The departmental server sphere, and the mail, web, share, ptr, and blog/wiki servers will have software updates applied this Wednesday afternoon, August 14, 2013 which will require rebooting (most servers will be unavailable starting at 3:45pm). 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 4:30pm.
New sphere
The update of hardware for sphere went smoothly. The new machine is faster and we have installed the latest versions of:
- Magma (version V2.19-7); type magma to run it
- Mathematica (version 9.0.1); type math (CLI) or mathematica (GUI) to run it
- Matlab (version R2013a); type matlab to run it
As mentioned before we are negotiating to get the newest version of Maple as well.
There is some free mathematical software on sphere as well:
- Asymptote, a powerful descriptive vector graphics language; type asy (CLI) or xasy (GUI) to run it
- Axiom, a general purpose computer algebra system; type axiom to run it
- Macaulay2, a software system devoted to supporting research in algebraic geometry and commutative algebra; type M2 to run it
- Sage, a free open-source mathematics software system licensed under the GPL which combines the power of many existing open-source packages into a common Python-based interface and whose mission is to create a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica, and Matlab; type sage to run it
sphere update at 3:45pm on Wednesday July 10, 2013
Starting at approximately 3:45pm on Wednesday, Jul 10 we will be updating sphere‘s hardware. The new sphere will have 2 6-core Intel Xeon 2.4GHz CPUs and 64GB of RAM in an energy-efficient system. There will be a shared scratchspace area that users can use to temporarily store files during computations. Please note that the scratchspace area WILL NOT BE BACKED UP and any files put there could be erased or deleted without warning at any time. For example, a user with account name janedoe can use the scratchspace in:
/DO_NOT_BACK_UP/scratch/janedoe
It is expected that the hardware changeover will not be very difficult, but not quite all of the software will be ready yet. We have newer versions of most of the software from the old sphere. We will need Thursday to install the new Mathematica and currently there are negotiations underway to get a version of maple for sphere. In order to understand usage could you please let us know (at requests@math.toronto.edu) if you have used maple in the last three years and if you think having maple on the new sphere is important.
A newer, larger version of coxeter is also being planned for later this summer.
Please type bigjobs on coxeter or visit:
http://www.math.toronto.edu/help/bigjobs.txt
to read the guidelines for running large programs on our departmental systems.
We expect that sphere will be back up around 4:15pm if there are no unforeseen problems. Please let us know (at requests@math.toronto.edu) if you have any problems with or questions about the new sphere.
Software updates at 4:15pm on Wednesday June 26, 2013
The departmental servers coxeter, sphere, and the mail, web, share, ptr, and blog/wiki servers will have software updates applied this Wednesday afternoon, June 26, 2013 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.
Software updates at 4:15pm on Wednesday April 24, 2013
The departmental servers coxeter, sphere, and the mail, web, share, ptr, and blog/wiki servers will have software updates applied this Wednesday afternoon, April 24, 2013 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.
Software updates at 4:15pm on Wednesday March 20, 2013
The departmental servers coxeter, sphere, and the mail, web, share, and blog/wiki servers will have software updates applied this Wednesday afternoon, March 20, 2013 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.
Mail server is working again
The spam filter software installation took much less time than expected and everything seems to have been back to normal before 8am.
Mail server downtime starting at 7am on Wednesday March 6, 2013
The departmental mail server will be unavailable starting at 7am on Wednesday (March 6, 2013) morning for an update to the spam filter software. We expect that it will be back by 9am and will post status updates here if there are changes.
Minor server update at 4:30pm on Wednesday February 13, 2013
The server that hosts share.math.toronto.edu (that contains, among other
things, the Self-Study and Appendix Drafts that were mentioned in an email
sent out by the Chair to the faculty last night) and our escalator sites
will be unavailable starting tomorrow (Feb 13, 2013) at 4:30pm for a minor
filesystem upgrade. We expect it to be back by 5pm.
There are no current plans to interrupt the services on any other servers
tomorrow.
