Information Technology News Archive

1996 - 2017

Laptop Computer Support in NACS Labs

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NACS has created two “laptop stations” in the NACS Engineering Gateway computing labs where portable computers can be connected to the campus network. Laptops with an appropriate Network Interface Card (NIC) and running current versions of the Microsoft or Macintosh operating systems are supported. Connections are made using the Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP) to simplify the process, which is outlined in new NACS documentation:

http://www.nacs.uci.edu/computing/laptops

We have created only two stations for laptops at this time, while we determine support requirements and the level of demand. If the demand warrants it, we will establish laptop positions in other NACS labs, such as the NACS@HIB lab in the Humanities Instructional Building.

Please let us know your experience and interest in using this new facility.

UCI Epidemiology to Manage Internet-based Informatics Systems

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The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has chosen the Epidemiology Division of UC Irvine’s College of Medicine to manage two Internet-based informatics systems. The first is for an existing NCI network of twelve international institutions studying genetic and other causes of breast and colon cancer, and the second will link eight major research centers nationally (including UCI) in NCI’s newly created Cancer Genetics Network. Both informatics systems will take advantage of emerging technologies and recent discoveries that are allowing scientists to explore, more than ever before, the key role gene mutations play in human cancer susceptibility.

In early May, the Epidemiology Division moved the Cancer Genetics Network and Informatics Centers to one of the new buildings on Theory Drive in the University Research Park (URP). The Informatics Centers are the first campus programs to utilize high-speed fiber-optic communication links from URP to the campus network backbone, orchestrated in large part through NACS. NACS will also be instrumental in planning networking and security needs for the Informatics Center.

The UCI Informatics Centers will develop one of the most comprehensive human cancer genetics research databases ever undertaken. The system will contain data on hundreds of thousands of people who are genetically predisposed to cancer, as well as information on biological specimens, educational materials and other resources designed to increase the world’s understanding of the genetic basis of cancer.

The Principal Investigators on these research projects are Hoda Anton-Culver, Ph.D., Robert Moyzis, Ph.D., Alberto Manetta, M.D., F. Allan Hubbell, M.D., and Argyrios Ziogas, Ph.D., among many others.

Powerful new SGI Origin in Mathematics

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Professor Alexander Figotin of the UCI Mathematics Department has recently acquired a new SGI Origin2000 computer to provide the main computing resource for his research. The machine has been named “krein.math.uci.edu” after one of the most eminent mathematicians of our time, Mark Grigorievich Krein, who made many fundamental contributions in functional analysis and its applications. The system currently has 24 MIPS R10000 CPUs (soon to be upgraded to SGI’s latest and most powerful CPU, the MIPS R12000), 6 GBytes of memory and 54 GBytes of disk space. The Origin2000 scalable shared memory architecture has been optimized for parallel programs using either shared memory or the message-passing model. Extensive software development tools, including the C/C++ and Fortran90 compilers, are available with special features for developing efficient parallel programs.

The acquisition of this powerful new computer was funded from a Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) grant, along with campus and School of Physical Sciences matching funds. It is being jointly supported by the school and NACS. Professor Figotin’s research involves the calculation of electromagnetic spectral properties of photonic crystals.

Contact Don Frederick (Frederik@UCI.EDU) or Professor Figotin (Figotin@UCI.EDU) for more information about this acquisition.

New UCInet Backbone

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The implementation of UCI’s new network backbone began in January and is proceeding on schedule. The Gigabit Ethernet, fault-tolerant, backbone “core” has been tested and placed into production. The implementation team is in the process of connecting buildings to the new core that had been on an interim Fast Ethernet backbone. The team is also configuring and testing the building switches that comprise the rest of the backbone.

The plan is to move the bulk of campus subnets to the new backbone over the summer. Moving departmental subnets will require a few hours of network downtime in each building. Each outage will be scheduled in advance and announced on the UCInet-OPS@UCI.EDU LISTSERV mailing list. In addition, the full schedule will be maintained on the Web:

http://www.nacs.uci.edu/communication/backbone-schedule.html

The new backbone will address rapidly growing communication needs, provide a foundation for ongoing departmental network improvement projects, and ensure continued, reliable operation of the critical campus data communication infrastructure. For more information, please see:

http://www.nacs.uci.edu/communication/plans/backbone-plan-1998.html

Questions about the project may be addressed to Garrett Hildebrand, whose e-mail address is GDH@UCI.EDU.

NACS-DCS Y2K Efforts

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UCI System Administrators have been busy getting ready for year 2000 (Y2K) and the associated software “bugs” we have all been hearing about in the media. NACS’ Distributed Computing Support (DCS) group is no exception.

DCS has reviewed the 260+ UNIX systems and servers it supports and has identified those that are not considered “Y2K compliant” by their Operating System (OS) vendors. Approximately one-third of DCS-supported systems still require an OS upgrade to make them Y2K compliant (about 30 others have been upgraded in recent months). It is hard to say whether or not an upgrade of a given system is absolutely required, as some Y2K problems have limited impact and may not affect a work-group’s particular use. However, vendors make no promises unless compliant software versions are installed.

Systems running Digital UNIX (DU) 4.0d, DU 4.0e, Irix 6.5.3, Red Hat Intel Linux 5.1, Solaris 2.6, or Solaris 7 are compliant. DU 4.0d and Solaris 2.6 are compliant with the patches that DCS has already applied. DCS is working on upgrading systems running other OS versions, but it is a large task that DCS will be busy with for the rest of the year or longer. If you are the owner of a system that needs to be upgraded, you may contact DCS to review your upgrade schedule.

In addition to Y2K issues in operating systems, application software that is important to end-users must be checked for Y2K compliance. Contact your software vendor for more information, or DCS for general advice.

For more information on Y2K efforts, contact DCS (DCS@UCI.EDU), or see:

http://www.nacs.uci.edu/support/sysadmin/Y2K/