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The ADN Connection, January/February/March 1998 The A3C Connection
Jan/Feb/March 1998 Contents What's New at the ADN Configuring Win95 for ADN and Modem Introducing the Network Services Group The New Inform on the Web Using the Inform Advanced Search Form About the ADN Connection

What's New at the ADN

 
The ADN Post CMS UNIX Mac Windows Everyone 

 
Want to keep up with the ADN Beat between issues of The ADN Connection? 
The ADN "What's New or Different at the Academic Computing and Communications Center" Web page can keep you up-to-date. There's a link to it at the top of the ADN home page or visit it directly at: http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/home/new.current.html
 
   
 
     
CMS Accounts Harder to Get
  As part of our march to the millennium, we've removed the UICVM CMS option from our automatic account creation process. Hardly anyone really needs a new CMS account anymore; this change makes it harder to get one by accident. If you must open a CMS account (because a particular piece of software is there and nowhere else, and we don't mean mail or note), go in person to the CSO or the CSO's consulting office in BGRC. If there is something that you need that's still on CMS and isn't on tigger or icarus, please tell us. We'll move it or get a replacement.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but -- yes, this is "handwriting on the wall." Those of you who routinely use CMS now need not panic, but it would be wise for you to explore other options. As a first step, you should consider moving your email to tigger or icarus and begin using pine or Eudora (see How do I migrate away from CMS mail? from the January/February 1997 ADN Connection.) Not sure where to go after that? We'll have more for you in future issues of the ADN Connection and in special Computer Center seminars.

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Win95 News from the Labs
  We are in the process of converting the PCs in the ADN microcomputer labs to always boot to MS Windows 95 and removing the MS Windows 3.1 and DOS options. Win3.1 and DOS are obsolete, of course, but please do let us know if there's something that you or your students need that only works on Windows 3.1 or if you need help with converting. Settling on a single operating system also lets us provide extra functions, such as:
 
Disk space:
When you log onto Win95 using your netid and icarus or tigger password, we now provide you with permanent disk space on the server, available as your H: drive. You can leave files there and expect to see them the next time you log in. But remember it's your account so be sure to logoff when you're finished!
Printing:
We no longer allow printing from the public labs unless you first log in with your netid and icarus password. (We're working on extending this to tigger passwords. In the meantime, please see the consultants if you need to print from the labs and don't have an icarus account.) An added benefit is that your netid will appear on your output, making it much easier to find. Again, it's your account so be sure to logoff when you're finished!
Fast Booting:
In the converted labs, Win95 boots mostly from the local hard drive rather than entirely over the network. This means dramatically reduced boot times. However, just to make sure, the local copy of the operating system is checked during the boot process, and a new copy is downloaded if the local one has been changed. So you get faster booting -- most of the time -- and still keep the assurance of always getting a clean copy of the operating system
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What's New with ADSM (ADN/Datasave)
  Faced with a snowballing slowdown of ADN/Datasave services, we closed off ADN/Datasave registrations on November 8 to give us some time to analyze where we were and where we were going. Our analysis is now complete, and after making a number of adjustments, we have reopened registration. So, remembering the policy:
  • ADN/Datasave is offered only to individual UIC faculty and staff members for use on their own primary, exclusively used personal computer or workstation.
  •  Due to resource limitations, each faculty or staff member may register only one machine.
  • ADN/Datasave is not available for use on any PCs in public labs, LAN file servers, multi-user workstations, or public-access workstations.
You can now register new ADN/Datasave clients via the dsreg command on UICVM or tigger. (dsreg isn't needed on icarus because students can't use ADN/Datasave.)

We have also added the capability for you to delete your own obsolete backups, such as drives from a computer that you no longer use.

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What happened?

The major problem turned out to be the growth in the Computer Center's use of ADSM to back up tigger, icarus, borg, and our system servers. We divided the ADSM workload into two ADSM servers, one to serve the Computer Center's own systems -- tigger, icarus, borg, and so on -- and the other for everyone else -- the original users of ADN/Datasave. The result has been that we can now manage each of the servers in a way appropriate to their very different workloads, and we have succeeded in restoring good service to the faculty and staff desktop machines that ADN/Datasave was originally intended for.

How to Delete Files from ADSM

  1. Open the ADSM backup client as usual, and select a drive from your list of "Drives for Restore/Retrieve".
  2. Click on Utilities in the menu bar, then select Delete Restore\Retrieve Drives.
  3. An ADSM dialog box opens warning you that:

  4. ALL the data on the server for drive 'drive_name' will be deleted. ALL DATA will be UNRECOVERABLE for this drive. Do you wish to delete the drive?
  5. Click on Yes or No.
(You can't delete individual files from your backups, but ADSM marks files that you've deleted from your hard drive as "inactive" and automatically deletes them from the backups after a certain period of time.)

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The ADN Connection, Jan/Feb/March 1998 Previous: Jan/Feb/March 1998 Contents Next: Configuring Win95 for ADN and Modem


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