During the Tuesday, 4 March 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:
Single Sign On service: the software which provides the single sign on service will be reconfigured. There may be times when it will not be possible to login to services which use the single sign on service, such as RUconnected, ROSS or library electronic resources, among others, at times during the evening.
Afterwards, when you access a service that uses single sign on (e.g. RUconnected, ROSS or Fincore) the login process will be different.
If you've already signed in to your Rhodes University Google Workspace account, you'll simply need to click the button for the appropriate Staff/Student/Guest category and you'll be taken directly to the service, or the personal information consent page.
If you haven't signed in to Rhodes University Google Workspace on the device you're using, you'll need to select your category then complete the Google login process. You'll need to enter your email address (ending with @ru.ac.za for staff or @campus.ru.ac.za for students) then enter your password. If you've enrolled for 2 Step Verification, you will need to provide your second verification method. Once you've completed that, you'll be taken to the service or the consent page.
This change is being made to improve the university's security by providing 2 Step Verification (2FA) protection for more services, without needing to enroll new verification methods.
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
Mailing lists
SMS
Provisioning (web proxy autodiscovery)
Wi-Fi and VPN authentication
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, studentfiles)
PC login service for public labs
Archibus
Storage systems: software on storage systems will be updated. No noticeable outage is expected, though an unexpected failure during the upgrade would cause an outage affecting almost all services.
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.