UF-Statistics UFL


1998 System Changes



1998Dec18: Installed SSH

Installed SSH, the secure shell replacement for telnet, rsh, rlogin and other network services. SSH encrypts usernames and passwords used for logins across network connections. All department unix machines have SSH and un-encrypted telnet logins will be eliminated soon. Users who connect from home machines, campus PCs and other systesm should contact system@stat.ufl.edu for information on obtaining and installing client software for SSH.

1998Dec01: Upgraded Octave 2.0.13

Upgraded octave to version 2.0.13. Octave is a free version of Matlab, a statistical programming language. Documentation for octave is available on the web at http://www.che.wisc.edu/octave/.

1998Nov23: Upgraded CIS 97

The online CIS database has been updated to the 1997 version (which covers through 1996). The 1998 version should be out in 3 to 5 months. We have not yet installed new search software, but we plan to upgrade, including the addition of a web accessible version.

1998Nov13: Installed BUGS 0.6

Installed Bayesian inference Using Gibbs Sampling (BUGS) version 0.6. BUGS is a software package which permits the analysis of complex statistical models using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. For more information, see the postscript manuals online.

1998Nov03: Upgrade Sendmail 8.9.1

Upgraded Sendmail to 8.9.1 with anti-spam features. The purpose of the mail changes was to block people from using our server to send junkmail to other sites. This is accomplished by allowing people to use our server to send outgoing mail anywhere from a stat machine, and receiving mail from anywhere to a stat machine.
What is not allowed is sending mail from a non-stat machine to another non-stat machine. This is relevant to people who use a home computer for email. If you dial into an Internet Service Provider (ISP) other than NERDC, GatorLink or IBM.NET, you cannot use our server for your SMTP host. You should use you ISP's SMTP host instead.

1998Oct15: Sponsorship for Departed Students

Departed students and collaborative guests now require departmental faculty sponsors in order to create new accounts and keep existing computer accounts active beyond a three-month grace period. Faculty sponsorship forms are available in and Portable Document Format (PDF). Sponsored accounts must be renewed at six-month intervals by the faculty sponsor.

1998Oct14: Upgrade Ghostscript 5.10

Upgrade from Aladdin ghostscript 5.03 to 5.10. The ghostscript program converts images into and out of PostScript format. The newer version includes a copy of ps2pdf for creating cross-platform Portable Document Format (PDF) documents which are acceptable to the NSF for electronic grant requests.

1998Oct05: Upgrade AcroRead 3.0

Upgrade from Adobe Acrobat 1.0 to 3.0. The acroread program allows viewing of cross-platform Portable Document Format (PDF) documents.

1998Oct03: Installed new Biostat server

The new Biostat server is moss, or biostat.ufl.edu, which is an Enterprise 450 with one 250Mhz processor and 128MB of RAM. Any references you had for azalea, the old biostat server, should be changed to biostat.ufl.edu so that you connect to the new machine.

1998Sep30: Upgrade Communicator 4.06

Upgrade from Netscape Communicator 4.02 to 4.06. Includes bug fixes, better IMAP support, Smart Browsing, enhanced JDK 1.1 support, etc. For a complete list of what's new see the Release Notes.

1998Sep28: Installed gv 3.5.8

Installed a new postscript viewer (gv) as a replacement for Ghostview. You should find gv to be a big improvement over ghostview. Among other things, the "Open" entry under the "File" menu will work correctly. Also gv will open compressed PostScript or PDF files on the fly, so that you can use gzip (or compress) to compress your PostScript files and still view them without manually gunzip'ing (or uncompressing) them. For documentation see the gv man page or our online documentation .

1998Sep15: Moved Licenses

The machine-specific licenses for GLIM and Mathematica were moved to the new computation server, orca.stat.ufl.edu, and can no longer be run on ocean. At the same time, mathematica was upgraded from version 3.0 to version 3.0.2 to be compatible with the new server.

1998Sep03: Installed Computation Server

Installed Sun Enterprise 450 server with three 250Mhz processors and 512MB of RAM. The new machine is self-contained enough that it should be able to run during downtime for the primary server. Statistical software licensed only for one machine, eg. GLIM and Mathematica, will be moved to the new machine as soon as the licenses can be transferred.
The new machine is orca.stat.ufl.edu, and users can telnet or rlogin to run jobs there. Normal rules of running jobs with the nice command still apply.

1998Aug27: Installed Ghostscript 5.03

Installed Ghostscript 5.03 for image procesing - includes ps2pdf utlity for converting exisiting postscript files to Portable Document Format (PDF) which is viewable across various platforms and through web browsers.

1998Aug03: Installed Zip Drive

Installed an Iomega Zip drive on skipjack in the graduate lab for use with DOS formatted Zip disks. See the Zip page for notes on using the drive.

1998Aug03: Installed New Ultras

Installed new workstations, all running Solaris 2.6. Please see the 2.6 updates page for information about changes to the user environment under the new system software.

1998Jul02: Installed Ox 2.00

Installed an updated version of the Ox statistical package. New versions of the HTML documentation are available on the web, as well as the old documents for comparison.

1998Jul02: Installed Bind 8.1.2

Installed the Bind DNS package, version 8.1.2. This version should be immune to recent attacks on name service daemons which compromised several servers on campus. The new Bind includes host and dig as well as a new nslookup, all of which provide information about internet hosts. Bind configuration docs are available in the online documentation section of the system web page.

1998Jun25: Installed GNU diff utils

Installed GNU diff utilities which are a replacement for the standard diff, diff3, sdiff, and cmp utilities. The GNU diff utils have more options than the standard diff utils. There are no man pages for this distribution but there is documentation in the form of info files which can be found in the /usr/local/info directory.

1998Jun22: Installed XMeter

Installed xmeter version 1.15. Xmeter provides a graphical view of the current number of active processes on a machine. Several machines' status can be displayed at once, as well as showing a variety of metrics including disk, swap and RAM usage. Xmeter is similar to xnetload, except it used RPC calls which are more easily supported to query remote hosts.

1998Jun22: Installed Pine 3.96

Installed pine version 3.96. Pine is a simple but powerful text-based email program capable of IMAP and local mail reading. It also supports both mh-style message folders as well as Berkeley mbox format.
This version of the Pine package also includes pico, a simple text editor and pilot, a text-based file manager. All three of these programs are recommended for telnet users who cannot access the graphical mail client, file manager and text editors.

1998Jun20: Installed Agrep

Installed agrep version 2.04. agrep is a member of the grep family of search utilities. Searches text for strings or approximations thereof. Agrep is similar to the standard UNIX grep utility, but is more general, and according to its authors, usually faster. Its most notable feature is the approximate pattern matching facility. Agrep has other features not found in the grep family: It is record rather than line orientated; pattern matches can be output in a larger context than a single line. Multiple search patterns can be specified with AND/OR logic. See the agrep man page for examples of usage.

1998Jun19: Installed Mac Utilities

Installed various Macintosh Utilities for Solaris. It includes utilities for working with archives (.cpt, .hqx, .sit, etc.). The commands are... binhex, hexbin, frommac, tomac, macsave, macstream, and macunpack. There are man pages for each utility.

1998May14: Installed Lyx

Installed Lyx software on all Statistics servers. Lyx is a "what you see is what you mean" interface to LaTex. Lyx handles the typesetting duties involved with LaTex in a consistent fashion so you can instead focus working on the content of your document. Help menus and a highly-suggested tutorial are available.

1998Mar13: Installed CAPA Server

Installed the CAPA software and web server on capa.stat.ufl.edu, formerly snapper. This machine is not part of the password and file sharing system due to security holes in the CAPA implementation. Instructors who are interested in experimenting with CAPA can contact Allan for the instructor account name and password (there's only one - that's part of the security issue) and have a class area made for you to work in.

1998Mar13: Installed Splus 3.4

The latest update of Splus for unix, 3.4, is installed on all Statistics servers. Splus is statistical software with add-in packages for various special procedures.

1998Apr11: Delegated Routing

CLASNET now performs routing for subnet 141 on their Fore PowerHub 7000. They route IP, IPX and AppleTalk. This replaces IP-only routing on stat.ufl.edu which existed since prior to the formation of CLASNET. The server stat.ufl.edu now has a lighter load, and subnet 141 has access to campus-wide AppleTalk and IPX (Novell) file and print services including connectivity to the Statistics lab in Little Hall.

1998Mar13: Installed Color Printer

Installed a networked color inkjet printer for faculty use. The printer's name is rainbowprn and the machine is located in Griffin-Floyd 103C, the supply room, next to officeprn. It is for printing transparencies and other teaching materials. Please contact Allan for further information.

1998Mar03: Installed Ox 1.20

Installed Ox 1.20 on all servers. Ox is an object-oriented statistical package from Jurgen Doornik at Oxford. See: our online software documentation for more information.

1998Jan16: Moved departmental web documents

Moved departmental web documents. All departmental web documents for http://www.stat.ufl.edu/ have been moved to the virtual user directory ~htdocs/ and reassigned to group spinners for easier updating.


Previous year's changes: [1997]



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Last modified: Mon Jun 5 10:11:20 EDT 2000