General BioIT « BioIT

Solution for the Windows 64-bit VPN Problem

Thursday, November 19th, 2009, 9:43 am MT - posted by Ross Madden

It has been stated before and will be stated again, but here goes – Cisco will not be releasing a VPN client for Windows 64 bit computers. This leaves those running 64 bit windows in a bit of a bind when they need to access resources that are restricted to on-campus users. VPN allows those who are traveling and working from home to act like they are using a computer that is physically on campus, allowing their computer to access restricted resources. A few of these resources are Library journals, network drives, and Pangea (for the Department of Biology). The Pangea connection application will not work unless you are on campus, or using a VPN client from off campus.

Fortunately, there is now a solution! The Juniper Network SSL gateway that ACNS has set up has a (currently) unpublished feature called NetConnect. NetConnect will allow a full tunnel to be created through the SSL gateway. The way you access this unpublished feature is to append ‘netconnect’ after the SSL URL which creates the following:

https://secure.colostate.edu/netconnect

You will log in as usual with your CSU eID but will now notice a new section at the bottom of the page called ‘NetConnect’. You will also see a ‘Start’ button on the right side of this section. Clicking on this will create the secure tunnel onto campus, allowing you to run the Pangea connection application! Of course, the first time you run this option you will need to install the Juniper NetConnect client – this only takes a few minutes though.

Enjoy!

Posted in General BioIT, Tips and Tricks, Windows | No Comments »

New Computer? Old Computer? CCleaner!

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009, 3:53 pm MT - posted by Ross Madden

I am often asked these two questions.

I have a new computer, how can I remove all the CRAP that came preinstalled?

I have an older computer, how can I speed it up?

I will share with you a little IT secret, and that is CCleaner. In short, this program optimizes your system, by removed “crapware” that comes preinstalled on your new machine, cleaning up your Windows registry, as well as trashing temporary files that are not needed. Oh, and it is totally free! So, the next time you want to optimize an older computer, or polish up your brand new machine by wiping that crapware off – give CCleaner a try. The only drawback is for Mac users, since this is a Windows only computer. Luckily Macs don’t come with much crapware – so you shouldn’t be too disappointed.

http://www.ccleaner.com

Posted in General BioIT, Tips and Tricks, Windows | No Comments »

Quota limits now enforced on Pangea

Monday, November 16th, 2009, 11:41 am MT - posted by Ross Madden

As part of this weekends hardware upgrades, Pangea has also turned on the live tracking and enforcement of the previously mentioned quota limits. Please refer to the following FAq entry regarding the current default quota limits for the various group types that exist on Pangea.

http://rydberg.biology.colostate.edu/sites/bioit-faq/2009/08/24/what-is-my-quota-limit-on-pangea-and-how-do-i-check-it

If you reach your limit you will received something similar to “Disk Full” error from your operating system when you attempt to write to it. You can monitor the real time usage of your various group quotas using My Biology’s ‘Pangea Information’ tool.

Thank you for your attention to this matter and as always, Enjoy!

Posted in General BioIT | No Comments »

Pangea Upgrades 11/13/2009

Friday, November 13th, 2009, 4:52 pm MT - posted by Ross Madden

I will be conducting some Pangea hardware upgrades to the storage devices on Friday, November 13th starting at 7pm. Please be sure to have all Pangea documents closed at this time to avoid data loss.

I will be using this post to update you on the progress. We begin at 7:00pm tonight!

6:58pm – I am about the begin – it looks like everyone is off of Pangea (which is good). The first thing is to turn Samba off, and run a sync script to make a current copy of all data from the live Pangea to the Secondary (soon to be Primary) storage devices. This will take about 30 minutes to complete.

7:02pm – Synchronization has begun. The main upgrade tonight is that we will be connecting our storage device to the Pangea controller server via a technology called iSCSI. This should improve the server to storage and vice versa performance. We are also increasing the storage capacity.

7:30pm – Synchronization is complete. I will now commence the swap. Hopefully the next time I post it will be to let you know all is well!

7:42pm – The swap went great! All Pangea services have been restored. Please let me know as soon as possible if you notice anything strange. Thanks and have a great weekend!

Posted in General BioIT | No Comments »

Snow Leopard and SAMBA for Pangea

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009, 11:03 am MT - posted by Ross Madden

With the release of Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) there have been reports of slowness, and hanging of the Finder when attempting to access SAMBA (SMB) network shares. SAMBA network shares are essentially the most popular type of network share in use today, and the primary method of sharing files between Macintosh computers and Windows computers.

Unfortunately for us, Pangea uses SAMBA to share its files. So, we have been experiencing these symptoms, primarily the hanging of Finder when attempting to browse through sub-directories within your Pangea space. For the past couple of months since Snow Leopard has been released, I have been patiently monitoring several forum threads for a solution as well as silently hoping that the releases of 10.6.1 and 10.6.2 would address and fix these issues automatically. This has not happened.

On the other side, these forum threads have provided a solution to this problem which I have implemented on the Pangea server. This solution was to remove a line in the Pangea SAMBA configuration file that prevented certain files from being created by Apple client computers (those of you connecting to Pangea with your Macintosh computers). This line is called the ‘veto file’ setting is now turned off and Macintosh computers will start freely placing these strange files onto the Pangea spaces they access. These files include .DS_Store, .AppleDesktop, .AppleDouble, and .Trashes to name just a few. These files will not be visible to Macintosh computers, but will start showing up in the file lists for Windows computers. The important thing is that this has solved the SAMBA access issues with Finder.

So, for the end users who glaze over with the above technical explanation – Snow Leopard can now access Pangea normally, but will be creating strange files and folders (.DS_Store, .AppleDesktop, .AppleDouble, .Trashes, etc.) which will only be viewable by Windows clients on default.

Thank you for your patience with this, and I will remain optimistic that at some point the future I can re-enable the ‘veto file’ line. Enjoy!

Posted in Apple, General BioIT, The Cloud | No Comments »

Chloroform Restart 11/6/2009 7:00 AM

Friday, November 6th, 2009, 8:16 am MT - posted by Ross Madden

I have restarting one of the Department of Biology’s Domain Controllers this morning at 7am on Friday, the 6th of November. This restart was necessary to apply a few security patches. Chloroform is one of two domain controllers within the Department. Fluoroform is the other domain controller and was not restarted during this maintenance. Domain controllers allow for the department to authenticate against the University’s Active Directory (eID). Chloroform also hosts the departmental workstation backup server. Please let me know if you have any trouble authenticating to Biology related resources with your CSU eID. Thank you for your cooperation!

Posted in General BioIT, Security, Windows | No Comments »

What is Twitter and why should I use it?

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009, 10:48 am MT - posted by Ross Madden

“Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets” (http://www.twitter.com). What the heck does that even mean though? Twitter has actually been around for several years, but only this past 12 months has it picked up steam and become a household name. Twitter is a free service that allows users to send out and receive updates from other Twitter users. These updates are short, pithy, and allow a user to filter though a vast amount of information in a very short period of time.

In our academic environment Twitter can be very useful in the following ways. Twitter use can be split into two camps depending on who you are; you may fall into one or the other, or even both.

Twitter Follower
Most of the average Twitter use is simply following and reading posts that are posted by the Twitter users you follow. Typically, you will have a list of twitter users that you follow and you can at any point check on those entries to read their content. Since their content is limited (140 characters) you can quickly read and filter though a ton of information. So, as a Twitter follower, one can be informed of events, special offers, interesting articles, tips and tricks for various services, and up to the minute news.

Twitter Content Provider
As a Content Provider you are responsible for creating content that you post to your followers on Twitter. In some sense everyone can be a content provider if you use Twitter as a Social Networking tool. This is accomplished by updating your life to your friends and family that follow you. Most of Twitter content circulates around posting links and news and the distribution is amplified by “Re-Tweets” (noted by RT or Via). RTs allow a user to resend a Tweet they received from an account they follow to all of their followers. Good content is then RTd over and over again reaching more and more Twitter accounts. RTs are a way for someone to vouch for another Twitter account, much the same way Google Pagerank works when one page “links” to another page. These RTs usually end in more accounts following the original sender (due to the valuable content they have provided) and in the end allows the Twitter accounts that are sending out valuable content to reach more and more people. In the end, those with the more valuable content will have the most followers (at least this is how it should be).

Accessing Twitter
The most basic way to access your Twitter account is through the Twitter website at http://www.twitter.com. However, with the increase in popularity that Twitter has enjoyed recently there has been an incredible surge in the creation of new client software for whatever device you are using. On my work computer, I have been using Tweetdeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta). On my smart phone (iPhone) I have been using a free app called Twitterrific (http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific). With this combination I am able to send and receive tweets with ease from wherever I am. What Twitter clients are you using?

My personal Twitter experience revolves around the Twitter account for BioIT. BioIT has been using Twitter under both the Follower and Content Provider roles consistently since around late August. I have refined the accounts I follow through trial and error. If I follow an account and it then spams out post after post – I usually un-follow them. I now have a concise group of accounts that are both creating valuable new content as well as RTing with discretion – only valuable and relatively new content should be RTd. If I see an account send a dozen RTs out in a short period of time, they had better be amazing conent – otherwise it is just annoying. Twitter has been valuable to me in that I receive all of my IT related news and events quickly (in terms of reading through all new Tweets in the morning), and in real time – since my Twitter clients are alerting me of new tweets every minute or so (that is – if there are new tweets).

The BioIT Twitter account is attentive to content that deals with end user micro-computing, tips and tricks, and information technology. These topics must also be valuable to someone in our Academic/Research environment. I also occasionally post about super cool new gadgets or technology that I feel most will appreciate. My new content comes from the BioIT weblog and BioIT FAQ library. All in all, I think the BioIT Twitter account would be valuable to anyone from Colorado State University. Feel free to follow BioIT at http://www.twitter.com/bioit.

Let me know what you think about Twitter. Enjoy!

Posted in General BioIT, The Cloud | No Comments »

How to: Work From Home

Thursday, October 8th, 2009, 9:03 am MT - posted by Ross Madden

No, I’m not pitching some “Google pays me $1,425 a week” foolishness. I am talking about how you can connect to your work computer from home if you find yourself sick, or if one of the campus’ emergency plans are implemented due to pandemic, weather, or whatever else you can think of.

I have created some instructions on how a user can continue to work from home by setting up Remote Desktop on their office computer. Remote Desktop will allow your computer at home to look and feel exactly like the computer you are connecting to (Your office computer in this case). This includes having access to all the resources (Pangea etc.) that you had on your work machine. There are a few requirements of course:

- Power. You cannot work from home if the power is out.
- You have a Cable or DSL Internet connection at home. Dial up will not provide adequate bandwidth for this to be useful.
- Your office computer is running Microsoft Windows XP or newer.
- Your office computer is left ‘On’ when you are not in the office and that it does not go into ‘Standby’ or ‘Hibernation’ after a specific amount of time.

The important action item for these directions is that we get this taken care of BEFORE you are forced to remain home. It is important that these steps are also tested ahead of time to make sure everything is set up properly.

These directions take advantage of the Juniper SSL Gateway that ACNS implemented a few years ago. The reason we will be using this is that it avoids the use of the problematic Cisco VPN Client which is still (and probably won’t ever be) available for 64 bit Windows operating systems. The remaining bit of this post will point to the FAQ I composed a while back for this topic.

Please take a look at these directions and give them a try ahead of time. Biology affiliates can feel free to contact me about any trouble you have in setting this up. I can usually help with the setup of your office computer if the need arises. If you are not a Biology affiliate, please contact your local IT personnel for assistance.

http://rydberg.biology.colostate.edu/sites/bioit-faq/2009/09/15/how-can-i-work-from-home/

Posted in General BioIT, Windows | No Comments »

The future of Laptops?

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009, 10:05 am MT - posted by Ross Madden

Here is an interesting little concept video for the future design of portable laptop computers. Very cool if you ask me. Enjoy!

Posted in General BioIT | No Comments »

Taking it to Netbook City!

Friday, October 2nd, 2009, 1:01 pm MT - posted by Ross Madden

What is a Netbook?

Netbooks are the term applied to ultra portable laptop computers which in turn come with a low price tag; typically, under $400. The low price means that these devices are comparably underpowered for the operations a more expensive “laptop” or desktop computer could typically handle. The ultra portable part means that these devices are very small, usually a 10″ screen or even smaller. Powered by an Intel Atom processor, these low power chips are great for battery life – as some netbook specifications boast 10+ hours of life on a single charge. These devices are great for Internet, photo and video viewing, social networking, and basic applications. Just don’t expect to do anything heavy like Photoshop or video editing.

I am aware of at least a few of these devices in the building – and anticipate more. In fact, I just recently picked up an Asus 1005HA model (shown above). This $300 machine is replacing an aging Apple Powerbook G4 12″. A netbook was attractive to me because of its ultra-portability, long battery life, and low purchase price. For my purposes I will be running Windows 7 32bit RC and Ubuntu Linux Netbook Remix.

It took me only a couple of hours to follow these dual booting directions (http://www.bauer-power.net/2009/06/how-to-dual-boot-windows-7-and-ubuntu.html). I use the Windows 7 side for the majority of my work on this device – Word, Excel, and web browsing. The Ubuntu side is available so that I can program of course.

The important thing to remember about these little devices is that they are UNDERPOWERED. Just like any low cost traditional laptop or cheap desktop setup – they are noticably slower when doing anything other than browsing the web and using services or resources that exist on the web. However, I would say that close to 90% of what I do on computers happens within a web browser. E-mail, Social Networking, Netflix – these services all exist in the “Cloud” (See the post for ‘What is Cloud Networking‘) – and with more and more services popping up online, netbooks seem like a good and affordable way to access these resources from wherever you are.

Posted in General BioIT, The Cloud, Windows | No Comments »