Author Archives: Alastair Scobie

In order to minimise the risk to computing facilities during the strike action there will be a ‘change freeze’ for those computing systems managed by the School’s computing staff: the University’s Information Services are implementing a similar ‘change freeze’. This … Continue reading →

In order to minimize the risk to computing facilities during the strike action there will be a ‘change freeze’ for those computing systems managed by the School’s computing staff. This will be effective from Friday 23rd February to Wednesday 21st … Continue reading →

Most of you should now be aware that the College recently introduced a policy requiring the encryption of mobile devices and desktops, particularly where these are likely to be used for handling sensitive data. Sensitive data can include :- email … Continue reading →

Porting DICE to a new version of the Redhat platform is a non trivial task. For a flavour of the work involved, you can read the final report for the base platform upgrade project. Note that this doesn’t include the … Continue reading →

As reported in previous posts (Upgrade of DICE desktops to SL7, Seven), we have been working hard on preparing DICE for upgrade to Scientific Linux 7. We are on track to begin upgrading DICE desktops in May, completing the teaching … Continue reading →

On the evening of 6th January, one of the disks in the IBM storage array used to provide storage for KVM guests at the Forum decided to go faulty. As with other storage arrays, this should not have been a … Continue reading →

I’m sorry to report that we shall not be upgrading the DICE teaching desktop platform this summer. This means that the DICE teaching platform will be SL6 based for another academic year. We had hoped to upgrade to a free … Continue reading →

The School produces an annual computing plan which :- states our current strategic objectives reports on goals set in the previous year’s plan lists goals for the current calendar year provides feedback and input to Information Services The plan is … Continue reading →

Every now and then, we test our preparedness for disasters by holding a mock disaster exercise. On the 13th January, the computing staff were told that over the preceding weekend, as a result of a gas explosion in the basement … Continue reading →

Redhat, who provide the Linux platform on which DICE is based, has recently released a beta version of their latest release – RHEL 7. We have started work on porting DICE to this platform, with a view to upgrading DICE … Continue reading →