CTS Announcements & System Status

The pre-announced retirement of AFP did not occur on Monday due to CTS staff responding to the database server crash. The retirement will occur at 2:00 pm today. AFP is used only on OS X. There are few if any OS X systems still using AFP on campus, however if you have an OS X system and have trouble connecting to Helios, please see Connecting to Helios with OS X and note the “smb” in the Server Address field. If this does not solve the problem, please contact the Helpdesk at extension 4444, or via helpdesk@potsdam.edu.

Our mailing list server is operational again.

Out mailing lists server (lists.potsdam.edu) is currently offline. Technicians are working on the problem.

E-mail is working again.

We are experiencing authentication issues with e-mail. Technicians are investigating.

CTS will be performing maintenance on the campus data network tomorrow, Wednesday, November 4, 2015. Work will begin at 6:00 P. M. and be restricted to administrative areas until 9:00 P. M. After 9:00 P. M. academic buildings will experience brief outages as network hardware is updated. These outages will be localized, but complete; resulting in no network or phone access until the updates are finished. A blog post will be made when the maintenance window is closed and all service should be back to normal. As always, please report any problems you have with CTS-provided and -supported devices and/or services to the CTS Helpdesk: helpdesk@potsdam.edu or x-4444 (315/267-4444)

The email server has been restored.

The email server is restarting to relieve a high load condition.

On November 16th 2015, CTS will discontinue Potsdam’s support for Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) service to Helios. AFP is Apple’s legacy file sharing protocol that is being phased out of OS X in favor of the more common Server Message Block (SMB). Connecting to Helios with SMB is almost exactly the same as AFP. Instead of connecting with afp://helios.potsdam.edu, simply use smb://helios.potsdam.edu instead. Detailed connection instructions can be found here: http://www.potsdam.edu/cts/services/helios/windowsosx.cfm Why the change? Over the last four years Apple has steadily migrated OS X away from using AFP as the default protocol, instead standardizing on SMB. SMB has been the default connection method for the last two Mac OS X operating systems, Yosemite (10.10) & El Capitan (10.11). All OS X versions have been able to utilize SMB effectively since OS X 10.7. With this change, Helios will now use a single protocol to communicate with all campus computers. This simplification will improve the maintainability and security of Helios. If you use AFP to connect to Helios, please change to SMB at your earliest convenience. If you encounter problems, as always please contact the CTS Helpdesk: helpdesk@potsdam.edu or extension 4444.

Residence Hall internet service has been restored.