Welcome

Simultaneous with this operating system upgrade, we are evaluating new hardware for performance and stability. CUNIX is currently seven Sun Ultra 2/2170s, each with 2 UltraSparc CPUs @ 168Mhz. The new CUNIX hosts now available for testing are Netra T1, with 1 UltraSparc II CPU @ 500Mhz and significantly better hardware design to decrease downtime. We will also evaluate the SunFire 280R, with 2 UltraSparc II CPUs @ 900Mhz.

If you normally use cunix solely to read email using Pine, you will probably not notice any difference at all (except perhaps faster service).

You may access new cunix via SSH or Kerberized telnet to

        newcunix.cc.columbia.edu

Solaris 2.5.1 vs 8 vs 9

Solaris 8 is very similar from the user's perspective to Solaris 2.5.1, but contains numerous functionality and performance enhancements that make the systems more robust and reliable. We have been running Solaris 8 for over a year on 72 Sun workstations in the Mudd lab. Solaris 2.5.1 will no longer be supported by Sun, making maintenance increasingly difficult. If you compile your own programs, programs built under Solaris 2.5.1 will generally work under Solaris 8, but the opposite may not be true.

Sun has now released the next version of Solaris, Solaris 9. We are now evaluating this version for deployment, and have installed it on the new CUNIX servers. Solaris 9 should appear almost identical to Solaris 8.

Major Changes

• The major change that you will notice is that plaintext connections -- those where you type your password in the clear over the network, making it susceptible to capture by malicious people -- are no longer supported. To login to new cunix, use of an SSH or Kerberized telnet application is required. To FTP to new cunix, use of SCP or Kerberized FTP is required.

  (Plaintext FTP is currently enabled for backwards compatibility, but will be disabled along with plaintext IMAP and POP when cunix is fully upgraded to the new cunix configuration.)

  For those of you concerned with such matters, the SSH key fingerprints and public keys for newcunix are

      RSA1 key fingerprint is d0:e5:1e:f5:69:80:e7:16:95:34:70:21:ef:9e:8b:a3.
  
      1024 35 1473709376808915342080032063838954192038695708154583673417345
      740845535564806573994165555034434828038791178390803332295449800258620
      490717996695406145100198225579778505435222903803130497214922539309599
      455086704593947981747559615679736200688821666878604927607335154851553
      31061713469289445557419607420341658531131
  
      DSA key fingerprint is 99:59:1f:0d:13:b8:a7:c0:1b:34:70:aa:a9:bd:21:72.
  
      ssh-dss AAAAB3NzaC1kc3MAAACBAMGDwb12ddh5zmG/huCtjHpHRuDnmWMApiT4wscjq
      t9pgA8ZaopHqI6nSYhVOQXfQ4yNIgiCXODMXZMPQCkBVfRoHxqVblLRkcYjxLKyWibzOo
      L7dnPuVlrJHWv58rS+tH/xnySXZ2sKl+V+C0oLRFzVaXnAVZen30vpfmgLh/3DAAAAFQD
      z9vI6hqXA1z860qXTIZ9OmLQKQQAAAIEAj5lDIJc5cNiUd/8oCeB7BJaXORpSFl/liNC/
      rQZRUkHpz1pquyEyr7HGxM0QW4rgY60M/+8TIrNfj3pMLJSyUJ0lOvnxCEa9cSLcnNgxM
      UZ32mNUIHHsH0kxaYZv4h/BY/0yXxQEhNlhOXNl92CJ72fAE/fx0Ipz+r4AleMN2jcAAA
      CAA4d2fxoDyvcbhLeuEteFHwt1zn3xRt3hhBB5kduIpd9NtAhwsYIyGw6z/JekE3eJ4Lp
      i/YvfdXLZBlprFFy3fQobq/4odTvEmU4aiknUlBnmT3v/BoE8CgjTtymI1mgKal/NXm+J
      AM7R51dhaw9Mwhh1dRIfLkflavadDesxalM=
      

  When newcunix replaces cunix the keys will change to the standard cunix keys.

• /etc/passwd and /etc/group are not maintained. These files have been replaced with modules that access the required information via LDAP and Kerberos. The standard C library calls getpwnam, getpwuid, getgrnam, and getgrgid continue to function normally. The C library calls getpwent and getgrent have been disabled.

• Certain changes may require an hour or so to take effect. These changes include updating your shell or gecos (finger) information. During the day, these changes should propagate in about an hour. Overnight, updates are less frequent. Password changes remain instantaneous.

• Program locations have been standardized. Generally speaking, nothing exists in /usr/local anymore, but instead under /opt or /opt/local. Notably, perl (v5.6.1) is available as /usr/bin/perl or /opt/local/bin/perl, but any other path is not supported.

  This may manifest itself as follows:

      $ ~/bin/script.pl
      bash: /u/1/a/abc123/bin/script.pl: No such file or directory
      

  Additionally, mm users need to update mm's mmail-path:

      MM> set mmail-path /opt/ACISmm/lib/mmail.el
      MM> save-init
      

• Global finger has been disabled, due to a confluence of privacy and technical reasons. finger user@newcunix remains available, subject to the destination user having enabled finger via the fingeron command.

Known Problems with New CUNIX

Problems we have fixed

• quota does not report in the same format.
  quota has been fixed to work properly under Solaris 8. (19 Feb 2002)

• finger does not work correctly.
  finger has been fixed to work properly under Solaris 8. (18 Feb 2002)

• send reports /etc/utmp: No such file or directory.
  send has been fixed to work with utmpx. (15 Feb 2002)

• Kerberized rsh to "newcunix" does not work from other AcIS hosts.
  Kerberos IV applications and some Kerberos V applications do not work correctly to newcunix.
  Kerberos application servers were patched and keytab file was adjusted to work correctly with the newcunix configuration. (7 Feb 2002)

• pine completes addresses as user@hazelnut.cc.columbia.edu instead of user@columbia.edu.
  Global configuration file properly selected. (30 Jan 2002)

• Missing software.
  onall, ourhosts man pages installed. (21 Feb 2003)
  lookup man page installed. (4 Feb 2003)
  gnuplot installed. (2 May 2002)
  ImageMagick installed. (15 Apr 2002)
  ACISsubmit as /opt/ACISsubmit/bin/submit. (15 Apr 2002)
  ejava installed. (5 March 2002)
  emacs 21.1 available as /opt/emacs-21.1/bin/emacs. (15 Feb 2002)
  jdk 1.3.1 installed. (18 Dec 2001)
  GnuPG installed. (13 Dec 2001)
  

• talk does not work.
  Daemon enabled. (13 Dec 2001)

Acknowledgements