The departmental servers coxeter, sphere, and the mail, web, and blog/wiki servers will have software updates applied on Wednesday afternoon, March 14, 2012 which will require rebooting (most servers will be unavailable starting at 4:15pm). Since some updates will be applied while the servers are still up there may be some temporary issues with some software. We hope that any such issues will be minor and by doing most of the upgrading before bringing systems down the shorter downtime will be worth the potential minor problems. Please restart any programs if you observe problems during the upgrades (and please let us know at requests@math.toronto.edu, so we can investigate). Since this is a larger update than usual we expect the systems to be back up by 6:00pm.
firefox and thunderbird updates this afternoon were successful
The updates of firefox, thunderbird, and the flash-plugin on coxeter are completed. Please let us know at requests@math.toronto.edu if you experience problems with these newer versions.
coxeter updates for thunderbird and firefox at 4:15pm on Wednesday March 7, 2012
The departmental server coxeter will have software updates for firefox, thunderbird, and flash-plugin applied this afternoon (Wednesday, March 7, 2012) at 4:15pm which will require that those processes be terminated and unavailable for about 10 minutes while they are updated.
More extensive software updates (requiring reboots) on all our systems, will be applied next week.
The updated thunderbird has tabs (similar to firefox) and a somewhat different look on the toolbar at the top of the window. If you wish to have the “original Toolbar buttons” that will be more familiar to you then you need to select the menu:
Help -> Migration Assistant
then:
1) click on the “Next” button
2) do NOT change the settings on this page (there is not enough diskspace on coxeter to “Synchronize” your folders); simply click the “Next” button again
3) on this page select “Keep your original Toolbar buttons” (as you choose between that selection and “Message Buttons Toolbar” options your thunderbird window will change and you can choose the display you prefer); then click the “Close” button
Portal (Blackboard) Extended Maintenance – Fri. Feb. 17th 2012 4:00 – 10:00 P.M.
The following is an informational posting from the portal (Blackboard):
Thank you for your patience during this unusually long service disruption.
– the Portal Help Team
Server updates on 2012feb15 were successful
The departmental servers all appear to be working fine after the updates.
Software updates at 4:15pm on Wednesday February 15, 2012
The departmental servers coxeter, sphere, and the mail, web, and blog/wiki servers will have software updates applied tomorrow, on Wednesday afternoon, February 15, 2012 which will require rebooting (most servers will be unavailable starting at 4:15pm). Since some updates will be applied while the servers are still up there may be some temporary issues with some software. We hope that any such issues will be minor and by doing most of the upgrading before bringing systems down the shorter downtime will be worth the potential minor problems. Please restart any programs if you observe problems during the upgrades (and please let us know at requests@math.toronto.edu, so we can investigate). We expect the systems to be back up by 5:00pm.
Phishing emails with Subject "Notice"
Many users have received emails with a Subject line of “Notice” that claim to be From some address like “Mathematics <adminn@math.toronto.edu>” or “Department of Mathematics <helpdesk1@math.toronto.edu>”. These emails are attempts to get your passwords and should be ignored.
Voltage Reduction Test on 2012feb07
On Tuesday, February 7 a province-wide voltage reduction test will be carried out which may affect our computer systems.
From 9am to 10am that day there will be a 3% voltage reduction.
From 1pm to 2pm that day there will be a 5% voltage reduction.
All our main servers should be unaffected by these reductions, however computers in offices and BA6200 may shutdown if they are unable to tolerate the reductions (modern equipment should not have any issues).
Symantec's pcAnywhere software has been compromised
Symantec’s pcAnywhere software (which runs under Windows, and which is not installed on departmental computers by default) has been compromised and users of that software should disable it until they produce a fix for it. Please see
for more information.
Server updates on 2012jan18 were successful
The departmental servers all appear to be working fine after the updates.
