IT Overview

IT facilities for PPE staff and students are provided and supported by three separate groups: local PPE IT staff, School of Physics and Astronomy IT staff, and University of Glasgow IT Services staff. Contact details for each group, along with an overview of the services they provide, can be found on the IT management page.

Information about a lot of the IT facilities to which you will have access is provided in this wiki, and it is well worth spending some time reading through it. This page summarises some of the key information, and should help you get started when you first join the group.

Additional information on IT matters can be found in the following locations:

• School of Physics and Astronomy IT Support
• Glasgow University IT Services

Accounts

As a member of the PPE group, you will have several accounts:

Account	Use	Managed By
PPE	PPE Linux desktops and services	PPE IT Support
GUPHYSICS	PPE and school Windows desktops; GUPHYSICS wireless network	School IT (but PPE IT Support can reset passwords)
GUID	E-Mail; university services	IT Services

Your PPE and GUPHYSICS accounts will be created for you by PPE and school IT support when you arrive. Your GUID (Glasgow Unique IDentifier) is managed centrally by IT Services.

• Members of staff can set up their GUID by following the registration instructions on the IT Services GUID page.
• For students, your GUID is your matriculation number followed by the first letter of your surname, and will be set up as part of the registration process with the university. Further information may be found on the IT Services GUID page.

E-Mail

Staff and student e-mail accounts are managed centrally by IT services, and should be created for you automatically when you join the university. Further information, including instructions on how to configure various e-mail clients, can be found on the e-mail page of this wiki, and also at the following locations:

• E-Mail information for staff
• E-Mail information for students

The university also provides web access for its e-mail accounts:

• Staff mail web access
• Student mail web access

Software

PPE machines are generally provided with commonly-used software pre-installed. Information about other available software packages which may be of interest is provided in the software section.

The university's licence agreement with Microsoft allows staff and students to install a copy of the latest version of the Microsoft Office suite on up to five personal computers, and up to five mobile devices. This scheme is supported by IT Services, and further information may be found in the Office 365 section of their website.

Printing

Members of the PPE group have access to two sets of printers: managed ("pull") printers, which are supported and maintained by IT Services, and a few local printers supported and maintained by PPE IT support. There is also an A0 colour plotter intended for producing posters.

More details, including installation instructions for various operating systems, can be found in the printing section.

Storage

The PPE file servers store peoples home directories (/home/xxx) and data directories (/data/xxx) for the different experiments. These are available (automatically) via nfs on the linux desktops and via samba in the windows desktops. See FileStorage.

Files in users home directories are backed up overnight and keep for upto six months. See Backups. The /data areas are not backed up, with the exception of /data/ppemgr01 and /data/www01 which are backed up.

Passwords

PPE linux passwords can be changed on any PPE linux desktop with the passwd command.