This page tells you where your files are in Virtual DICE, and how to copy them to and from your DICE home directory, where they will be safely backed up.
Where are your files in Virtual DICE?
Your home directory in Virtual DICE is /home/guest. This is where your files will be saved to. It's a local directory in the virtual machine.
Note: your Virtual DICE VM is never backed up. To be safe, you should regularly copy the files you've made in Virtual DICE to your DICE home directory.
Where are your files in DICE?
Your DICE home directory is under /afs/inf.ed.ac.uk/user. For example, the DICE home directory for user s2123456 would be in /afs/inf.ed.ac.uk/user/s21/s2123456.
To check where yours is, login to a DICE computer then type pwd in a Terminal window:
pwd
Copying your files to DICE
This is how to copy files from Virtual DICE to your DICE home directory.
First, make sure that your computer currently has a working internet connection.
Second, start a Terminal window (click the Terminal icon on the top bar of your Virtual DICE session).
Then type this, replacing the word user with your own DICE username:
kinit user@INF.ED.AC.UK
Remember to replace the word user with your own DICE username.
Enter your DICE password when prompted.
You will then be able to copy files to DICE in either of two ways:
Copying files to DICE using AFS
To get access to AFS, type this in the same Terminal where you typed the kinit command (above):
aklog
That will give you access to AFS for a few hours.
Once you can access AFS from Virtual DICE, you can copy your files to DICE with (for example) the cp command.
For example, user s2123456 might copy a file called example_file to DICE with the command:
cp example_file /afs/inf.ed.ac.uk/user/s21/s2123456
Copying files to DICE using scp
Instead of AFS you could use scp.
After typing the kinit command (above), you can copy files using the scp command. To see its documentation, type:
man scp
For example, copy a file named fred to DICE by typing:
scp fred user@ssh.inf.ed.ac.uk:
Use your own filename in place of the example fred, and your own DICE username in place of user.
Copy a file from DICE like this:
scp user@ssh.inf.ed.ac.uk:fred .
Use your own filename in place of the example fred, and your own DICE username in place of user, and remember to type that dot . character.
Note: ssh fingerprints
The first time you use scp, you will be asked to approve a fingerprint. This is easy - just check that the fingerprint it shows you is mentioned in our list of official key fingerprints. We always publish our ssh server fingerprints there.