A New Era

This Summer, a gradual change in the organization of Engineering computer
systems is becoming more visible.

For years, the Design Center has been the home to most of the school's
Unix servers and workstations, while some faculty and research labs had
completely independent systems.

We are making the transition to a structure that simpler, more powerful,
and easier to maintain.

All Unix workstations, regardless of where they are and who uses them,
can now become part of a unified Engineering computer system sharing a
common set of servers.  Some of the major benefits of this system are:
Single username/password for all systems.
All workstations have access to applications formerly only available in
the Design Center (subject to availability and licensing restrictions).
Reduced need for disk space on individual systems.
Centralized system administration means more regular software upgrades
and faster detection of problems.

We have been testing this arrangement in several research labs and on
a few faculty members' personal workstations, and it has worked well.

Please contact us if you have an existing workstation that you would
like to have integrated into the system.

Design Center Name Changes

As part of the conversion to a unified system, the Design Center is
changing domain name to clarify its identity as part of engineering,
and switching to a more meaningful workstation naming convention.

The scudc.scu.edu domain pre-dates the Engineering domain engr.scu.edu,
but this makes the Design Center appear not to be part of the Engineering
school.  We have chosen dc.engr.scu.edu as the new domain name.

Additionally, we currently use names such as ws42 for all workstations,
regardless of type.  We now use operating system-specific hostnames such
as hpux42 instead.

The old names will continue to be valid to ease the transition, but will
eventually be phased out.

New Mail Addresses

We will be upgrading our e-mail software during the first week of August,
and e-mail addresses in the main Engineering system will be changing.

Now that the system contains more than just the Design Center, using
@scudc.scu.edu or @dc.engr.scu.edu is not the best option.  Both of these
will still be accepted on incoming e-mail (although @scudc.scu.edu may
eventually be phased out), but the recommended addresses, and the return
address on outgoing mail, will be changed. Our new configuration will
have different addresses for faculty/staff and students.

Student e-mail addresses will be username@students.engr.scu.edu.
Faculty/staff addresses will be at their department address (@ce.scu.edu,
@cse.scu.edu, @ee.scu.edu, @me.scu.edu, etc.) and @engr.scu.edu.
Where necessary, we have also expanded from the username to include the
entire last name.  For example, Ron Danielson's username is rdaniels,
but his e-mail will now show 'rdanielson' instead of the shorter name.
Both long and short forms will be valid on incoming e-mail.

Everyone with a Design Center account will be set up this way as soon as
the new mail system is installed.  For everyone else, we will be adding
in pointers to forward @engr.scu.edu and @department.scu.edu addresses
to your Groupwise accounts in the near future.

Summer 2000

http://support.engr.scu.edu/        support@engr.scu.edu       (408) 554-6806