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Sam Houston the Lab’s Site Access Office puts a personal and friendly
face on the process of getting an LDAP password for new Lab employees.
In the past, new employees called the Help Desk to get their password,
but the Help Desk had no way of verifying callers’ identities. Today
passwords are distributed face to face at the same time that employees
receive their badge, making distribution more secure and giving employees
immediate access to email. Read
more.
Increasing cyber security threats and regulatory requirements have led
the LBLnet team to add new defenses to the Lab's wireless networking facilities.
They've stepped up protection, particularly against worms and viruses
aimed at Windows systems on the wireless network. Read
more.
One useful feature of Mozilla that makes web browsing more convenient
is tabbed browsing, which allows multiple web sessions to run in the same
window. You can simply switch to another session by clicking on its tab.
To learn more about tabbed browsing and how to located missing email attachments,
read
more.
Don't Fall for the Latest Internet Hoax
The latest Internet hoax is in the form of what looks like a message
from the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis announcing
that NPRC is planning to destroy all paper military records. Several web
sites also have postings with this alleged destruction of military records.
A NPRC spokesperson denied that they plan to destroy any of their records.
Beware of this hoax!
ESnet will hold a workshop in Auditorium 66 from Oct. 27 - 29 to help
plan the future directions for ESnet Collaboration Services. ESnet Collaboration
Services provides a number of online services aimed at improving collaboration
among researchers at the national laboratories and universities served
by ESnet. Read
more.
New Scientific Clusters
Where it all begins
These newly-arrived boxes are clusters waiting to
be assembled by the Scientific Cluster Support (SCS) team. On the left
are components for a planned 256-processor Infiniband cluster belonging
to Earth Sciences. It will be used to develop solutions to large scale
forward and inverse modeling problems based on electromagnetic and seismic
wave fields to better characterize complex geological systems. On the
right are boxes that will soon be a 72-processor Myrinet Linux cluster
for Marvin Cohen and Steven Louie in Material Sciences. This cluster
will be running first-principles quantum-mechanical simulations that
will predict and understand the fundamental properties of exotic materials
with potential technological applications.
Up and running
These are twin clusters for Chemical Sciences. On
the left is a 46-processor Linux cluster, which belongs to the William
Lester Group, went into production this month. It’s used to develop
the Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) method or application to the electronic
structure of atoms and molecules. On the right is a 42-processor Opteron
cluster is being installed for Martin Head-Gordon. His group will use
this cluster to perform electronic structure calculations on molecular
systems ranging from combustion-related radicals to nanomaterials, and
for the development of new algorithms for such calculations.
Service Tip
Did you know that ITSD supports scientific clusters for the Lab?
With twelve Linux clusters in production and more coming in the door,
ITSD’s Scientific Cluster Support (SCS) team has been busy building
and running Linux clusters for Berkeley Lab scientists. Now offered
as a Lab service, the SCS team provides cost-effective pre-purchase
consulting, configuration, and ongoing system administration support
to Linux clusters for scientific research. If your group is interested
in these services, see the project web
site or contact SCS Project Manager Gary Jung at x4894.
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