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Annual software upgrades and disk cleanup starts November 21, 2011

November 14, 2011

The Mitchell A59 G.R.I.D. computer lab will be closed to normal use on Monday, November 21, 2011, for operating system and software upgrades on all the lab computers. User files saved on local disks will also be erased as part of an annual cleanup. See Computing News for details on which files may be erased. The upgrade process may continue into Tuesday or Wednesday if additional time is needed.

The "Jode" computer will be removed from the lab on November 14 so it can be used as the "build computer" to make a new software image for all four iMacs in the lab.

General operating system patches will be installed and individual software applications will be upgraded to the latest versions. Two major changes are planned for the Mac OS X operating system on the lab computers:

  • Mac OS X will be upgraded from version 10.5 ("Leopard") to version 10.6 ("Snow Leopard" on the Mac disk partition of all four iMac computers: Jode, Mauro, Mercator, and Beck. The older Mac "Saxton" does not meet system requirements for version 10.6 and will remain at 10.5.

    The Windows disk partition of the four iMacs, and the Dell PC "Amerigo", will remain at the 64 bit Windows 7 Professional version.

  • Currently, both the Windows and Mac OS X desktops are mapped to the same folder on your home share on the sesfs server. This can be confusing if you alternate between operating systems, since some desktop files in one operating system, such as disk and folder shortcuts, will show up on the desktop of the other operating system, but do not function there.

    To fix this confusion, the upgrade will separate the files saved to the Mac desktop into their own subfolder, named MacDesktop. The Desktop subfolder in the GRIDLab folder of your home share will continue to be used for files and shortcuts on the Windows desktop.

    If you previously saved files to the Mac desktop in the GRID lab, you will need to move them yourself after the upgrade from the Desktop subfolder to the new MacDesktop subfolder or to the Documents subfolder. The Documents subfolder will continue to be shared between the operating systems. Save any files there if you want them to be accessible from either operating system in the lab.

Computers to be upgraded to Windows 7 on January 18, 2011

January 12, 2011

The Mitchell A59 G.R.I.D. computer lab will be closed to normal use on Tuesday, January 18, 2011, for operating system and software upgrades on all the lab computers. Some user files saved on local disks will be erased as a side effect. See Computing News for details on which files may be affected.

The Windows partition on each computer (except Saxton, which is Mac OS X only) will be upgraded from Windows XP to 64 bit Windows 7. This will give us a more modern and better supported version of Windows that can use all of the RAM installed in each computer (XP can only use 3 GB). Mac OS X partitions will remain at version 10.5.8.

Most applications on the computers under both Windows and Mac OS X will be upgraded to the latest version.

The Dell PC "Amerigo" has 8 GB of RAM (main memory), which will now be fully available under Windows 7. Because there are no Windows 7 drivers for the Contex large format scanner that was attached to Amerigo, another older PC running Windows XP has been connected to this scanner. It is named "Hoffman" and is intended solely to operate the scanner.

No general purpose applications will be installed on Hoffman. The only application on it (other than programs built-in to Windows itself) is the "WIDEimage" scanning software to operate the Contex scanner. Use this software to scan maps and other large documents. Save the files to your "My Documents" folder, which is mapped to your home share on sesfs. Then you can retrieve the scans from other computers in the lab or elsewhere. Complete instructions for using the Contex scanner will be added to the lab website soon.

Annual erasure of user files on G.R.I.D. computer local disks

October 8, 2010

All user files stored directly on the G.R.I.D. lab computer hard drives were erased on October 8, 2010, as announced in advance on the Computing Resources website news section. As normal user files are actually stored on your home share on the sesfs file server when using the lab, the only files actually erased were files stored in the Scratch disk partition, files stored by guest users of the lab, and program settings files (such as browser bookmarks), which are stored on the local hard drives.

Door lock code changed

August 2010

The combination code for the lock on the lab door was changed. Click here to get the new code (restricted to Earth Sciences SUNet IDs only).