Internet interruption Wed., 11/27, 3:30 - 4:00 PM

There will be a brief interruption in Internet connectivity from the district network today (Wednesday, 11/27) between 3:30 - 4:00 PM so that we can perform some scheduled maintenance.

As with all things technical, the actual outage could be shorter or longer due to unforeseen circumstances. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Wifi scheduled maintenance 11/15, 4-5 PM

The district's wireless networks will be unavailable between 4:00 - 5:00 PM on Friday, Nov. 15, while scheduled maintenance is performed. 

Website scheduled maintenance on 11/16, 7-11 AM

The district web site at www.OregonSD.org will have routine maintenance performed on it on Saturday, November 16 from 7:00 AM - 11:00 AM. While there will not be a complete outage during the maintenance window, connectivity will be sporadic during the required server reboots. We appreciate your understanding.

How to fix PDF issues in new version of Firefox

Yesterday afternoon, we upgraded the Firefox browser for everyone to version 24. This morning we learned that Mozilla has created their own built-in PDF viewer and made it the default way to open pdf files. This new viewer does not seem to open all PDFs correctly, especially from Infinite Campus. There is an easy fix, but it is up to each person to set it in their own profile. EEN staff especially should do this right away. The steps are outlined below. 

1. Go to the Firefox Options Dialog box

     A. If you only have the orange firefox tab in the upper left - click the down arrow then options then options again to open the box.

     B. If you have the menu bar, just click Tools, then Options 

2. In the Options Box, click the 'Applications" Icon. 

3. As shown in the above screen shot, type "pdf" in the search bar. You'll see that the default action for pdf files is "Preview in firefox".

4. Use the drop-down box to change "Preview in firefox" to "use Adobe Reader", as in the second screen shot below. 

5. Click OK to close the Dialog and you are finished. PDF files will now open using Adobe Reader as they did prior to today. 

Library catalogs will be unavailable over Thanksgiving weekend

The OSD school library online catalog will be unavailable from Thursday, November 28 to Saturday, November 30 (coinciding with the Thanksgiving holiday weekend). Outage times vary per website, so please visit follettupdates.com for information. Once the move is complete, the card catalogs will be back online.

RIP, osd and public wifi networks!

Tomorrow, the old, musty "osd" and "public" wireless networks will be disappear like a ghost in sunlight. The new networks will be OSD-BYOD and OSD-Guest. Log in to OSD-BYOD to get access to the most sites at the fastest speeds. OSD-Guest is for non-students and non-staff, so it's heavily filtered and throttled. 

Wireless network outage today around 4:15 for upgrade

The district's wireless network will be unavailable briefly today while the software is upgraded and the controllers are rebooted. This outage will occur around 4:15 today, and should last no more than 10 minutes. However, as with all things technical, unforeseen errors could cause this outage to last longer.

Network upgrade status update, including upcoming outages

The Brooklyn Elementary network is still down except for a few computers in the office. Contractors will be here Monday to complete the wiring work in the building. Hopefully it will be done Monday. 

At 8:00 AM on Tuesday, the Prairie View data network will have an interruption lasting around 5 minutes to install a fiber patch cable.

Wireless networks are still available in only certain areas in the buildings. (There are 43 wireless access points currently running, instead of 74 at the end of the school year.) Wireless should begin coming online (in new and improved form) starting tomorrow, with full coverage scheduled for August 22. At that point, there should be 168 high-capacity access points providing coverage. I'm sure there will be some tweaking necessary. Thanks for your patience as we try to get everything installed.

Phones and voicemail are back up

Phones and voicemail are back up.

Phones and voicemail are down

All district phones and the voicemail system are down unexpectedly right now. No ETA yet on when they will be back up. Minor updates will be posted athttp://osdtech.blogspot.com. I will send an update only if services are not expected to be operational before regular work hours tomorrow morning.

Update: network outage due to configuration work

The District network was rebooted around 8:40 PM this evening to attempt to troubleshoot some network configuration issues at OHS. This resulted in all network traffic in and out of the district being interrupted. Sorry for any inconvenience. The issue has since been identified, and as of 10:20 PM, everything at OHS is stable.

Updated schedule of network outages

Here is an updated schedule of network outages, listed by building. To avoid deluging you with emails, I will post minor updates to the OSD IT Blog at http://osdtech.blogspot.com and send email notifications only for major changes. Unless noted otherwise, all outages are for the entire day.

BKE

Entire network and voicemail down Thursday 8/8, 4:00 PM - Friday, 8/9, 2:00 AM.

Network down Monday, 8/12 - Thursday, 8/15, except for select office computers.

Network down Friday, 8/16

Intermittent wireless outages Thursday, 8/22

PVE

Entire network and voicemail down Thursday 8/8, 4:00 PM - Friday, 8/9, 2:00 AM.

Network down Friday, 8/16

Intermittent wireless outages Thursday, 8/22

NKE

Entire network and voicemail down Thursday 8/8, 4:00 PM - Friday, 8/9, 2:00 AM.

Network down Wednesday, 8/7 - Thursday, 8/8, except for select office computers.

Network down Monday, 8/12.

Intermittent wireless outages Thursday, 8/22

RCI

Entire network and voicemail down Thursday 8/8, 4:00 PM - Friday, 8/9, 2:00 AM.

Network down Thursday, 8/15 except for select office computers.

Intermittent wireless outages Thursday, 8/22

OMS

Entire network and voicemail down Thursday 8/8, 4:00 PM - Friday, 8/9, 2:00 AM.

Network, except for select office computers, down now through 8/14.

Network down 8/14 (even office computers)

Intermittent wireless outages Thursday, 8/22

OHS

Entire network and voicemail down Thursday 8/8, 4:00 PM - Friday, 8/9, 2:00 AM.

Network down in areas surrounding PAC, Science, Office, Math, and Tech Ed on Monday, 8/12.

Network down in areas surrounding IMC, Social Studies, and Bus. Ed. on Tuesday, 8/13.

Intermittent wireless outages Thursday, 8/22

DSO/Pool

Entire network and voicemail down Thursday 8/8, 4:00 PM - Friday, 8/9, 2:00 AM.

Intermittent wireless outages Thursday, 8/22

Planned network outage at NKE on 8/9

Scheduled outage: NKE 8/9

All network services including wireless, Internet access, and printers, will be down in Netherwood on 8/9 starting for part or all of the day. Please plan accordingly. Thank you.

Scheduled outage: Phones, computers, and networks on 8/8

In order to replace network gear, the entire district network will be down, including wireless, Internet access, phones, and voicemail, on Thursday, August 8, starting at 4:00 PM. We plan to have all services restored by 8:00 PM. You can get updates at http://osdtech.blogspot.com

Campus rosters available August 19

Campus rosters to be available August 19
Teachers will have access to gradebooks and rosters in Infinite Campus on the afternoon of August 19. 

Wifi outages during upgrade

Wireless network unavailable in spots

As we upgrade the network over the next two weeks, the wireless network will be unavailable in some areas of some buildings. The areas affected within each building may change daily as work progresses, so I can't give you exact locations or timeframes. Just consider this a general heads-up. The target completion date for all network upgrades is August 16.

Voicemail lights are working again

All voicemail systems and features, including the message waiting lights (or MWIs, for those of you who like acronyms) should be working properly at this time.

Update: Voicemail and phone services are back online

The voicemail system and phone systems are back online and working normally except that voicemail notification lights are not active yet. This issue should be resolved this evening.

Voicemail system is down

The district's voicemail system is currently down, which also means that calls to the main number (835-4000) result in a busy signal.

We are working with our support vendor to fix it, but do not have an ETA yet. Check back on this blog for updates. If you need immediate assistance, please call 835-4091 and the receptionist can deliver a message.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

Year-end tech procedures

Please help us make summer school and the fall successful by doing a few checklist items!

If you brought in a personally-owned monitor please take it home. All CRTs ("tube" monitors) will be replaced with LCD (flat) monitors this summer.
Remove CDs, DVDs, and USB devices from the computer.
Remove everything from your computer and monitor (e.g. sticky notes, tape, pencil holders, decorations, awards, gum, mysterious life forms, etc.) If you plan to replace them next year, just store them somewhere. Or go crazy and throw them out, giving you a fresh start in the new year. This helps us work more quickly when replacing 200 computers.
Delete old and unused files from the Video (V:), Home (H:), and "share" folders (that you own, of course). If you don't specifically need it as part of curriculum next year, it's just using up valuable and limited space on the network.

Turn in mobile devices. We need iPads, Chromebooks, and laptops for summer school! Please turn in iPads to your library (if that's where you checked it out from) or to the district IT office (if it is assigned to you primarily). We will update the iPads for next year. The wireless network names will change and we will update each school-owned computer/iPad/Chromebook with the new credentials over the summer. If you don't turn it in, you won't be able to connect to the new network!

If your main computer is a laptop and you are not a year-round employee, you must turn in your laptop on your last day of work or the last day of Curriculum Academy to the IT office. We know that some people get really emotionally attached to their laptop (I can relate), but we need you to part with it for a while so we can do routine maintenance. You can pick it up about a week after you drop it off if you really want it back over the summer.
If you are a year-round employee whose main computer is a laptop, please schedule a time with the IT department when your computer can be updated (i.e., you can be without it for a day).
Summer AV procedures and cleanup
If your room is being used for summer school (which is pretty much all of PVE and half of NKE), please don't pack up your SmartBoard items and AV stuff; the summer school teachers have requested projectors and SmartBoards. Please label everything, though. Summer cleaning involves moving everything in your room into the hallway (along with everything from the other classrooms) and sometimes things get switched around. Labeling helps fix this. Using Velcro to attach remotes to the devices they control is also handy.

Those of you at all other buildings, please:

• label all movable items especially SmartBoard USB connectors and put them into a bag in a secure place in your room
• remove all batteries from remote controls. (i.e. Projectors, TV, boom boxes.) This keeps the batteries from draining over the summer, or worse, corroding inside the unit. You may want to label the batteries or tape them to the thing they came out of so you know where they go when you come back.
• Unplug all power cords from all A/V equipment in your room, including TVs.

Thanks for your help with this! Please contact me with any questions.

Some servers down for maintenance Saturday morning 6/1

On Saturday, June 1, there will be a brief maintenance outage on several servers in order to do some routine maintenance and one upgrade. 

The affected servers will be the Teachers web server (the W: drive), the FitnessGram web server, the print server, principalm bridge, Moodle, Zenworks and OSD-APPS1 (the U: drive). 

The total time out of service for each should be no longer than 15 minutes at various times in the morning, with the exception of Zenworks which I will be upgrading in preparation for Summer computer imaging. I expect that server to be down for at least 2 hours. 

Only the listed services will be effected. E-mail, Google Drive, and Infinite Campus will remain fully functional.

Especially for Graduates- How to Migrate All Your Google Apps data

As this year's Senior class prepares to graduate and move on to bigger and better things, we want to make sure that they can take all their hard work with them to college or work. Most student data is stored in Google Apps for Education in the students.oregonsd.net domain.

Students can export their data directly from Google Apps (directions here), but there are also tools to automatically move all the contents of a Google Apps account to another Google account. For example, a student could move their documents, gmail, calendar items, and websites from student.sample@students.oregonsd.net  to a new personal account such as mynewaccount@gmail.com, or to their new university email address.

One tool to do this is Backupify's Migrator, available at https://www.backupify.com/free-tools/migrator-google-apps

Another is Google Takeout from the Data Liberation Front.

We (the OSD IT department) don't own these tools, so we really can't support them, but wanted to let you know they exist. Best wishes to the Seniors!

Brief Internet outage this morning due to firewall issue

Internet access was unexpectedly interrupted for about five minutes this morning due to an issue with our firewall, which required it to be rebooted. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Update: Google Apps is partially restored

Some portions of Google Apps have returned to service, but not necessarily for all users. Looks like things are gradually coming back online. Just keep trying to log in occasionally.
See www.google.com/appsstatus for Google's official status report.

Google Apps is down

Google Apps is down. Not just for us, but for everybody. In the world. Literally. We don't have an ETA for restoration yet. More updates now.

Public website to have sporadic outages Saturday morning due to upgrades

We will be performing routine server maintenance on the public web site (www.OregonSD.org) on Saturday, April 13, 2013 from 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM ET. While there will not be a complete outage during the maintenance window, connectivity will be sporadic during the required server reboots. We appreciate your understanding.

Destiny (Online Library Catalog) to be offline Saturday night and Sunday

The online library catalog (called Destiny) will be offline for upgrades on Sunday. The upgrade is scheduled for Saturday, April 6, 2013, beginning at 9:00 pm CT until Sunday, April 7, 2013 at 9:00 pm CT. The Destiny system will be temporarily unavailable during the upgrade.We apologize for any inconvenience.

Internet outage tonight 9:00 - 9:30 PM

The district's Internet connection will be down for maintenance tonight (Friday, 3/22) starting at 9:00 PM and lasting approximately 30 minutes. As with all maintenance, the length of time could be longer or shorter.

Google Drive fully restored

From the Google Apps Status page:

3/18/13 11:35 AM

The problem with Google Drive should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better. If you are still experiencing an issue, please contact us via the Google Help Center.

Google Drive restored for most users- the rest within an hour

From Google Support:

3/18/13 10:55 AM

Google Drive service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users within the next 1 hours. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change.

Update: Google Drive outage- it's global

I just got off the phone with Google support (yes, you can call Google for support, if you are a Google Apps for Enterprise or Google Apps for Education customer), and they confirmed that Google Drive is unavailable for everyone- even the Google support employees.

Until it's fixed, we will compulsively check the Google Apps Status dashboard (where Google officially posts status updates, and the popular IsItDownRightNow.com site.

Google Drive Service Disruption

Google Drive is experiencing problems. Trying to get to Google Drive results in a "502 Error."

502. That’s an error.
The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request.
Please try again in 30 seconds. That’s all we know.

Google is aware of this problem (it's affecting more than just OregonSD) and is working on a solution. You can track Google's status on the issue at http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&ts=1363669199000&iid=281772ec1e2cb9c718aa0a46e0b6eb94

Staff can sign up for text alerts

Infinite Campus now has the ability to send out text message (SMS) notifications. Staff can sign up for it by following the procedure here (staff login required). Staff who are also a parent of an OSD student, can sign up for alerts sent to parents on the Campus Portal.

Another helpful addition is the ability to add a secondary email address. I use this to receive staff alerts at my work email address, but parent notices on my personal email address. (In the words of Offspring, "You gotta keep 'em separated...")

Internet outage due to software upgrade lasted way longer than expected

A software upgrade to our network security and content management system was supposed to take only about 5-10 minutes, but actually caused a 25 minute interruption in Internet service from 4:00 - 4:25 PM today (3/5/2013). I apologize for the long interruption.

Update 3: Internet connection back to full speed

Full Internet access speed has been restored as of 3:40 PM. Thanks for your patience!

Update 2: Slow Internet speeds

A technician from Frontier (who maintains the District's BCN fiber connection) has inspected the fiber-optic cable at OSD and has concluded that the problem is with fiber-optic cable inside Frontier's premises. No ETA yet on full functionality.

Firefox missing? Here's how to get it back.

If you cannot find Firefox on your desktop, you are not alone. Here's how to solve it:

1. Open the Zenworks Application window (a blue square with a white Z)
2. Go to the Default Software icon.
3. Double-click on Firefox 17.02 ESR.

It will take about 30 seconds to 1 minute to install and launch, after which the icon will reappear on your desktop.  If this does not work for you, please turn in a work ticket at:
http://helpdesk.oregon.k12.wi.us/

Thanks!

Updated: Internet speed reduced

Update: According to the NOC, the BCN circuit and ParkviewSD's went down at 11:30. As of right now Parkview is back up but BCN says "Frontier is still working on the OregonSD interface at the OregonCO."

 ++++++
The district's primary Internet connection is down, so we are operating on our secondary connection, which is only 30 Mbps instead of 100Mbps. We are looking into the situation and will post an update here when we have news to share.

Parents can now sign up for text notifications

Parents and guardians are now able to sign up to receive text message (SMS) alerts from the Oregon School District.

To sign up for text messages, and to choose which type(s) of notifications to receive via text, follow these steps:

1. Log in to the Campus Portal at http://www.OregonSD.org/portal. If you do not have a Campus Portal account, you can request one by sending an email to portal@oregonsd.net
2. On the left side of the Portal window, click on the Contact Preferences link.
3. In the contact preferences grid each row is for a phone number or email address. Each column is for a type of notification that you can receive, such as: Emergency, Attendance, General Notification or Priority Notification.
4. Select the "Text (SMS)" checkbox in the grid to indicate which phone number(s) should receive text messages, and for which types of notifications. I suggest selecting "Emergency" and "Priority Notification," since these are time-sensitive notices.
5. Click Save.

Please note that although there is no charge from the district for text messages, your cell phone provider may charge you for text (SMS) service. I hope you find this new service beneficial.

Update: Firefox, Adobe Reader, and Java

We are continuing to work on fixing Adobe Reader and Java plugins in Firefox. Thanks to alert reader Mark L., I am posting some additional information specifically about Campus gradebooks and Java.
The new version of Firefox is disabling certain versions of Java by default because Java has some widely-reported security issues. (See my previous post for more info.) This means that when you open your Campus gradebook in Firefox, you get a screen that warns you "This plugin has security vulnerabilities."

You can override this by clicking on the link that says "Click here to activate the Java(TM) Platform SE 7 U plugin."

When you click on the link, you'll be greeted by a screen asking if you are sure you want to run this application. Click Run. Your gradebook will open shortly.

After we get the Adobe Reader issue fixed, we'll work on updating the Java plugin so that you'll no longer have to go through this process. In the meantime, please feel free to continue using your gradebook with this workaround.

New Firefox has plugins disabled

Yesterday we deployed a new version of Firefox in order to fix the problem with Advanced Search not working in Infinite Campus. Unfortunately, many of the plugins to Firefox are disabled in the new version because they are old. We are working to restore the plugin functionality to Firefox while making sure we are maintaining secure versions. (Some of the plugins, especially Adobe Acrobat and Java, have had many security issues in recent versions.)

One workaround for reading Adobe Acrobat files (PDFs), is to right-click on the file, save it on your computer, and then open the file in Acrobat Reader. This opens the file in the actual Acrobat Reader application instead of using the web browser plugin.

Infinite Campus scheduled maintenance 2/20 5-10 PM

This is to inform you of scheduled maintenance that is going to be conducted on your site by Infinite Campus.  On February 20 this maintenance will be conducted on all districts in the states of WI, MI and IN.  Districts may experience a fifteen to twenty minute service disruptions between the hours of 5pm and 10:00 pm local time.  We are updating our anti-virus software and this takes a reboot of the server.  If your district has a conflict with this maintenance window please submit a support case with the subject: Conflict With Maintenance Window.  The work will then be rescheduled.

Email virus outbreaks detected and blocked

There have been a couple of email virus outbreaks detected and blocked. These were NOT in the Oregon domain, but were sent to OSD email addresses from an external sources. Our email security/anti-virus sends a message back to the sender in these cases claiming the destination is unavailable.

Action: block '550 mailbox unavailable'
Source: 217.76.69.114
Time: 2013/02/18 16:27:29 GMT

Action: block '550 mailbox unavailable'

Source: 79.106.15.113
Time: 2013/02/18 16:29:39 GMT

"Ghost messages" from the past seem to have stopped, but please turn off POP anyway

The "ghost messages" from January 23-25 that inexplicably arrived in people's mailboxes yesterday seem to have stopped. We are still investigating the cause of the problem.

Although we don't think it's related, you should turn off POP mail in your Gmail account. It's no longer necessary to have enabled, and having it turned off will eliminate a variable while we are trying to troubleshoot issues with mail delivery.

Here are the directions (also available on the IT support site).

Procedure

1. Log in to your OSD Gmail account
2. Under the "gear" icon, select Settings as shown below.
   
   
   
3. Click on Forwarding and POP/IMAP
4. In the POP Download section, choose the Disable POP button.
5. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page. See below.
   
   

Your Gmail account will no longer try to check email from another account.

Gmail messages being re-delivered from January 23-25

Good news: Our weekend project of building a time machine seems to have worked!

Bad news: A bunch of our email got sucked into the time vortex, so email messages that we received between January 23-25 are being received again. I guess we shouldn't have hooked the flux capacitor up to a computer that has our email account on it.

Actually, we have no idea why some (many?) staff are receiving messages again that were originally sent between January 23-25. We are investigating it, but so far cannot tell what is causing it. We will continue investigating and post updates when we discover something useful. Sorry for all the confusion.

Update: workaround for problems caused by anti-virus software

Josh and Doug have spent many hours researching the cause of the slow logins and it appears to be a combination of issues related to our anti-virus software. Our server was overloaded and Kaspersky released an update which caused problems. The server couldn't keep up with the update requests, so the fix to the bad update couldn't be pushed out. So, machines were stuck with a bad version of anti-virus, and the server couldn't deliver the fix. (Arrrgh.)

We have disabled Kaspersky on startup for the endpoints, but left the service running on the server. So far we haven't heard any complaints after restarting the machines. Hopefully this will solve the problem in the short term. Our long-term solution is to provide a more powerful server for the anti-virus.

Sorry again for the loss of instructional time.

Jon

PS- Here's the official notice from Kaspersky
"If you are experiencing the following symptoms: explorer.exe and /or MS Office applications crashing, or login prompt not appearing, please be aware that Kaspersky Lab is working on a resolution. Also, please go to http://usa.kaspersky.com/support/companyaccount and open an online case. Once a resolution is available a member of the business support team will contact and assist you. Kaspersky Lab apologizes for any inconvenience this may have caused."

Slow/freezing logins

We are still having problems with computers freezing or taking a long time logging in. We thought we had a workaround yesterday but it still appears to be happening. Feel free to submit helpdesk tickets if you like, but we are aware of the issue and will keep you updated when we have more to share.

Moodle server back up

Update:

The Moodle server is working again. Sorry for the interruption.

>>>
The Moodle server is not responding. We are trying to restore service.

Navigator page moved to a new server

Kevin and Chris have moved the OSD Navigator Page to a new server, which should solve the outages which seem to keep happening on Sunday afternoons. The URL has not changed, so you don't have to change any bookmarks. (Students will have to revert to the old "dog ate my homework" excuse instead of "the nav page was down.")

Homeland security says to disable Java...but we need to post grades

The US Department of Homeland Security strongly advises that Java be disabled on all computers due to a security flaw. This is one of those situations where it's really difficult to find a balance between security and usability. The district computers need to run Java, because it is required for Infinite Campus gradebooks (as well as many other programs). At the end of the semester, entering grades is obviously a really high priority. Disabling Java until a solution is found really isn't an option, unless we were to postpone the grading window.

I would suggest that Java be disabled on any computers that don't require it. I've disabled it on my home computer for the time being, and I encourage others to do the same.

Full details of the vulnerability, and instructions for disabling Java, can be found on the CERT page, which will also post updates as available.

Navigator page down...again

The Navigator page again stopped working on Sunday evening. Not sure if it was hardware failure, or the server was just dejected from the Packers' loss, but it wasn't responding to any requests. It's back now. Sorry again for what appears to be a recurring problem. We are planning to replace this server shortly, or at least move the Navigator page to a different server to solve this issue. Thanks for your patience.