Service Desk Knowledgebase: Resources

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This is the Resources content page of the CL Wiki Service Desk Knowledgebase. Its purpose is to provide information to the Service Desk team on how to handle problems and requests about this CL service. If you are involved with the provision of this CL service please feel free to add to the knowledge about that it.

If CL staff need to tell the Service Desk team about problems with this service please email
sys-admin-aside@cl.cam.ac.uk.

Return to the Service Desk Knowledgebase SERVICE PORTFOLIO

Key Service Description & URLs

William Gates Building Floor Plans (inc. Room Codes):

CL Customer Documentation

Further CL Sys-Admin Resources

[NOTE: The Personresponsible is actually the one who is financially responsible.]

People

Equipment storage

All the monitors on the bottom shelf of the racking on the West wall of room GC20 are available.

Underpinning Services

  • Computer Lab Administration Database, Mail Server, Networking & RT

Customer-base for this Service

  • All staff and students of the Computer Laboratory

Costs

  • Visitors, Interns & RAs equipment should be funded by the Sponsor for anything substantial but short term loans are possible
  • RARS (Research Assistants registered for a PhD) should be treated as RAs but some funding bodies do not permit this (in which case Lab funding is used)
  • Staff equipment for new arrivals is funded by the department

SLA

  • N/A

Service Desk Call Handling Procedure

  • RT tickets can be escalated by changing the Queue to backoffice with the Owner set to Nobody and the Status as new. Tell the requestor:
    I am passing this request over to the experts who, I'm sure, will be in contact shortly.

Delaying RT Tickets

  • To delay a ticket for automatic re-activation on a given date set the Status to Stalled then use Dates to set a Due: date and [Save Changes].

New Research Students

Processing of postgraduate student admissions by administrative staff automatically generate an RT ticket with the following format:
Academic Year RS GivenName FamilyName crsid kit
when they are added to the database.

The body of the message contains the name and crsid of the supervisor and the email address of the RS.

  • Before doing anything with this ticket link it as a child of this years parent
  • The step is to add the supervisor as the sole requestor of the ticket.
  • Then Reply to the ticket with the following message
For the incoming student this request relates do you know if a new or existing group machine will be used,
or whether one from the Lab Pool should be used?

Can the RS can be given a free choice of Hardware [1] and Operation System [2], or do you as Supervisor want
to restrict the choice to a particular HW or OS?  We will contact the student directly to decide what they
want if you allow them to choose.

[1] http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/local/sys/platforms/equipment.html
[2] http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/local/sys/platforms/


  • When the Supervisor replies change their status from Requestor to CC
  • Add the research student's email (which is in the body of the original message) as Requestor
  • Email the incoming Research student with the following message

New arrivals

Processing of new arrivals by administrative staff automatically generate an RT ticket with the following format:
CRSid has a HR Role starting ??/??/2015 requiring equipment v#VisitorID visitor name
when they are added to the database.

  1. Copy the RT ticket number (without the #)
  2. Click on the URL in ticket like: https://dbwebserver.ad.cl.cam.ac.uk/Administration/Visitors/VisitorDetails.aspx?ID=999
  3. Enter your CRSid & Computer Lab password if requested
  4. Click the [Edit] button at the bottom left of the form
  5. Paste in the RT_Ticket & click [Update]
  6. Desks & Rooms: Allocation of desks/rooms is done by Reception - we don't care about them until we actually need to install equipment. Reception see a parallel workflow and use the OpenRoomMap (ORM). If there seems to be a problem, contact them, and ask them which desk/room to use (but remember that they cannot reply to an email sent to them using an RT comment!) Once the 'OpenRoomMap (ORM) is updated use it to see where the user 'will be'. If room information is available [Edit] Allocated_Office & [Update].
  7. Copy notes for any specific instructions to paste into the RT ticket
  8. Return to RT
  9. Click Comment and paste specific equipment requests into the RT ticket
  10. What happens next depends on what's been requested and who has the equipment:
    • If there are no specific equipment requests Reply to the RT ticket requestor asking:
      What do you intend to provide for the person please?
      In RT set the Owner as Nobody & Status as Stalled (with a suitable Due date) & leave the Queue as Sys-Admin and then [Edit] the inventory database Equipment_state with Asking and [Update]
    • If a computer has been requested or allocated to the person but is already allocated to someone else who is still here, Reply to the RT ticket requestor asking if the new person should be made the "assigned user" of the computer (i.e. User in the inventory, the person who has 'cl-asuser' and 'sudo' privileges to do things such as install software on a managed Linux PC, & have access to the machines BMC if it has one). In RT set the Owner as Nobody & Status as Stalled (with a suitable Due date) & leave the Queue as Sys-Admin.
    • If a computer has been requested or allocated to the person and is not allocated to anyone or their end date has passed then the new person should be made the "assigned user" (i.e. User in the inventory, the person who has 'cl-asuser' and 'sudo' privileges to do things such as install software on a managed Linux PC, & have access to the machines BMC if it has one).
    • If access to servers is required Reply and CC the Sponsor/Personresponsible for each server as they need to formally agree to that access in order to meet the Cam AUP (even though almost all machines are accessible by anyone in the Computer Lab by default). In RT set the Owner as Nobody & Status as Stalled (with a suitable Due date) & leave the Queue as Sys-Admin.
  11. Finally when all the required information has been gather escalate the RT ticket by leaving on the backoffice queue with Status as new and Owner as Nobody

Creating accounts for people arriving

See Account creation request for <CRSid> arriving <date>" or Outstanding equipment requests for arriving visitors/staff

Requests for machine moves

The move process involves:

  1. Reception allocate people to a free desk in a room using OpenRoomMap (ORM).
  2. When people are physically moved into a room, whoever moves them (e.g. the operators) checks that the OpenRoomMap (ORM) information is correct, reporting any erros to Reception, then moves them and when the move is complete updates the Staff List.
  3. Users can update their details within a room (e.g. if they move tables etc).


Requests for machine moves are raised by Reception after they allocate a new office.

  1. Take the RT ticket and check the equipment the person has in the equipment Inventory.
  2. Check what phone may need moving in the VOIPList.
  3. If there is some equipment to move then list it and pass the ticket over to the operators.
  4. Set the Queue to oper, the Owner to Nobody and with Status as new.


After the operators have moved the machine they should provide back details of which port the machine is now plugged into on the ticket.

1. Take the RT ticket and then update the inventory with the new machine's location.

2. Check that the information in the Staff List and the OpenRoomMap (ORM) is correct.

3. Using Updating VLANs in the Cisco switches note the VLAN of the old switch port and then set the old switch port where the machine was to no longer be on the VLAN it was with no switch port access vlan vlan# then set the new switch port to access the VLAN that was removed.

4. Check you can access the machine remotely

5. To check the "assigned user" on Linux desktop machines: On svr-ssh-1 or sandy run ssh -K $host ls -l /etc/user-config/bundles 

 -rw-rw-r-- 1 qg216 sysadmin 3565 Nov  3 20:06 /etc/user-config/bundles

to check the user can install software as the "assigned user" (i.e. sysadmin). If not see Adding privileged or 'assigned' users

6. To check the "assigned user" access to BMC on Linux desktop machines: On svr-ssh-1 or sandy run cl-amttool $host user list 

 kikyo-bmc  Registered 3 AMT user accounts:
  $$uns                  1 realm    LocalAccessPermission    Enabled  <system account>
  $$OsAdmin              6 realms   LocalAccessPermission    Enabled  <system account>
  qg216                 21 realms   AnyAccessPermission      Enabled

to check that the user has AnyAccessPermission Enabled. If not see (4.7) BMC ACL - when up if present.

User Can't install Software under Linux

See Adding privileged or 'assigned' users

Machine Hardware Problems

Graham Titmus (22 Apr '15)

Machines with noise issues etc.:
Change the RT ticket queue to hw-admin with status New AND email a comment Nick Baterham (nb@cl.cam.ac.uk) to alert him.

Operating System Upgrades

and

Duel boot requests

Piete Brooks (06 May '15)

Duel booting is discouraged in favour of running virtual machines instead. The options are either Computer Lab Windows + virtual Linux, or Computer Lab Linux + virtual Windows See http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/local/sys/platforms/#dualboot

Contacts

Primary

Availability

  • Monday:
  • Tuesday:
  • Wednesday:
  • Thursday:
  • Friday:
  • Saturday: Closed
  • Sunday: Closed

Hints, Tips & Known Issues

Typical "Standard Lab PC" (Linux & Windows) Spec.

Graham Titmus 

 Typical Standard Computer Lab PC Spec. Dated 15/04/15:  
 
 Qty     Item            Price   Total   Description 
 1       Med-ATXB        £66     £66     Med Tower ATX Case High Efficiency 80Plus 350W PSU 
 1       SH-W163A-BL     £18     £18     Samsung Internal 22xDVD-RW SATA Black 
 1       Q87M-E  £98     £98     ASUS 1150 Q87M-E Executive Series /SI M-ATX Haswell 
 1       SV300S37A/240G  £70     £70     Kingston V300 - 240GB - Read 450MB/s - Write 450MB/s - 533 DW 
 1       i5-4670 £169    £169    Intel Haswell Core i5-4670 3.4-3.8 GHz 4 Cores, 84W, HD Graphics 4600 
 2       KVR16N11/8      £53     £106    8GB 1600MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL11 DIMM 
 2       25SATSAS35      £11     £22     StarTech.com 2.5 inch SATA/SAS SSD/HDD to 3.5 inch SATA Hard Drive Converter 
 2       HSB100SATBK     £14     £28     StarTech.com 5.25 inch Tray-Less Hot Swap Mobile Rack for 3.5 inch Hard Drive 
 1       USB2.0Header    £3      £3      USB 2.0 Header plate 
 1       Header  £5      £5      Serial Header plate 
 1       USB3.0Header    £9      £9      USB 3.0 Header plate 
 1       K/B-Mouse-Bl    £17     £17     Microsoft USB Wired Desktop 600 Keyboard+Mouse Black 
 Total:          £611.00 
 Discount:       £30.55 
 Total Ex-VAT:   £580.45 
 VAT:            £116.09 
 Total:          £696.54
 
 to which you need to add a screen - a 4K screen costs about £300 + VAT.

Categorising Keywords

  • Resources PC machines new arrivals upgrades failures
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