Some of you make use of our DynDNS infrastructure that automatically assigns hostnames to computers with a dynamic IP address. This feature enables you to connect to your computer using its sent hostname, followed by the dhcp.phys.ethz.ch domain (eg example.dhcp.phys.ethz.ch) instead of the ever-changing dynamic IP address.

Thursday morning

Jan 30 2020 between 9:00 and 11:00

we will be migrating our DynDNS service to the servers of central Informatikdienste. As a consequence the resolution of example.dhcp.phys.ethz.ch to its dynamic IP address may not always work during that time. The global phys.ethz.ch and ethz.ch domains are not affected. Therefore the bulk of our users will not even notice the migration.

Update: Informatikdienste have postponed the migration from 23rd to 30th January.

UPDATE 23:00 - maintenance finished, queued mails have been delivered.

As a probable aftermath of last week's power outage we are experiencing some issues with the file system on our home directory server which can only be repaired offline. We therefore schedule a maintenance window

Today, Monday Feb 2, 2015, starting at 22:00

The duration of the downtime cannot be estimated but should not exceed two hours. During this time you will not be able to access your home folder or receive new D-PHYS email. All incoming mail will be queued for later processing.

Thank you for your understanding.

Update Thursday 07:15 - all systems back to normal. whew.

Update Wednesday 11:00 - first rack back to normal. The picture shows how it looked during the remodeling.

Update Wednesday 07:00 - the most difficult part is over and the first rack is being retrofitted as we speak

All of D-PHYS's important servers (and services: mail, homes, SAN, web) reside in two water-cooled racks in HIT D 13. On Wednesday, August 20 those racks will have to be retrofitted by our colleagues of Informatikdienste since certain spare parts are no longer available. We have an elaborate plan how to externally power the servers while the racks are offline that schedules a 5-minute downtime that most of you won't even notice. However, there is a small chance that this external power supply does not work as expected which would lead to a longer interruption. Unfortunately we have no influence on the date, time and procedure of this modification and can only try our best to minimize potential consequences. So if something should go wrong next Wednesday, please don't panic, we'll be hard at work to fix it ASAP.
Thank you for your cooperation.

Tomorrow,

Tuesday, January 29, starting at 07:15 am

there will be a short downtime of our LDAP server since we have to perform some maintenance work. You will not be able to log in or use our file services during this downtime. The expected duration is < 15 min however, so most of you won't even notice.

The new print server solved many of the problems that were troubling you (and us) in the past. Unfortunately, it seems it also introduced a couple of new ones. In order for us to be able to address them, it is very important that we know about them in the first place. We hadn't seen those issues in our months-long tests, otherwise we wouldn't have deployed the new server. So, pretty please with sugar on top, call us immediately if your print job does not come out as expected. A problem description like "it hasn't been working for weeks" does not help anyone. Please call us, we're working hard to find and eliminate those issues. Thank you.

We know printing is not always fun, and we hear your complaints. During the past few months we have been busy setting up a new print server that should solve most of today's problems (hopefully). We will deploy the new system on

Monday, April 4, at 07:30

The only change for you should be faster and more reliable printing. If you do experience any problems when printing, please let us know immediately so we can fix it.

Update 08:45 DNS confusion about old/new print server, we'll have to wait for the DNS cache to flush

Update April 5, 16:10 migration is done

We are happy to announce that our ticket system now allows you to track the status of your tickets at ISG D-PHYS.

We will continue to refrain from sending out ticket confirmation emails, but you can now log in to https://rt.phys.ethz.ch/rt in order to check progress on your requests.

If you are using your regular D-PHYS email address when emailing us, just type in your D-PHYS login to gain access. In case you opened your tickets from an external email account, use the Forgot Your Password feature on the login page to request a password for this email address.

Please let us know if you encounter any problems when using this service.

On Monday, August 2nd, starting at 07:00, our terminal server / computation nodes plempy, plompy and plumpy will be moved into the water-cooled racks in the HIT server room. This will cause a downtime of said machines of about 30 min. If your thin client connects to plompy or if you're performing calculations on plempy or plumpy, please make sure your data has been saved by Monday morning. After the move, the trio will enjoy the amenities of our most advanced server room that only another thunderstorm could disrupt.

Update Mon Aug 2 08:40 All servers have reached their final destination.

Today around 0715 we experienced a series of power outages in our water-cooled racks in HIT, leading to a shutdown of our most crucial servers. It took us almost two hours to get the systems up and running again, during which time most of our services were not available.

We apologize for any inconvenience.