This is an early warning that we shall be upgrading DICE desktops to Scientific Linux 6 (SL6) this summer/autumn. SL6, which is based on Redhat’s Enterprise Linux 6, is very similar to Fedora 13 on which our current DICE desktop platform is based. However, support for Fedora 13 is about to be withdrawn – Fedora […]
Due to a couple of incidents at the weekend, where two of our web servers were made inaccessible due to either accidental or malicious activity, we are now denying access from IP addresses attempting lots of simultaneous web connections. Once a single IP attempts an additional connection above a certain threshold, those subsequent connections will […]
We often get asked to install Dropbox on DICE, it hasn’t happened before now, mostly for reasons that are probably too long and boring to go into on the systems blog (but if you’re interested). However if you have hand crafted an install on DICE or are using it you may want to be aware […]
The machine hosting the staff.ssh service (rydell) crashed on the evening of Tuesday 12th April. This was caused by a runaway process which consumed all available memory. The machine was rebooted at 6:30am on Wednesday 13th April and is now working normally. For those interested in the details, the Linux kernel Out-Of-Memory (OOM) killer did […]
The Informatics Computing Plan for 2011 is now available. This plan reviews progress with respect to the previous plan for 2010, enumerates our key aims for 2011 and makes a stab at identifying likely aims for 2012. Comments are very welcome.
Here’s some news: we’ve moved the DICE weekly release from Thursday to Wednesday afternoons. If you’re already tempted to move on, let me explain. Most of the configuration of a DICE machine – what software is installed, who can login, security arrangements, that sort of thing – is handled automatically by our LCFG configuration system. […]
As a security measure we are now blocking outbound ssh connections from the cvs and subversion server cvs/svn.inf.ed.ac.uk. There should be no need for users to be ssh’ing from cvs.inf and so no one should notice any change in behaviour. Those needing to ssh onward can use the hosts student.ssh.inf.ed.ac.uk or staff.ssh.inf.ed.ac.uk.
We’ve turned off some of the machines which normally form part of the DICE Beowulf and Hadoop clusters. At the moment the Forum’s server room is running with only one of its UPSes rather than the normal two, so we’ve cut our electricity consumption slightly until we get the second UPS back. One obvious target […]
This post is mainly just to announce that the student lab machines can now be woken from sleep in the way one might reasonably expect: with a key press or mouse click. Previously they could only be woken by pressing the machine’s power button. As the author of the LCFG sleep component which configures these […]
Development of new computing services by the computing staff is now scheduled in project periods (three per year). The next project period starts in January 2011 and the process of prioritising which projects will be resourced starts now (end Nov). This is a call for project proposals for the next project period. Please add any […]
