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The "self-managed server room" (B.Z14) in the Forum basement provides a "fairly secure" room to house machines which would not be suitable for an office environment. It's "fairly secure" in the sense that access is normally granted freely to those who have machines in the room but not to anyone else.
Access is by swipe&PIN; please request access by sending in a support request giving your swipe card number ("100100..."). Please send this as a separate ticket so that the necessary actions can take place in parallel with any other work you might request. If you are a student, please be sure to include the name of your supervisor. Note that, in common with other swipe locks, an alarm will go off if the door is held open for more than 15 seconds; if you think you'll need to open the door for longer, please contact support beforehand.
Once your card is enabled and your machine installed (see below), the expectation is that you should be able to do all necessary management tasks yourself. However, please feel free to send in a support request if you'd like assistance with something.
There is a mailing list for folk who have machines in the self-managed server room. We suggest that you subscribe to this list here. The list is expected to be low-volume, and will carry occasional announcements and followup-discussion.
There are occasions when we do have to turn off machines at short notice. We'll try to contact you first, which would be easier if you attach labels with contact details to your machines. However we can't guarantee that timescales will permit, and we do suggest, therefore, that you configure your machines to shut down when their front-panel power buttons are pressed. If all else fails, we may just have to pull the plug.
Stephen says: "I had a quick look at how to configure machines to gracefully shutdown when the power button is pressed. On SL5 and F12 (and from that I assume all Redhat and Fedora distros) this is controlled through the /etc/acpi/events/power.conf config file. On Debian (and I assume Ubuntu) it is controlled through the configuration in the /etc/acpi/events/powerbtn file. Both already feature sane handling of a power button shutdown. On Debian I had to install the acpi-support package, on Redhat/Fedora the files are in the acpid package."
There is limited shelving provided for existing non-rack-mounted machines, and we may not have space for any new non-rack-mounted machines. We strongly recommend that any new machines you buy are rack-mounted. If space for rack-mounted machines becomes an issue in future, we may have to remove this shelving and any machines still using it at that time.
Once you have your new (rack-mounted) machine, please send in a support request to ask for assistance with installation, power, network and console provision. Note that some configuration of the room's switches will be necessary before new network connections will work. If we find that you have installed your machine incorrectly or inappropriately we may require you to move it.
If you aren't already accredited to the room's swipe lock, please also send your card number ("100100...") so that we can add it to the list.
We can provide serial console access to the machines in the room. Instructions for setting up and using the serial console server can be found here. Consult your system's documentation to find out how to configure your machine to use a serial console.
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