News 2006

Calar Alto Computer News for 2006

1. Hardware

Installed two powerful Dell computers for serving as x-terminals with overlayed graphics so they can run both applications of 8 or 24 bits at the same time and on the same display. Both are normal Linux Clients, so they have locally all the normal applications and programs (like Iraf, Midas, ds9, fitscopyx...). And they are prepared to run different sessions at the same time, so with a simple key combination a user can change between the observing computer (like ultra1) into the local computer with such Linux applications availables. The first computer is called xt22 and it stands on the SOR (Laboratory Observing Room). The second one is on the 3.5m Observing room.
Finished works (together with Maintenance) concerning the improvement of the security against storms on the router and micro wave link side
Rearranged all cabling at the router building
New powerful PC for LAICA project. The idea is moving all LAICA software from Solaris into Linux. However, some problems arose during the work, so the job is not finished still
Most of the old epics systems have already being moved into the new Linux Epics Server. Only MOSCA epics system is still living on an old box, due to the special configuration of this one.
As the epics system is really a critical system for telescope operation, the computer is duplicated, and we have now a hot spare just in case of problems
New general use Linux system. It is called linca7 and have special features: It is a normal Linux Client, with all programs and applications that normally run on clients, but it has a special configuration that allows it to see all the intrumentation computers observing disks. With this possibility and having in mind that this computer has a DDS5 DAT (capable for DDS3, DDS4 and DDS5 units) and a powerful DVD re-writer, back ups of the files with the observations carried out is fast and easy to be done.
Another computer was finished for some of the Astronomy Group personnel. People using this machine called linca2 (Linux) have been moved from old ca5 (Solaris), so now their environment is totally Linux
Our old weather server (meteoserv) has been replaced by a new Linux box. This new computer took also all the services running on our DHCP server: DHCP, router and firewall for our Private Network, some special mail system for Administrative tasks and the GDS (Global Dialing Scheme)
New cloud sensor added to our weather station

2. Software

Lots of security patches on all systems (as usual)
Totally New CAHA Web Site
New Night Report Utility at the web with weather and seeing data and graphics
Now, the PC that runs the Weather Station is NTP syncronized
Jobs for the new weather station generation started late this year
Unfortunately, Meteosat 7 stop diseminating their images on June 14th. So our system for receiving images are now finished too. We have set up a link on the weather web page to the new Meteosat 8
Together with the Meteosat 7 finish and with the new linux meteorological server, the Hotel weather PC is now re-arranged
The Weather Web Page has suffered some cosmetic changes and a very deep engine changes
There is an easy to use new epics software for starting the engine, stopping it and showing its status. Its is mainly done for making it comfortable for support astronomers during observing nights
Nearly all programs that are running on Solaris, now can be found on the Linux environment. Most of them updated.
We have an agreement with IAA so now we can use their IDL licenses. Our present IDL, on Linux environment, is version 6.0
New SMTP-AUTH + SASL on the Mail , allowing now use of normal mail clients (like Netscape or Outlook) for both reading and sending mail while outside our network
New filter with rejecting hosts with bad resolution (including reverse resolution) for avoiding spam
New filter with rejecting hosts from black lists for avoiding spam
Now we have two anti-virus engines running at the same time for our mail system

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