10 Oct 2006:

The Institute of Technology was originally designed to be the umbrella organization for a variety of different programs. We hope to be approved for a Computer Engineering and Systems degree soon, and that may change the mission and operation of the labs. Cormac McGaughey is already focusing some of his efforts on embedded systems hardware and software support, and there will be discussions this year about how the labs will be used to support the new programs.

Over the Summer of 2006, student lab assistants Brandon Cabading and Alan Fowler as well as lab staff were busy getting the labs ready for the 2006/2007 academic year. The amount of information the assistants needed to assimilate was tremendous. Brandon and Alan stepped up to the challenge, rolled up their sleeves and dedicated themselves to doing a great job -- and they succeeded. In addition to upgrading the operating systems and applications you use, they improved the process of installing applications, configuring them and deploying disk images.

Here is what is new or different in the labs:

1. General Development (GenDev) Labs
   1. Workstation Images

      These are just the highlights -- there were minor updates to many of the applications we install.

      • Java SDK 1.5.0_08 -- 1.6 (now in beta) won't be installed until Summer 2007
      • TextPad 4.7.3
      • BlueJ 2.1.3
      • Eclipse 3.2
      • Eclipse CDT: C/C++ Development Toolkit (3.1.0)
      • Eclipse WTP: Web Tools Platform (1.5)
      • Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional
      • Cygwin gcc 3.4.4, gdb and make (standalone or with Eclipse CDT)
      • Cygwin subversion
      • Alice

2. All GenDev and TAR Labs
   • JDBC Drivers (see Using JDBC)

     New JDBC drivers/connectors were installed for MySQL (3.1.13), Firebird (2.0.1), DB2 (for DB2 9.1), SQL Server 2005 (1.1) and Oracle (1.4).

   • JOGL (see Set Classpath for Java Tools)

     JOGL 1.0.0 JSR-231 is also available.

3. Student-Administered Lab (SCI113)

   A minimal set of software was installed on the Windows partition, and the common Linux image (Fedora Core 5) was loaded into the Linux partition.

4. Teaching and Research Labs (TARLs)

   The Windows partition on the TARL workstations contains a common set of applications. For each lab, applications specific to that lab are added. Some TARLs (ADC and ECS Labs) have the capability to boot Linux (Fedora Core 5), and there is a common set of applications installed there as well.

   1. Common Windows Applications
      • Java SDK 1.5.0_08
      • Eclipse 3.2
      • Eclipse CDT 3.1.0
      • Firefox 1.5.0.7
      • Iomega CD/DVD Burning Software (removable drives are in storage rooms)
      • Office 2003
      • TextPad 4.7.3
      • Cygwin gcc 3.4.4, gdb and make

   2. Applied Distributed Computing (ADC) Lab

      Workstation changes:

      • Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional
      • Eclipse WTP 1.5

      This lab's workstations can also boot to Linux.

      Linux servers were upgraded to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server 4, Update 4.

   3. Embedded Computing Systems (ECS) Lab
      • Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Standard (C/C++, C#)
      • Zilog IDE and Tools
      • RoboLab
      • Netburner IDE and Tools
      • Java parallel and serial communication facility

      This lab's workstations can also boot to Linux.

   4. Informatics and Artificial Intelligence (IAI) Lab

      Workstation changes:

      • Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Standard (C/C++, C#)
      • ARToolKit 2.71.3
      • audacity 1.2.4b
      • BlackMagic Home Edition
      • Gamemaker 6.1
      • ImageJ 1.36
      • Maya Complete 7.1
      • P5 Glove
      • Protege 3.1.1, and 3.2 Beta
      • Clementine 10.1
      • SPSS 13
      • Specialist 2006
      • MMTx 2.4B
      • OpenCyc 1.0.1
      • Cluster 3.0
      • treeview 1.6.6
      • hmmer 2.3.2
      • phylip 3.66
      • Aima
      • Bnj 3
      • Adobe Photoshop CS
      • DB2 9.1 Client
      • GraphViz 2.8
      • Java3D 1.4.0_01
      • Dreamweaver 8
      • Flash Player 9
      • SQL Server 2005 Management Studio Express Edition
      • Visio 2003 SP2
      • Weka 3.4.8
      • Rational Rose Enterprise Edition 7.0

      Server Changes:

      • MySQL 5.0.24a was installed and used to load UMLS and Specialist databases.
      • SQL Server is now SQL Server 2005
      • DB2 is now 9.1
      • Oracle was not updated (still in process -- security fixes only)
      • Linux servers were upgraded to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server 4, Update 4.

   5. Information Assurance and Networking (IAN) Lab

      Workstation changes:

      • All workstations now have at least 2GB of RAM; most have 3GB.
      • Wireshark 0.99.3
      • VMware Server 1.0.1

      Server changes:

      • All IAN Lab servers (dIANe, brIAN, pIANo) now have 2.5GB of RAM, were upgraded to Fedora Core 5, and have VMware Server 1.0.1 installed.

      • consensus was upgraded to Fedora Core 5.

   6. Graduate and Directed Research (GDR) Lab

      The UWT campus needed some temporary class space, so we vacated this space (PNK131) during the summer. Most of the equipment ended up in the Simulation Science (SS) Lab.

   7. Simulation Science (SS) Lab

      There are about 60 older workstation-class computers (Dell Precision Workstation 420s, 330s and 350s), some inexpensive computers for disassembly/reassembly, and several servers available for use for projects and research.

5. Repository Server Changes
   1. Red Hat Cluster

      We are now running Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server (RHEL AS) 4 Update 4, with Cluster Services for better availability.

      As with any other Linux clustering scheme we have used, all it allows is for you to login again and continue working should one node of the two-node cluster fail. You will lose all work held in RAM on the failed node, as well as all processes you started there. However, on the working node you will have access to your files and can restart processes (e.g., local tomcat development service).

   2. Java SDK

      As on all of the workstations, we are running Java 1.5.0_08.

   3. Tomcat

      We are now running Apache Tomcat 5.5.17. You shouldn't need to make any changes for this new release.

   4. MySQL

      The new version is 5.0.24a.

   5. JDBC Drivers

      New JDBC drivers/connectors were installed for MySQL (3.1.13), Firebird (2.0.1), DB2 (for DB2 9.1), SQL Server 2005 (1.1) and Oracle (1.4).

6. Infrastructure

   We retired our oldest, most venerable server this summer: css1. This is a Dell PowerEdge 2300, bought in 1999 before I (Stephen Rondeau) was hired. It has two Pentium III 450Mhz processors and 512MB of ECC RAM. It was the only server we had for the first two years of the CSS program and at the birth of the Institute. It ran Windows NT 4.0 for a few years, then Windows 2000 Advanced Server, and, for the last couple of years ran Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition.

   For a little perspective, now we manage about 30 servers.

   We are also in the process of trying to retire intkpr1 -- another Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition server. This dual-processor AMD Athlon server was originally supposed to be a projects server (hence the "pr" in its name), but ended up being our primary authentication, printing and license management server. We would like to move printing to a server cluster, but had problems last year doing so. We did not have time to test printing on the test server cluster we created this summer. We will test during the school year, and if it looks feasible, we may move printing to the production server cluster during one of the breaks.

   Authentication, license management and web serving are being handled by two new servers we put into production during this past year (auth1 and auth2).

   During the past year, one of the Sun V480R servers (vega) was upgraded successfully to Solaris 10; the other (rigel) was not -- at least, it wasn't the best way of doing it. vega is the only currently operational Sun server.