Please note that coxeter will be going down at approximately 11:00am on Thursday, January 3, 2008 in preparation for the changeover to a new server. It is expected that the system will be back up by the end of the next day, if there are no difficulties encountered. Please be aware that even though the software and hardware have been tested there is always a possibility that we will have to return to the old system after the weekend and work done over the weekend may not get backed up. Below is information about some of the issues involved with the server changes. Probably the "EMAIL" changes are the most important for most people, so please read those especially carefully. Do not log into coxeter or use the email server on January 3rd and 4th unless there is a status message posted, as described below, that says that things are working. coxeter and the email server will be in states of flux during the upgrade and any use of them may result in permanent file damage that cannot be recovered. EMAIL ***** coxeter will no longer function as the email server (we have a new server called "mail" for that, which has newer, better spam filtering). For security, you must use an email client that supports IMAP over SSL (all email traffic will be encrypted between the client and our server) such as "Thunderbird" (this graphical email client will be available on the new coxeter and runs on other platforms as well such as Windows and Macs), "pine" (there is also "PCPine" for Windows), "mutt", "Outlook", or "Mac Mail". Of these we only support Thunderbird and pine on coxeter. For a graphical, step-by-step tutorial on how to set up "thunderbird" please visit: http://www.math.utoronto.ca/help/thunderbird/thunderbird_setup.html There is also a webmail interface that you can access by visiting https://mail.math.utoronto.ca with a web browser (such as "firefox"). This interface is not as nice as gmail, for example, but does work reasonably well as long as email folders (an email folder is a file that contains email messages) are not too large. This can be used for sending outgoing email as well. This new mail system will be more secure for users and has folders so that mail can be better organized than with POP, which keeps all email in one large folder. You may have to make some configuration changes to your email client to use IMAP over SSL, but for those using "pine" on coxeter we will automatically update things for the new system. Make sure you move all your email folders that you would like to access with our new server to a directory called "mail" in your home directory. Then when the move to the new coxeter is done your email will be automatically migrated to the new mail server. If you do not move your folders then they will only be accessible directly on coxeter. Please note that the email clients "mail" and "elm" will no longer work since they are very old and do not support the new secure protocols. The ".mailrc" file will no longer be used, you must use address books inside one of the new email clients if you use them. In case you need the following information for configuration changes the name of the mail server will be "mail.math.toronto.edu" and the IMAP over SSL port is 993 (this is the default). Normally you use your ISP's SMTP server for outgoing mail (at home, for example) but within the department, on departmental machines, the outgoing (or SMTP server) is "smtp.math.toronto.edu". "pine" on coxeter will be automatically set up to use the proper outgoing email server. In the future we plan to have authenticated access to our SMTP server and outgoing email from home could also be sent through our server. EMAIL SERVER CERTIFICATE SECURITY ********************************* The first time you connect to our SSL encrypted mail server you will receive a message about its "certificate" (used for security). You should examine the certificate as your client/browser allows. If you are satisfied that the certificate is authentic then most email clients allow you to accept it automatically. The fingerprints for our certificate are: SHA1: 38:CD:26:B9:21:85:E0:2A:F1:59:C1:04:B2:98:D4:29:56:B5:7B:AE MD5: D7:55:02:4D:25:FF:5F:5B:46:4B:DE:B5:1E:A4:5F:8B Note that this is how "thunderbird" shows the fingerprints when you click on "Examine Certificate", other programs may show them in a slightly different manner (with spaces instead of colons, say), but the numbers and letters should always be as shown above. "STEP 8" in the following link provides more information about "thunderbird" and certificates: http://www.math.utoronto.ca/help/thunderbird/thunderbird_setup.html WEB BROWSING ************ The latest stable version of "firefox" will be available on coxeter. For web browsing it is very similar to "mozilla", which is no longer being developed. MATHEMATICAL SOFTWARE ********************* The latest versions of mathematica, maple, and matlab will be on sphere only. You can have them display on your local monitor when you log into coxeter, but the actual computations will run on sphere. Your coxeter files will be the same ones that you will see on sphere. sphere does have some extra diskspace (that will NOT be backed up) for users who require scratch space for their computations. Please let us know if you need access to the scratch space. COXETER LOGIN ************* There will be a new welcome login screen for graphical access to coxeter. "ctwm" is the default window manager since it looks similar to the old one and it is relatively easy to configure. By default if you "left click" on the root window you will get a menu of various programs that you can run, such as "firefox" and "thunderbird", among many others. You will also see help entries for UNIX commands and the Mathematics Department's help web page. If you "middle click" you will see entries which will allow you to open a new "terminal" window or a window to sphere. If you "right click" you will be able to perform various window operations, such as moving and resizing windows. The "kde" desktop is also available for the adventurous, but bear in mind that it may not work well and if there are problems we can reset things to the original state, but any customizations you make will be lost. NAMESERVER ********** The departmental DNS server is "ns.math.toronto.edu". WEB SERVER ********** The departmental web server should be unaffected by this move. If time permits, status updates will be posted to: http://www.math.toronto.edu/status.html QUESTIONS? ********** If you have any questions, either before or after the changeover, please send email to: requests@math.toronto.edu