University IT
IT Services hosts a huge range of systems, many of which are well kept secrets! We’ll have a look at some of them in this article.
Snowy
Every CS student has an account on the departmental server, snowy. Read the snowy tutorial.
IT Services maintain a page with other remote access information, including the addresses of lab machines that you can remote into.
Frosty
If you’re doing Design Verification (COMS31700), you’ll probably need to use Frosty for remote access to Cadence tools. This machine supports NoMachine, which makes remoting a lot more pleasant.
VPN
The university VPN allows you to access university resources (e.g. journals, firewalled internal systems) from anywhere.
Remote Desktop
You can also remote into a standard university desktop from anywhere. Some commercial software that you cannot install on personal machines is available on remote desktop. IT Services record the status of each piece of software in Topdesk.
Network Filestore - MyFiles
Every student has a ‘MyFiles’ filestore, which you can mount on your own device while connected through the university network (i.e. eduroam, VPN, Remote Desktop).
Mediasite
Rewatching (ahem) lectures for revision? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could speed them up? Well, you can - just not with Flash enabled. Append &usehtml5=true to the URL of a Mediasite video and voila: you can speed up playback.
If you’re tired of having to do this manually, then use the HTML5 mediasite userscript to automatically append it (using an extension like TamperMonkey)
Free Software
While studying, you have access to various university-licensed software. This includes:
- Microsoft Office
- SPSS
- Maple
- Matlab
Laptop Clinic
If you need help with a computer, phone or software, you can get help from the Student Laptop and Mobile Clinic, which runs in Senate House at 2pm to 5pm, Monday to Friday.
The clinic is staffed largely by current computer science students. Towards the end of the academic year, IT Services advertises for new students to staff the clinic - so keep an eye out!
Wikis
The university hosts an Atlassian Confluence install, which you can use to create your own wikis.
Online Tools
Password tools - check that your password is working correctly. Sometimes UoB and Google passwords become desynced - you can fix it here.
Feedback
Any issues with this tutorial? Submit an issue or a pull request and we'll get it sorted out right away.
