How to open a terminal window
Linux has a very powerful command line environment. To use the command line, you need to open a terminal window - sometimes called a shell window. This page shows how to open a terminal window.
ALSA Mixer
AlsaMixer is one of the least deceptive of the volume control apps available on DICE. However operating it is still not entirely straightforward.
Launch AlsaMixer in a terminal using $ alsamixer. This starts the mixer with your default ALSA sound card. You'll see something like the following:
Screensaver and display preferences
This page explains how to alter screensaver and display preferences in order to save energy or increase security.
Using ssh on iOS or iPadOS
iOS is the operating system for Apple iPhones, and iPadOS is the version for iPads.
With an ssh app, you can log in to an Informatics computer from these devices.
The App Store offers a choice of ssh apps. You should choose a highly rated ssh app such as Shelly, Termius or WebSSH.
VPN
Before you can use ssh, your device will need to be using a VPN - either the University VPN or the School's OpenVPN. The VPN page can help with that.
Self-managed machines in Appleton Tower
To get a self-managed computer on to the wired network in Appleton Tower, please fill in a Support Request. In your message, please include the computer's MAC address, its serial number and its host name. The Computing Support team will tell you when you can connect it to a network port.
A 'self-managed' computer is one that is not managed by the School - so that's anything other than DICE Linux, Windows Managed Desktop, or Managed Mac.
Using the wired network in Appleton Tower
In addition to our overall computing Policies and guidelines:
Informatics Forum network ports
Within the Informatics Forum, connections to the wired network are made via network ports which are arranged in sets of six in the various floorboxes situated in both offices and public space. Each user's desk is generally fed from a single floorbox.
To avoid confusion, we configure all floorboxes which feed desks to the following standard pattern with 'port 1' being the lowest-numbered in the box, and 'port 6' the highest:
Informatics Forum subnets and VLANs
The School of Informatics has some 40 or so different IP subnets in use.
Each of these subnets serves a particular purpose but, for users in the Informatics Forum, the five most important subnets are:
Installing PuTTY
PuTTY is both an ssh client and a terminal emulator. You can use it to remotely login to Informatics machines using ssh. See also: using ssh from Windows.
You can log in using your DICE password ("keyboard-interactive"), or use Kerberos if you have that installed and configured (for example, if you've configured your machine for AFS).
Instructions on configuring PuTTY for Kerberos are below.
Connecting from outside the University - an overview
An important aim of the Informatics computing infrastructure is that you should be able to easily and securely use your data, and make use of computing resources, from outside of the School's internal network. To do this, you need to have certain software packages installed on your home computer. Although there are pages on this site telling you how to install this software, they don't necessarily explain what each piece of software does, why you might need them, and how they interact. This page tries to fill that gap.