Astrophysics Research CentreQueen's University Belfast • School of Mathematics & Physics |
Mac support infoARC is transitioning from giving users a Linux workstation and (usually) a Mac laptop to treating the laptops as the prime systems, with limited access to some shared workstations for those bits of software which won't run on a Mac. Large computational needs will be dealt with by rack mounted servers, accessed remotely, and we will maintain various servers for mail, web, and other services. AdministrationAs is currently the case with laptop systems users will be the main administrator of their systems, with advice and guidance from the ARC systems manager. Lists of recommended software are available, and we supply licenses for various essential packages. This places more responsibility on users, but reflects the reality of recent operations anyway. Backups will also be the responsibility of the user. Hard drives will be provided to use both with Apple's Time Machine software, and also to make an offsite clone of the laptop drive using SuperDuper. Access to linux systemsThere are likely to be some occasions when access to a Linux system is desirable, perhaps for some software which is not available for OS X. In such cases there are two options. The first is to run a Linux virtual machine under VirtualBox - pre-installed disk images will be available for this, and assistance can be provided to set them up and install particular packages. This can run under OS X with little performance impact, so is just like running Linux on your Mac, but much more convenient. The other option is to use the shared Linux workstations (tpol, corona), which are regular workstations set up in pretty much the traditional manner with standard packages like SciSoft, IRAF, IDL, and Starlink installed. These can be accessed via SSH (using SSH keypairs) for console applications or with X11 tunnelling (use ssh -Y you@tpol.pst.qub.ac.uk) to display graphical applications on the OS X X11 server. Alternatively a virtual console session can be created using VNC software, which allows you to run a complete KDE desktop, just as if you logged onto the machine directly. An advantage of this approach over plain X11 & SSH is that the VNC session can be left running even when you are not connected to it, so can be left overnight, for example, and then reconnected to the next day. The home areas on the shared workstations are also available from the Macs using MacFusion, which allows easy file sharing between users. We have a nominal space allocation of 50GB per user for these home spaces, which are backed up nightly. |
Quick Links
|