NRAO-NM Computing News

September 22, 2008 - Upgrading from RHEL4 to RHEL5

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 this upgrade 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.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

Content reviewed on: 24-April-2007
Reviewed by: Gayle Rhodes