On Monday 3rd April we will replace the SSH server named schiff which hosts ssh.inf.ed.ac.uk and student.ssh.inf.ed.ac.uk with a machine named bruegel. All that will happen is that at about 08:00 on Monday we will change the DNS aliases to point to the new machine. This change can take some time to propagate so we […]

On Thursday 26th January we plan to upgrade the NX remote desktop service. All that will happen is that at about 09:00 we will change the DNS aliases (nx.inf and staff.nx.inf) to point to the new machines. This change can take some time to propagate so we will not immediately remove access to the old […]

On 20th October 2016 it was announced that a serious security hole had been discovered in the Linux kernel which was already being actively exploited. This vulnerability has been dubbed "Dirty COW" due to the exploit using a race condition in the implementation of the copy-on-write mechanism. Although described as a local exploit the bug […]

We need to upgrade the general access SSH server (schiff) to SL7. We plan to start this work at 9am on Tuesday 16th August. We expect the service to be unavailable for approximately 2 hours, we will send out another message when the work has been completed. During the period of downtime an alternative SSH […]

We need to upgrade the staff SSH server (brendel) to SL7. We plan to do this at 9am on Tuesday 9th August. We expect the service to be unavailable for most of that morning, we will send out another message when the work has been completed. During the period of downtime the alternative SSH server […]

We have recently added support for the Redhat Software Collections (2.1) on SL7 DICE machines. Redhat describes these as: For certain applications, more recent versions of some software components are often needed in order to use their latest new features. Red Hat Software Collections is a Red Hat offering that provides a set of dynamic […]

The 2nd minor update to ScientificLinux 7 (which is based on RHEL7) is now ready for deployment to the Informatics SL7 DICE office machines. At this point the update will NOT be deployed in the student labs, they will remain on SL7.1 until after exams have finished at the end of May. A minor update […]

If you have a DICE SL7 desktop you will be prompted to reboot over the next few days. This is required to make an important configuration change which can only be safely applied at boot time. We understand that reboots can be very inconvenient so you can be assured that we will only ever schedule […]

The 6th minor update to ScientificLinux 6 (which is based on RHEL6) is now ready for deployment to the Informatics SL6 DICE office and student lab machines. A minor update like this provides us with the opportunity to update important software and fix any bugs which are not security issues (we apply security updates as […]

In order to maintain the integrity of our systems we need to reboot all DICE desktops over the next few days. We understand that reboots can be very inconvenient so you can be assured that we will only ever schedule reboots which we consider to be essential. A delayed reboot has been scheduled for all […]