Volume 2. No 4 
Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis Summer 1994
Inside IT
Summer 1994
Information Resources Facilitates Distance Learning
Tim Leehane of IR Instruction Services has been helping Assistant Professor Patrick Brown of Pomology communicate electronically with twelve students for several months now from Perth, Australia. Leehane developed a script for students and instructor to share materials submitted electronically and showed Brown how to set up a public directory. Leehane also taught the students a one-hour course on how to use the Fetch program to pick up and drop off mail, how to compress and decompress files, and how to put in a shortcut list in Fetch to automate the process. Both Leehane and Brown have been monitoring the success of the training and this electronic solution to distance learning.
Information Resources Helps Aggie Kids Compute
Information Resources participates again in the annual Aggie Kids Computer Camp. This year 450-500 students aged 6-12 are expected to enroll for the two-week long sessions. Classes last approximately two hours and meet twice a week: Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:00-3:15 pm. From late June through late August, the students are going to be exposed to a variety of computing environments. This year IR instructors introduce them to the ISH (Information Super Highway).
For more information, contact Peter Peterson at plpeterson@ucdavis.edu or 752-2131.
Listserv for Computer Training Information
Information Resources has started an electronic mailing list for announcing new class offerings, course schedules, and other Information Technology computer training information. This mailing list is called it-instruction@ucdavis.edu.
To subscribe, send email to listproc@ucdavis.edu, containing the following one-line command in the body of the email message (leaving the "Subject" line blank and rest of the message blank):
subscribe it-instruction@ucdavis.edu <firstname>
<lastname>
(Substitute your last and first names for <firstname> <lastname>.)
For more info, send email to learnit@ucdavis.edu or call 752-2131 or 752-2906.
IT Units are National Prize Winners
A combined effort by Illustration Services and Repro Graphics and the UCD Sports Information Office resulted in several award winners in this year's national publications contest sponsored by the College Sports Information Directors of
America.
At the Division II level, the Aggie women's softball poster captured second place in the nation. The poster was photographed by Markus Pfitzner and designed by assistant athletic director Doug Dull.
At the Division I level, first place in the western district went to a poster highlighting the Aggie women's gymnastics program, with design by Dino Gay and concept/photography by Steve Stevenson.
Other posters earning consideration were:
- football, which placed 7th in the nation in Division II, with design by Rick Hayes and concept and photography by Steve Stevenson;
- basketball, which placed eighth in the nation in Division II, with design by Rick Hayes, concept by Debra Wilson, and photography by Jim von Rummelhoff; and
- baseball, which placed ninth in the nation in Division II, with design and concept by Doug Dull and photography by Jim von Rummelhoff.
Retirement of Hamlet and Othello
After July 31, 1994, users of IT-managed UNIX systems no longer will be able to login to Hamlet and Othello interactively. One of these systems, however, will remain up through October 1994 for copying files.
Information Resources has put a utility in place for people to move files off the decommissioned DEC 5500s to the IT-managed Sun servers Chip and Dale. You obtain instructions on using this utility from the Campus Wide Information System. It is located at the end of the following directory path: Bulletin_News (Current UCD & Computing News)/Campus Computing News/Computing Announcements/Hamlet-Othello Retirement.
If you have any questions about the procedure, contact the Information Technology Campus Access Point at ithelp@ucdavis.edu or 752-2548.
Retirement of Alcor/Mizar and Move to Euclid
In mid-to-late summer, users of IT-managed VMS systems will be asked to move off the Alcor/Mizar cluster to Euclid, a DEC 3000 Model 500 AXP running Open VMS. A copy utility for self-help use will be provided to facilitate moving files off the VAX 8600s.
Third-party software to be dropped during the upgrade will include: CAMP, CTRLC, NCAR, SPEAKEASY, IMSL, IFPS, UNSC, EESOF. If you compile your own executables, they will probably be larger (files include more instructions), but not in all cases. Also, though you won't have the A11 exporter/importer on Euclid, you will be able to use FTP to transfer files to/from the Unisys machine.
Upgrade of Suns to Solaris Operating System
All IT-managed Sun workstations are being upgraded to Solaris 2.3 by early to mid-September 1994. Users of these systems may not notice much change from the older SunOS operating system, outside of increased performance. However, a short list of system command changes will be compiled for distribution by the IT-Campus Access Point (ithelp@ucdavis.edu or 752-2548).
X-Terminals to Replace 12 ELCs in Storer Lab
Half of the Sun ELC workstations in 0208 Storer (12 out of 24) are going to be replaced by NCD X-terminals this summer. In the long-term, probably all of the ELCs will be replaced by X-terminals.
New Mail and News Hub Servers
Three new Sun servers will be installed as the campus electronic mail and news machines this summer. A SparcServer 1000 with 4 CPUs upgradeable to 8 CPUs will be the new mail spool hub. Of the other two (SparcServer 20s), one will serve as the mail routing hub and the other will be the Usenet news-server.
As part of this upgrade, the two Sun 670MPs Rocky and Bullwinkle will be opened to interactive user logins, taking over the functions of Hamlet and Othello. Bullwinkle at least will be available for public use by early to mid-August.
New Strategy for Passwords on IT Systems
Information Resources will change the way passwords are created on the IT-managed systems this summer. Passwd+, a proactive password checker developed by Assistant Professor of Computer Science Matt Bishop, will be installed. Most password cracking programs search a large dictionary looking for matches. Passwd+ performs such a search on a prospective password to ensure that this form of attack will be unlikely to succeed and that passwords will be more secure. Password lifetime can be extended beyond the current 90 days and users will have more freedom in selecting their passwords.
Computer Classrooms Summer Hours
Here is the schedule for use of classrooms managed by Information Resources effective from June 20, 1994 to September 23, 1994:
Meyer Hall 1131, 1154 -- M-F 8 am to 5 pm
Hutchison Hall 8, 14, 76, 86 -- M-F 8 am to 7 pm
Storer Hall 208 M-F -- 8 am to 7 pm
Hart Hall 1101, 1102 -- M-F 8 am to noon
Any IR-managed computer classroom not listed here is closed for the summer.
Contributors to Inside IT for the July 22 issue include Ivars Balkits, Dana Drennan, Jennifer Koester, Manel Kappagoda, Peter Peterson, Tom Arons, Brian Hill, Paul Schneeman, Johnson Lai, and Doug Dull.