This Wiki has been created to contain the Body of Knowledge related to administering the various machines of the WPI Computer Science Department.

It will consist of a number of sections and will hopefully be somewhat well organized. Most importantly, the docs here won't get lost.

If you're curious about the text-formatting used to make Wiki pages here, please read the syntax page.

(shortcut for MCV)

Tasks like buying things, accounts, and grunt-work. Perhaps we'll discuss where in, all this mess, various useful items may be found.

• Configuring email readers. Servers to select for incoming and outgoing email.
• The Big Picture. Generic Description of WPI CS Computing Infrastructure.
• Something's Broken -- Troubleshooting. You've received a report, diffuse in content, that “something is broken.” How to find the origin of the problem?
• Schedules. When things happen in the department, the academic year, the Fiscal Year, etc.
• Tasks to be done at the start of a Term or Semester.
• Buying things. There are several approaches to spending the department's money.
• New user accounts. Who gets an account? Who doesn't.
• Grunt Work. Facilities department can move that desk/office/huge-thing for us.
• Requests for noncomputer tech support, like speakerphones, and conference support.
• Resetting Passwords. Make sure the person whose password is being reset is the same person who is making the request. Don't reset passwords of people that have not brought photo identification to you. Look at the photo ID, even if you know the person. Be fair to those you don't know, by checking the people that you do know.
• Departmental Email Setup. The correct servers for incoming, outgoing and Addressbook setup for WPICS Email reading.
• Wireless Setup http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/CCC/Netops/Wireless/Setup/
• Faster Guest Wireless Access can be had, also. The website claims they want a day or two of lead-time, but netops has been known to get wireless up for us in as little as 20 minutes. Don't rely on this though, because the day you assume you can get instantaneous guest access, all of netops will be out to lunch, etc. leaving you screwed.
• Create class user account. Make an account to be viewed from a web browser.
• ARGOS Setup Setting up ARGOS when it refuses your connection. Usually a problem on Refi Cane's office computer.
• Web-scheduler instructions How to use the web-scheduler, for people that forget its password or are concerned about their meeting not being “approved.”

Care and maintainance of our PC Images. Other Windows-related tasks will go in here as well.

• Creating VMs for Linux KVM servers
• Adding a modern Win7 machine to our archaic NT4-style CS Domain.
• Registering a PC on the campus network. probably invalid now
• XP Ghost procedure soup to nuts
• Create a Windows 7 image and capture to share drive
• Windows 7 Deployment Procedure
• Creating a new Image
• Updating an existing image
• Uploading a ghost image (from a PC up to the Image server)
• Installing an image to a machine (from the server to build a fresh machine)
• Windows print setup
• Windows packages used in WPICS (not a small item)
• Tools for cleaning up broken machines
• List of PC Images and their problems
• Create a bootable USB flash drive for Windows XP
• Windows XP Backup utility to recordable optical media
• Registering a Windows 7 or Vista Machine at WPI.
• Erasing a Computer HDD before discarding an old machine
• Disabling the Mcaffee Virusscan Splash Screen eliminate an annoying feature of logins!

Care and feeding of the PDUs, UPS units, wiring, air conditioning, Adder KVM units, Snoopy, and other items I'm sure.

• Racks and Server Locations. Where are machines located in Fuller a24? Which racks? Battery-age and model information is here as well, strangely.
• PDU's and remote power control (remote-accessible power strips). Accessible via SSH or HTTPS, very sluggish, but much faster than a trip into Worcester. This page describes which machines are attached to each PDU. The
• UPS Units. Batteries to keep our machines alive through power flickers and the like. The batteries need replacement from time to time.
• Wiring. Our machine room is a good example of disorganized wiring techniques.
• Air Conditioning. The room has one cranky, old Liebert unit, and a backup AC unit good enough to keep our important systems alive long enough to shut them down, basically.
• BIOS Updates on server hardware. How to run a BIOS or Firmware update on a machine that doesn't have Windows on it, has no floppy disk, and has no CDROM drive?
• Adder remote KVM units. These allow remote Console access from the internet; very useful if you don't like driving to Worcester on weekends and evenings.
• Snoopy. Snoopy is the camera in the corner, which watches the door switches, airflow, temperature, humidity, and other aspects of the machine room.

The bane of a peaceful existence for Sysadmins. When they or the queueing system breaks, you'll hear about it. Fast. And they have to print every strange new file format in existence. Now.

Printers should already be added to CS-Imaged machines, but occasionally we get people coming into the department with their own mahcines, which they would like to use to print to our printers.

• List of CS Department Printers and Queues.
• Adding printer access to non-domain Windows computers.
• Adding printer access to UNIX machines.
• Who printed that?? Looking through printer logs to determine who abused a printer.

Maintainance of UNIX machines; best practices, and pointers to information about various types of UNIX distributions.

• General List of CS Unix machines
• Building new Unix machines
• Virtual Machines--Starting, stopping, moving them.
• Setting up encrypted VNC on Linux machines.
• Setting up remote console access for users that can't work without a GUI.

• Create a new VM server for dept use
• Doing BIOS and Firmware Updates on Dell Rack Servers.
• List of Linux-Unix admin documentation
• Setting up and working with Linux software RAID aka md devices.
• Setting up a Resume Server VM.
• Crash recovery
• Kerberos for ignorant sysadmins like Mike. This page will attempt to collect Kerberos knowledge so that MCV can convert the department.
• Distributions to use
• Backup and restore information and procedures.
• Replacing a failed hard drive in a ZFS Pool on a Dell PowerEdge machine. A nerve-wracking process the first few times you do it.

• Setting up a Zone Minder (video surveillance) server.
• Anti-theft setup for linux laptops… setup of laptops to “phone home” using simple scripts, so that if stolen they will identify their location via cronjob
• Maintaining password quality to proimote system security.
• Setting up platter or partition encryption in Linux/FreeBSD/your OS

• List of critical machines
• What else?

If there's anything else I've forgotten, send me email! My address is at the bottom of this page. I've been here for a long time, and some confusing things may no longer seem this way to me. So send that email, and we'll talk about it. There's nothing to be lost in asking!

• Page listing stuff to add to this Wiki
• ASSISTments The Assistments project
• Where to get software from CCC. Their samba share: \\storage.wpi.edu\software\[…]
• Password-protecting webpages.
• SSI (Server side includes) in User webpages
• HDDs with wrecked partition tables can be recovered with the TestDisk program.
• Break Ins! Dealing with broken-into machines.
• disk quota info What to do when people see disk quota problems
• nuking_old_user_accounts Procedures for Nuking old user accounts.
• Use of encrypted ZFS devices in FreeBSD Tough to remember, tough to find information.