Author Archives: Chris Cooke

About Chris Cooke

Chris Cooke is a Computing Officer in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. He works in the Managed Platforms Unit and rides a very large bicycle.

Virtual DICE updated

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Chris Cooke

There’s a new version of Virtual DICE, our lightweight DICE-like virtual machine. Here’s how to install it on your own computer. We release a new version of Virtual DICE twice a year. This version has the hostname sensa. It runs … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Keep Safe

Posted on January 16, 2018 by Chris Cooke

Recently we’ve been patching the DICE and Windows managed desktop computers to mitigate the Meltdown and Spectre attacks. We’ll continue to apply patches and fixes as they become available. If you use any other sort of computer in Informatics, it’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Virtual DICE – new version

Posted on October 4, 2017 by Chris Cooke

We’re pleased to announce a new version of Virtual DICE for the 2017-18 session. Here’s how to download it. If you don’t know what Virtual DICE is, read on. The managed Linux machines here in the School of Informatics run … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 3 Comments

KeePassX password manager

Posted on March 16, 2017 by Chris Cooke

If you sometimes struggle to remember passwords, a password manager can help. It’s a utility which can store your usernames and passwords in a strongly encrypted personal file, and which can generate random passwords for you. DICE has keepassx2. It … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Virtual DICE

Posted on November 2, 2016 by Chris Cooke

A new version of Virtual DICE is now available for download. (Here’s how to download it.) If you don’t know what Virtual DICE is, read on. The managed Linux machines here in the School of Informatics run an environment which … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

SL6 DICE: sleep suspended

Posted on November 24, 2015 by Chris Cooke

Some staff and postgrads who haven’t yet had their DICE desktop upgraded to SL7 have been having trouble logging in at the start of the day, after waking their machine from sleep. We’ve been gathering evidence on this problem, but … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

New: SL7 Virtual DICE

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Chris Cooke

We’re delighted to announce a new release of Virtual DICE. Find out more in the Virtual DICE help pages. The download information is here. Virtual DICE is DICE Linux, but running in a virtual machine. It can run on any … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Upcoming hardware maintenance – down time for services

Posted on August 28, 2015 by Chris Cooke

Edit: this work has now been done. To enable hardware maintenance a number of services and websites will be unavailable for a short while – read on for details. The following services and sites will be unavailable between about 10am … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Virtual DICE now has Java

Posted on February 25, 2015 by Chris Cooke

New Virtual DICE VM images are available for download. A lot of software has been updated, but the big news is that the VMs now include Java. A careful review of the licence conditions suggested that we were after all … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Seven.

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Chris Cooke

You may remember that DICE Linux is not getting the major upgrade this summer (DICE teaching platform upgrade – postponed) that we optimistically forecast in February (Upgrade of DICE desktops to Scientific Linux 7). This post explains what’s been going … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment