rename the ID
rather that create a new one and delete the old one, because we don't have
to recreate all the permissions for all the different accesses they may
need. It would be very helpful if this information was included in
the original request. Also, it is good to know if an ID can be deleted
when an employee leaves their position so that we can remove their network
security.
by
Nancy Geier, CTC HelpDesk Supervisor
Fall and Spring Regular Hours
Mondays - Thursdays 8am -
10pm
Fridays
8am -5pm
Saturdays
CLOSED
Sundays
7pm - 10pm
HelpDesk Holiday Hours
Nov 26 - Dec 11
Regular hours
Dec
12 - 14 & 17 - 21 8am - 5pm
Dec
15 & 16, 22 - Jan 1 CLOSED
Jan 2 - Jan 21 Hours
Monday- Friday
8am - 5pm
Weekends
& Jan 21 CLOSED
Jan
22
Regular hours
Internet
Dial-Up Statistics
The following chart compares use of the dial-up service now to one
year ago. Averages were computed using a 15-day period from September
23 to October 7 of each year.
|
Activity
|
10/00
|
10/01
|
% Chg
|
|
#student
accts
|
1,070
|
1,112
|
4
|
|
#
fac/staff accts
|
491
|
525
|
7
|
|
Total
# of accts
|
1,561
|
1,637
|
5
|
|
Avg
# accts used per day
|
851
|
888
|
4
|
|
modems
available
|
189
|
214
|
13
|
|
Avg
total connect time (mins) per day
|
87,281
|
105,979
|
21
|
|
Avg
connect time (mins) - peak hour/day
|
7,745
|
9,681
|
25
|
|
Avg
modem capacity use - peak hour/day
|
68.3%
|
75.4%
|
10
|
|
Avg
connect time (mins) per login
|
32.74
|
38.11
|
16
|
While
there has not been a significant increase in accounts, use has grown steadily.
This can be attributed to rising online course enrollment and expansion
of available capacity.
To
assist those doing online course work, the maximum idle connection time
was increased from 20 to 30 minutes on January 25, 2001. In response,
average session time grew by 16%. To meet rising demand, additional
lines were placed into service on March 2, bringing the total possible
simultaneous connections to 214. The highest level of utilization
to date has been 211 modems in concurrent use. As of November 20,
there were 1710 total accounts. Hourly dial-up activity statistics
may be viewed at http://scatcat.fhsu.edu/dialup/.
User
Services News
by
Viv Zimmerman, User Services
Holiday & End of Semester Hours
These are the end-of-semester and holiday hours that the CTC Tomanek
Hall Computer labs will have from November 26 through the Martin Luther
King holiday.
Regular Hours Fall and Spring
Mondays
- Thursdays 8am - 10pm
Fridays
8am - 5pm
Saturdays
1pm - 5pm
Sundays
3pm - 10pm
CTC Lab Holiday Hours
Nov 26 - Dec 11
Regular hours
Dec
12 - 14 & 17 - 21 8am - 5pm
Dec
15 - 16, 22 - Jan 1 CLOSED
Jan 2 - Jan 21 Hours
Monday - Friday
8am - 5pm
Weekends
& Jan 21 CLOSED
Jan
22
Regular hours
As always, if you have questions, feedback, comments or suggestions
regarding our labs, please let us know; send a note to
vzimmerm@fhsu.edu
. For more information about our services or hours, visit our web
site at
http://www.fhsu.edu/ctc/labs/
or stop by
TH127 (next to the elevator) and check with the lab monitor
on duty.
Staff Changes
Please notify
Viv at
4031 or send a note to
vzimmerm@fhsu.edu
anytime faculty, staff, or student employees terminate their employment
with your office so that we can remove their IDs and security.
Here’s
How to Request New IDs
If
you have any new faculty, staff, or student employees hired for the spring
semester, it would be helpful if the departmental secretaries would send
a Lotus Notes Request for Computing Services as soon as possible to request
user IDs for Lotus Notes, CICS, Bigcat, or any other systems that are needed
so that we can get them set up before the beginning of the spring semester
rush begins. This would help us tremendously in processing your requests
more efficiently. We also use this information to put the new IDs
in the appropriate groups on LN and also in the file used to create the
IDs for the proxy server for the Library Electronic Journals security.
It
is very important that you include the following information: name of employee,
SSN, department name and number, title, indicate whether the new employee
is faculty, staff, or student employee, office location and phone number.
On
this request, also include the location of the computer that needs to have
LN installed and any special instructions -- such as -- is this computer
shared by several users? Computers shared by more than one user affect
the way LN is set up and installed.
Notes
Closing
-
If you would like to automatically include your closing information and/or
a witty saying at the end of all of your LN mail, do the following:
-
Open your Inbox.
-
Click on Tools and choose Preferences.
-
Click on the Mail tab and the Signature tab.
-
Click on the box to Automatically append a signature to the bottom
of my outgoing mail messages.
-
Click on the Text radio button.
-
In the Signature box, leave a couple of blank spaces and
enter your name, title, department, phone number and any other
relevant closing information.
-
Click OK.
-
Send yourself a test note to see if you like how the closing looks.Repeat
the above steps until you are happy with the appearance.
You
may change your closing information at any time by repeating the above
procedure.
LN Housekeeping
With the end of the year rapidly approaching and the beginning of a
new year right around the corner, it is a good time to think about cleaning
up your Lotus Notes. Go through your
All Documents folder
and delete old calendar entries that are no longer needed (print them first
if you want a copy for your records). Go through your
Inbox, Sent,
and Draft folders and delete all of the old mail that you no longer
need. The instructions for archiving mail to your PC are listed
in the article
Archive Mail Procedure in the Fall 2001 CTC Newsletter
(
http://www.fhsu.edu/ctc/newsletters/news.html).
It will save the archived notes in a folder called
Archived in your
Lotus Notes mail folder section, but this archived mail will actually be
stored on your PC rather than on the server. This should free up
a considerable amount of your allocated space on the LN server.
After you clean up your mail file, compact your mail file by doing
the following:
-
Click File, choose Database, and choose Properties.Click
on the i tab.
-
Click on the Compact button and wait a few seconds.
-
Click the X in the upper-right corner of the Properties window.Your
mail file will be compacted overnight.
If
you need help with any of the LN housekeeping procedures, contact the CTC
HelpDesk at 5276.