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sending the relevant data back to UWisc without informing the user.

Informed participation is a really big deal for me. No user should ever find themselves participating in the Cooperative Bug Isolation Project without their knowledge. Opt-in is explicit and revokable, and if the opt-in system runs into trouble of any kind, the fallback position is no data reporting at all.

The whole thing collapses if users don't trust me. So I've taken every measure I can think of to ensure that they can. Please see the relevant project page for more details about privacy matters.

It sounds like a good idea, but I doubt it is in Liblit's power to fix Windows OS bugs.

Working on it! Check back in with me in a few years ... maybe less. :-)

This research has been a wonderful collaborative effort, and many people deserve to share the credit. To quote from part of the Acknowledgements section of my dissertation:

I am indebted to the many members of the open source community who have supported our work. My thanks go out to the many anonymous users of our public deployment, and to the developers of the open source projects used in our public deployment and case studies.

So thanks, Slashdot, for helping me find those users (or helping them find me). The exposure was invaluable. And thanks, open source community, for your participation. I've benefitted greatly from standing on your massed shoulders. This could not have happened without you.

No, the "funny part" is that people were aware of it, but later, executive management viewed it as too much of a liability/exposure - this is probably so, from certain perspectives. You can read her thoughts on it here. I routinely do interviews for the press, and have been involved with projects that have received national exposure that aren't strictly UW-related, such as Grants.gov for Mac OS X, a package which Grants.gov and Northrop Grumman now officially distribute themselves.

And appleintelfaq.com and ipodbatteryfaq.com just picked up the default contact information I use on DirectNIC, where other domains I administer for UW are registered. Since they're hosted off campus, have nothing to do with the university, and don't use university DNS, there was never any issue with either domain. I've changed the contact information appropriately.

If you really are affiliated with the university and have something to say to me, why don't you stop by my office or email me instead of anonymously trolling me on slashdot? Thanks!

No, the "funny part" is that people were aware of it, but later, executive management viewed it as too much of a liability/exposure - this is probably so, from certain perspectives. You can read her thoughts on it here. I routinely do interviews for the press, and have been involved with projects that have received national exposure that aren't strictly UW-related, such as Grants.gov for Mac OS X, a package which Grants.gov and Northrop Grumman now officially distribute themselves.

And appleintelfaq.com and ipodbatteryfaq.com just picked up the default contact information I use on DirectNIC, where other domains I administer for UW are registered. Since they're hosted off campus, have nothing to do with the university, and don't use university DNS, there was never any issue with either domain. I've changed the contact information appropriately.

If you really are affiliated with the university and have something to say to me, why don't you stop by my office or email me instead of anonymously trolling me on slashdot? Thanks!

True, but there are better ways to go about upscaling (various interpolation algorithms) than simply making the pixels bigger (nearest neighbor). See Gleicher, Michael. A Brief Tutorial On Interpolation for Image Scaling. 1999.

Shit. I didn't preview. Here's what I meant to say.

What happened with the U of Wisconsin test? It was supposed to run until Friday, then he shortened the deadline and removed the reference to the Friday end time, and then I forgot to log back into it at midnight. Now the URL gives a "could not find host" error and I can't even ping the IP... So what happened? What was the end result?

What happened with the text? It was supposed to run until Friday, then he shortened the deadline and removed the reference to the Friday end time, and then I forgot to log back into it at midnight. Now the URL gives a "could not find host" error and I can't even pign the IP..... so what happened? What was the end result?

Dear Mrs. Stunden,

        As you know, a test computer was setup at the web address of: http://test.doit.wisc.edu/ in order to research the security of the Mac OS X operating system.

I have read today on the technology news site http://www.slashdot.org/ that it has been abruptly shut down. When I visited the site, I received this message:

"Yesterday we discovered the Mac OSX "challenge" was not an activity authorized by the UW-Madison. Once the test came to the attention of our CIO, she ended it. The site, test.doit.wisc.edu, will be removed from the network tonight. Our primary concern is for security and network access for UW services. We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused to the community."

In regards to your decision to shut the site down, please understand that you have left an indelible mark on the IT community around the WORLD. Certainly this is a destructive blow to the reputation of your department and to UW-Madison.

You state on your professional bio, "UW-Madison is a 40,000-student research university committed to transformational change of the teaching and learning environment through the use of technology."

How can you and UW-Madison be "committed to transformational change of the teaching and learning environment through the use of technology" by terminating such a noble project? What ever happened to service to the technology community?

Go ahead, laugh at me, ignore me. You probably deleted this e-mail before even reading this far. I'm just a kid...a college student of Information Systems Management; however I am an example of our country's next generation of Leadership. I represent the new style of thinking and ethics.

My generation has no tolerance for people like you. Your leadership style is obsolete and people like you are getting replaced faster than you can say Sayonara. To us, Ethics and Community Service are the two most important values a university must have.

Can you give me one good reason not to write a letter to my Senators and Congressmen, asking to launch an investigation of what your department does with my tax dollars? Can you give me a good reason to not write a letter to UW-Madison's board asking for you to be terminated immediately because of your selfish and unethical behavior?

For someone who has been working in technology since "1959" haven't you learned by now to think about the consequences before you make a decision?

I recommend that you release an official statement and send it to http://www.slashdot.org/ for the sake of your own and UW-Madison's reputation.

most sincerely,
XYZ

At the time of my submission (around 12:30pm today), the http://test.doit.wisc.edu/ website did not appear as it does now. It appeared as an updated version of what you see in the Google cache. There was an updated posting on the site from Schroeder earlier this morning mentioning that the challenge had ended and giving the statistics which I included in my submission. The posting had no mention of the challenge ending early or the messege that is currently displayed, it mearly stated that the challenge had ended and there was no successful access by anyone.

See, the funny part is the CIO did find out about this, and she promptly pulled the plug. Dave Schroeder is nothing more than a mac fanatic wanker. He is as annoying on campus mailing lists as he is on slashdot.

Speaking of AUPS... I wonder why the University of Wisconsin is listed as the registrant for a few of his domains. ipodbatteryfaq intelapplefaq. At least they aren't hosted in the UW ip space, that is very much a no no.

Yesterday we discovered the Mac OSX "challenge" was not an activity authorized by the UW-Madison. Once the test came to the attention of our CIO, she ended it. The site, test.doit.wisc.edu, will be removed from the network tonight. Our primary concern is for security and network access for UW services. We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused to the community.

The test is now closed and there were no sucsessful security breaches. This proves what most of us already knew about Mac OS X .This is take directly from the site http://test.doit.wisc.edu/ Mac OS X Security Test Tue 7 March 2006 11:59 PM CST (8 March 2006 0559 GMT) The testing period is now closed. The response has been very strong, and the test has illustrated its point. Traffic to the host spiked at over 30 Mbps. Most of the traffic, aside from casual web visitors, was web exploit scripts, ssh dictionary attacks, and scanning tools such as Nessus. The machine was under intermittent DoS attack. During the two brief periods of denial of service, the host remained up. The test machine was a Mac mini (PowerPC) running Mac OS X 10.4.5 with Security Update 2006-001, had two local accounts, and had ssh and http open with their default configurations. There were no successful access attempts of any kind, including during the 38 hour duration of the test period, nor have their been any claims of success. The host is still the same host and configuration used for the test. Some snippets from 7 March 2006: The site received almost a half a million requests via the web. There were over 4000 login attempts via ssh. The ipfw log grew at 40MB/hour and contains 6 million events logged. Several social engineering attempts were received, including one purporting to be from the government of Sweden, which apparently uses GMail. ;-) More test results and information will be published here at a future date.

The fact is *all* security gaps are important. If there's a network hack that can only get you a non-priviledged account, but you can then jack that up to root access using this local hole, then that hole was mighty significant. This whole "Mac has no security faults" meme is dangerously delusional. It's significantly more secure than Win32, but at least own up to faults (small as they may be) and get them fixed, don't bury your heads in the sand.

Have you read the page at http://test.doit.wisc.edu/ ?

He doesn't say it's invulnerable, and he doesn't say the local hole is unimportant, just that it's unimportant to desktop users (which it is), and applicable only to servers giving out ssh accounts. At present there is no network hack that can get you a local account, and most desktops wouldn't even have the services he has turned on enabled. Once something has a local account, you can only try to contain it, and for most desktop users it's game over, as it has access to all their files, address book etc. The worst hole so far has been due to Apple's stupidity in adding a feature to open downloaded files automatically to Safari, allowing trojans an easier route to trick users.

I haven't heard anyone say 'The Mac has no security faults', almost everyone here will readily admit that it has faults, and the stream of security updates from Apple attest to that. What people do say is that it's fairly secure, and more secure than Windows, by design.

I find it interesting he took the test down so quickly though, it's almost as if he was worried : )

The other user account is "guest" as in
http://test.doit.wisc.edu/~guest/

"The testing period will be closed at 11:59 PM CST on 7 March 2006 (0559 GMT 8 March 2006). Test results will be published." - Mac OS X Security Test

You know, it was the "oh so cute" comment that gave it away. Somehow I suspect that anyone paying for a mouse with diabetes is probably more concerned about diabetes than "cute".

Although obese mice are pretty darn cute. Pic. More.

Oh boo.

You can prove anything with science if you setup your question, assumptions, parameters/criteria inappropriately.

Schroeder is saying that the parameters/criteria surrounding that previous test were invalid and do not support the conclusions being drawn from it.

Stalyn (662) is obviously not new here, but did you RTFA?

Maybe you're just jaded from years of Mac is teh b3st vs n00b, W1nd0wz is t3h 4wes0m35t

I love how the mac mini is surviving the slashdotting no probs. Sure its mostly text, but I've seen similar sites crumble in no time.

http://test.doit.wisc.edu/

Chris

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/
http://test.doit.wisc.edu/~das

If it helps...

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/
http://test.doit.wisc.edu/~das

If it helps...

While you're right on the "das", it's doubtful that a dictionary crack would fix it. Since "das" is also his U of Wisc NetID (ref. the e-mail address at the bottom of the page), it's more likely that the password is the same as his U of Wisc password.

So... Anyone up for breaking into the U of Wisc password database?

While you're right on the "das", it's doubtful that a dictionary crack would fix it. Since "das" is also his U of Wisc NetID (ref. the e-mail address at the bottom of the page), it's more likely that the password is the same as his U of Wisc password.

So... Anyone up for breaking into the U of Wisc password database?

It proves neither: every operating system on the face of this earth has been hacked, cracked, and 0wned. Numerous times.

Oh yeah?

There's a challenge going on right now to prove that! Try to change the web page at test.doit.wisc.edu/

I've also wondered how an EDU employee can get away with spending so much time on blatent Apple advocacy activitites. (And not just for IT matters either -- daveschroeder spends a lot of time "defending" Apple's policies about iPods and iTMS.)

Presumably his position must be funded by Apple or rewarded by Apple somehow, and "University of Wisconsin Mac Zealot" is actually in his job description. (Sure, Apple rewards loyal sysadmins with nice freebies like flat panels and iPods, but daveschroeder's activities are way to blatent for that sort of under-the-table stuff.)

The UW Appropriate Use Policy specifically disallows the use of "University IT resources to represent the interests of any non-University group or organization" (Apple), so presumably this must be sanctioned by his higher-ups.

I thought about emailing the UW CIO to ask, but I've got better things to do.

I've also wondered how an EDU employee can get away with spending so much time on blatent Apple advocacy activitites. (And not just for IT matters either -- daveschroeder spends a lot of time "defending" Apple's policies about iPods and iTMS.)

Presumably his position must be funded by Apple or rewarded by Apple somehow, and "University of Wisconsin Mac Zealot" is actually in his job description. (Sure, Apple rewards loyal sysadmins with nice freebies like flat panels and iPods, but daveschroeder's activities are way to blatent for that sort of under-the-table stuff.)

The UW Appropriate Use Policy specifically disallows the use of "University IT resources to represent the interests of any non-University group or organization" (Apple), so presumably this must be sanctioned by his higher-ups.

I thought about emailing the UW CIO to ask, but I've got better things to do.

Corsaire - Securing Mac OS X Tiger

NSA - Mac OS X Security Configuration Guide (not yet updated for Mac OS X 10.4)

Apple - Common Criteria configuration guide

And for the "average joe"?

- Keep your machine patched
- Don't randomly open ports for services you don't use
- Have a personal firewall/router
- Don't run software you don't trust

And this doesn't "prove" anything, except that the initial ZDnet article was totally vague and sensationalistic, making it seem to an average person reading that article that a Mac OS X box could just be "hacked" by being on the internet. That is wrong, and I'm showing that. Simple. It's all explained on http://test.doit.wisc.edu/

One of the user names is "das".... as in http://test.doit.wisc.edu/~das/

So run that against a dictionary and see if you can get in....

This is why I think it might be best for us to consider a purely helium-3 reactor
for fusion , though we will end up going to the moon for the fuel .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion

You will notice #6 the 3he + 3he reacion does not make nuetrons .

Thus the material damage issue is resolved, the fuel acquisition issue is not .

http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/Research/iec.html

Shows the reactor they are using to fuse D + 3HE at this time, and are
on target for the fusing of 3HE + 3HE in the not too distant future .

Their intended eventual goal is this 3HE clean reactor .

As they label it a 3rd generation fuel in this PDF .

http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/presentations/jfs_ieee090 4.pdf

So I'd say with proper funding it would be viable in a lot less than 44 years,
but takes a much different apporach .

Ex-MislTech

This is why I think it might be best for us to consider a purely helium-3 reactor
for fusion , though we will end up going to the moon for the fuel .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion

You will notice #6 the 3he + 3he reacion does not make nuetrons .

Thus the material damage issue is resolved, the fuel acquisition issue is not .

http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/Research/iec.html

Shows the reactor they are using to fuse D + 3HE at this time, and are
on target for the fusing of 3HE + 3HE in the not too distant future .

Their intended eventual goal is this 3HE clean reactor .

As they label it a 3rd generation fuel in this PDF .

http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/presentations/jfs_ieee090 4.pdf

So I'd say with proper funding it would be viable in a lot less than 44 years,
but takes a much different apporach .

Ex-MislTech

Response Headers - http://test.doit.wisc.edu/

Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 02:02:28 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.33 (Darwin)
Last-Modified: Mon, 06 Mar 2006 22:46:43 GMT
Etag: "3a397-1380-440cbbd3"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 4992
Content-Type: text/html

200 OK

Try this http://test.doit.wisc.edu/

http://test.doit.wisc.edu/

Why would he need to do that, since if you go to http://test.doit.wisc.edu/, the machine itself presents a page explaining the competition?

The only function that signing the invitation here on Slashdot would do, is positively link the owner of the Slashdot account daveschroeder to the machine...but really, what does that matter? The owner of the machine, even if it's not daveschroeder (and I'm not implying that this is the case, but speaking hypothetically -- especially since his name is at the bottom of the page) is inviting people to hack it. I think that pretty much makes it valid, signature or not.

Then he should put his gpg public key at
http://test.doit.wisc.edu/ and sign and publish on slashdot an invitation to hack this machine to prove that he's the owner of this machine.

k2r

Mac OS X Security Challenge

In response to the woefully misleading ZDnet article, Mac OS X hacked under 30 minutes, I have decided to launch a Mac OS X Security Challenge.

The ZDnet article, and almost all of the coverage of it, failed to mention a very critical point: anyone who wished it was given a local account on the machine (which could be accessed via ssh). Yes, there are local privilege escalation vulnerabilities; likely some that are "unpublished". But this machine was not hacked from the outside just by being on the Internet. It was hacked from within, by someone who was allowed to have a local account on the box. That is a huge distinction.

Almost all consumer Mac OS X machines will:

- Not give any external entities access
- Not even have any ports open

The challenge is as follows: simply alter the web page on this machine, test.doit.wisc.edu (128.104.16.150). The machine is a Mac Mini (PowerPC) running Mac OS X 10.4.5 with Security Update 2006-001, has two local accounts, and has ssh and http open - a lot more than most Mac OS X machines will ever have open. Email das@doit.wisc.edu if you feel you have met the reqiurements.

The following paper might be of interest, it does a nice dissection of the capabilities of a few popular botnet families:
An Inside Look at Botnets (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~pb/botnets_final.pdf)

This at least covers the first little bit of what you stated. I've gotten much comfortable using the PS format instead of PDF. At my university, they use PS more often than PDF.

Idiot. Ghostscript

If you look further into the study, you will notice that educated people tend to to manifest symptoms of Alzheimers later. So, if it progresses at a faster rate, is that really any worse? Additional consideration are studies that indicate people who keep their minds active slow down the progression of Alzheimers. A good article that discusses nuns who packed more ideas into the sentences of their early autobiographies were less likely to get Alzheimer's disease six decades later is at:

http://www.neuroanatomy.wisc.edu/selflearn/Nuns&al zheimers.htm [Neroanatomy)

I could never get the hang of Microsoft tools for developing ActiveX controls -- I have done toy examples in ATL and don't want to even think about MFC. My biggest gripe is that COM interface development doesn't round-trip -- once you develop an interface using the wizards (gosh I hate that word for those lame tools) you are pretty much stuck. The wizards create so much code in so many places of "you-can't-touch-that" code, that if you need to change an interface, you may as well crumple the sheet into a wad, toss into wastebasket, and start fresh.

Delphi has a pretty good Type Library editor for fine tuning COM and ActiveX interfaces -- of course interfaces are cast in stone when you let them out, but I like to make changes to interfaces when developing a new library. Type Library editor does a pretty good job of allowing one to add to or edit COM or ActiveX interfaces -- the updates to your code are a sometime thing, but there are not too many places you need to change and the compiler error when something doesn't change automatically also help.

There is one serious flaw in Delphi-developed ActiveX controls -- they won't serve up events with the Python ActiveX support, with Matlab 7, and with any other system that does multiple registrations of event listeners on a control. I have a really ugly patch for this at http://www.medsch.wisc.edu/~milenkvc/pdf/multieven t.htm.

There is one big shortcoming to Delphi -- collection classes. C++ has the STL, Java has its collection classes, Python is a set of collection objects masquerading as an object system. The built-in collection types in Delphi are sparse and are wired into major parts of the VCL (you can't do a console app or a straight Windows API app and use those collection types without folding in a lot of VCL code). Collection classes built-in to the language/library instead of programmers rolling their own linked lists, hash tables, etc. are the vogue, and Delphi hasn't kept up.

looks like http://daveandvalerie.com/ and http://das.doit.wisc.edu/val.jpg ...not bad!

Purchased on January 24, 1984, from, of all places, a Dillard's department store in Dallas, TX.

There it is, next to a NeXT Cube and a CHRP box, on the top shelf in my office:

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/CHRP_128K_Cube. jpg

Also present are a 20th Anniversary Mac and a PowerBook Duo, with dock:

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/20th_Duo.jpg

And over 22 years later, I'm still using Macs. Even found a wife who loves Macs too. ;-)

Purchased on January 24, 1984, from, of all places, a Dillard's department store in Dallas, TX.

There it is, next to a NeXT Cube and a CHRP box, on the top shelf in my office:

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/CHRP_128K_Cube. jpg

Also present are a 20th Anniversary Mac and a PowerBook Duo, with dock:

http://das.doit.wisc.edu/nostalgia/20th_Duo.jpg

And over 22 years later, I'm still using Macs. Even found a wife who loves Macs too. ;-)

I'm surprised, so far no BOFHs have posted yet. Here are some ways to save time that probably haven't been mentioned in the book:

1. Redirect the backups to /dev/null. This frees up lots of cumbersome time checking status and changing tapes, and backup time gets reduced to...oh, about 1.35 seconds.
2. Kill -9 is your friend. Generally, if it's not part of the OS, it should probably be killed occasionally, and at random times. After all, if the process isn't running, you don't have to answer questions about it, you just say it isn't running out there and that they should try starting it. And the users love it, really, because it makes them faster; nothing like racing against the imminent death of your process to hurry you up.
3. Forward your phone. That test line in the basement works well. The cafeteria will also appreciate UNIX-related calls; gives 'em something to do. And it gives you time to attack that pit of Ringwraiths in Angband Level 40 while they're sorting it out.
4. If another tech department calls, remember the magic words: "It must be something on your end". A little tinkering with their on-server diagnostic tools will be sure to keep them busy for hours sorting out the nonexistant problem.
5. Keep an Excuse Calendar for those troublesome times when a user actually gets through to you (which is about once a day, if you do it right).

For all the humorless pedants that are about to reply saying "This will get you fired"...what was your username again?

200TB of Xserve RAID storage (link includes pictures)

Text of the article:

The University of Wisconsin - Madison has deployed 35 5.6TB Xserve RAID storage arrays in a single research installation as part of an ongoing scientific computing initiative.

The Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin (GLOW), a partnership between several research departments at the University of Wisconsin, have installed almost 200TB, or 200,000GB, of Xserve RAID arrays.

As a comparison, 200TB of storage is enough to hold 2.75 years of high definition video, 25,000 full length DVD movies, 323,000 CDs, 20 printed collections of the Library of Congress, or over 1000 Wikipedias.

The GLOW storage installation is physically split between the departments of Computer Sciences and High Energy Physics. Each Xserve RAID is attached to a dedicated Linux node running Fedora Core via an Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X Card and is either directly accessed via various mechanisms, such as over the network via gigabit ethernet, or aggregated using tools such as dCache.

The storage is primarily used to act as a holding area for large amounts of data from experiments such as the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and ATLAS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

200TB of Xserve RAID storage (link includes pictures)

Text of the article:

The University of Wisconsin - Madison has deployed 35 5.6TB Xserve RAID storage arrays in a single research installation as part of an ongoing scientific computing initiative.

The Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin (GLOW), a partnership between several research departments at the University of Wisconsin, have installed almost 200TB, or 200,000GB, of Xserve RAID arrays.

As a comparison, 200TB of storage is enough to hold 2.75 years of high definition video, 25,000 full length DVD movies, 323,000 CDs, 20 printed collections of the Library of Congress, or over 1000 Wikipedias.

The GLOW storage installation is physically split between the departments of Computer Sciences and High Energy Physics. Each Xserve RAID is attached to a dedicated Linux node running Fedora Core via an Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X Card and is either directly accessed via various mechanisms, such as over the network via gigabit ethernet, or aggregated using tools such as dCache.

The storage is primarily used to act as a holding area for large amounts of data from experiments such as the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and ATLAS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

200TB of Xserve RAID storage (link includes pictures)

Text of the article:

The University of Wisconsin - Madison has deployed 35 5.6TB Xserve RAID storage arrays in a single research installation as part of an ongoing scientific computing initiative.

The Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin (GLOW), a partnership between several research departments at the University of Wisconsin, have installed almost 200TB, or 200,000GB, of Xserve RAID arrays.

As a comparison, 200TB of storage is enough to hold 2.75 years of high definition video, 25,000 full length DVD movies, 323,000 CDs, 20 printed collections of the Library of Congress, or over 1000 Wikipedias.

The GLOW storage installation is physically split between the departments of Computer Sciences and High Energy Physics. Each Xserve RAID is attached to a dedicated Linux node running Fedora Core via an Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X Card and is either directly accessed via various mechanisms, such as over the network via gigabit ethernet, or aggregated using tools such as dCache.

The storage is primarily used to act as a holding area for large amounts of data from experiments such as the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and ATLAS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

200TB of Xserve RAID storage (link includes pictures)

Text of the article:

The University of Wisconsin - Madison has deployed 35 5.6TB Xserve RAID storage arrays in a single research installation as part of an ongoing scientific computing initiative.

The Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin (GLOW), a partnership between several research departments at the University of Wisconsin, have installed almost 200TB, or 200,000GB, of Xserve RAID arrays.

As a comparison, 200TB of storage is enough to hold 2.75 years of high definition video, 25,000 full length DVD movies, 323,000 CDs, 20 printed collections of the Library of Congress, or over 1000 Wikipedias.

The GLOW storage installation is physically split between the departments of Computer Sciences and High Energy Physics. Each Xserve RAID is attached to a dedicated Linux node running Fedora Core via an Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X Card and is either directly accessed via various mechanisms, such as over the network via gigabit ethernet, or aggregated using tools such as dCache.

The storage is primarily used to act as a holding area for large amounts of data from experiments such as the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and ATLAS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

200TB of Xserve RAID storage (link includes pictures)

Text of the article:

The University of Wisconsin - Madison has deployed 35 5.6TB Xserve RAID storage arrays in a single research installation as part of an ongoing scientific computing initiative.

The Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin (GLOW), a partnership between several research departments at the University of Wisconsin, have installed almost 200TB, or 200,000GB, of Xserve RAID arrays.

As a comparison, 200TB of storage is enough to hold 2.75 years of high definition video, 25,000 full length DVD movies, 323,000 CDs, 20 printed collections of the Library of Congress, or over 1000 Wikipedias.

The GLOW storage installation is physically split between the departments of Computer Sciences and High Energy Physics. Each Xserve RAID is attached to a dedicated Linux node running Fedora Core via an Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X Card and is either directly accessed via various mechanisms, such as over the network via gigabit ethernet, or aggregated using tools such as dCache.

The storage is primarily used to act as a holding area for large amounts of data from experiments such as the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and ATLAS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

http://www.hep.wisc.edu/cms/trig/welcome-trigger.h tml

-theGreater.