During the Tuesday, 7 September 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:
Wi-Fi security certificate renewal: the certificate used to secure connections from Rhodes University staff/students to the eduroam and RUoffcampus Wi-Fi services will be updated.
Users of Apple iPhones and/or iPads will be prompted to accept the new certificate when next they connect to an eduroam or RUoffcampus Wi-Fi network. When asked to accept the certificate, tap View Certificate Details then More Details. Check that the certificate was issued by DigiCert and that the serial number is:
VPN service: the VPN service will be set to require TLS 1.2 for SSTP connections. The encryption supported by the previous TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 versions is no longer regarded as secure, so any PC using VPN software which is only capable of TLS 1.0/1.1 will no longer be able to connect to the VPN.
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
IMAP e-mail mailboxes
Webmail
Mailing lists
SMS
Provisioning (web proxy autodiscovery)
Wi-Fi and VPN authentication
CHERTL Evaluation Assistant
Network graphs
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)
File servers/home directories (gnu, serval)
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.