During the Tuesday, September 6th maintenance window, maintenance work affecting a number of services will occur, starting at 5:30 PM and being completed before midnight. The following work is planned:
- File servers: previous attempts to update the software on the jackal.ru.ac.za server have not been successful, so a further attempt will be made to update it. Software will be updated on the gnu.ru.ac.za server. It will not be possible for students or staff to
log in to public labs oraccess files stored on jackal or gnu during the outage. It is expected that both jackal and gnu will be unavailable for the entire evening.
- Correction, 6 Sep 2016: it will be possible to log in to public labs, but it is not possible to save files on jackal or gnu. Saving to USB flash disks or external hard disks is possible during the maintenance.
- IP telephones: all Avaya IP telephones will be rebooted to update settings. Each phone will take about five minutes to reboot.
- Access switches:software on a number of access switches will be updated, causing a network outage of up to fifteen minutes in the following buildings:
- AMM
- Bangor House
- Barratt Lecture Complex
- Botany
- Dingemans House
- DIFS (Royal Engineers Building and Stables)
- Drostdy Lodge
- Geography
- Geology
- Highway Africa
- HKE
- Library (new PC lab only)
- Life Sciences
- New Arts
- Physics
- School of Languages
- Server software updates: software on the servers which provide the following services will be updated, resulting in outages of up to 15 minutes per server:
- DNS
- DHCP
- NTP
- RT
- Web proxies
- Registration system
- Incoming e-mail
- Outgoing e-mail
- E-mail mailboxes
- Webmail
- Mailing lists
- SMS
- Apple Software Update Server
- Provisioning (web proxy autodiscovery, telephone provisioning)
- Wi-Fi and VPN authentication
- CHERTL Evaluation Assistant
- Network graphs
- Guest network access
- Network monitoring
- Terminal Four content management system
- RU Single Sign-On system
- Main web server (www.ru.ac.za, etc)
- University administration and meal booking systems
- SEALS Library consortium services
- Network printing services (iPrint / PaperCut)
- Home directories (gnu)
While we try to publish a list of all service-affecting work here in advance, the list should not be considered exhaustive and other low impact work may also be undertaken during the maintenance window.
This maintenance work is being undertaken in the ITSC-approved scheduled maintenance window. More information about maintenance windows and maintenance periods.
Update 1: corrected "File servers" item. 10:25, 6 Sep 2016.