Topics

1) General News: SSH User Meeting
2) General News: New Unix and NT servers
3) General News: Astronomy was hacked recently
4) General News: Preparedness for Y2K
5) General Tips: Did you know that...?
6) General News: Security of your home computer

Newsletter Archive:
        http://www.chemistry.ohio-state.edu//compsupp/Newsletter/



1) General News: SSH User Meeting:


We have successfully completed an initial series of tests of SSH and would
like to share what we have learned with our users. We will explain some of
the ideas behind SSH so that everyone in the Department will get some
understanding of SSH functionality. We would also like to hear your concerns
and comments.

To accomplish this exchange of information, we have scheduled a meeting:

	Time:    4:00PM - 5:00PM
	Date:    Monday, December 13
	Place:   2015 MP

To remind you, we will phase out telnet access from outside the Department,
along with all other forms of access that send usernames and passwords in
clear text across the net. The date for this transition has been set to

        May 1, 1999

For more information on SSH, see "The Great SSH Primer", under

	Internal --> Computer Support --> The Great SSH Primer

This document is currently under construction, and more information will
be added as time allows.


2) General News: New Unix and NT servers:


We are happy to inform you that the new Unix server, known as "chemistry" or
"chemistry.ohio-state.edu" went live on Thursday, November 11, 1999. The new
server is a 4 x 400 MHz processor Sun Ultra 450, replacing the old 1 x 143
MHz Sun Ultra 1 workstation (which served us well for many years).

The new server runs Solaris 7. Many software packages have been upgraded to
newer versions as well. All other Solaris computers in the Department have
been upgraded to Solaris 7.

Note: Email relaying (someone outside the Department sending email through
      chemistry to somewhere outside the Department) won't work anymore.
      Please see the email relaying FAQ under

        Internal --> Computer Support --> Chemistry Department Related Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

The chemistry Unix server handles all departmental email, web pages, general
purpose computing, Unix home directories and serves as the entry point into
the Department from the outside.

More details about the new Unix server can be found under

         Internal --> Computer Support --> Support Bulletin Board


We are also happy to inform you that the two new NT-servers, chem-nt and
chem-nt1, went into production on November 11. We are even more happy that
they are stable now. Due to hardware/software problems (defective driver
software shipped by a company, tape drive failure) departmental NT services
were intermittently disrupted and unstable for about 1-2 weeks until all
problems were resolved and data had been restored from backup tape.

All users in the Department have their own NT accounts now and can access
their U: share on the nt-server. The U: share is the equivalent of the Unix
/home directory on the chemistry server and can be accessed from all PCs (and
on request, from all the Macs) in the Department.

Note: If you want to access central printers (in the Lab 2105 NW) from your
      Windows 95/98 PC elsewhere in the Department, you need to login on your
      PC under the same username/password as your NT username/password.
      Please see the NT FAQ "How do I access my U: share on the NT-server,
      and how do I print through the NT-server?" under

         Internal --> Computer Support --> Chemistry Department Related Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

If you don't know how to access your U: drive, please see the same FAQ.

What motivated the NT server upgrade was the need to provide more storage
space, faster access to it, better reliability and faster failover in case of
hardware problems. These goals have largely been addressed by going to two
redundant identically equipped PCs, one of which holds an external storage
enclosure where most of the disks are kept.

More details about the new NT servers can be found under

	Internal --> Computer Support --> The Support Bulletin Board


3) General News: Astronomy was hacked recently:


These days security is a vital part of our operations, not a luxury.
Recently Astronomy Department computers were compromised by hackers. To
prevent further invasion across the University, the Astronomy Department was
entirely disconnected from the rest of campus and the Internet for 3 weeks -
no e-mail, no WWW, no file transfer - while the operating system of each of
their computers was reinstalled. Our goal is to minimize the chances of a
similar disaster for the Chemistry Department.

THE INTERNET IS NOT A FRIENDLY PLACE ANYMORE!

This incident demonstrates again how dangerous the Internet has become.
Since hackers constantantly find new ways of exploiting security
vulnerabilities in operating systems and applications, we have to spend
considerable time and effort to counter those threats. We will never achieve
perfect security, but well thought-out measures can go a long way both in
reducing the risk of being broken in to and minimizing the impact a potential
breakin would have.

More information can be found in the security FAQ "Why is computer security so important?" under

         Internal --> Computer Support --> Chemistry Department Related Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)


4) General News: Preparedness for Y2K:


The Y2K problem has produced much discussion in recent months, with public
reaction ranging from indifference to panic. OSU, like any large institution,
has the full range of Y2K issues among its many facilities and services. Each
College has been responsible for assessing and repairing problems with its
local facilities, using its existing budget and staff.

Here are a few notes:

 - Only a few of our computers are used in life-critical activities, mostly
   those in the chemical safety area. Most of our computer-based activities
   can tolerate hours of downtime, or even a few days.

 - Most Y2K problems involve dates and arithmetic on dates. Most of our users
   manipulate mathematical symbols, chemical structures, scientific text, or
   experimental data, and therefore encounter few Y2K-related problems.

 - Our scarcest Y2K resource is Computer Support staff. Staff time must be
   efficiently used.

 - Users should take Y2K as an opportunity to phase out obsolete systems
   (such as old PCs and obsolete Unix workstations) that would consume more
   staff time to make Y2K-compliant than they are worth.

 - We have examined our production servers (Unix and NT) and believe that
   they are reasonably Y2K ready. For Y2K problems, we will give priority to
   problems affecting large numbers of people, especially students, over
   problems of unique systems and individual users. The extra load on
   Computer Support staff and the inconvenience of some computer owner will
   be our major Y2K cost.

Further reading:

   http://www.osu.edu/year2000      is the OSU Y2K website
   http://www1.umn.edu/oit/year2000 is the University of Minnesota website,
				    which is especially easy to use


5) General Tips: Did you know that...?


 ... you're are supposed to send all requests and problem reports to

	support@chemistry.ohio-state.edu

     and NOT to individual members of the support staff? Otherwise, You
     might not get any response if one of us is sick or on vacation.

 ... you're not supposed to lock screens on workstations or PCs in the
     Lab 2105 NW? Other users want to use the computers as well.

 ... the computers in 2105 NW are for chemistry-related purposes only?
     You should restrict your activities in the lab to chemistry-related
     activities only, and always avoid viewing materials that someone
     else could find offensive.

 ... you should use the color printers (Tektronix Phaser, HP Deskjet)
     only for color printouts? If you have b/w printouts, please use
     the laser printer. If you have a 40-page document with one figure
     in color, you should print the entire document on the laser printer
     and then print only that one page on the color printer.

 ... the Catalyst is online on our web pages under "Seminars"?

 ... the Encyclopedia Britannica is now online free of charge at

	 http://www.britannica.com  ?

 ... chemistry email addresses are faster than osu.edu addresses? We
     recommend that you advertise your chemistry address rather than your
     osu.edu address. Over the last few months, the osu.edu mailer has on
     occasion been delaying messages up to 8 hours due to congestion and
     other problems, and shutdowns.

 ... you can create files .term and .erase in your Unix /home directory
     that will answer the questions asked of you during your login to
     chemistry?

     Steve's contain 'vt100' and '^H' respectively. You can copy his files
     into your own /home directory with

	cp ~parker/.term ~/
	cp ~parker/.erase ~/


6) General News: Security of your home computer:


PST 99-3: Personal Security Tip
This week's Tip is from Randy Marchany, sysadmin and security guru at
Virginia Tech.

If you use a browser on your personal computer, make sure you have downloaded
and installed the latest security patches. Managers make all sorts of
demands on system administrators to protect the servers and then they forget
that their own unpatched browsers open their systems up to easy attack.