Jeremy Gonyea June 18th, 2009
Recently, there have been many new releases of Internet browsers: Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8, Apple has released Safari 4, and we expect that Mozilla will soon release Firefox 3.5. While these new programs may provide new feature sets as well as faster browsing experiences, they have not yet been fully tested by the Information Services department. We are hard at work at trying out these latest products and seeing how they interact with our present Bryn Mawr College services.
Please note that since many of the Bryn Mawr College services are accessed via the Web (Virtual Bryn Mawr, Blackboard, Webmail/Communication Center, etc.), we do not yet recommend using these newest browser versions as we are not yet certain of their compatibility with our provided services. Information Services recommends Mozilla Firefox 3.1 on all platforms, and also provides support for Internet Explorer 7, and Apple Safari 3 for the Mac.
Some community members use other browsers such as Google Chrome, Opera, Safari for Windows, etc. While you are welcome to use any browser you like, these are not necessarily tested by Information Services, and are often not supported by the manufacturers of our Web based software (PeopleSoft, Zimbra, Blackboard, etc.)
Janet Scannell June 13th, 2009
The recent upgrade made it easier to add events to someone else’s calendar within your account (sometimes called a “proxy” calendar).
In the earlier version the software always put your default calendar as the calendar where the event should be displayed and you needed to choose the desired calendar from the drop-down (see graphic)
.
This was true even if your default calendar was “unchecked” and not visible.
With the upgrade on June 5th, this can behave differently. If you unselect all calendars by right-clicking on “v Calendar” in the upper left (see graphic below) and left-clicking on “Clear All”. Then check only the calendar you want to add events to and the calendar selection will use the calendar being edited. Note that if a second calendar is checked which you have ability to edit (as opposed to just view) this feature will not work and it will still assume your primary calendar whether or not the
primary calendar is checked.
- Please let us know if you have questions about this. and feel free to add a comment to this post if you try this and have a better way to explain it to someone else.
Amy Pearlman June 10th, 2009
Bryn Mawr Blogs and Forums will be unavailable on Friday evening beginning at 6:00 PM for a scheduled migration to a new server. This includes all “blogs.brynmawr.edu” and “forums.brynmawr.edu” pages. This migration has been tested, and based on the results of that test, we expect the outage to last less than 30 minutes.
If you have any questions or concerns about this outage, please direct them to the Help Desk (x7440 or help@brynmawr.edu).
Thanks,
Andrew Lacey
Web Applications and Systems Administrator
alacey@brynmawr.edu
610-526-5630
David Schlich June 8th, 2009
On Friday evening, the Bryn Mawr Communication Center (a.k.a Webmail or Zimbra) underwent its second upgrade since it was installed last June.
If you are reading this email in the Communication Center, you have probably noticed that it doesn’t look very different. This upgrade did not change the “look and feel” very much; the purpose of this upgrade was to offer some improvements, and correct a few “bugs” that people had reported.
Many of this upgrade’s benefits will be invisible to you because they affect the administration tools and server directly; a brief summary of the changes you will see is available at http://www.brynmawr.edu/is/isir/documents/FAQEmailUpgradeJune09.pdf.
Keep in mind that the Zimbra developers are always open to feedback. In the time we have been using our Communication Center, we have seen many changes based on requests made by customers, including some requested by Bryn Mawr community members, and we expect to see quite a few more in our next major upgrade (anticipated: January 2010).
If you have a feature or enhancement you would like to see added, or you would like to report a bug, please let us know – it may just show up in a future update!
David Schlich June 5th, 2009
Our Zimbra update was completed successfully at 9pm this evening.
Amy Pearlman May 25th, 2009
From: Janet Scannell
Shortly, Information Services will begin managing the updates that all college-owned computers receive to their Windows XP or Macintosh operating systems. Updates will be tested in advance and then distributed overnight. This process will be piloted in April and May and will begin campus-wide starting in June.
Below is a summary of points of interest. If you want more detail about this change please visit: http://www.brynmawr.edu/computing/WorkstationMaintenance.shtml
For Desktop Users:
- This will affect both Mac and Windows computers.
- Patching your computer software will require a reboot. If a machine is on the network it will be awakened or turned on for the update.
- All computers will be left turned off after the update.
- These reboots will only be scheduled to happen on Thursday nights generally no more than once a month.
When a scheduled update is planned it will be announced on the I.S. blog two work days before the update. You can subscribe to get an email update if you prefer.
If you run software overnight that cannot be interrupted you can request an exemption from this scheduled update. Please visit http://www.brynmawr.edu/computing/WMExclusionRequest.shtml to do so.
For Research computers:
- This process only applies to computers that are on the College domain. If you aren’t sure whether you will be affected, please contact Amy Pearlman at apearlman@brynmawr.edu.
- If you run software overnight that cannot be interrupted you need to request an exemption from this scheduled update for each computer that is used in your research. You will need the asset tag number (e.g. 08-1234) for each computer. Please visit http://www.brynmawr.edu/computing/WMExclusionRequest.shtml to do so.
For Laptop Users:
- Laptop users will be notified in advance of the update and will have a few days to run it him or herself at a convenient time.
- After the self-scheduled interval, the next time the laptop is connected to the Bryn Mawr network the update will run automatically.
We expect this process to be invisible for most users and to offer significant benefits. The current Apple and Windows update cycles often interrupt work and require reboots at inconvenient times.
This change also allows Support Services to test updates before they are released on campus, protecting Bryn Mawr computers from occasional bad or problematic updates and to improve support by having campus computers at a common patch level.
Please let us know if you have any questions.
Janet Scannell, Director of Computing Services
Amy Pearlman, Head of Support Services
Amy Pearlman April 14th, 2009
Blackboard will be unavailable for approximately an hour, beginning at 7:00 AM this Thursday morning. Our colleagues at Swarthmore need to physically relocate one of the database servers which Blackboard uses. We expect this outage to be uneventful, and to be over by 8:00 am.
Jeremy Gonyea April 9th, 2009
Recently, many community members have been receiving spam and/or phishing type emails that appear to be sent from the Information Services staff. These emails may state that your email account is over quota or is slated for removal. The emails are requesting that you reply with your name, password, and some other personal information. Bryn Mawr College will NEVER, EVER ask for this type of information over email.
What happens when your account is comprimised?
When an account is compromised by a phishing email (see our previous post about phishing here), the phisher attempts to send hundreds to thousands of emails just like the one that was sent to the original person. Other email services like AOL, Microsoft, Hotmail, etc. see Bryn Mawr as a spam generating domain and move to block all further emails from Bryn Mawr, legitimate or spam. Users attempting to send to these blocked domains will receive bounce-back messages, and it is difficult to re-open these pathways.
If you believe your account is compromised, or are unsure if a message is spam, please contact the Help Desk at x7440.
Amy Pearlman April 6th, 2009
Hello everyone,
We have seen some fairly “believable” scam traffic in the last week or so, and we thought we would remind you of a few items that will help to keep your accounts safe.
- Never send any of your passwords or other personal information via email, or enter your password into a field inside an email message. Bryn Mawr Computing will never ask you to give or send us your password, especially via email.
- Spammers will sometimes include legitimate or legitimate-looking links in an email in order to make the email appear legitimate. This does not guarantee that an email is from IS.
- Messages from Bryn Mawr Information Services, especially about Computing related issues will *always* be signed with one or more person’s name and title. If you receive a message where the name is not familiar, or the message does not conform to this standard feel free to verify with the Help Desk or check the Computing Web site for verification.
- If you attempt to open a message and receive a virus warning (even if the message claims to be from a friend), delete the message as it is a fake. This is especially true if the message claims to be a greeting card or something similar. If you are not sure, contact that friend and ask if they have sent you that type of message.
- Never open an attachment which looks suspicious or which you were not expecting to receive.
Remember that by answering an email scam, you not only risk your identity and email records, but compromised accounts sometimes result in Bryn Mawr being blocked by other carriers for several days as a spamming site
If you have responded to an email asking for your password, please change your password immediately, and change the passwords for any accounts which may use the same password.
If you feel your account has been compromised, or you have reason to believe that your computer may have been infected by an email-borne virus please contact the Help Desk immediately at 610-526-7440.
We always report any spam or virus traffic we can identify to our anti-spam service to help them improve their filtering. If you identify some, please feel free to send it to spam@brynmawr.edu. Please include full headers (if you need assistance with this, the Help Desk can help).
Mark Colvson April 5th, 2009
If you want to see your calendar immediately, when you first open webmail, here’s a link that works https://zmailbox.brynmawr.edu/zimbra/?app=calendar
I find this very useful when I want to check a date or schedule without getting distracted by my inbox.
Susan March 5th, 2009
As many of you have noticed, Blackboard has been a bit unstable this week. We lost access on Tuesday afternoon, overnight Wednesday night, and part of Thursday morning. IS sent out an email warning regarding possible future outages.
Here are the details we’ve received from the hardware and system administrators at Swarthmore:
- The Blackboard database had been stored on a SAN (storage array network) at Swarthmore that became unstable due to hardware failures. These hardware failures also caused an email outage at Swarthmore.
- This morning (Thursday 3/5) the database was migrated to a different SAN, and should now be stable.
- Next Wednesday morning (3/11), additional maintenance work will be done to all of the storage networks at Swarthmore. This will result in scheduled Blackboard downtime from 4:00 am until 8:00 am.
We hope that our Blackboard troubles will be over after break. Thanks for your patience!
