It’s now more than three years since we implemented IPv6 for the School’s managed Linux (DICE) desktops and servers, and in that time we have seen very few issues which were specifically related to IPv6.  We were not, unfortunately, able to roll it out to the “self-managed” subnets at that time, for a few reasons, […]

In order to minimise the risk to computing facilities during the strike action there will be a ‘change freeze’ for those computing systems managed by the School’s computing staff: the University’s Information Services are implementing a similar ‘change freeze’. This ‘change freeze’ is being extended to cover the online class exams on Thursday 5th, Friday […]

We’ve been using OpenAFS as the School’s network file system (i.e. the thing that lets you access your DICE home directory and research group space on pretty much any machine from pretty much anywhere in the world) for the best part of 15 years. That’s a awfully long time in the fast moving world of […]

We’ve updated Virtual DICE! Both “little” and “large” VMs have been updated. There are two changes compared to last month’s release: VirtualBox Guest Additions has been updated to a much newer version, so the Virtual DICE VM should now be better integrated with the rest of your computer environment. For example, the focus will be […]

We advise waiting a while before updating your Mac to the new macOS version, Catalina, for two reasons: firstly it has bugs, which Apple is steadily fixing; secondly it introduces a security system which is causing problems for software which hasn’t been adapted to deal with it. At the time of writing, VirtualBox is an […]

A new version of Virtual DICE is out – in fact, two new versions! They have the software for the 2019-20 session. Virtual DICE is the lightweight DICE-like virtual machine which you can install and run on your own computer. Here’s how to get it. We release a new version of Virtual DICE twice a […]

The new OpenVPN configuration files which we have been beta-testing for the last month or so have now gone live, and our computing.help pages have been updated. These configuration files are intended to have essentially the same effect as the previous ones.  The only difference is that some configuration statements have been updated in line […]

On Monday 19th August we will replace the SSH server named “hare” which hosts staff.ssh.inf.ed.ac.uk with a machine named “steen”. All that will happen is that at about 08:00 on Monday we will change the DNS alias to point to the new machine. This change can take some time to propagate so we will not […]

Several people have opened support tickets recently asking about warning messages being produced by OpenVPN when connecting to Informatics.  The reason for these warnings has been that the configuration syntax has gradually changed over time to accommodate new features, and the form we have in our configuration files is now deprecated and will be removed […]

The 6th minor update for ScientificLinux 7 (which is based on RHEL7) is now ready for deployment to the Informatics 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 soon […]