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Files in Virtual DICE
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.
It is never backed up. To keep your files safe, you should regularly copy them to your DICE home directory.
Your files in 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 -f user@INF.ED.AC.UK
Enter your DICE password when prompted.
You will then be able to copy files to DICE in either of two ways:
Copying files using AFS
To use 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.
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
If AFS doesn't work for you, try scp.
Copying files using 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.
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 on our External login (ssh) servers page. We always publish our ssh server fingerprints there.