Rescheduled new password date: Thursday, July 22

The rescheduled date for moving to our new passwords is this Thursday, July 22. By this time, we should have all outstanding issues resolved and all files transferred from the old servers.

Due to the unpredictability of this process, I'm not going to specify a time of day during which the change will take place. In fact, it may affect different services and different users at different times. You should expect your old password to stop working sometime during the day on Thursday, at which time you should being using your new password.

As always, if you have questions, please contact the helpdesk.

Thanks for your patience.

Keep using your Novell passwords, for now

The technical problem with delayed our switch to the new Active Directory passwords has been resolved... sorta. After many hours (thanks, Doug!) our technical support engineer friends were able to fix the problem with the service. Unfortunately, it required steps which mean we have to re-do much of the migration work we had already done prior to the glitch.

We have not determined a new cutover date or time, though it will likely be early next week, July 19 or 20. We will try to give you some advance notice, but I know many of you are really anxious to use your new passwords, so we may just make the configuration changes.

Your best course of action for now is to continue using your Novell passwords to access email until they no longer work, then try using your new Microsoft Active Directory password.

If you are trying to log on to a computer at school, take a look at the login screen. If it says "Novell" on it, use your old Novell password. If it doesn't say "Novell," use your new Microsoft Active Directory password.

Technical difficulties may delay migration

This morning (yes, the day before our scheduled migration to Active Directory...[sigh]), a significant technical glitch reared its ugly head. Essentially, the service which deploys applications to the computers stopped working.

Doug worked on it for many hours, along with technical support from several companies. We do not have a solution yet. This may delay our scheduled migration. We have more things to try, but don't have an ETA.

What this means to you:

Basically, just continue using your Novell password until it no longer works. If it stops working, then try using the new AD password. This applies to logging into computers on campus as well as web-based services such as email and Google Apps.


We will post more updates here as necessary.

Planned Internet outage July 14, 1:00 - 5:00 AM

Charter Communications will be performing maintenance that will affect the District's Internet connection on 7/14/2010, between 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM.

Description of Maintenance: Fitchburg, WI - Critical upgrade of chassis equipment to ensure optimum network performance and for future growth. This work involves powering down chassis, card removal, re-cabling, and then re-slotting cards and powering up new chassis.

Expected Down Time: 90 mins

Affected Sites or Services: Oregon SD

Circuit ID	Circuit Description/Location	Impact
WOGWI09.26533	123 E. Grove St., Oregon, WI	90 mins

Charter Maintenance Ticket#: CRQ 23914

Servers to be frozen July 6-15(?)

On Friday, July 2, we will perform a final backup of all server data before migrating the data to the new servers. Starting July 6, data on the Novell servers will be migrated to the new Microsoft servers. Because we are moving more than 1 TB (yes, terabyte) of data while maintaining file permissions, this may take several days, and could last until the July 15 cutover to Active Directory. During this time, no changes can be made to data on the servers. You will be able to access data on the Novell servers, but will not be able to save any changes. We realize this will be an inconvenience for those of you working during the summer.

As a workaround, I highly recommend that you move any documents you need to work on during this time to Google Docs, which will allow you to access, modify, and share documents while the servers are "frozen." It is also a great way to access files from anywhere without any special software (Office, etc.)

If the migration goes more quickly than anticipated, we will turn on access to the Microsoft Servers ahead of the July 15 cutover date to give you access sooner.

Thanks for your patience during this major transition.

Changes to personalized Start Page

Google has informed us that beginning July 1, they will no longer support the personalized start page that we have been using. The page will be replaced with an iGoogle page, which is completely customizable by each user. This means that we can no longer publish the district's links that you currently see on the left column of your personalized page. To fix this, we are creating a second page which will contain the district links which you can customize. We will roll this out soon. Until then, you can add the links you use frequently to your own customized iGoogle page. Sorry for any confusion this may cause.

Summer computer checkout request form

If you want to check out a notebook computer over the summer, you need to check out one from the tech office, not your school. All computers must be migrated from Novell to Microsoft Active Directory this summer, so they may not be checked out from schools as in past years. We have a limited number of computers we can check out from the DSO for summer use. 

Submit a request using the form at
http://spreadsheets.google.com/a/oregonsd.net/viewform?formkey=dDI4OS1PbUtuZ0JEZGk4Zl8zOFd2WVE6MQ

You can also access the form by going to the IT Document site at http://sites.google.com/a/oregonsd.net/technology/ and scroll down the "Summer computer checkout request form" link.

Bear in mind that we have a limited number of computers available, so you should check one out for the shortest amount of time necessary so that we have enough for everyone.