The Unix Systems Support Group offers a variety of services for IU faculty, staff, and students. These services are directed toward those who own or administer Unix workstations.

System administration support and tools

• Advanced technical consulting for owners and administrators of single and multiple Unix workstations at no cost.
• On-site consulting (or chargeback work) at your campus office or residence hall at the UITS hourly consulting rate (subject to the RAC charge back policies). To arrange on-site consulting, contact the USSG.
• Access to a variety of licensed and unlicensed software. Much of this is available at the USSG FTP archive.
• The USSG maintains the software support contracts for Unix workstations. Hardware contracts can be purchased through these programs, contact us for more information or review the description of the vendor contract offerings by vendor.
• Security support and consulting. Network based security scanning and other security programs are available to authenticated IU personnel from the UITS Information Technology Security Office (ITSO) at no charge. ITSO also has a security advisory distribution service.
• The USSG provides information and consulting on Open Source Software. The Open Source Mirror at http://ftp.ussg.iu.edu mirrors a number of Open Source Software Projects.
• Beta-level testing of new products. USSG tests pre-release versions of software to provide first hand evaluations of emerging technologies to the IU community.

Network administration and support services

• Integrating Unix workstations with the campus network.
• Installation and configuration of network services.
• Troubleshooting network problems.
• Configure Internet services, e-mail services, and other network functions.

Educational resources and projects

• The Unix User Group (UUG) meets periodically. Each meeting includes a presentation on a topic of interest to Unix users.
• USSG offers an Educational Certification course for Unix system administrators.
• In addition, the IT Training and Education Program (formerly UITS Education program) offers a number of useful Unix related classes.
• USSG has developed a Unix System Administration Independent Learning (USAIL) project. USAIL is a learning tool that integrates Web-based information, books, tutorials, and video into a comprehensive course for Unix users of all levels.

Informational resources

• The USSG mirrors the Linux Documentation Project (LDP) at http://www.ussg.iu.edu/linux/LDP, a broad source of general documentation and howtos related to Linux.
• USSG offers mailing lists to discuss items of interest for the Unix Users Group and the Unix platforms. Lists are used to keep subscribers informed of software releases and other developments.
• Platform specific information is maintained for supported Unix platforms, included is pricing and performance information, information about specific maintenance and software support programs and links to other sites of interest.
• Access to full online documentation is provided to Indiana University:
  • Sun Answerbook
  • IBM AIXInfo

Software and hardware acquisition consulting

• USSG has access to pricing and information for Unix workstations, and acts as vendor liaison and purchasing recommender for the IU community. We can provide you with approximate costs for putting together a hardware or software (not covered under our site-wide licenses, which is available to you without charge) solution. In most cases, you then contact the vendor directly to obtain an accurate price quote.
• We negotitate current software support contracts for each Unix platform. Vendor software support allows us access to the new version of the operating system and in some cases unbundled vendor software. Also, if we are unable to resolve a vendor-specific software issue locally, we have access to vendor software support engineers.