MMM Minutes 1/21/99

Minutes of Smathers
Middle Manager's Meeting
January 21, 1999

Present: Rich Bennett, Gary Cornwell, Robena Cornwell, Carol Drum, Trudi Di Trolio, David Hickey, Dot Hope, Erich Kesse, Barry Hartigan, Richard Phillips, Rob Roberts
New Mail Server
  1. Last Saturday (January 16), we took down the old NT2 server. It had been running for 3½ years and was not a very high-end model.
  2. We have replaced it with a Dell server that is much more powerful. It backs up copies as they are written.
  3. The new server will have a bandwidth increased to 100M - which is five times what the bandwidth was before for incoming mail. Better Outlook response is also expected.
  4. The most troublesome part of the move happened when we were trying to move the MS software. Despite these problems, we were able to complete the switch within the 3-day window required to insure no mail would be lost. We've received no reports of lost or bounced mail.
  5. The old server had print queues on it, we had most of them back up & running by Tuesday morning.
  6. Shared folders are another matter, we are currently working to restore their permissions.
  7. CLARR was the most significant report of outage. Once we located it, we had it back up within 20 minutes.
  8. If you discover that there is anything that is not showing up on NT2, please alert the Systems department.
  9. Any folders on NT7 need to be migrated to NT2.
  10. We will be upgrading the software on the new server starting on Friday (Jan. 22) evening. We will be taking it offline & then do the upgrade. It will take at least five hours, should be back up by late Saturday afternoon.
Macro Virus Plague
  1. We've recently been experiencing a plague of micro viruses.
  2. The DVA in Office Suite allows utilities for macrolanguage, which, unfortunately, allows for viruses.
  3. These viruses are easier to write & can go from spreadsheets to word documents & from Macs to DOS. There's even one that will rename your hard drive.
  4. These macro viruses are proliferating & are hard to catch.
  5. We need to make sure all work stations have at least McAfee Scandisk 4.02 (4.06 is preferable) installed. This free software can be downloaded from www.software.ufl.edu.
  6. Many of these viruses are spread through email attachments. Be wary of mass mailings with attachments.
  7. It is possible to scan one file at a time, just do a right click & choose to scan the attachment.
  8. If you restore your backups, be sure to scan them as well - they can be restored with a virus attached.
Back to the Systems Homepage
Last updated February 17, 2000
by Debra Harris
debharr@mail.uflib.ufl.edu