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Campus Computing NewsBy Dr. Maurice Leatherbury, Senior Director of Academic ComputingThere are quite a few things "in the works" this summer, as we have discussed in previous issues of Benchmarks Online. The items below are particularly noteworthy at this time. New Virus Protection Software SelectedThe Distributed Computing Support Management Team has been evaluating virus protection software packages in order to find the best package that will protect UNT's desktop machines from virus attacks. After looking at a number of such packages, including F-Prot (our current package,) Norton AntiVirus, Dr. Solomon, and McAfee VirusScan, the committee investigating the packages selected McAfee VirusScan as the best package for our needs. It is available for all versions of Windows and for the Macintosh, has automatic update features to virus "signatures" (definitions of the viruses that it scans for), and is widely regarded as the leading virus protection package on the market. The Computing Center is fully funding the campus site license of the package, and network managers will be installing it on machines over the next two months. VirusScan will also be available for free to faculty, staff, and students for their home use some time in the Fall once a suitable means of distribution is worked out. For more information on this upgrade see "Cross Platform Virus Detection Comes to UNT" in this issue of Benchmarks Online. DNS will No Longer Run on 129.120.1.1Domain Name Services (DNS) from the addresses 129.120.1.1 and 129.120.220.1 will be shut down on July 31, 1998. Please be aware that DNS requests to those addresses will "fall on deaf ears" as of midday on July 31. The address 129.120.1.1 was the original host for DNS on UNT's TCP/IP network, so there is a chance that some machines still have that number "hard-coded" in their networking setup. If your PC is using DHCP/BOOTP to get its IP address, it should also be getting its DNS and other information in that packet exchange so you should not experience any problems related to this change. If you have hard-coded your DNS server information, contact your network manager or local support staff for assistance in changing that definition. If you are a network or system manager and need more information about DNS configuration, contact Blair Copeland of the Computing Center's Data Communications staff. New Classroom UNIX System AvailableAcademic Computing Services is providing a Sun Solaris UNIX system, named terra.acs.unt.edu, exclusively for class instruction. Professors whose curriculum includes instruction on the UNIX operating environment or program development under UNIX may acquire a set of classroom User-IDs by utilizing the Computing Center's "Request for New User-ID" form available in ISB 119. User-IDs can be generated after the first class day based upon class enrollment. Terra is configured with a number of compilers and software products which are available to UNT as freeware or under a campus site license. Additional software can be installed upon request. Installation requests must be made one whole semester prior to the time it is needed for class instruction. If the software does not fall under a free or site license, then the requesting department may be asked to fund the purchase. Please note that terra accounts requests made exclusively for class E-mail access will be denied. Students receive E-mail services via a UNT Internet Services account. Academic Computing Services will be glad to provide a class mailing list for instructional communication. For more information about Terra, see http://www.unt.edu/ACSUNIX/terra Year 2000 Issues Gaining Campus AttentionThe University has been working on the "Year 2000" problem -- frequently abbreviated Y2K -- for over a year now. Computing Center Administrative Computing Services programmers have been checking and modifying programs that run administrative applications such as the student records system, financial systems, and human resources systems and hope to have those systems corrected by the end of this calendar year. The issue of insuring that desktop computers and software continue working when the date changes from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000 has come to the forefront lately. A committee of computing support personnel and campus administrators is working to conduct inventories in every department on campus by early in the fall, with the goal of identifying and correcting potential Year 2000 problems by the end of this calendar year. Many older microcomputers (486's and below) plus a large number of software packages are not Year 2000 compliant (they won't operate correctly when the year 2000 arrives), so prompt action to insure that we can work unimpeded in January, 2000 is imperative. Coy Hoggard, Senior Director of Administrative Computing in the Computing Center, is the University's Year 2000 Compliance Officer and he can answer questions about the compliance efforts. Coy is working hard to combat this problem at UNT. His phone number is 940-565-3855. If you are interested in learning more about the Year 2000 problem and issues associated with it, the following sources should be helpful:
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