Local System Information
This page offers pointers to detail of how to use lab systems, how to get help, and so on.
Contents |
Getting help and introductory documents
- Getting help: The main contact address will be sys-admin@cl.cam.ac.uk. However, that is not the only possibility. It's usually best to contact via a rôle address rather than guessing who is best-placed to answer your question: a list of rôle addresses may suggest where to look.
- The systems managers use a job-ticketing system to keep track of reported problems; it's useful to know how it behaves.
- An introduction to computing facilities is an on-line copy of the booklet new users are given.
- The Frequently Asked Questions list.
- The local system administration pages A to Z list.
Administrative matters
- Web server information including how to export personal web pages files to the WWW and restrict access to them using .htaccess files and Raven passwords.
- Information for, and about, new arrivals at the Computer Lab. A selection of information, both technical and general, for new arrivals at the Computer Laboratory. This information is intended for everyone, visitors and longer-term residents. There is also information for the host of a visitor.
- Information for people leaving the Computer Lab, or moving into the Writing up/Hot Desk area.
Workstation provision
- Equipment allocation, replacement and support
- Choice of Operating System on Lab managed machines
- For users of Unix systems. Redhat (Fedora and CentOS) and Ubuntu Linux. General information, software installation, configuration, applications.
- For users of Microsoft Windows systems. General information, access, applications.
- For users of private Macintosh OS/X systems Local configuration and integration information.
Systems software
- Applications software, including MATLAB and Unix tools.
- Printing from Unix or Windows systems.
- Mail in the Computer Laboratory gives broad coverage of the facilities available.
Communications and the network
- The Computer Lab network. An overview of the lab networks, both physical and wireless.
- The means of access to Computer Lab Systems, and other security related issues.
- Using the secure shell ssh to connect to the Laboratory.
- The one-time password system, that allows safe connection to lab unix systems in an insecure environment.
Facilities
- Information about the Time Sharing Systems.
- Information about the File server and other file spaces.
- Disc usage and quota report (requires Raven).
- Users can boot a machine if it's off.
- For users of the Publicly-accessible scanners.
- For users of the Public CD/DVD writing machines.
- Specialist services such as SPSS, Adobe CS5 running under Windows.
- Public Windows Terminal Server machines.
- Video Conferencing Facilities
- Condor is a specialized batch system for managing compute-intensive jobs. We have a local Condor Pool running on the processor bank machines.
If you spot things missing from this page and its sub-pages, please notify sys-admin@cl.cam.ac.uk.
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Sys-admin news8 Feb 2012
The regular remote backups that were suspended on 30th January have now resumed. In particular home directories are now up to date on the remote server and should continue to be backed up hourly. (more...)
8 Feb 2012
There has recently been a change to the IPv6 address allocations used in the University, though at present this affects relatively few people. The reason for the change is that the original allocation to Cambridge was not thought to be large enough; a larger allocation was subsequently obtained but this entails phasing out the old addresses. (more...)
1 Feb 2012
Since the morning of Monday 30th January, we have had a problem with the offsite backup system; a number of filesystems, including the one containing user home directories, are not being copied to the offsite server. (more...)
28 Nov 2011
There was a major problem with the CL internal network during the afternoon of Friday 25th November, believed to have been caused by a faulty switch. There were a number of consequential side effects on other systems, which we now believe have been dealt with. (more...)
25 Oct 2011
On departmental Linux systems, many Unix groups have been added locally, to facilitate groups of users jointly editing files. Use the shell command “id” to see which groups you are a member of. To avoid malfunctions, we now need to clean up older groups with gid value below 500. This requires your help. (more...)