Computing Services Team Activity for the Period 9/01 to 1/02 - MEC - 1/17/02 HET Spiesman and Odoms continued work on final details for the moving baffle. It will probably be ready for science commissioning after one more engineering run. Spiesman et al. transferred control of the PFIP slide from the old PFIP computer to the new baffle computer, and then recovered from the problems that ensued. Odoms and Cornell continued work on the HET autoguider. One critical bug was identified and fixed, which had prevented the use of the new guiding algorithm to alleviate the drift seen against the LRS. Other improvements included the ability to save multiple sets of markers for different instrument setups, fixes to some marker registration errors, and improvements to the strip chart scaling. Wilkinson met with the TOs to discuss current DIMM operations, in preparation for helping out with the DIMM automation project. Mt. Locke Operations Erho Zhang joined our group in early November, and took over responsibility for the high level code in the 107-inch TCS system. He fixed several long standing bugs, and a new release is expected within a month or so. Cornell analyzed 107-inch night reports for the last couple of years and updated the bug lists to get Erho started. Zhang and Spiesman fixed a bug in Sun POINT for Dec track rates for non-sidereal objects. They also set up a new LynxOS testbed computer that will also be used to port the 107-inch control system to linux. Spiesman automated the download of the IERS time information used in pointing Mt. Locke telescopes. He also rebuilt the 107-inch TCS software after Harvey and Lambert reported flakey pointing behavior, and documented the LynxOS installation process. Cornell and Bash finally got the new T1 installed, just in time, as NASA has recently notified us that they plan to stop funding the old line. Odoms released a new server for 82-inch coordinates, running off of miranda. Work continues on deciphering the encoder output so that the current HA computer can be retired. Spiesman worked with the Mt. Locke staff to define procedures for routine maintenance of the 107-inch TCS computer. Odoms continued to work on the new ATOG control system in the background, as the hardware is completed by Mitchell et al. Odoms began work with MacQueen's group on the new PCI-based interface to the v2 CCD system, for use initially with TK3 at the 107-inch. Cornell, Crook, and Wilkinson installed a new Ultra 10 at the 107-inch to run the new system. Odoms updated xreport to run from either 107-inch data-taking Sun. Austin Operations Wilkinson revamped our PC installation procedures, based on cloning an existing system, and reinstalled the public PCs, the PCs in the instrumentation course lab, and most of the PCs in the undergraduate majors lab. A new photographic-quality color printer was installed in 16.304. Schaefer and Wilkinson got RADIUS authentication working for the department modems, allowing us to serve passwords to them from a remote machine, and permitting the modems to run in a much more stable way than was previously possible. Vargas made substantial improvements in the Department and Observatory web pages, including new personal pages for 11 faculty and research scientists, major redesigns of the Astronomy, Education, People, and McDonald pages, as well as day-to-day maintenance and postings. Vargas also ported Dotson's travel pages over to our site, the Theory group's web pages from tycho to hej3, and the Texas Symposium from Earthlink to hej3. Anderson migrated class web development from Adobe PageMill to the more powerful Adobe GoLive. She then used the new system for all postings for courses for Fall 2001 and Spring 2002. Anderson also developed the new Staff Directory page. Cornell transferred our web site to a new, much faster computer. Wilkinson and Schaefer selected a new standard virus solution for department Macs and PCs and began implementing the first purchase of 50 licenses. Wilkinson began working with the Austin and Mt. Locke librarians to develop an integrated and automated library database. Cornell worked with Woods to release her new RTA form. Schaefer and Wilkinson did a lot of system maintenance on the Suns and PCs, including replacing disks, memory, resolving printer problems, etc. Schaefer updated the kernels on the grad PCs with various bug fixes. Wilkinson created a web-based astronomical calendar system computed on the fly to replace the static pages we typically post each year. Vargas trained Anderson and Thompson in web techniques. Schaefer backed up and retired four of Wheeler's old Suns. Vargas updated her Mac and Web support documentation and transferred Mac support duties to Schaefer and Web support to Anderson. Vargas announced that she is leaving us to enter grad school at UC Berkeley. Schaefer developed a script to archive and delete inactive users on astro. Cornell cleaned out 6 Suns that were attacked over the break, and Wilkinson and Schaefer rebuilt a linux system hacked at the same time. Cornell updated the department's ssh servers to close a common form of attack. Wilkinson patched the Lexmark printers to prevent further virus attacks on them. Cornell dealt with a spamming episode on one of Nather's Suns. Wilkinson installed 8 new PCs and Vargas installed 3 new Macs during the period. Collins and Cornell renewed the Sun and printer hardware maintenance contracts, the Sun software leases, the ACITS accounts, and all the usual new fiscal year stuff. Wilkinson developed proposals for a new mass-storage facility, and expanded our capability to monitor network traffic. Collins purchased a Sun workstation, 3 monitors, 3 PCs, 1 Mac, 4 disks, 2 printers, a UPS, plus lots of memory, computer cards, cables, software, and supplies, and coordinated numerous repairs during the period, including a large number of tape drive repairs. Cornell attended the annual astronomical software conference, showing the flag and recruiting for positions open at the time.