Chris McCafferty
About Me
I am a Systems Administrator in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study. As such, I am mainly interested in keeping all the software we use current and patched, the user environment secure, and the level of support and service we give to users as high as possible. I mainly use AutoIT for scripting software updates, modifications, and installations. Also, PHP, VBScript and the excellent Sysinternals suite deserve mention.
I am also the author and maintainer of LaTeXSnap, a Windows application that renders equations.
Articles
- Creating an iCalendar Feed from a Generic Source with PHP and Smarty
- Use AutoIT as a Windows Login Script
- Configuring Dell Mass Storage Drivers for Sysprep on Windows XP
- Run a WMI VBScript Fast Against All Computers in an OU
Projects
VMware
In 2009, I led our virtual infrastructure rollout on VMware. The initial setup includes three ESX servers in a cluster configuration that provides high-availability and resource management. As of this writing, we have 12 virtual servers running in this environment.
LaTeXSnap
LaTeXSnap is a free, open-source, Windows application that renders LaTeX equations as PNG images so they are ready to use in Windows applications, such as Microsoft PowerPoint. You can find it here. I wrote it because we could not find a piece of software that is simple and does the job, at any price.
iCalendar feeds from Legacy Scheduler
At the request of a scientist here, I designed and coded iCalendar feeds for our events calendars. This was done with PHP and Smarty with data from an existing MySQL database. The queries involved are complex, so to speed up the system generally and to reduce unnecessary work for the database server, Smarty caching is used extensively.
Splunk
We needed a reliable way to be alerted to certain log events. In particular, we don't want to be inundated with repeated alerts, but rather notified if any given things are logged in a given time period. Splunk does just that, perfectly, so I set it up in 2008 and configured Saved Searches on the types of errors that concern us.
Interim Storage Samba/NFS
In 2008, we needed a lot of inexpensive storage, fast, to support HPC operations. I configured a Dell PowerVault NF600 with Redhat Linux, sharing several terabytes of disk seamlessly over Samba and NFS. Access to Samba functioned with single-sign-on for our Windows users via Samba integration with Active Directory.
Inventory System on CakePHP
In 2007, it was time to move away from the old MS Access database which stored our equipment inventory. Our inventory needs are particular, so I knew we would need a custom system. I did a little research and selected CakePHP application framework. I developed in my spare time for a month or two. Today, we now have nice online inventory system with no known bugs.
RT
In order to serve our user community better, in 2007 I implemented RT: Request Tracker on the SNS network. Now, user requests are responded to more quickly and efficiently than ever before. As an added benefit, there is now a searchable, linkable index of prior requests so we don't have to repeat ourselves!
Nagios
System availability monitoring is a priority for me. In 2005, I implemented Nagios on the SNS network. I configured it to monitor the computer room UPS, every server, every printer, and every workstation. This implementation produced immediate and long-lasting positive effects in our operations.
Contact
Chris
McCafferty
School of Natural Sciences
Institute for Advanced Study
1 Einstein Drive
Princeton, NJ 08540
c...@ias.edu
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.