Thank you again for your participation in the recent surveys, and for your continued patience. We apologize for the confusion and concern we have created in the community announcing the retirement of Socrates and Arachne. We were naive in our assumptions about the options available to campus, and learned from our survey that our current offerings will not meet the needs of all Socrates and Arachne users. We appreciate your feedback and are actively pursuing options to meet the requirements you identified in the surveys and at the forums, including evaluating non-campus vendors. With that in mind, we want you to know that we will not close either the Socrates or Arachne services until we have more robust and affordable solutions available.
We will be revising the timetable for the retirement of Socrates and Arachne and will communicate with you when we have a new timeframe in place. However, it is clear that it will take at least until the end of this calendar year before we can retire these services and move you to suitable new services.
We have extended the date for the Socrates retirement to the end of the fall
2008 semester; however we expect to decommission Arachne by mid-summer 2008:
Survey current Socrates/Arachne customers. (The survey closed on Thursday, April 24, 2008.)
14 March 2008 >> Arachne Users Forum April 7, 2008 <<
Source: Helen Norris email to arachne_customers mailing list
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:31:32 -0700
Message-ID: <01f201c88623$277f7160$1ff0e5a9@ist.berkeley.edu>
Subject: [arachne_customers] Arachne users open forum
We would like to invite you to attend our upcoming open forums on this topic. The dates and times are as follows:
Arachne Customer Forum April 7, 2008 at 2:00pm
Socrates Customer Forum April 8, 2008 at 10:00 am
Both forums will be held in Sibley auditorium in the Bechtel Engineering Center. Please RSVP to Sheila Press, spress@berkeley.edu if you are interested in joining us for these forums.
Our next steps in this project include:
gathering customer input;
open forums as mentioned above;
customer survey kick-off
We are also in the process of forming an oversight advisory committee. We will announce the Socrates Arachne Advisory Group once membership is confirmed.
We will make every effort to move web hosting customers to current IST services but we are also evaluating lower cost options.
We look forward to hearing from you and will continue to send communications throughout the project. Please continue to check the project web site http://ist.berkeley.edu/services/tam/serverabatement.html for updates and if you'd like to contact us, please send a message to cosar@lists.berkeley.edu
This message is going to customers associated with the initial account setup and email addresses associated with the virtual host setup. Multiple people associated with the site may receive the same email. We apologize for any duplication.
If you ever want to unsubscribe or change your options (eg, switch to or from digest mode, change your password, etc.), visit your subscription page at:
15 February 2008 >> Socrates and Arachne services to be retired. <<
Source: iNews
IST is beginning the effort to retire the Socrates and Arachne services and to move clients to new services that are appropriate for their technical needs. IST will follow up with more detailed communications throughout the project life cycle.
The most current information about this project can be found at:
20 September 2007 >> Socrates SSH access from off-campus will discontinue <<
Source: Socrates news
Socrates server -- SSH access from off-campus will discontinue
Effective November 7, 2007, Socrates will no longer be accessible via SSH
(Secure Shell), SFTP (Secure File Transfer Software), and SCP (the file
transfer component of SSH) from off-campus IP addresses. This is being done
to protect the server from the ever-growing number of break-in attempts
that are being performed via SSH.
If you are currently logging in from a non ".berkeley.edu" host, for example,
from a commercial Internet provider IP address, you will need to install
the campus Cisco VPN Client on your computer. This allows secure campus
network connections, as if your are connecting from the campus hosts.
The Cisco VPN client can be downloaded from Software Central at:
IST is in the process of upgrading its web hosting and general Unix service offerings, and developing new services in response to changes in technology and new campus requirements.
As a part of the upgrade, the Socrates and Arachne servers will be retired in June 2008. Both Socrates and Arachne are aging servers with ongoing security issues. Socrates provides general purpose Unix services and Arachne provides administrative web hosting services.
The services on Socrates and Arachne will be replaced with modern services such as CalGrid, CalWeb, CalWeb Pro, and the Unix and Windows Web Farms — see the IST Infrastructure Services Catalog for detailed descriptions of these services.
The IST CalWeb team is currently reviewing customer usage of Socrates and Arachne, and will be contacting customers during fall 2007 to assist with planning of migrations to one of the new services. If you have any questions or need more information, please contact the IST Technical Account Management unit,
The PHP Hypertext Preprocessor Development Team at http://www.php.net/ has announced that there will be no updates to PHP 4.4 after December 31, 2007.
Campus websites using PHP will need to upgrade PHP 4 web applications to PHP 5. For more information about migrating from PHP 4 to PHP 5 see PHP's Migrating from PHP 4 to PHP 5.
13 August 2007 >> Arachne Terminal and File Transfer Logins <<
To connect to a web server via a terminal login or to transfer files
to and from your web site account, use the web server hostname, not
your web site hostname. Hostnames for web servers on the CalWeb Unix
Arachne platform are:
Due to security changes on the CalWeb Unix Arachne platform users are now required to login using the web
server hostname, not their web site hostname.
Calweb Unix Arachne web sites are on a web server but are served
through a load balancer. The new
SSH server on the Arachne platform does not listen to load balancer IP addresses.
9 August 2007 >> Arachne OS and SSH Server Update 8/12/2007 <<
The Arachne Unix platform that includes
the arachne, spider and tarantula CalWeb Unix web
servers and the http://www.berkeley.edu/ web site,
will have a short outage on Sunday, August 12th, 2007,
between 6am and 8am to perform scheduled maintenance
(CMR 4341).
The SSH server on this platform will also be
upgraded from the 'SSH-1.99-2.4.0 SSH Secure Shell'
server to a 'SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_4.5' server at that time.
Users of SSH 2 capable client programs for secure terminal
and file transfer access with password authentication should
see no changes in how they access this platform.
The SSH Secure Shell and OpenSSH servers use different methods
to store public keys. Users with public keys in a '~/.ssh2'
directory will have those keys converted to OpenSSH format
and appended to the '~/.ssh/authorized_keys' file used by
the OpenSSH server by IST so they can continue to use their
current RSA 1, RSA 2 and DSA 2 keys.
Users of the SSH Secure Shell for Windows client program
who generate new SSH Secure Shell public keys will need to convert
them to the OpenSSH format before appending them to the
'~/.ssh/authorized_keys' file. This may be done at:
https://svnkeys.berkeley.edu/ or after this update to OpenSSH
is completed by uploading the public key to the
'~/.ssh2' directory as before, then using the
'ssh-keygen' command with the '-i' option before appending
it to the '~/.ssh/authorized_keys' file. To append
a key to this file when connected via a terminal login,
enter:
cat keyfile >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
at the terminal-login shell prompt where 'keyfile' is
the name of the converted public key.
25 July 2007 >> Arachne CSW software updated 7/25/2007 <<
The following software was updated on 7/25/2007 at about 5pm.
Spider and Tarantula web servers were restarted about 5:15pm to use
some of these changes.
CSW software
Old version
New version
gnutls
1.4.4,REV=2006.10.29
1.6.3
libgcrypt
1.2.3,REV=2007.01.22
1.2.4
libgpg_error
1.4,REV=2006.10.09
1.5
libpq
8.1.4
8.2.3
mysql5rt
5.0.33,REV=2007.01.14
5.0.41,REV=2007.06.03
opencdk
0.5.9,REV=2006.09.23
0.5.13
openldap_rt
2.3.31,REV=2007.01.07
2.3.35,REV=2007.04.14
openssl
0.9.8,REV=2006.09.29_rev=d
0.9.8,REV=2007.05.10_rev=e
perl
5.8.8,REV=2007.02.20
5.8.8,REV=2007.03.16
php5
5.2.1,REV=2007.02.20
5.2.1,REV=2007.03.15
pkg_get
3.7.1
3.7.2
png
1.2.15
1.2.18
sasl
2.1.21,REV=2006.03.09
2.1.22,REV=2007.06.19
zlib
1.2.3,REV=2005.07.22
1.2.3,REV=2007.05.12
10 July 2007 >> Emergency security change to Arachne 7/11/2007 <<
Due to critical security issues, access to the Arachne server from
all non-berkeley.edu addresses will be restricted to VPN (Virtual
Private Network) connections only. This change will be effective
on July 11, 2007 at 3 p.m.
You can download the Cisco VPN software configured for the UC
Berkeley campus from software.berkeley.edu, at:
If you have any problems installing or configuring the VPN software,
please contact the Faculty and Staff Consulting office at 642-8899 or
by email at connecting@berkeley.edu
For more information about how to access the arachne system, please see:
If you have any other problems, please email calweb_consult@berkeley.edu
We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.
28 June 2007 >> Arachne Unscheduled Maintenance 28 June 2007 <<
Critical software updates for apache, PHP and other
web-related software are being applied to correct problems. Some websites
may require configuration updates to continue normal operation. Website
owners who encounter problems should contact the IST service desk to report
the problem. (CMR 4224)
The Campus home page (www.berkeley.edu ) will not be affected.
25 May 2007 >> Upgrade reminder for arachne web server users <<
For CalWeb users on the "arachne" webserver:
We'd like to start migrating users who have tested their websites under
the upgraded server. The original message we sent you about this is
included below.
If you've tested with your rec(#).berkeley.edu alias and found things
looking good, please let calweb_consult@berkeley.edu know and we will move you to the new
server. The process will take place in the wee hours of the next
morning when the main campus name server pushes out the change. You'll
receive confirmation email from us that the change has been scheduled.
Note that this upgrade is mandatory for both us as the IS&T web hosting
service and you, the website owner. This is due to security concerns.
Within 2 weeks or so we will be migrating any websites left on the old
server.
10 May 2007 >> Important web server upgrade information for arachne web server users <<
For CalWeb users on the "arachne" webserver:
We will be upgrading the Apache server and PHP scripting language due
to security vulnerabilities soon. Since we are moving to newer
versions (Apache/2.2.3 PHP/5.1.6) for both, there is a possibility of
backwards compatibilities issues.
Your arachne website is running under the new server with a test URL.
You can map your URL with the test version at
http://calweb.berkeley.edu/test.html.
NOTE: If your URL is NOT on this list it's likely you are running under
the spider or tarantula webservers. These servers have already been
upgraded. If you are still not sure, feel free to email or call for
help.
Please check your website(s) carefully for any problems. We have noted
some PHP issues. If you use PHP, you must take a look at
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/faq.migration5.php. Some variables like
HTTP_SERVER_VARS have been discontinued.
It's very important to check your website in that we will go production
very soon. Make sure your CGI, if any, works. If you connect to a
database, make sure that works.
16 March 2007 >> apache/PHP upgrades 3/19/07 11pm for tarantula webserver users <<
For CalWeb users on the "tarantula" webserver:
We will be upgrading the Apache server and PHP scripting language due
to security vulnerabilities Monday, 3/19/07, at 11pm. Since we are
moving to newer versions (Apache/2.2.3 PHP/5.1.6) for both, there is a
possibility of backwards compatibilities issues.
*** NOTE *** If you are not sure if your website runs on tarantula, look for your URL
under "Tarantula" in the table at http://calweb.berkeley.edu/urls.html.
You can test your tarantula website at the alternative port 8061 by
entering your URL in your browser followed by colon 8061.
http://yoururl.berkeley.edu:8061
Example for the Faculty Guide site:
http://facultyguide.berkeley.edu:8061
Please check your website(s) carefully for any problems. We have noted
some PHP issues. If you use PHP, you must take a look at
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/faq.migration5.php. Some variables like
HTTP_SERVER_VARS have been discontinued.
It's very important to check your website in that we will go production
very soon. Make sure your CGI, if any, works. If you connect to a
database, make sure that works.
01 February 2007 >> arachne/tarantula webhosting test site <<
This notice is being sent to the web content providers served by the
arachne "tarantula" webserver.
We have to upgrade the Apache server and PHP scripting language due to
security vulnerabilities. Since we are moving to newer versions
(Apache/2.2.3 PHP/5.1.6) for both, there is a possibility of backwards
compatibilities issues.
You can test your site at the alternative port 8061 by entering your
URL in your browser followed by colon 8061.
http://yoururl.berkeley.edu:8061
Example for the CalWeb site:
http://calweb.berkeley.edu:8061
Please check your website carefully for any problems. We have noted
some PHP issues, there may be more. It's very important to check your
website in that we will go production very soon.
18 January 2007 >> arachne/spider webhosting test site <<
This notice is being sent to the web content providers served by the
arachne "spider" webserver.
We have to upgrade the Apache server and PHP scripting language within
the next week due to security vulnerabilities. Since we are moving to
newer versions (Apache/2.2.3 PHP/5.1.6) for both, there is a
possibility of backwards compatibilities issues.
You can test your site at the alternative port 8060 by entering your
URL in your browser followed by colon 8060.
http://yoururl.berkeley.edu:8060
Example for the CalWeb site:
http://calweb.berkeley.edu:8060
Please check your website carefully for any problems. We have noted
some PHP issues, there may be more. It's very important to check your
website in that we will go production with this setup on January 24th.
12 January 2007 >> Arachne webserver work in January 2007 <<
Through the month of January we will be upgrading a number of web
related products such as PHP and Apache. Email will be sent to you
before these actions take place.
03 January 2007 >> Webserver maintenance this week <<
We are in the process of moving the CalWeb webservers to route through
load balancers this week. This is being done to help build in redundancy
in the event of server failures. There will be some webserver restarts in
the early mornings but otherwise should not affect your website. If you
see anything unusual, please let us know.
14 December 2006 >> NOTICE: Socrates Emergency Security change to be implemented
asap <<
Source: Socrates news
Reverse-dns now required for sshd logins. If you do not have
a reverse dns record for the ip of your computer, you may not
be able to login to Socrates via ssh. If this is the case please
connect to socrates via the campus vpn. Software for Campus VPN
Service is available at http://www.net.berkeley.edu/vpn/
05 October 2006 >> Basic MySQL Service Now Available <<
The new IST basic MySQL service is a low cost MySQL service for departments and groups on campus with simple database needs. For more information see:
09 November 2005 >> More info on arachne billing <<
Several customers have inquired as to whether we will be
retroactively billing at the 1/1/2003 rate. We will NOT
be billing previous months at the 1/1/2003 rate. We will
begin billing at the $9.29/250 Mb/month rate for the month
of October 2004 and forward. Please accept our apologies
for any confusion.
05 November 2005 >> Arachne website account charges <<
We recently discovered a billing error that was undercharging your
accounts. We have modified the charges to reflect the 1/1/2003
approved rate of $9.29/250 Mb/month. We apologize for any
inconvenience this causes.
04 November 2005 >> Migration to Apache 2 - Target completion deadline: 12/31/2005 <<
We are continuing to move websites running under the Stronghold web
server to the Apache 2 webserver. We would like to complete this
migration by December 31, 2005. If your site is still running under
Stronghold, it is very important that you test all your links on the
alias for your site (see http://calweb.berkeley.edu/aliases) to
verify that all your website functionality and information is working
and displaying correctly. There are still 90+ websites that need to
be moved.
04 November 2005 >> System maintenance work to be scheduled in December, short outage expected <<
System work will require a reboot of the Arachne server on Sunday,
December 17 at 6am. We expect the outage to last for less than one
hour. This time and date are subject to change, we will let you know
if this happens.
25 August 2005 >> PHP 5 on Socrates <<
We have been asked to consider upgrading PHP4 on socrates to PHP5.
It's possible PHP4 files may break. We strongly urge you to check your
PHP files through the PHP5-enabled test web server running on port 86.
The URL would be http://socrates.berkeley.edu:86/~(your userid). If you
have a virtual host or redirect pointing to your website use the above
form instead.
04 August 2005 >> Transitioning consulting services to the central Service Desk <<
As you may already have noticed, as of July 18, we started assigning
ticket numbers to customers that call in for CalWeb or Socrates
consulting on the 642-4072 phone line. Customers then receive an email
notification about their ticket at the email address they have listed
in the CalNet directory.
In an ongoing effort to consolidate the myriad of consult phone numbers,
beginning August 18, we will be changing the current consult phone,
642-4072 phone message to notify our customers to call 642-4920 for
CalWeb and Socrates inquiries. The Service desk analysts are available
Monday through Friday, 5 am - 12 midnight, and Saturday and Sunday,
7 am - 5:30 pm to record your call, assign a ticket number and in some
cases, they will be able to resolve your issue. For other issues,
your ticket will be assigned to the CalWeb and Socrates teams to resolve
during normal service hours of Monday through Friday, 8 am to 5 pm.
The 642-4072 phone line will no longer be available for voicemail.
Our future phase will be assigning ticket numbers to the email inquiries.
04 August 2005 >> Migrating from Stronghold webserver software to Apache 2 <<
We are assigning alias URL's for all the websites we are moving
from Stronghold 1.3 to Apache 2. These will be in the form of
http://spider(n).berkeley.edu or http://tara(n).berkeley.edu where
(n) is an assigned number for your website. These aliases will allow
you to test the functionality of your website under Apache 2 and
verify that all is working as expected. Please note that absolute
links will refer you back to the production site on Stronghold. You
can check absolute links out through the new server by pasting
in the assigned alias name followed by the path to your html files.
04 August 2005 >> Semester Quiet time - August 19, 6 pm to September 2, 6 pm <<
During the Semester Quiet period, we cannot update any production system
that affects students. This includes the CalWeb service. We cannot
install any updates or changes during this time period so as to ensure
as smooth a semester startup for all students as possible. Any exception
must be approved by the IST directors before implementation.
04 August 2005 >> RSS news feeds <<
RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like
sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community
sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. RSS files have the extension
of .xml or .rdf.
The CalWeb RSS feed, or channel, will be available for users to view
using RSS Aggregators, so that they can have instant CalWeb news
updates. This feature should be especially attractive to users who
like to have the most up-to-date information about the status of the
products and services that they use. For a list of current UC Berkeley
RSS channels, please visit http://inews.berkeley.edu:7077/channels.html.
03 Aug 2005 >> CalWeb test aliases, consulting service,
and RSS service <<
1. Alias URL's to test your website on the
new Apache 2 server
We are assigning alias URL's for all the
websites we are moving from Stronghold 1.3 to Apache 2. These
will be in the form of http://spider(n).berkeley.edu or http://tara(n).berkeley.edu
where
(n) is an assigned number for your website. These aliases
will give you chance to make sure all is working as expected
in your website as it is served by Apache 2. Note that absolute
links will refer you back to the production site on Stronghold.
You can check these out through the new server by pasting
in the assigned alias name followed by the path to you html
files.
2. Update on the transitioning consulting
services to the central Service Desk
Our first phase of this transition involves
the Consult phone number.
As you may already have noticed, as of July 18, we started
assigning ticket numbers to customers that call in for CalWeb
or Socrates consulting on the 642-4072 phone line. Customers
then receive an email notification about their ticket at the
email address they have listed in the CalNet directory.
In an ongoing effort to consolidate the myriad
of consult phone numbers to a single phone number, beginning
August 18, we will be changing the
642-4072 phone message to notify our customers to call 642-4920
for CalWeb and Socrates inquiries and that this line will
no longer be available for voicemail.
Our next phase will be assigning ticket numbers
to the email inquiries to our consult email lists.
3. RSS news feeds
RSS is a format for syndicating news and
the content of news-like sites, including major news sites
like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and
personal weblogs.
Once information about each item is in RSS
format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes
and react to the changes in an appropriate way. A news aggregator
can help you keep up with important news updates by checking
their RSS feeds and displaying new items from each of them."
CalWeb RSS "feeds" will be available
for users to use with a news aggregator or to point to using
HTML, so that you can have updated news information available
on any website you choose to develop.
06 July 2005 >> CalWeb Service Changes! <<
CalWeb (formerly known as Arachne) Website
Hosting customers:
We are planning several changes to our service
in the coming months. You may have noticed that we have re-branded
our service offering as CalWeb. Here are other enhancements
that we are working on:
1. We will soon be switching to using a central
ticket request system so that we can track all customers'
request for information or reports of problems. We are in
the process of working with the Service desk group to implement
this in mid-July. Changes you will see are that you will receive
a ticket number that you can use to reference the status of
your inquiry. We will be relying on the CalNet directory for
your email address so please make sure your CalNet directory
entry is accurate (https://directory.berkeley.edu).
2. We have historically used the commercial
version of Apache called Stronghold for our webserver software.
We are migrating to the open source Apache 2.0.50 version
of software. This involves moving all the websites running
under Stronghold to Apache. We have already moved a number
of sites and will be contacting each user when it comes time
to convert your site.
3. We are planning for major improvements
to our webhost service offering with hardware architectural
changes that will give our customers redundancy and ensure
uptime. These changes are still in the planning stages so
look for more information later in the year.
4. If you are running your own MySql database
on Arachne, you would be interested to know that our colleagues
in the CCS Database group will be offering central MySQL and
Postgres database administration as recharge services in the
late summer or early fall. If you are interested in these
offerings, please let us know. We would like to get a count
of interested parties to help them plan.
We will be sending out monthly updates to
keep you informed of our activities. Please do not hesitate
to let us know if you have any suggestions for improvements
to our service by sending email to:
Thanks!
The CalWeb team
06 July 2005 >> CalWeb News Created! <<
Welcome to the new CalWeb News page. This page will provide
periodic updates to the new CalWeb Service, formerly known
as Arachne and Socrates web hosting.
01 July 2005 >> Changes in Departmental Web services <<
We are planning several changes to our service in the coming
months. You may have noticed that we have re-branded our service
offering as CalWeb. Here are other enhancements that we are working
on:
We will soon be switching to using a central ticket request system
so that we can track all customers' request for information or
reports of problems. We are in the process of working with the
Service desk group to implement this in mid-July. Changes you will
see are that you will receive a ticket number that you can use to
reference the status of your inquiry. We will be relying on the
CalNet directory for your email address so please make sure your
CalNet directory entry is accurate (https://directory.berkeley.edu).
We have historically used the commercial version of Apache called Stronghold for our webserver software. We are migrating to the
open source Apache 2.0.50 version of software. This involves moving
all the websites running under Stronghold to Apache. We have already
moved a number of sites and will be contacting each user when it
comes time to convert your site.
We are planning for major improvements to our webhost service
offering with hardware architectural changes that will give our
customers redundancy and ensure uptime. These changes are still
in the planning stages so look for more information later in the
year.
If you are running your own MySql database on Arachne, you would be
interested to know that our colleagues in the CCS Database group
will be offering central MySQL and Postgres database administration
as recharge services in the late summer or early fall. If you are
interested in these offerings, please let us know. We would like to
get a count of interested parties to help them plan.
27 May 2005 >> REMINDER: Socrates ftp services to be discontinued June 1, 2005 <<
A secure alternative to ftp, sftp, is already available on Socrates.
Sftp uses the ssh protocol. To use sftp, you will need to use
SSH software that includes ssh, scp and sftp. The software is free
for download (http://software.berkeley.edu/). We also plan to offer
another secure alternative to ftp, FTPS, in early June.
26 May 2004 >> The computer center move and arachne <<
The IS&T Computer Center is moving early this summer. We are going to
make every effort to minimize any outage for the +100 web servers
running on arachne.
In a nutshell, we're preparing another server that will be set up in
the new data center as a duplicate of Arachne (we're actually prepping
it in Evans now). We will provide test URL's for all sites. After all
user testing is completed , we will basically just rename the new
server (which is bigger and faster) to Arachne and take Arachne's IP.
To log into socrates.berkeley.edu, you will need to switch to SSH software
SSH software includes ssh, scp and sftp. The software is free for download
(http://software.berkeley.edu/).
