July 2009 - Physics-Departmental-Computing

ICT Issues
by Rochford, Steve 17 Jul '09

17 Jul '09

First, a brief introduction; I know I've met some of the people here but for those who've not met me I'm the IT Services site manager and it's my job to try and make sure that IT provides a useful service in Blackett and Huxley. I'm based in Huxley 616 if you ever want to visit me. ICT provides a centrally hosted Wiki service. Details are on the College web site - http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/ict/services/databasewebsiteandmediaservices/web… I'm not sure what more info we can give about eduroam; it's aimed at academic visitors to Imperial and was set up quite some time ago. It's one of the SSIDs you will see if you try to use a wireless network here. You can get to (brief!) information about it by starting at the ICT home page (http://www.imperial.ac.uk/ict) then clicking "Wireless Access" and "What is on offer at Imperial" If you want to use eduroam when you go to another institution then you have to register first (http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/ict/services/securitynetworkdatacentreandtelepho…) In maths, the departmental rep asked for a "bulk" registration of staff and we can do the same for physics staff if that is useful. I know that there were many issues when we moved to Exchange 2007, particularly for non-Windows clients but I understood that most (if not all of these) had been fixed. If there are still problems with reliable connections to the servers then do please let me know and I can try and get the problems fixed. I don't know if this is related, but there were some hardware problems with mail servers which didn't help the reliability earlier this year. As far as I know, these are now fixed. One of the useful ICT service desk pages is http://www.imperial.ac.uk/ict/servicedesk/status/ and this will show "live" updates of any serious issues affecting ICT services. The problem of people emailing huge attachments is not new and it is ultimately a training issue rather than a technological problem. ICT does provide secure group space which could be used to store these attachments and a link sent with the email. I can certainly raise the issue of how we should train staff to make better use of central storage. Another means of communication which some people find useful is Sharepoint (https://sharepoint.ic.ac.uk/; log in if prompted with IC\<username> and your standard college password) Any member of staff can create their own site and choose to share it with any group of users and we can also set up shared document libraries etc in there for particular groups of users. Steve

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Meeting with ICT
by David Colling 15 Jul '09

15 Jul '09

Dear All, I have been invited to a meeting between ICT and the Head of Department. The agenda is pretty broad and is: > > Topic - Review of ICT service provision to Dept > > Good things about ICT Services > > Problems or issues with ICT Services > > Requirements (future or existing) which need to be me and which are not > being met. > > I think that the people on this list are correct people to have input into this meeting. So I would be very interested in any services that you feel are provided well, or, those tat are not provided well enough (if at all). Clearly thi applies to both teaching and research. Talking to a couple of people informally the things that came up were: - a desire to have centralised wikis - communications - especially concerning items like the status of the plan for the rewiring. I hope that we can improve this via this list. - the extent of the wireless coverage. Clearly, it would be very useful to have a list going into this meeting. It would be very easy for people to only send issues or future wishes, but please do send mails outlining what you think ICT do well. I would also encourage people to send to this list rather than directly to me so that others can react if they strongly agree/disagree. All the best, david

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Problems posting to this list are now resolved
by David Colling 02 Jul '09

02 Jul '09

Dear All, the problems that were reported posting to this list would have effected anybody using the college exchange server. It just so happens that as HEP has its own mail server (which both Ray and I used) and my other test mail came from my gmail account. Anyway, it should all be fixed now. All the best, david

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Software to be installed on teaching machines
by David Colling 01 Jul '09

01 Jul '09

Dear All, Below is an email that Dave Clements tried to forward to this list but to no avail as the message disappears into the ether. In fact I would be grateful if somebody other than me could send another test mail to the list so that we can see if the problem is a general one or if the list has just taken a personal dislike to Dave. All the best, david > From: "Rochford, Steve" <s.rochford(a)imperial.ac.uk> > Date: 18 June 2009 12:21:00 BST > To: "Clements, David L" <d.clements(a)imperial.ac.uk> > Subject: Software to install on teaching cluster machines in Physics > > We're starting to get ready the software build for cluster machines for the next academic year; I hope you're the right person to talk to about this or can point me to the right person. > > There is a standard set of software which goes on every machine (things such as Microsoft Office, virus scanner, Adobe Reader etc) and then software which is specific to the subject area. > > Last year the extra software for Physics was as below. Does this make sense for next year; are there any other packages which you would want to add or anything you think is unlikely to be needed and can be removed. > > If this doesn't make sense or it's easier to talk about this then please call me on 46843 or I can come and meet you at a convenient time. > > Steve > > Current physics cluster software > > Visual Studio 2008 and MSDN 2008 Library > GNU Scientific Libraries > NAGLib > Matlab (with Physics toolboxes) > Bakoma TeX > Exceed > Maple 12 (Maple 13 should be available if you want it) > Endnote X2 > Reference Manager 11 > GIMP (Image manipulation package) >

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A number of things ...
by David Colling 01 Jul '09

01 Jul '09

Dear Physics Computing people, There are a few of things that have come up that I thought best putting into a mail. These are: - a couple of people wrote me suggesting that we have a Departmental Computing Meeting before everybody disappears for the summer. However, these were largely along the lines of getting to meet people rather than specific agenda items. Please could people send any agenda items that they would have for such a meeting as I am a little reluctant to hold a meeting simply to meet people - this we could do over a glass of Pimms on level 8 balcony (not a bad idea anyway). - I do not know what involvement any other groups have with grid Computing (in HEP we are highly involved) but the EU is going to fund a collection of bodies to support different user communities on the Grid. I am currently sitting in a meeting in Orsay where these different support communities (called SSCs) are being discussed. Several of these involve communities that I think would be interesting to people in the Physics Department. The agenda and the presentations can be found at http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=60563 If anybody has any interest either in being part of these support structures or perhaps being a customer of them (e.g. by porting the applications to the Grid) then I suggest that you contact the people giving the presentations. It may well be worth ccing me on the email as I know the grid community well and may be able to help. Also if people want to know more about Grid computing I would be happy to either talk to people individually or even give a brief presentation on it. - Apparently, we shared 5 floating licenses for the Intel compiler which expired in May before this list was set up. Has this effected your group? If so did you contribute to the license renewal? Are there any other packages for which people believe it would be useful buy floating licences. - I had one report of somebody being unable to post to this list. If you have such a problem please mail me directly so that I can trace the problem (but please make the subject line very obvious so that I don't miss it). All the best, david

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