CF Home - for CSCF technical notes

Welcome to the home of TWiki.CF. This is a web-based collaboration area for CSCF. Anything that belonged in http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/mfcf/internal/ or http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/cscf/internal/ and which is not confidential may go here instead. Confidential material should go in the CFPrivate web (but keep in mind that no webserver can be guaranteed to be invulnerable to security issues).

Sharing Critical Information

When we have a serious system outage we need to communicate with our clients and other CSCF staff. Refer to notes on Sharing (Critical) Information

Organization of these pages

Topics in the Left Bar are those of high common interest, for quick navigation. There is a larger list of topics on this main page, many of which will also have their own pages. The sub-topics are those that are expected to be most commonly referenced. Feel free to include the same sub-topic under multiple topics, or create separate pages as needed.

Starting points for topics included within this web

• CscfSpecific: CSCF-specific content (should not exists, that is, all content should be in this page)

Abuse and Security Incident Response

• Security

Accounts, Authentication and Authorization Management

• Accounts
• Xhier accounts
• TwoFactorYubi - YubiKey based Two-Factor Authentication
  • YubiKeyValArch - YubiKey Validation Architecture
  • YubiKeyValSetup - Setup of YubiKey Validation Servers
  • Setup of YubiKey Key Storage Modules
  • Setup of YubiKey Client Systems
    • YubiKeyUbuntuConfig - Configure an Ubuntu client for using YubiKey Two-Factor Authentication
      • CreateCertAuth - Devise your own Certificate Authority for securing https
• TwoFactor
• CSCFActiveDirectory
• Open Directory
• LDAP

Administration

• Administration - topics relating to CSCF Administration
• See Also: Management
• FirstAid - Documentation on First Aid supplies and procedures within CSCF

Backup and Restore

• LegatoNetworker - used to backup most of our systems
• BackupMacs - various notes on how backups work in CS in the general and teaching environment

Bug Reporting and Processing

• ST: Using our ST (Service Tracker)
• Gripe Handling — we don't do this any more

Communication

• Communication
  • Planned Outages
  • After Hours Support
  • Sharing (Critical) Information
  • Documentation
  • Newsgroups

Computing Environments

• Clusters - Building and administering groups of computers as a cluster
• HPC
• "general" region specifics
• "student" region specifics
• Undergraduate Operations
• Nettop's
• cluster configurations
• research labs (link to new "Cf-ResearchLab" wiki for lab admins to edit)
• TroubleShootingLabMacs - problems and solutions
• Thin Clients

CSCF: Who Does What

Database (info for a DBA)

• Database
• PostgreSQL
• MySQL
• IBM DB2

Data - Public Data Access

• Point of Contact

Documentation

• Documentation
  • DocumentationStandards - suggested guidelines for documentation within CSCF
  • EDocs - CSCF Internal electronic document storage

Email Setup

• Email

Evergreen

We spend much of our resources on the "evergreen" of space, equipment, software, ...

• Lab Renovations

File Services

• NetApp
• ZFS

File Systems

Topics concern anything to do with file systems. Of particular interest are network distributed filesystems like NFS, CIFS (samba), etc. Further consideration is given to authentication, authorization issues.

• Samba - CIFS support for non-windows platforms
• NFS - Network File Server as introduced to the world by Sun and available on Unix, Windows, MacOSX.
• SshFs - allows one to mount file using ssh protocol to a server that requires no additional configuration beyond having an ssh server running.
• LtspFS - an experimental file system developed by the Linux terminal server project, sound intriguing.

Hardware

• Hardware
• E+I Database info
• Sun
• Dell
• Apple

ICR Specific

• VideoConferencingICR - notes specifically relating to ICR's videoconference unit
• WirelessGuestsICR - notes on Guest Wirelsss access for ICR
• Xerox8355ICR - notes on adding users to the address book

Imaging Systems for Fast Installation

• ImageServer - Setting up a CSCF PXE Image Server with Private networks
• CreatingImage
• ImageDeployment
• CscfImagingWorkstation (current in the private twiki, should it be moved the public?)
• SystemImager - primarily for Linux only
• RSGLoanerWorkstationLoanerPoolImaging
• CscfGradImageNotes - notes on the various images that have been created for the Grad PCs

Infrastructure

• Infrastructure - main page for the CSI group
• Configuration Management
• Technology Deployment Requirements
• Email
• Linux
• Networking
• Windows
• HardwareLab-DC2560G

Lab and Machine Room Infrastructure and Security

• Physical Security
• MachineRoomRacks
• KVMs
• UPS
• EnvironmentalMonitoring

Management

See the information specific to managers. Also of interest are information for staff about the work environment, and administration.

MFCF

• The Math Faculty Computing Facility.
• Collaboration Space.

Miscellaneous

Put entries here if you don't know where to put them elsewhere in this page.

• Library: CSCF/MFCF shared library (DLP)
• Historical reference: Network load balancing
• Space - Planning for Change

Networks

• Networking

News items of interest to MFCF/CSCF staff

See News.

Notifications

See Sharing (Critical) Information

Operating Systems (generic notes universal to all environments)

• Standard Procedures for all OS Updates
• FreeBSD
• Irix
• Linux
• Macintosh
• Solaris
• Windows
• OpenBSD
• Setting Up Various OS Services
  • NTP

Printing and Scanning

• Printing
• Scanning
• Printer Maintenance

Professional Development

• Professional Development main page - training and conference opportunities
• ProfessionalDevelopmentApproach - the CSCF approach to Professional Development

Projects

• ClientProjects - notes and documentation on CSCF Projects for clients
• InternalProjects - internal CSCF projects

Purchasing

• AFF Object Codes Used by CSCF

Research

• Research - main page for the Research Support Group
• ResearchGroups - Notes about Research Groups in CS

Resource and Service Monitoring (ie. Cacti, Nagios)

• Cacti
• CactiMonitoring
• NagiosMonitoring

Software/Applications

Acquisition, Distribution, and Configuration

• SoftwareChart - a listing of software by application area - UW licensing, acquisition, installation, configuration
• Cfengine: configuration management (likely to be deprecated in favour of Puppet)
• Puppet - a configuration management tool
• Software Notes
• Licensed Software
• Twiki
• Maple
• TwoFactor
• web calendar
• VirtualMachines - running an operating system within another
• XHier

Development (within CSCF)

• Software Developer Documentation Template
• OdysseyApplications
• GradOfficeWebApplication (OGSAS, Grad Admissions)
• Other ClientProjects
• Inventory System
• InstallingNonXhierPerlModules
• Research Subscription application

Installation

• Software/Applications Installation

Staff Stuff

• StaffStuff - non-technical topics of interest to staff

Task Groups / Working Groups

• Definition
• Membership
• AuthenticationTaskGroup
• CSDFScWorkingGroup
• CSLinuxWorkingGroup
• CSSaltStackWorkingGroup
• MacTaskGroup
• WindowsTaskGroup or WindowsWorkgroup
• Printing Task Group - determines how to print to a heterogeneous group of printers from a heterogeneous group of clients

Teaching

• Teaching - main page for the Teaching/User Support Group

Tutorials

• Networking Tutorials
• JuniperNetscreen
• LyndaCourses

User Support

• UserSupport

Vendors

• Vendors

Videoconferencing

• VideoConferencing - notes on Video conference availability on campus
• VideoConferencingICR - notes specifically relating to ICR's videoconference unit
• VideoConferencingAHS - and AHS'
• VideoConferencingEng - and Engineering's

Web

• OdysseyApplications3Apache — Information about the new Apache 2 Web server implementation (now entering testing)
• WebCapabilities — About our CS Web Server configuration and capabilities
• MFCF Help pages on creating your own web pages
• CscfOFISTestBed — Used for OFIS
• CsOFISProposal
• Providing support for CS Sharepoint use.

Workshops and Seminars

Concerning the use of computing environments with respect to internal and external requests for workshops and seminars

• Internal usage in this context is described as being requested by the CS department or the Math faculty. An example of this would be CEMC (Centre for Education in Math and Computing)
• External usage in this context is described as being requested by people outside of the Math faculty. An example of this would be requests from Sharcnet for use of lab space to to hold HPC computing workshops.
  • ESQ

WatITis

• See Professional Development#Attended_notes

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Information on who can read and write on this web

• WhoCanReadWrite - this describes who can read these pages and update them. Are these pages accessible to Google?

Usage Guidelines

• UsageGuidelines - Notes on how to use this web and when to consider putting information elsewhere

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