The general details of the Cavendish Managed Cluster Service (MCS) can be found on the Cavendish MCS page and the University MCS page.

In addition to the workstations in the Physics MCS, there is a server system accessible over the network from Colleges and other parts of the University, whose address is:

linux.phy.pwf.cam.ac.uk

This machine gives you the same Linux operating system as the MCS workstations, and access to the same programs, libraries and files, but is only accessible by using a secure network connection. If you want to access the server, you must be running one of the secure shell clients on your local machine.

The exact mechanism for making a secure connection to the server will depend on the operating system running on your local machine. Do not assume that this will be a trivial thing to do, and do not assume that I can support your remote computing activities. If you will be using this approach for your project, make sure you sort out the remote access well in advance.

If you have problems configuring your local system, your College Computer Officer may be able to help.

UNIX/LINUX access

This should be straightforward. Use the Secure Shell program from a terminal on your machine:

ssh -Y -l CRSID linux.phy.pwf.cam.ac.uk

MacOS X

Recent MacOS X distributions come with SSH, so open a terminal, and use SSH as in the UNIX instructions. To get X-windows access you may need to download XQuartz

Windows

You need to install and run two applications, but they are both free.

• An SSH client. I recommend PuTTY. Download and run this. You should set it up to access the MCS linux machine at linux.phy.pwf.cam.ac.uk In the options menu, go to the section on X11 and ensure you have X11 forwarding box ticked.
• An X server for Windows. Options include Xming and Cygwin (which also includes ssh).