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{{Outdated}} [[Category:GroupsComputers]][[Category:WSO]]{{Group|| name = WSO| image = Poweredges.jpeg| type = Service| selective = No.| membership = 12| meeting-time = 9:00pm Tuesdays| meeting-place = TCL or TPL 2nd floor| office = Transient| contact-name = Steve Rubin| contact-unix = ssr2| wso-listserver = wso-staff| website = http://wso.williams.edu/| established = 1995}}
'''Williams Students Online''', or WSO, is a student computer group that offers several computer- and internet-related services to members of the [[College community]]. Current projects include a multi-featured [http://wso.williams.edu/ web site], [[Main Page|this Wiki]], [http://wso.williams.edu/mailman/listinfo listservers], Linux parties, and web hosting for students, student organizations, and alumni.
Many people often confuse WSO with the college -run [[Office of for Information Technology]].
===Web Hosting===
WSO lets students and alumni put their web pages on our servers. To apply for an account, email Scott Tamura Richard Oot (stamuraroot@wso). Please supply a williams.edu email address to send the password to. Organizations can also get web pages through WSO.
Our web hosting supports PHP and server-side includes by default. If you want more advanced features, such as CGI, MySQL, or PostgreSQL, contact a [[Root]]Richard Oot (root@wso).
See also: [[How to make a web page on WSO]]
===http://wso.williams.edu===
This is our fancy web site, featuring blogs, a calendar, a campus facebook, photos, floor plans, choose your own adventure, and surveys. We wrote it all ourself with the help of Ruby on Rails and, formerly, Apache PageKit. If you have ideas for it, please come to a meeting (above). Or scribble something on [[Stuff WSO Definitely Should Do]].
===Linux Parties===
A listserver is an email address that distributes messages to a bunch of people. WSO hosts listservers for student groups broadly defined, and other organizations around campus/Williamstown. You can apply for a listserver at http://wso.williams.edu/lists/create, and we'll try to get to the request in a few days. A complete list of WSO listservers is available from http://wso.williams.edu/mailman/listinfo.
WSO uses Mailman to power its listservers. [[Steven Rubin]] (srubin@wso) is our list admin. Contact him with list administration questions.
===campus@wsoSecure Instant Messaging===This is a listserver WSO users can communicate with basically all students subscribed. It has information about campus happenings. See each other using the [http://wso.williams.edu/mailman/listinfo/campus[WSO Secure iChat Service] for info about subscribing or unsubscribing, and see [http://wso.williams.edu/lists/campus] about sending messages.
===wso/wiki===
You're reading it now. We host, hack, and prune the wikiWillipedia.
==Servers==
The current roster:
'''UrsulaEmma''' is the latest addition to the cageNancy's replacement. Lean '''Ursula''', lean and sleek, she's is an Xserve with dual G5 processors and 2 gigs of RAM. Don't bump into her, though, unless you're a deaf person in need of a metronome. Ursula runs shell logins, email forwarding, and listserverslists.
[[Image:Ursula.jpeg]]
[[Image:Spiker.jpeg]]
Spiker is currently hosting POP and IMAP connectionstaking up space in the cage, having been Officially Unplugged after a long stint in Non-booting Purgatory. It's quieter in the cage now.
'''Olga and the Firewall''' are nearly identical Dell PowerEdge 300's running at 800 MHz. Olga has much more hard disk space (600 GB), though, because she's (was) our backup server. The Firewall is the only machine in the Cage without a scary aunt name. As you might guess, she acts as a firewall, connecting incoming traffic to the proper machine in the cluser, and protecting the machines from requests on ports that we don't run official services on. Here the are pictured together. The Firewall is on the left, identifiable by the red FreeBSD demon sticker:
[[Image:Poweredges.jpeg]]
[http://wso.williams.edu/about/servers Read about the retired aunts.]
==Choice excerpts from WSO files==
===Self-deprecation=History==
==HistorySee also== WSO was founded in January of 1995 by [[DeWitt Clinton]] and [[John Kim]], with help from [[Jon Zeppieri]], [[Jason Gladstone]], [[Jessica Mintz]], and others. Originally, the first server was an Apple Powermac 7100 running WebStar, on loan from the College Council. The original mandate from the CC was to create an online version of the daily advisor. John and DeWitt successfully ignored this mandate for serveral years. 1996 saw the beginning of the Internet boom, and the arrival of many new recruits to WSO. With the strong UNIX background of [[Jon Zeppieri]], [[Iein Valdez]], [[Geoff Hutchison]], and *[[DeWitt Clinton]] and a blazingly-fast Pentium I 100MHz machine, WSO was migrated to a FreeBSD-based server. Meanwhile, Stuff WSO attracted the artistic talents of [[Kate Tan]], [[Eric Smith]], and [[Kenric Taylor]]. Others lending their computer expertise and love for technology included [[Matt GarlandDefinitely Should Do]], [[Ken Fowler]], and [[Christine Soarse]]. Finally, [[Jonah Wittkamper]] served as general all-around cheerleader for WSO. The fall of 1996 saw the arrival of a new crop of freshman, including *[[Chuck Hagenbuch]] (would would go on to design [[Hordehttp://IMP]], the Williams College Webmail system), [[Dan Mason]] (HTML coder extrordinaire), [[Chris Richards]] (security and FSH enthusiast), [[David Ramos]] (designer and typographer), and [[Jason Healy]] (future all-campus listserver nazi)wso. By winter, the website had been overhauled (sporting a scan of Chuck's right hand), and new services were cropping up like crazy: the online Facebook, all-campus and dorm listservers, online DA and calendar announcements, and a small software archivewilliams. WSO continued to grow at a rapid pace, as new services were added and members signed on for web and e-mail accounts. [[Free University]] HTML courses were taught to students and members of the community by [[David Ramos]], [[Ben Isecke]], and [[Jacob Eisler]], and several clubs and organizations at the college created web pages edu/about themselves. As the use of technology grew, WSO acquired more and better equipment. Better funding was provided by the IT department of the college, and / About WSO soon got a new server. A new naming scheme was conceived for the servers: [[Scary Aunt Names]]. The new machine was christented "Ethel"-- documentation, and replaced the aging Pentium I ("Mabel"). In the years that followed, several new servers came on board: Gertrude, Spiker, Olga, Nancy (and others?). In the fall of 2002, abuse of the [[WSO Forums]] continued. A thread entitled "Gays Suck" prompted the [[Queer Student Union]] to print out the thread and post it in [[Baxter Hall]], inviting responses with paper and pen. Abuse escalated at the end of October, at which time there were several pornographic images, violent threats, and racist, sexisthelp, and homophobic posts to be found in the forums. On October 30policy, the forums were removedetc. But they were to return. *[[Shimon Rura]] led a site re-write in the spring and summer of 2003. One goal of the re-write was to authenticate users, so that their postings and doings could be identified. The site was written with [httphttps://www.pagekiteukhost.org Apache PageKit]. Shimon wrote the authentication system and the [[WSO Ride Board]], [[Josh Ain]] wrote a new menu feed, [[Tom White]] re-wrote the [[WSO Forums]], [[Evan Millercom web hosting]] re-wrote some screen scrapers, and [[Topher Cyll]] re-wrote the [[WSO Facebook]] and wrote [[WSO Blogs]] from a hole in Scotland. The site went live in July of 2003 and has grown in features and popularity since then. Toph, Tom, Brent, Jacob, and Steve graduated in the spring of 2004, and around that time [[Ben Cohen]] and [[Dan Weintraub]] were given [[root]]. During the summer, Evan and Dan converted [[WSO Plans]] from its standalone PHP/MySQL incarnation over to PageKit, so that students could access it from off-campus without [[setting up a proxy server]]. Also, they converted the Postgres database and the website over to UTF-8/Unicode. With the help of [[Masha Lifshin]] and [[Sam Dreeben]], the duo made much-envied but never-imitated Quicktime VRs for their [[Facebook pictures]]. In the fall of 2004, [[Kai Steverson]] rewrote [[Factrak]] for [[College Council]] to enhance the ability of the admin, make comments expire, and allow raters to "agree" with comments left about professors. Kai also wrote [[My Survey]] that semester. Evan re-wrote the [[WSO Facebook]] (again) to include faculty and more information fields. In February 2005, WSO was hacked by a group of Brazilians calling themselves Simiens Crew 2005Student Host your blog.