The ECN No Name Newsletter is no longer being published. This is an archived issue.
[previous article] [next article]David S. Carmichael
From time to time people may ask what keeps the Engineering Computer Network staff busy. The most common answer is "fighting fires." This means that a major portion of the ECN staff's time is spent solving work-a-day problems of network failures, packet jams, crashing machines and unusual user problems. My intent with this article is to provide an idea of what the ECN staff has been up to over the last 12 months. Plus maybe a little insight as to why...
Hardware
The goals of the Dean's 1994 Engineering Instructional Computing Initiative were
The results by December 1994 were
April 1994 April 1995
Sun-3 186 70
Sun-4 400 385
SPARC 5 0 159
Sun-4/2XX 21 7
Sun-4/3XX 11 8
SPARC 1000 4 15
HP 9000/715/50 100 100
HP 9000/725 4 4
HP 9000/735 6 6
HP 9000/755 6 6
Goulds 4 2
Software On UNIX Boxes
An aim of the Dean's Initiative was to try to provide a consistent work environment for everyone using the Engineering network. With the addition of 100+ HPs in 1993, and the newer machines from Sun requiring Solaris, ECN was being asked to support and maintain:
With this variety of architectures, offering a consistent set of core software packages is difficult. Fewer new versions of third party software were being offered for old Sun-3s, and very little third party software was available for the Goulds. The ECN staff was spending an inordinate amount of time trying to support different versions of third party software on different platforms. As a result of the Dean's Initiative and the conversion to Solaris, the vast majority of ECN Sun and HP users are using an AT&T System V based operating system and the same versions of application packages.
Much of the ECN staff's energy this year was spent addressing the conversion of its Sun equipment to Solaris. The primary reason Sun moved to the new System V based operating system is that it provides a better mechanism for software support of multiple CPU computers. The older SunOS was based on BSD and would have required add-ons and extensions to the core operating system; instead, with Solaris, the core operating system itself is providing the features.
Many third party applications are procured and supported by faculty or labs at particular ECN sites. Much effort went into assisting faculty and staff obtain Solaris versions of their applications. In many cases, this required faculty and staff of the Schools to find time and money to rework course-ware and research-ware. As you can imagine, this was no small effort.
Chemical and Civil Personnel
Historically, Chemical and Civil have been known as the CSite. The Schools shared some machines and a site specialist. The CSite Specialist effectively took care of all of Civil as well as the shared machines. Stacey Clark was the CSite Specialist from 1986 to 1994.
For several years, Chemical has maintained a separate staff position for computer hardware and software support. This individual has been responsible for supporting ChE in the fashion of a site specialist. Chemical has been known as KSite and the support person as the KSite Specialist. Over the last 4+ years, I have been the KSite Specialist.
Last summer through various hardware upgrades, Chemical and Civil no longer shared hardware and further decided that there was enough work in each school to justify each having fulltime site specialists. This means that CSite is all Civil and KSite is all Chemical.
Overall the staffing changes include increasing the Civil site specialist position from 1/2 to fulltime and creating a new 3/4 academic year Associate Site Specialist position in Chemical.
Other Personnel
With the Csite/Ksite reconfiguration (see above), Stacey Clark decided she would accept the newly created Associate KSite Specialist position in Chemical Engineering, and Jim Moore, previously with Industrial Engineering, accepted the position of CSite Specialist in Civil Engineering.
ECN User Services Manager-this position is currently posted as available. Earlier this year, Kent De La Croix accepted the position of Network Project Manager at PUCC. Kent had been part of the ECN since 1983. His first position with the ECN was CSite Specialist! We wish Kent well in his new adventures. This leaves the ECN with some big shoes to fill...and until that happens, please be patient with the rest of us.
Desktop Computer Support Specialist, Cathy Curry, began serving in this newly created position last summer. Since joining the ECN she has written many helpful instructional documents. You can review her FAQs off the ECN home page. Cathy is currently shifting her efforts to assisting faculty to intergrate PCs into ECN. Look for her material on the Engineering web.
http://ecn.www.ecn.purdue.edu/ECN/FAQ/
John Le became ECN's Desktop Computer Support Specialist. He moved from Aeronautics and Astronautics to provide PC procurement, setup and networking support.
Cathy and John's new positions were created through ECN reorigination after Jeff Schwab's resignation in June 1993. These positions denote a shift in ECN support from UNIX based machines to the PC platform.
In mid-December, Pam Hiner, joined ECN from the University Collections Office. She is the Administrative Assistant to the Manager of the Engineering Computer Network.
Maryjane Scharenberg joined ECN as a Support Software Specialist. Her responsibilities revolve around installing application software. In recent months Maryjane has been heavily involved installing the many httpd web servers and all their dependent applications.
Caught In The Web
As many of you may have noticed, there is this thing called the World Wide Web. Basically, it is a collection of text and graphics files that are linked from one place to the next (and back again) by hypertext links, much like a spider's web where there are multiple ways to get from one point to another. The ECN and several of the Schools of Engineering have invested substantial time in building a presence on the Web for Engineering. The ECN provides the support for the server and browser software and creating the framework for all of the Schools of Engineering. Within this framework, the ECN put together information pages for many of the services they provide.
Machines
Engineering
ECN Staff (full time)
These numbers reflect ECNland as of April 1995.
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