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:

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.

bash

The shell is the program which provides the command line interface to Linux. The shell used in DICE is called bash. Other shells (e.g. zsh) are not supported. To get a shell, open a terminal window or login using ssh.

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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