Physics and Astronomy IT notes

This is a collection of notes about the IT systems in P&A.

School computing services §

Login : logging in to the school's machines; specifically:
- Notes on the undergraduate Linux machine, brutha, which also hosts a Jupyter server.
- There are (unfortuately) several distinct sets of login accounts within the school.
- Most users are (also) in the school single signon directory.
- There are a few notes on acceptable use of the group and school machines.
(Also re JupyterHub) It's possible to run out of disk quota on brutha.
Applications : preliminary notes about various third-party applications which are available within the school. In connection with such applications, or rather their licensing, you may be asked to supply your machine's ‘MAC address’.
A number of resources are accessed using the single signon directory; the most important of these, at present, is brutha. Most ‘school unix accounts’ give access to most of the school machines, but there are some per-research-group peculiarities.
Further notes on specific groups of machines: specifically teaching unix machines, and the machines in Linux lab 220a.

Networking and web services: §

Webpages : creating web pages on www.physics or www.astro.
WiFi access: Eduroam is available in a few areas within the building, and the Eduroam coverage should increase/improve in the next year or so.
VPN : some notes about the installation and configuration of VPN clients.
Windows Remote Desktop : some notes about the installation and configuration of the Microsoft RDP clients, including the use of the RDP Gateway server. Also some brief notes about configuring RDP access to Windows systems.
Central Windows Virtual Desktop service : Additional notes about IT Services Windows Virtual Desktop service, also known as the Glasgow Anywhere Desktop

Data, and data security §

The various categories of data storage on ‘school machines’.
General data security observations, including some remarks about passwords.
Multi-factor authentication notes.
Data protection legislation (which includes GDPR) is generally concerned with data-about-people. Our advice about this interacts with our recommendations on cloud services, and with our recommendations concerning full-disk encryption.
In contrast, ‘Research Data Management’ (RDM) is concerned with funder-mandated policies for handling and preserving research data. We have some outline advice locally.

Other §

(because every list needs a ‘misc’)

AV support: AV in different spaces in the Kelvin Building is handled by different people.
Printing: how to configure printing.
The school has a local X.509 certificate authority (you probably don't need to care about this).
We also have a collection of miscellaneous tips and HOWTOs, including answers to a few common problems.
news : news/blog

This is, in a sense, The Manual for P&A School IT (as opposed to research group IT); it sometimes errs on the side of comprehensiveness rather than apothegmatic brevity. Comments on these pages – particularly concerning for example missing or inaccurate information – are welcome: contact P&A IT.