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How to wake a second screen

If your DICE desktop has two screens you may find that one of them has gone to sleep and seems difficult to wake. It can usually be woken in these ways:

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Setting a default application on DICE

On DICE some types of files - for instance PDF documents - have a default application. This is the application that will be used when you click on the icon for a file or open a file that your web browser cannot view directly.

If you don't like the default, you can change it. This page explains how to do that.

Step 1: Find out the MIME type

Each file has a "MIME type". To find out what it is, start a terminal window and type mimetype and the name of the file. For example:

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LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Sometimes a software guide will tell you to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to a certain value.

This is occasionally required by certain pieces of software, for example to load a library which cannot be provided automatically on DICE. However setting this globally - for example using bash's export command - is likely to break things in unpredictable ways.

LD_LIBRARY_PATH is a bash environment variable.

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bash

The shell used in DICE is bash. The shell is the program which provides the command line interface to Linux. To get a shell, open a terminal window or login using ssh.

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SMSR: monitoring the server room UPS

Power to the Informatics Forum self-managed server rooms IF-B.Z14 and IF-B.01 is supplied by the same 200kVA Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) system as supplies the main Forum server server room IF-B.02.

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How to logout of DICE

MATE Desktop

This is how to log out of DICE if you are using the MATE desktop environment. (If you have not chosen a different window manager then your window manager will be MATE.)

First, click the "cog wheel" logo at the top-right of the screen. A menu will appear:

Select the Log Out.. item. A new window will now appear in the centre of the screen which will ask you to confirm that you wish to logout:

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Power Outages

This page describes how the systems at the various Informatics sites will react to power outages.

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Network Connectivity

This page summarises the network connectivity used between Informatics sites, to the rest of the University, and to the rest of the Internet.

Informatics operates a unified network across four sites: the Forum, Bayes Building, Appleton Tower and JCMB.

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Enabling encryption on computers

All University-owned desktops and laptops - including self-managed - should be encrypted. (See College device encryption policy.)

University-managed computers

The disks on Windows Managed Desktops are encrypted.

For DICE desktops see Encrypting Groups of Files on DICE. Some DICE disk partitions are encrypted, and the computing staff are working on encryption solutions for the others.

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Virtual Private Networks

What is a VPN?

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. It's a private connection between your computer - wherever it is - and a computer somewhere else. It's private because it's strongly encrypted, so it can't be read en route.

The University of Edinburgh has a VPN. When you use it, your computer has a private connection to the University's network. To other computers, your computer appears to be on that network.
You should use the University VPN whenever you are working while away from the University, for security.

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