University Homepage School Homepage School Contacts School Search

Introduction to the System

Contents

1. Lecturer
2. Course description
3. Lecture slides and notes
4. Lab and Tutorial Exercises
5. Assessed assignments
6. General Information & Other Resources
7. Feedback

1. Lecturer

Roger Burroughes <roger@inf.ed.ac.uk>

2. Course description

2a. Aims and Objectives

To introduce students to the computing systems (DICE - the Distributed Informatics Computing Environment) used within the School of Informatics, and to ensure familiarity with the basic concepts and procedures.

2b. Syllabus

• Introduction to the Gnome desktop and basic Unix
• Web browsing, mail and news reading
• Basic editing with Emacs
• Additional Unix commands, and file permissions

2c. Context

This single-lecture course (with associated practicals) is intended to familiarise students with the Informatics computing systems, enabling them to work effectively with the available tools, retrieve and print documents, and to interact with other students and staff using the mechanisms provided (web, mail, news).

Only basic familiarity with computers is assumed (simple vocabulary and concepts, such as "mouse", "window", "web-browsing", etc).

3. Lecture materials

3a. Lecture slides

There are none - refer to lecture notes

3b. Lecture notes

• UG/PG Lecture: Systems Introduction - The Basics
  (Revised version for 2012/2013)
  Logging on, the Gnome desktop, simple commands, basic Emacs and editing text files

4. Lab and Tutorial Exercises

These are intended primarily for undergraduate lab sessions, but may be used by anyone who wishes to follow structured examples.

• Introductory Exercise: Logging On...
  (Revised version for 2012/2013)
  Logging in/out, changing passwd, printing, reading mail & Unix files, etc.

• Emacs Tutorial: Editing Text with Emacs
  (Revised version for 2011/2012)
  Invoking Emacs and simple file editing
  (this is a purely optional worksheet for those wishing for some extra introductory material on the Emacs text editor).

5. Assessed assignments

There are none

6. General Information & Other Resources

• How To Access DICE Machines Remotely

• File protection and access (Access Control List, ACLs) information can be found on the "AFS Top Ten Questions" page.

• Computing Services guide to Electronic Mail

• ... and Reading Email on the World Wide Web

• Login page for Student Mail Service (via Edinburgh's reduced sign-on service EASE)

• For SMS/Mail help, the Computing Services Support Team have:
  - a Help Desk Web Page, and
  - a mail address Student.Support@ed.ac.uk.
  (Note that "Telephone support is not available at this time".)

• Emacs Reference Card (in PDF format).

• The Informatics Web Support Form

• The Informatics Computing Support list of Frequently Asked Questions

• A list of Open-Access Computing Labs for student use (undergrad & postgrad) provided by Computing Services.

• The University Computing Regulations.

7. Feedback

If you have any comments about this course (on the lecture material itself, the practicals, the way the information was presented, the on-line resources, or the environment and tools) then please send us feedback (it really would be very helpful!).

All information that can help to improve the course, or help tailor it more specifically to student needs, will be appreciated. Don't worry about responding later in the year, responses at any time are appreciated and may be more useful once you have more experience of other course requirements and the DICE environment.