Blog

The UC Berkeley Research Computing (BRC) celebrates its launch on Thursday, May 22, 2014 at 3:00 p.m. in Sutardja Dai Hall. This exciting new program, developed with the IT Division's High Performance Computing Services group (HPCS), will help faculty and students with a range of computation and data needs for both research and instruction. BRC will include  a comprehensive HPC service offering including a condo and institutional cluster, cloud computing support, and virtual workstations. BRC will also develop a community of consultants from across campus departments to share knowledge and better understand and meet faculty and students needs over time. To attend the event RSVP here.

Traditional check-out procedures involve physical items like keys, badges and parking passes.  Electronic data is as important and often much more difficult to deal with.  Think about the places where your electronic history at the lab is stored:

• Local storage on your workstation (laptop and/or desktop)
• Network storage (your Home and Shared drives)
• Email (Gmail stored on the web or locally stored using a client like Thunderbird)
• Google Docs as well as external content (MS office files, PDFs, etc) stored on Google Drive
• Calendar events that reserve resources for your group (and may need to be changed after you leave)
• Content stored in one of the Google Marketplace Applications we have acquired (e.g. Smartsheet)
• Files stored on Webspace
• Content stored on local division, department, or group servers

Talk to your supervisor about your electronic data.  Transfer content to the right person before you leave.

Make sure that any  Gmail messages that you need to take with you are dealt with and consider transferring relevant messages to someone else who is replacing you.   Remember - you can not have a lab Google account after you leave. Eventually the account and all the data associated with it will be deleted.

We have some suggestions with a few  tools that you might want to try.   https://commons.lbl.gov/x/IYfNBQ

Learn how to quickly locate and get a hold of articles, books and other information through subscription journals, databases and libraries worldwide at any time and location without cost to you. Whether you are a scientist, student or staff, this course will provide you with resources and strategies to effectively research, refine and organize your results, or simply fulfill your reading habits.

A Q&A will immediately follow, so if there’s a problem that hasn’t been solved, or if you are just looking to test the wits of the Lab librarians, send your questions here and they will reveal what they’ve found following the presentation.  

The class is scheduled for Thursday, May 8  from 11:00 AM-Noon in 50B-4205. 

 Presenters are Peter Palath and Sarah Cruz from Research Services, IT Division.

The recently announced Heartbleed bug has been making the rounds in the media.  Visit go.lbl.gov/heartbleed for an assessment of impact on Berkeley Lab systems, to find more information on the bug and to get recommendations from Cyber Security regarding password safety.

Are you running out of space in your office?  Are you moving to a new office?  Is the size of your office being reduced?  Are you responsible for dealing with the records of retiring (or already retired) scientists?  Are you wondering what to do with all the files you are responsible for–which ones need to be kept, which can be archived, and which can be disposed of, all in compliance with Lab and DOE regulations?  This month as part of Records and Information Management Month (RIMM), you can get the answers to these and other questions by attending a 1.5 hour workshop being put on by the Archives and Records Office.  

The class is scheduled for Friday, April 25 from 10:00 AM-11:30 AM in 50B-4205.

Go here to register:  https://hris.lbl.gov/self_service/training/

Select: ITD0508 | Archiving Files & Records

WINS (Windows Internet Name Service)  was a pre DNS method for associating a NetBIOS name with an IP address.  Older Windows PC and Samba Servers  used this to locate services on a windows network - but in the modern era, this is no longer needed.

The Lab has two WINS servers that we are in the process of retiring.  

• On March 17 we removed WINS servers from DHCP leases.

• On April 28 we will shutdown the WINS servers.

If an older system has a dependency,  workarounds  are easy to implement (add a DNS suffix of lbl.gov,  use a fully qualified domain name (fqdn) to refer to a server or use the local  lmhost file)  Please contact the IT help desk if you run into a situation where you need a workaround for WINS.

On April 20th, 2014, IT will be discontinuing the Google Search Appliance service offering in favor of new Google provided search offering called Google Custom Search.  This has implications for you if you:

• Create or manage websites that make use of the current search infrastructure and/or

• You currently have a custom “collection” on the Google Search Appliance that searches a particular subset of LBL pages for you.

Information for both of these scenarios is provided below.  In addition, all users should be aware that IP restricted content (content on LBL websites that has its visibility limited to users on LBL networks) will no longer be indexed by the new service.   Since most protected content is now authenticated instead of IP restricted, this should have little to no impact on most users.

For most purposes, the new service will provide substantially superior search results to users, since unlike the on premises search appliance, the new service will benefit from Google’s main product ranking algorithms and search data.  The new service also supports distributed administration of search engines, so divisional website managers will have substantially better access to maintain their search engines.  Global LBL search and custom divisional searches are both part of the Berkeley Lab Technology Toolkit and are provided at no recharge to the Laboratory community.  

Who will this impact?

You will be impacted If you create or manage websites which provide for the ability to search the google search appliance against the regular LBL collection (all LBL websites)

How this will impact our Google Search Engine Customers

1. If you just provide a link (click here to search), no action is necessary.  All existing links will continue to work (search.lbl.gov, lbl.gov/search, google.lbl.gov, google1.lbl.gov) provided that it is a “bare link” to the search page (not a specially crafted link to a specific collection).
2.  If you provide a search box that searches the regular LBL collection (all LBL websites), you will need to update the search code.  The new code will take the form http://www.lbl.gov/?q=query+string&search_type=google    Please note that this is not available to test at this time, but we will notice you again when it is.  A preview of results is available here: https://www.google.com/cse/publicurl?cx=014713365614947559691:qqz_miakyrw   BUT DON’T LINK OR CODE TO THAT URL.
3. Additional documentation will be available in late March

What you need to do

If you currently have a special collection that was created for you (list of these is below), you will need to take action to 1. Recreate/reclaim your search index and 2. Change your websites to correctly point to the new search.   We will try to reach out to known customers, but some of the collections in our google Search Appliance are old and contacts may not be accurate.  If you have not heard from us, Please open a helpdesk ticket at help.lbl.gov with the following information:

1. Desired Name of your Search Engine

2. URL patterns to include (example:  http://myproject.lbl.gov/stuff/, http://myproject.lbl.gov/hello/,   or http://myproject.lbl.gov/ which would include both of the above.   As an administrator, you’ll also have the ability to manage these yourself going forward.

3. URL patterns to exclude (optional)

4. Names of at least two administrators in your organization who will manage the search engine (must be LBL Google Account users).

Special GSA Collections

We are not sure all of the GSA collections are active - but this is the list we have as of 3/17/14

Outage Details:

Date/Time: Saturday March 22, 2014   8:00am - Noon  (The upgrade was completeed on schedule)

Type: Scheduled

Impacted Services:  Commons - including many divisional/group home pages, including IT, Facilities, HR, Nuclear Sciences, and  Physics.

Background

Our institutional wiki (commons.lbl.gov) is due for an upgrade.  After some significant challenges with the migration process from our current version (Confluence 4.2.13) to the most recent (Confluence 5.4.3) - we are finally able to test the results. There are some layout changes that will impact all spaces on the wiki. Each space that uses the default Confluence Theme will now have a left sidebar for page navigation.  While it is adjustable (can be collapsed when users need more space for the page content), it is not an option.  As a example, the new look for our Google Help Site  (lbl.gov/google) will change to the image you see below.

There are also some minor changes to fonts and spacing - but nothing that impacts the utilization of the wiki from what we observe. Some spaces on commons use special themes using the themebuilder product.  We think that most of the migration problems have been solved and that spaces that use this theme will not have major impacts. The IT and Facilities division web sites are examples.

 Next Steps

We will be reaching out to space owners next week - but anyone can preview the results by going to a test site available only at the lab (commons-test.lbl.gov). Note: you will have to approve web access to the site because we do not have a well known "certificate" on the test site - so your browser will give you a warning. (Chrome will let you bypass this warning, others may not without modification to security settings)

If we do not experience any show stoppers while we work with our customers, we plan to do the upgrade Saturday morning, March 22.  The outage window will be from 8am to noon.

HPC Services consultant Krishna Muriki and systems engineer Karen Fernsler will be presenting at GlobusWorld 2014 on April 15-17, 2014 at Argonne National Laboratory. The main theme of this year's conference is Setting Up a Campus Data Service since many campus IT professionals are charged with creating a flexible, highly-available service for moving data to, from, and within their campus. This year’s agenda includes tutorials, presentations, and opportunities to engage with the Globus team and our partners, to help service providers design and implement a solution that meets their institution’s needs.

Their talk "Globus for Big Data and Science Gateways at LBL" will highlight some of our projects, including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III and the X-Ray Diffraction and Microtomography Beamlines at the Advanced Light Source user facility, which benefit from the implementation of Globus endpoints to construct Data Pipelines. They will also discuss how we chose to implement a Science Gateway for the LBNL Molecular Foundry Nanoscience Center.

IT is pleased to announce two new video conferencing services for the use of Berkeley Lab staff.   First, we've outfitted 30 conference rooms with multi-functional video conferencing carts.  Second, we've procured a site license for Fuze, an easy to use online meeting + videoconferencing application.

Video Conferencing Carts

IT Division developed and deployed 30 new video conferencing carts across the laboratory, with more to come.  Each cart has a   TV (either 40" or 60" models depending on the size of the room), a mac-mini, high quality external microphone and speakers, along with a cart (if the TV is not wall mounted).  Each system is remotely managed (e.g. software updates) and the IT help desk can assist as needed.  The carts have software to use Fuze (our new standard) attend traditional H.323/SIP video conferences, Skype, Readytalk, Google Hangouts, and more. 

With the landscape of video conferencing changing rapidly and the diversity of platforms used by our collaborators, we're happy to have found a solution that delivers high quality audio and video, but supports a wide variety of video conferencing technologies. 

FUZE now available

We're also pleased to announce the availability of Fuze labwide via a site license.  Fuze is a cloud based video conferencing service that has high quality video and audio (via VOIP).  You can use Fuze on our video carts, or on virtually any computer or mobile device.    We chose Fuze because it provides a simple but powerful interface and very high quality video and audio.  

Fuze has been fully integrated with our single sign-on service.   go.lbl.gov/fuze will allow you to authenticate with your Berkeley Lab identity username and password (often referred to as "LDAP").  A client is required to fully participate in a meeting (as either a host or as a participant) and you will be asked to download the software the first time you visit the site).  Clients are available for Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, and iOS.

Learn More

Classes for  Fuze (and a general introduction to the cart based system) are available for signup in employee self service.  We also provide on-site instruction wherever we have deployed a cart.

For more information on the Video Conferencing Pilot, review this web site  go.lbl.gov/vc.  The web page you will see is also what appears when the mac-mini is started - some of the directions are targeted towards use in that environment.   Follow the link at the bottom called "Conference Room Targets" to find out which rooms have video equipment.

Give Us Feedback

As always, we welcome your feedback, questions, and suggestions at http://help.lbl.gov

The issue

Google has notified Berkeley Lab Google administrators that a recent global Google issue may have affected messages in 167 LBL GMail accounts. This caused some actions that were taken, e.g., deleting a message, marking it as spam, or moving it to a folder to be inadvertently applied to a different message. 

This issue affected only actions taken in Mail for iOS, Mail in a mobile browser, and Mail Offline. It did NOT affect Mail in a web browser or Mail for Android. 

Next steps

Each one of the 167 individuals will be notified by email on Thursday January 30, 2014. If you are one of them, read on.

By February 14, 2014:

• Check your Trash and Spam folders for any items that you didn’t intend to delete or mark as spam.
• Restore any misfiled messages by moving them back to your Inbox or intended folder.

Important

The issue occurred between January 15 and January 21, 2014 on messages that were deleted or moved in GMail for iOS or GMail in a mobile browser.  Please move these messages from the Trash and Spam folders by February 14, 2014 since messages are permanently deleted 30 days after they’re placed in the Trash. Also, you may find messages in your inbox that you originally intended for Trash, Spam, or other folders. You will need to move these messages.

Contact

If you have questions about this message, contact the IT Help Desk at x4357.

Note from Google

Below is the explanation from the Google Apps Team regarding the cause of the issue:

About the issue

The cause of the issue was a bug in a software update to Gmail on January 15. Once the issue was reported to the Gmail engineering team, they identified the root cause and issued a fix on January 21, and identified the users whose messages may have been incorrectly placed in Trash or Spam folders. The Gmail engineering team performed an internal review and is implementing a series of measures to address the source of the issue, improve early detection of these types of problems, and help prevent recurrence.

We sincerely apologize for the disruption to your organization. Google is committed to continually and quickly improving our technology and operations to ensure secure access and avoid service disruptions.

Announcing Lucidchart

Background

We are pleased to announce the addition of LucidChart  (a web based diagramming tool) to the applications available through the Google marketplace.  The IT division is making this product free of charge to any LBL employee.

Most IT services including many business systems, windows home directories, and collaboration tools will be offline this Friday (1/17) evening for four hours in order to upgrade storage hardware. This outage will also impact IT hosted websites including TABL and News Center as well as sites hosted for scientific divisions.  Since the IT Website and TABL will be offline, visit status.lbl.gov for information during the outage.

Outage Details:  

Date/Time: January 17, 2013   6:00-10:00

Type: Scheduled

Impacted Services:

Numerous.  

• Commons - including all divisional/group home pages

• Webspace - Web based file sharing

• Conferences - Indico conference System

• LBL Software Download site

• UCB Library proxy - access to UCB Library resource

• Windows File Shares and Home Directory Access (G Drive, etc)

• Windows Printing

• RMS application

• Sophos AV service - client systems will get red X because of unable to phone home

• Alfresco - eSpace.lbl.gov

• Websnap/Plesk hosting services including TABL/Newscenter and other sites.

• VM Hosting Service - Production and dev/test for 60net and 130net (scientific VM net)

 - EETD, CRD, LSD, Eng, HPCS, Foundry, and JGI sites.

• PeopleSoft 3 Tier Developer App access (including F$M Offshore access).  Applications hosted on Grouper include: nVision, psquery, app designer

On December 30th at approximately 12PM, fire alarm maintenance in the main networking data center resulted in an unexpected and unscheduled shutdown of all power to the datacenter including all backup power systems.

This resulted in a temporary complete loss of connectivity to the LBL site, outage to site telephone services, as well as outages to numerous servers/services provided from this datacenter.

Sitewide connectivity was restored within approximately 30 minutes, however, return of site services provided from this datacenter took several hours.  

In addition, an intermittent problem with email delivery that resulted from hardware issues as a result of the outage was not fixed until January 3.  The effect of this outage was that some outbound emails with attachments were delayed from Dec 30 till January 3.  All queued email will be redelivered. 

Congratulations to our colleagues in procurement on the relaunch of procurement.lbl.gov

The site makes use of the new Berkeley Lab Wordpress Templates, our new Wordpress Hosting service, and is a "child" of the new LBL Multisite.  Procurement.lbl.gov is also one of the first sites at LBL based on Responsive Design principles, allowing different visitors on different devices to view the same web page content appropriately structured for the size of their device.

More information on the new Wordpress related templates and services will be available on the IT website in early January.