A UPS failure early this morning in the data center caused some CS services to go down, including the CS filesystem.  Power was restored at around 7:30am and all services should be back to normal.

We have upgraded the FastX cluster from version 2 to version 3. We hope that this will resolve most or all of the issues FastX users have been experiencing over the last few weeks.

IMPORTANT: To use FastX 3, you will need to download the FastX version 3 client from software.brown.edu. Versions 2 ...

The dog days of summer are upon us, bringing lethargy, fever and mad dogs.  Meanwhile, the technical staff is bringing big changes to our computer systems.  Students returning in the fall will find two upgraded OSes, and a new filesystem.  We are adding more GPU power to our compute cluster, and a new online discussion ...

On Saturday, June 22, CIS will be upgrading Panopto to the newest version. As a result all users will be unable to access both the videos and the site itself temporarily. If you plan on using Panopto this weekend, please plan accordingly. 

The upgrade will feature improvements to the video player, additional quiz features, more ...

The filesystem and all services have been restored and are back to normal.  Our efforts to repair file corruption in the file system were not entirely successful.  Following instructions from IBM, we made four attempts to execute their file repair program, and it failed or hung each time.  However, each run did make progress, and ...

A virtual machine server crashed this morning at around 5am, affecting 49 CS Department servers, including list, web, and other important services.  The technical staff spent much of today locating and fixing problems that arose from this event.  All or most services have been restored, but problem mail was interrupted mid-day today, and remains broken ...

During the final weeks of the semester, the technical staff encountered issues with routine maintenance of our GPFS filesystem.  IBM suggested that there was corruption in the filesystem, and recommended that we take it offline to repair it.  We postponed that work until after commencement, to avoid disrupting the final weeks of classes, a conference ...

(copied from John Bazik's email 11:03pm Thursday, May 30th)

The CS filesystem will be shut down for a period of time this weekend. 
This will render desktop and grid systems unusable and disable some
services.  The technical staff is working with IBM to resolve a serious
issue, and this work cannot wait.

The ...

Shortly after 10am this morning, most CS services, including the filesystem, webserver, and list server were affected by the failure of several of the University's virtual machine hosts.  Services were down for about a half hour.  At this time, the cause of the failure is unknown, but we are investigating.  All services were restored ...

There was a 5 minute GPFS filesystem blip caused by a script used to delete fileset.  The issue has been resolved.  Please email problem if your system is still having problem.

Tstaff