Computing Accounts
Please register for scientific computing accounts via the links below. You will first need to be signed in via your Warwick IT services account.
- SCRTP account. Required immediately! Use the Department of your primary supervisor, or their research group if it has a specific entry, as your affiliation.
- SCRTP HPC account: Use the Department of your primary supervisor as your affiliation. Not immediately required, only register when you need high performance computing access.
Laptops
Installation of required packages
Your HetSys-provided laptop has a managed Windows 10 operating system. You will be guided through the steps to install the Windows Subsytem for Linux (WSL) with the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS distribution. The script below has already been run for you to install a number of useful packages within WSL.
On the Windows side, Microsoft Office, WiFi access and printing should work out-of-the-box. We recommend installing Visual Studio Code and Slack via the download links below.
Docking Stations
The HetSys desks in the workspace in D215 have been equipped with docking stations that are compatible with the HetSys-provided laptops. Upon connecting the USB cable from the docking station to the laptop, you should find it automatically connects to ethernet and the wireless keyboard and mouse.
Backing up your laptop
Here are some notes from Chris Woodgate (Cohort 1) on backing up the Linux files on your laptop.
My policy is to keep everything important and work related in one folder off my home directory in my laptop. So I have a folder ~/PhD where I keep everything important on my laptop. Make this folder, and remember to keep everything you want to back up in there!
Then, to back up:
First, ssh into your SCRTP homespace:
ssh phrxyz@godzilla.csc.warwick.ac.uk
Replace `phrxyz` with your SCRTP username. You will be prompted for your SCRTP password. I am lazy so I have a list of remote machines I commonly use in a file called config in my ~/.ssh directory (Google it!). That way I can just run ssh godzilla rather than typing out the whole address. godzilla is just a login machine for the SCRTP system.
Then, navigate to your home directory:
cd
Create a folder to which you will back up. I call mine laptop_backup. Keep it in your SCRTP home directory if you want to keep your life simple!
mkdir ~/laptop_backup
Then disconnect from Godzilla:
exit
Now, in your home directory, you are finally ready to backup the contents of the PhD folder. Run the command:
rsync -rv --delete PhD/ phrxyz@godzilla.csc.warwick.ac.uk:~/laptop_backup
-r means recursive (it digs down into folders). -v means verbose (you can see the progress rsync is making). --delete makes rsync delete files which are present on the SCRTP folder which are not present in your work folder (use with care: don't get the two folders the wrong way around!). This command will typically be slow the first time you use it because it has to copy everything, but quicker later on as it only copies files which have changed.
There will be a way to set this to happen automatically but I haven't bothered with that yet; I just try to remember to do it when I finish my work for the day. The SCRTP system is backed up by people who know what they're doing, so once your files are on that system they should be very safe.
