OIT to retire PINE & the Oak Menu Shell
Jan 03, 2008
By Sean O'Malley
To improve system security and prepare for future improvements to the university's email system, OIT plans to retire Oak's Menu Shell and the PINE email client on March 10, 2008.
The retirement began in late December when OIT notified current Menu Shell users about the coming change. Then on January 1, 2008, OIT disabled SSH access for Oak users who had not logged into the Menu Shell or PINE in the past two years. Current Menu Shell users can continue to use the interface through March 10, 2008.
The two month grace period is designed to give people time to make an orderly transition away from the system. "Everything available in the Menu Shell now is available via other and better methods," notes OIT system administrator Don Hone. For example, Oak account password changes and email forwarding are available through the OIT Web site, file storage on Oak can be accessed via SFTP or Network Storage, and the university offers several options for checking Oak email, including Webmail and Mulberry.
The Menu Shell has a long history at OHIO. Written in 1993 by OIT system administrator Scott Adkins while he was still a Computer Science student, the interface pre-dates Oak by nearly a year. When Oak first came online, the Menu Shell and PINE were the only ways to access the system. "The Menu Shell did it's job, but it's time to move on," says Adkins, whose duties with OIT now include managing the university's spam filters.
Windows users who prefer PINE's text-only interface can install a stand-alone program called PC-Pine that is very similar to the version of PINE offered through Oak's Menu Shell. A Mac version of Pine also exists; however, it has no developer support, and the installation process requires advanced knowledge of both OS X and Unix. As a result, OIT does not recommend trying to use Pine on a Mac.
For questions or comments, please contact the OIT Service Desk at 740-593-1222.
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