The Services Unit

A dumping ground for various useful bits of info - mainly for us, but occasionally for others. For older stuff, see the earlier, pre-wiki Service Unit info page.

We take it in turns to be the front-line Support contact, RT Guy. This honour rotates weekly on an alphabetical basis: Craig, Gordon, Neil, Roger.

Operational Stuff

• Whoever is RT Guy has a list of things to check.
• There are some smaller nuggets of useful information (Backups, Web, Mail, Printing &c) which may be of help.
• There is a list of components that we're responsible for.
• Some infrequent, but regular annual housekeeping stuff, normally done before each new teaching session.

Servers

The Services Unit is currently responsible for 58 machines, of which 47 include the <dice/options/server.h> header, and 11 the <dice/options/small-server.h> header. Of these machines, 15 are AFS servers:

• cetus, cockatrice, crocotta, gorgon, hawthorn, kraken, lammasu, minotaur, mullo, naga, nessie, pyrolisk, squonk, telford (not Services, MPU), unicorn, yeti

We also started keeping a note of server status and availability, but this appears to have fallen by the wayside.

We have a checklist from the last servers OS upgrade.

Hardware

• SAN disk hardware
• ATAboy, ATAbeast, Dothill R/Evolution hardware
• Appleton Tower rack (OLD? - Pre new server room, should be deleted)

Filespace & Backups

As listed above, we currently have 15 AFS servers (excluding the VM afsdb stand-in server), providing RW, RO, & BK volumes. A list (of all configured AFS servers, whether currently serving volumes or not) can be generated from the command-line using:

vos listaddrs

For servers with active volumes, use:

vos listvldb | awk '$1 ~ /server/ {print $2}'

(this currently gives the same list as above, but without crocotta).

Our backups are managed via TiBS, using the eponymous component (with notes on its development and full implementation).

Additionally, there are notes on configuration and use, plus NFS partititions (OLD) that may or may not still need adding.

The TiBS 2109 manual is also available, as are additional notes on TiBS configuration files and a snapshot of self-managed backups.

AFS

In addition to the servers mentioned above, we have notes on:

• /vice partitions on each AFS server
• AFS problems and their solutions
• a list of SAN Volumes (OLD - review or delete)

Printing

There are notes on CUPS configuration and problem-solving, plus notes on the more recent CUPS in Appleton Tower and general CUPS printing admin.

There's also a list of known printing problems that may be useful (OLD), and some fixes (OLD).

Additionally, there is Information on the Xerox MFDs (2012), plus scanning information and details of E-financials printing.

Web

• Use of cookies
• List of web sites hosted on the groups web server(OLD - Delete or review)

Meetings, Timekeeping, & Projects

• All our meeting notes and minutes can be found on the Unit Meetings page. Unit meetings are usually held fortnightly, with individual meetings in between.

• Neil's Time-keeping page describes his time-analysis script, and lists current "buckets"

• A list of ServicesUnitProjects contains a week-by-week breakdown of project work.

Policy Statements, and lists of Things To Do

• Information about the Removal of Web Content (2006 Terrorism Act)
• Mail delivery has been out-sourced to the Central Staffmail Service, for which there is an FAQ, and the original proposal documentation (and also for IMAP folders).

Current Tasks

We also maintain a list of jobs we're currently looking at, plus some smaller projects.

Historical Stuff

...anything of interest, but no longer current:

• ServicesUnitServerDeps (for move to SL6)
• ServicesUnitServers2SL56
• ServicesUnitVMReboots
• ServicesUnitServers2Sl53
• ServicesUnitServers2Sl52
• ServicesFc5Upgrade
• DICEServicesUnitATDecantTimetable
• Investigating move to Drupal
• ServicesUnitNov2010PowerOff
• Overview of the University's Research Publications Service
• ServicesUnitSolarisStuff

-- RogerBurroughes - 09 Jul 2013