Public Workstation Facility (PWF)

The Public Workstation Facility (PWF) consists of several computer rooms equipped with Internet-connected personal computers that are centrally managed by the Computing Service. The Computer Laboratory provides its students with a PWF room in the Intel Laboratory on the second floor of the William Gates Building. Additional PWF computers are found in many colleges and libraries throughout Cambridge.

• Computing Service PWF Information Pages
• PWF Linux

Tips for using the Computer Laboratory PWF

Remote access

Each PWF workstation can be booted into either Windows or Linux. In addition, the Computer Laboratory sponsors a PWF remote server that is continuously running Linux and is dedicated for use via remote access by Computer Science students and members of the department:

  linux.pwf.cl.cam.ac.uk

This is in addition to the public service available at:

  linux.pwf.cam.ac.uk

Remote access is only possible via the SSH protocol, (e.g. ssh, slogin, xon [on cl.cam.ac.uk machines], or PuTTY under Windows), but not via telnet or rsh. See the CS FAQ #3 about requiring a password for the 'first' session.
There is a delay when connecting, which may be associated with the fact that there seems to be a very short session before the main session.

If you cannot login with your PWF user id and password then contact sys-admin@cl.cam.ac.uk. Any other problems should be treated as per PWF Linux, e.g. read the CS PWF Linux pages or contact the CS Help Desk (help-desk@ucs.cam.ac.uk, 34681). If you are contacting the Help Desk please make it clear that you are connecting to one of the remote PWF Linux servers and not using a PWF Linux workstation.

PWF news

To view the PWF news, use the command pwfnews.

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If you discover any other tips which might be useful to other users, please pass them on to pagemaster@cl.cam.ac.uk.