VISITORS

E-MAIL

USERS

SOFTWARE

HARDWARE

HELPFUL LINKS

  Emergency Callout
  Resources/Policies
  Staff Lookups
  Help Desk

 

NRAO-NM Computing News

 

 

December 11, 2009 - AutoCAD and Inventor Upgrades for Windows

Starting on Friday, December 11, AutoCAD and Inventor 2010 SP1 upgrades will become available. AutoCAD and Inventor users should reboot their computers between 1-3 p.m. on Friday for their current AutoCAD and Inventor versions to uninstall. Users should also log off but leave their computer powered on at 5:00 p.m. Friday to allow the CID admins to finish this upgrade.

October 26, 2009 - Acrobat Upgrades for Windows

Starting at noon on Wednesday, October 28, these Windows software upgrades will become available:
- Acrobat Professional 8.1.2 to 9.2
- Acrobat Reader 8.1.3 to 9.2
Windows users should reboot their computers for these changes to occur.

October 14, 2009 - New printers

The printers, psnet and ps, have been replaced with new Hewlett-Packard 9040 models and renamed aoc213 and aoc352 respectively. Please use the new names for printing to these new printers as the old names will no longer work.

September 16, 2009 - Software Upgrades for Windows

Starting at noon on Thursday, September 17, these Windows software upgrades will become available:
- Microsoft Visio 2003 to 2007
- Microsoft Project 2003 to 2007
- Adobe Flash 10.0.22.87 to 10.0.32.18
In addition to these upgrades, Adobe Shockwave 10.1 will be uninstalled. Windows users should reboot their computers for these changes to occur.

Aug 24, 2009 - Firefox 3.5.2 for Windows and Linux

Firefox 3.5.2 will become available for RHEL5 Linux and Windows computers starting on August 27th at 10:05am MDT. Linux users should restart Firefox. Windows users should reboot their computers to install the new version.

August 4, 2009 - Internet Explorer 7 for Windows

Windows computers with Internet Explorer 6 will be upgraded to Internet Explorer 7, starting tomorrow at noon. Users will be requested to reboot their computers to install this upgrade.

July 16, 2009 - WinZip 12.1 for Windows

If you have a Windows computer with WinZip installed, starting at noon on July 16, 2009, WinZip will automatically upgrade to version 12.1 the next time your computer reboots.

June 30, 2009 - Quicktime 7.62.14.0 for Windows

Starting at noon on July 2, 2009, Quicktime will automatically upgrade to version 7.62.14.0 the next time your Windows computer reboots.

June 24, 2009 - Flash 10.0.22.87 for Windows

Starting at noon on June 24, 2009, Adobe Flash will automatically upgrade to version 10.2.22.87 the next time your Windows computer reboots. This upgrade will coincide with the usual monthly Windows patches and security updates.

June 23, 2009 - dvips defaults to letter paper.

A change has been made to the program dvips on our RHEL5 computers so that it now defaults to creating PostScript suitable for Letter sized paper instead of A4 sized paper. This may change the way some of your TeX documents print.

May 27, 2009 - Openoffice 3.1 is now installed on all Linux computers at the AOC.

To start it simply type soffice. The new Openoffice should allow a greater compatiblity with MS Office 2007. It should be availble to all Linux machines at the site by the end of the week.

May 18, 2009 - Firefox 3.0.10 and Office 2007 ODF Plugin

Firefox 3.0.10 will become available for RHEL5 Linux and Windows computers starting on May 18. Also the Sun ODF plugin will install on Windows computers running Office 2007 after the next reboot.

April 7, 2009 - java in /usr/local/java

The current version of java in /usr/local/java on the RHEL5 Linux machines is now 1.6.0_13.

March 24, 2009 - Firefox 3.0.7 Available

Firefox 3.0.7 will become available for Windows computers starting on March 25th. Current Firefox Windows users will get this upgrade when their computer reboots to install the monthly Windows operating system updates.

February 19, 2009 - Upgrade RHEL5.2 to RHEL5.3

On Tuesday, February 24th, we will be upgrading most of our RHEL5.2 linux installations to RHEL5.3. ALMA RHEL5.2 machines will not get upgraded yet. This upgrade will start after 5pm and will occur in the background to reduce impact on users.

February 3, 2009 - Email Access Upgrade

On Saturday, February 7th, the email access server, mail.aoc.nrao.edu, will upgraded. This will be an upgrade to both the hardware and software. It is expected that this upgrade will fix the occasional problem where the downloading of an email message can take a long time.

This upgrade will not require any changes to a user's email client

January 28, 2009 - Firefox 3.0.5 and Java 1.6.0.11 Available

Firefox 3.0.5 and Java 1.6.0.11 upgrades are now available for Windows users. Current Firefox and Java Windows users will get these upgrades when their computer reboots.

January 26, 2009 - Microsoft Office 2007 Upgrades

The Windows system administrators plan to upgrade Office 2003 to Office 2007, one NRAO division at a time, over the next few months. Division managers will be given a more detailed upgrade schedule and users will receive email notification before their Office upgrade occurs. This will affect all Windows users currently using Microsoft Office 2003. A training session will be offered during the upgrade process.

In addition, Microsoft provides useful online training: training courses and webcast training courses. Windows users are strongly encouraged to take this training as it will ease their transition to Office 2007.

More information about the Office 2007 upgrade can be found at the NRAO Office 2007 SharePoint. This site will ask for a username and password so please use your Windows account to login.

December 9, 2008 - Firefox 3.0.4 and Acrobat Reader 8.1.3 Available

Firefox 3.0.4 and Acrobat Reader 8.1.3 upgrades are now available for Windows computers. Current Firefox and Acrobat Reader Windows users will get these upgrades when their computer reboots. Firefox 3.0.4 has ETK rendering problems: the font color on tabs is almost the same as the background color and the field search hourglass icon is not displayed.

November 2, 2008 - Obit installed

Obit has been installed on all the Red Hat Linux 5 (rhel5) computers at the AOC.

October 10, 2008 - IDL 6.4

We have upgraded IDL from 6.2 to 6.4 on all our RHEL5 Linux computers. We have also installed the 32bit and 64bit versions. Just typing idl will start the correct version for your computer.

September 22, 2008 - Upgrading from RHEL4 to RHEL5

We are currently in the process of upgrading all of the Red Hat 4 Linux computers to Red Hat Linux 5. For information on the changes please look here.

April 4, 2008 - Mathematica upgraded to version 6.0.2

We have upgraded our Linux installation of mathematica from 4.1 to 6.0.2. We have also removed mathematica from our Solaris machines.

January 30, 2008 - Firefox 2.0.0.11 and Flash 9.0.115 Available

Firefox 2.0.0.11 and Flash 9.0.115 upgrades are now available for Windows computers. Current Firefox and Flash Windows users will get these upgrades when their computer reboots.

January 22, 2008 - Hummingbird Exceed 2007 Available

Hummingbird Exceed 2007 is now available for Windows computers. Current Hummingbird users will be contacted by Help Desk personel to get this upgrade.

December 18, 2007 - Symantec AntiVirus 10.1.7 Available

Symantec AntiVirus 10.1.7 is now available for Windows computers. Current Symantec AntiVirus users will be contacted by Help Desk personel to get this upgrade.

October 30, 2007 - Inventor 2008 SP1 Available

Inventor 2008 SP1 is now available for Windows computers. Current Inventor users can get this upgrade by emailing the NRAO-NM Help Desk. Users that do not currently run Inventor need their supervisor to approve its install.

October 29, 2007 - Revision Control System Disabled

We disabled the doco revision control system, which was used to control pages under www.aoc.nrao.edu, www.vla.nrao.edu and www.vlba.nrao.edu. Along the way we tightened down the permissions on those files: if you used maintain a web page (not including home pages) and cannot edit it now, submit a ticket to the helpdesk.

October 9, 2007 - New Poster Printer 'aoc352w'

The AOC has replaced its poster printer which was called widebed with a new HP Designjet Z6100ps 42inch poster printer called aoc352w. Instructions to use the new printer can be found here.

October 6, 2007 - New NetApp Filer 'filehost'

The AOC has replaced its main NetApp filer (FAS 250) with a new NetApp filer (FAS 270). The new filer has twice the capacity and therefore quotas have been increased from 3GB to 8GB.

September 15, 2007 - OpenSSH upgraded on Suns

OpenSSH on all the Solaris computers at the AOC and the VLA has been upgraded to 4.6p1 and was also installed locally on each computer instead on a network drive. This means ssh will be available to a Sun even if the fileserver is not.

August 6, 2007 - Disabled telnet, rlogin and rsh to Suns

We have finally disabled telnet, rlogin and rsh to our Sun SPARC computers. Please use ssh (unix) or putty (Windows) to connect to Sun computers from now on.

July 24, 2007 - Updated Flash plugin for Firefox and IE

Plugins for Flash 9 have been installed for firefox both in Linux and Windows and for IE in Windows.

March 19, 2007 - RPM updates for RHEL4

Updates have been released for firefox-1.5.0.10 and thunderbird-1.5.0.10 as well as gcc-3.4.6-3.1, gcc4-4.1.0-18 and other such associated gcc packages.

March 13, 2007 - Samba server upgraded

The server that provides \\samba-aoc as well as the helpdesk system was upgraded th Red Hat Enterprise 4 Update 4 today.

December 9, 2006 - FTP server upgraded

The server that provides ftp, rsync and web proxy services was upgraded to Red Hat Enterprise 4 Update 4 today. The upgrade went well and all services were upgraded to the latest stable versions available.

If you see errors on your computer like "Stale NFS file handle" then you will have to reboot before you can access /home/ftp.

September 7, 2006 - Red Hat Enterprise 4 Update 4

AOC Linux machines running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 have been upgraded to Update4. This has had the following noticeable effects:

  • Firefox and Thunderbird upgraded to 1.5.0.5
  • Mozilla browser and mail reader are no longer under development and have been replaced with SeaMonkey which provides similar functionality.
  • Xterm has once again redefined the backspace key. You may see this if vi or emacs. If you do, try setting stty sane in your appropriate shell rc file or just type it on the command line.

July 11, 2006 - OpenOffice 2.0.3

     The AOC has installed the latest version of the OpenOffice.org suite of programs on all Red Hat Enterprise 4 Linux computers. The new suite of programs can be accessed by typing soffice from a Linux command prompt or through the KDE Office menu.

January 17, 2006 - Spam Quarantine

     NRAO has developed a new utility to handle spam. The service and how to use it is described in the Gold Book webpages at automatic spam quarantine. Note: This utility will not work for employees who receive their e-mail on the Exchange Server.

2006 - New Web pages

     We are currently working on updating previous computing pages as well as creating new web pages - [INC].   If you would like to see a special computing page added that would be informative and helpful to other employees, please submit your suggestion to the Help Desk.

Content reviewed on: 24-August-2009
Reviewed by: Sonja Mendoza