#spdrstatus — Public Fediverse posts

#SPDRstatus: There was a power outage overnight in VAN.  Systems are restored. Let me
know if you see problems.

I'll be out of town for the rest of the day, however.

#SPDRstatus: Apparently several systems are down in VAN. This is affecting IDL licensing among many other things.

#SPDRstatus: A user process over-consumed memory on Axanar and locked it up, requiring a hard reset. It's back now. I'm considering process virtual memory limits. Let me know if you object.

#SPDRstatus: Research-git will be down for updates Friday, August 21, from 7:00pm to 8:00pm CDT.

#SPDRstatus: Internet restrictions are now in place. As far as I can tell, the exceptions I requested are working. Let me know if you see problems.

#SPDRstatus: AI resources available at UIowa: https://ai.uiowa.edu/

#SPDRstatus: If Zoom seems like it's not starting for you, it's probably already running. Look for the icon and right-click exit. Verify with "ps -ef | grep -i zoom"

It seems less likely to get stuck if you use the "back" (left-arrow) button and begin with the "sso" button (where you specify uiowa as the domain).

Finally, try killing off all zoom and chrome instances, removing the chrome lock files, and starting over. (Ask your favorite LLM.)

#SPDRstatus: By October ITS will phase out use of SMS and phone calls in two-factor authentication. If you can't use the DUO app on a smart phone, you may be able to get a hardware token from the ITS help desk. See me if you need help.
https://its.uiowa.edu/services/two-step-login-duo-security/how-obtain-and-use-hardware-token-two-step-login

#SPDRstatus: It looks like we will have to individually buy a license for OWL, a commercial plugin for Thunderbird. See the instructions at https://www.beonex.com/owl/. I used my [email protected] as both username and email address and things appear to work. In tests, "From" still shows [email protected].

10 Euro/year ($10.85 when I did it)

#SPDRstatus: These are computing system status messages for specific researchers.

#SPDRstatus: IMPORTANT If you are presented with an initialization screen for a new account, BE SURE TO SELECT THE ENTERPRISE LOGIN BUTTON. Then login with your HawkID/password. If you have been using MATE, logout and then select the MATE option from the gear icon between entering your username and password on the following login.

#SPDRstatus: Don't turn on the AI feature in Chrome search history or it will save the content of all pages you visit to your local machine, exploding your local disk usage.

#SPDRstatus: Foreign access to campus VPN, including travel, is not allowed without a personal interview and limiting the IP address to a single value (apparently). Also, the GlobalProtect client is not allowed outside the US at all. Unfortunately, policy and instructions are not obvious, which I will complain about.

#SPDRstatus: Unhappy with the new "safelink" obfuscation of links received via Exchange? Here's an add-on for Thunderbird that undoes them: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/addon/safelink-removal/

#SPDRstatus: There are new phishing emails claiming to come from "Uiowa|Phone System". Beware.

#SPDRstatus: It would be a good idea to bookmark https://fosstodon.org/tags/SPDRstatus on your phones so it's easy to check what's going on when your workstations freeze up.

#SPDRstatus: Elon apparently doesn't realize he's his own worst enemy. Twitter has lost all utility for this account. System status announcements have moved to https://fosstodon.org/tags/SPDRstatus. (You can append /tags/SPDRstatus to any Fediverse server address.)

#SPDRstatus: Misc . . . Avoid using KDE unless you disable the indexing in Dolphin. Red Hat has thrown a monkey wrench into Linux compatibility. Ubuntu has been withholding some patches unless you are a paying customer. A great darkness is spreading from the North.

#SPDRstatus: Remember to be suspicious of e-mail, even if it appears to be a transcription from the new phone service.

#SPDRstatus: Never give login credentials to a link you followed from email.

#SPDRstatus: Here's a quick tutorial on disabling forwarding so you can read incoming e-mail in MS Office365 Outlook: https://space.physics.uiowa.edu/plasma-wave/e-mail-config/

#SPDRstatus: Any user on our systems easily can set up a personal web page. See me if you're interested.

#SPDRstatus: Always check https://fosstodon.org/tags/SPDRstatus if working on weekends and first thing Monday morning for important messages.

You've found the replacement for the no longer useful Twitter platform for #SPDRstatus announcements. These are computing system status messages for specific researchers.