Problems found with IDs, Novell passwords

Numerous technical problems have come to light since the beginning of the school year regarding data on student ID cards and student login password settings.

The security ID cards for all students were printed with incorrect data, and cards currently issued to all students at Blair will be recalled and replaced on Monday and Tuesday during English classes. Sources cite the cause for the replacement as errors discovered in technical data on the cards.

"The emergency place for where the students should go was wrong, and the barcode on the IDs was wrong," said 11th grade Assistant Principal Linda Wanner, to whom the new replacement IDs were delivered during 6th period on Friday.

An e-mail sent out to Blair staff on Wednesday by 9th grade Assistant Principal Linda Wolf, who is in charge of ID coordination for the school, said that the next time students had English class they would turn in their current IDs and receive new ones.

"We will be able to get [the new IDs] to the English teachers in time to be distributed on Monday and Tuesday," said the e-mail, and also asked that English teachers "collect the current IDs that students are using before giving them" the new ones. The e-mail did not say that sophomores and upperclassmen would take new pictures for their IDs.

According to ESOL research teacher Joseph Bellino, who sent the data for the IDs to be printed, the incorrect data on the cards were the result of computer error. "When the data was sent, the computer was programmed to make the numbers sequential and was not programmed to skip numbers," he said.

Bellino explained that usually the homerooms were numbered in consecutive sequential order and the computer assigned emergency location numbers to each homeroom in that same order. "This year the home room was not sequential," he said. "It jumped from one grade to another and skipped some numbers."

This, Bellino claimed, was the reason why the computer incorrectly assigned emergency locations and even left some IDs blank. "The problem was discovered on the first day," Bellino claimed, although, he said, new problems arose after Blanton Studios, the company that takes Blair students' yearbook photos and makes Blair's ID cards, attempted to load new data onto the same files as the old data.

Tony White, Blanton Studios' correspondent for Blair High School, confirmed that the data being put into the computer was of a different kind from the original data.

"Some of the data that was going onto the cards was missorted," White said. "Computers were looking for numerical data and got textual data instead. Once the problem was identified we got the correct data on file. Then we ran a test on the new data, which was verified at the school, and then we made and sent the new IDs."

"We did everything we could do to identify and clarify the problem with the data in a timely manner," White contended, "because we realize how important these IDs are for the students at Blair."

The e-mail from Wolf stated that by Monday security will be prepared to give students who lost their IDs replacements for their new ones. "On Monday," it said, "security will be set up to produce new IDs for students who have already lost theirs and also for staff who have not yet gotten one."

This follows the computer network problems in which most students were unable to login to the new computer systems installed as part of the TechMod program, despite having set new passwords during their Connections or English class period.

Currently, teachers can access their students' passwords through FileMaker Pro and either accessing the class lists or looking up an individual student.

User Support Specialist Anne Wisniewski attributes the problem, first noticed during fifth period on Friday, Sept. 3, to a "glitch in Novell." Although Novell 6.0, the network software provided by MCPS, appeared to set the passwords correctly, many remained unchanged from the original MCPS preset passwords.

The computer network staff was unsure of the exact problem in Novell and decided instead to reset all account passwords to the default MCPS presets in all lowercase characters. Wisniewski urged students not to change their passwords, even if it appears as though they are able to. "You never know if [the password] changed or not," she explained.

In addition, Novell will allow for lengthier passwords than the standard eight character passwords allowed by Mac OSX. Therefore, any lengthy passwords set in Novell, assuming they work, will be truncated to only eight characters when trying to login to Novell from a Mac OSX machine.

This means that someone with the password "lockandkey" under Novell will only be able to access the fileserver from a Mac OSX using the password "lockandk," although it should also be noted that Mac OSX will not allow users to type more than eight characters in the password prompt box.