System Administration and Configuration FAQ

Here are some of the groups you can join. If your group or community is not listed here and you would like it to be, please let us know about it so we can add it.

• Frontline Notify (fln). FLN (Front Line Notify) is a vehicle for announcing changes to or problems with U-M's information technology (IT) environment to the people who are on the "front line," providing IT support and assistance to the members of the university community. It is a listserv list to which only members of the list can send messages; this was done as a defense against spam. To subscribe to FLN, send an e-mail message to fln-request@umich.edu with the word SUBSCRIBE in the subject line of your message. To unsubscribe from FLN, send an e-mail message to fln-request@umich.edu with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line of your message.

• Win2000. A forum for U-M Windows administrators. All aspects of Windows administratrion are discussed, but the primary focus is on the Active Directory and Windows domain environments. Access to this list is restricted to U-M personnel with uniqname and password. See Joining the Win2000 list for details.

• MacSIG. The Macintosh Special Interest Group (MacSIG) mail group is designed to help University of Michigan computer administrators and support personnel stay informed of the latest developments regarding Mac OS on campus. To join, leave, view archives or change your settings, see the MacSIG Listserv page.

• www-sig. A discussion forum for web server administrators and web application developers. This is a joinable group in the MCommunity Directory.

• unix.admins. A discussion forum for UNIX system administrators at U-M. This is a joinable group in the MCommunity Directory.

• umich-postmasters. The directory group umich-postmasters@umich.edu was created by the U-M Postmaster group for the purpose of notification about U-M e-mail issues or problems. It consists of groups of campus postmasters (the naming scheme being <department>-postmaster@umich.edu). It is intended to serve as a contacts list with names and numbers. To have your unit's group of postmasters added to the group, contact postmaster@umich.edu.

• afs-wg. This directory group is for those who are interested in AFS clients and/or servers. If you'd like to be added to the group, contact one of the group owners. (Search the directory for the afs-wg group to see a list of the group's owners.)

The NTP (Network Time Protocol) server address for the University of Michigan is

There are two LDAP server addresses for the University of Michigan:

• MCommunity Directory: ldap.umich.edu

• U-M Online Directory: ldap.itd.umich.edu

The MCommunity Directory essentially replaced the U-M Online Directory in July 2011. The U-M Online Directory remains available via LDAP only for now to allow U-M departments time to migrate their applications and such to the new directory. For reference, see LDAP Access to the MCommunity Directory (R1463).

The incoming mail server address for ITS IMAP e-mail is

For more detailed e-mail client configuration information for the ITS IMAP mail service, see Configuring Your E-Mail Program to Connect to the ITS E-Mail Service (S4321).

For configuration instructions for those who use the ITS Exchange Service, see the ITS Exchange Service website.

The outgoing mail server address for the University of Michigan is

Please note that this server requires authentication.

See Configuring Your E-Mail Program to Connect to the ITS E-Mail Service (S4321) for configuration instructions for various e-mail clients when using the ITS IMAP e-mail Service. See the ITS Exchange Service website for configuration instructions for e-mail clients connecting to the ITS Exchange Service.

The ITS Mail Relay Service is available for use by U-M machines and services that are not able to do authenticated SMTP.

ITS runs an IMSP (Internet Message Support Protocol) server that stores preferences for Mulberry users. We use the Cyrus version of IMSP, and it supports GSSAPI authentication. The server name is

The DNS (Domain Name Service) addresses for the University of Michigan are

For assistance with DNS, contact hostmaster@umich.edu.

Names that End in umich.edu

To register domain names that end in umich.edu, contact hostmaster@umich.edu. Please also see the U-M Standard Practice Guide Policy 601.15-1 - Domain Name System Standards (18 KB PDF file). For information about virtual web hosting, see the umweb services page.

Third-Party Top-Level Domains

Faculty and staff who need to register third-party top-level domain names for University of Michigan can contact domainreg@umich.edu. The ITS DNS Domain Name Registration group can register names in these domains and more: .org, .net, .com, .info, and .us. Note that there is a small per-year fee for such registration and that departmental approval is required. Payment must be made using a university account number.

Send your request to keytabs@umich.edu.

When you no longer need your keytab, please alert the keytabs group so the unneeded keytab can be expired.

Here are the names and port numbers to use for the U-M Kerberos servers provided and maintained by ITS:

Realm:
UMICH.EDU

Kerberos Servers:

• kerberos-1.umich.edu       Port: 88

• kerberos-2.umich.edu       Port: 88

• kerberos-3.umich.edu       Port: 88

Kerberos Admin Server:

• kerberos-admin.umich.edu       Port: 749

Here are the names and IP addresses to use for the U-M AFS database servers provided and maintained by ITS:

AFS Cell:
umich.edu

AFS Database Servers:

fear.ifs.umich.edu         141.211.1.32

surprise.ifs.umich.edu         141.211.1.33

ruthless.umich.edu         141.211.1.34

The actual formatted data that would reside in the CellServDB file:

AFSDB domain name service records are set up for the cell and can be used instead if you prefer.

For further assistance with configuration issues related to AFS/IFS, send e-mail to ifs-support@umich.edu.

The ITS Service Center can answer your questions about system administration and configuration.

These services are available to members of the University of Michigan community only.

DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) is a service that allows machines to get their IP addresses and other information assigned by the network themselves rather than having to have this done manually by a person. Basically, it allows a network administrator to attach a computer to a U-M network and then have that computer figure out its own configuration for connecting to the Internet automatically.

A new DHCP service is available for any school or department network on campus. This service is considered part of the campus computing infrastructure and is free of charge.