Documentation for admins

From Syscore

Contents

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Critical items

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Monitoring

→ Monitoring and statistics section
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Miscellanea


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Account management

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New accounts

New students, faculty, and staff need to create and activate a primary account in the UMBC computing environment before they can make full use of our various resources, including logins, [myUMBC], and so on. Assuming that directory information already exists about the new person, he or she can begin by authenticating via the [UMBC Account Creation webpage].

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Account lifecycle

  1. Active
    • An account is considered active so long as the owner (or a sponsor) maintains a current affiliation with UMBC
  2. Deactivated
    • After a user is no longer actively affiliated with UMBC, there is a grace period - the length of which is determined by the user's prior affilition type - during which the user's accounts still function normally
    • After the grace period expires, all the user's accounts are marked as deactivated
    • What changes
      • Interactive logins no longer work
      • Incoming email delivery fails with an error message
    • What stays the same
  3. Deleted
    • After a pre-defined time in the deactivated state, the account is deleted in a batch job
    • What changes
      • All files remaining in the account are deleted
      • The AFS volume associated with the account is removed
      • The Unix UID associated with the account put back in the pool for general use
    • Note: There are currently no plans to recycle usernames (Kerberos principals)
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Tasks


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Identity management system (IDMS)

IDMS is the logical construct that encompasses all information, services, and management processes related to entities, authentication, and authorization. It is generally considered middleware and tends to go hand-in-hand with directory services.

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Directory services and LDAP

Directory services are part of the middleware that exists between users and the underlying computing infrastructure. The directory contains information associated with users and network computing resources and serves out the relevant bits during user authentication, access authorization, and other informational queries.

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NIS

  • The subset of information necessary for logging into Unix-based systems is propagated using Network Information Services NIS/yp maps
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Infrastructure and environment

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Logical

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Physical


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Monitoring and statistics

Statistics generated by Cacti and Sawmill can be found off of [stats.umbc.edu], the UMBC statistics server.

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Cacti

Cacti is a PHP-driven graphing front-end to RRDTool (Round-Robin Database Tool). We use Cacti to monitor system status and key system metrics (such as load, memory usage, and network traffic) for Syscore servers.
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Nagios

Nagios was designed to monitor hosts, services, and network connectivity. It can run as an external, network-based observer or can poll data from [client plugins]. As a note of historical continuity, Nagios is the next generation of NetSaint - which we also used to monitor our demesne.
  • REFERENCE
    • Nagios is currently running on aegis.umbc.edu
    • Our Nagios portal uses Kerberos authentication
    • Offsite: [Nagios homepage]


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Policies and procedures


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Services: applications

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Blackboard

  • Blackboard is UMBC's online course content application
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Calendar

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Databases

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MySQL

  • Running on grimm.umbc.edu, with production address being mysql.gl or mysql1.umbc.edu
  • MySQL 4.1.x
  • MySQL user documentation
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Oracle

  • Syscore operates the GL Oracle instance
  • Runs on threepio.umbc.edu, with production address being oracle.gl
  • Oracle user documentation
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FTP mirroring

  • Access
  • We mirror various open-source software repositories locally for speedier onsite access
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Services: system

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AFS

AFS is a distributed network filesystem that has been used at UMBC since 1999.
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Email services

Email was once thought of as an ancillary service, an extra provided as a benefit to the site, but not a real necessity. What was once a neat trick has now become a mission-critical function, however; users are demanding reliability, performance, and transparency as they send innumerable messages to one another.
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Kerberos

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Logging

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Non-AFS Backup and Restoration

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Printing

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Services: web-based / web-enhanced

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Webadmin

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WebAuth

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WebMail

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Web portal

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Misc OIT-supported web applications

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Software in Syscore

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Building and managing software

Syscore uses EMT and depot to build, propagate, and manage software packages.

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Locally Developed Code

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System management

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Building new servers

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Managing existing servers

Retrieved from "http://www.umbc.edu/oit/iss/syscore/wiki/Documentation_for_admins"