Research Computing
Windows and Macintosh Desktop
Systems
The research computing environment provided at Wesleyan is
diverse. Academic Affairs provides all faculty with desktop
computers (Macintosh or PC) for performing everyday desktop
computing tasks (e.g., email, word-processing, student
advising). However, for most faculty, these computers are quite
sufficient for research purposes. In addition, faculty with research labs
are free to obtain (with their own funding) computers for their labs and for their graduate and
undergraduate lab employees to use. We suggest that you
consult with your
Academic Computing Manager
or Desktop Support
Specialist before purchasing equipment so as to ensure maximum
compatibility with the services and support provided by
Information Technology Services. Wesleyan provides
network support and general troubleshooting for lab computers,
although they are given lower priority in the request queue than
faculty and staff desktop/office computers. Problems relating to the interfacing of lab
computers with specialized lab instrumentation are the
responsibility of the researcher and the vendor of the equipment. Campus Linux Compute Servers and Accounts
Information Technology Services maintains 2 linux compute
servers, rintintin and chloe, for high-end research computing. These
systems replace the old woodstock Solaris server. Both new
systems respond, in random order, to the hostname
woodstock.wesleyan.edu.
For faculty and staff, accounts to these server are provided upon request.
Students accounts set up for them when they enter Wesleyan.
These servers run a number of computational applications such as MatLab, Mathematica, SPSS, SAS, IDL and ENVI. Most of these applications use
graphic interfaces via X-windows sessions. The campus
academic computing labs have cygwin-x available on the
Windows systems for display remote clients via SSH. These
compute servers to not support XDMCP sessions. Macintosh
OS X supports X11 natively. Scratch space
is available for transferring large files. Files are automatically
deleted from scratch after 3 days of inactivity. More
information about these systems and how to access them is available at
http://condor.wesleyan.edu/woodstock.html
Fileshare
Many researchers have a need to share large files with collaborators
off-campus. To support this, ITS provides accounts on a system called
fileshare.wesleyan.edu. These 10 Gig accounts are available to any faculty
member upon request. Non-Wesleyan collaborators are provided with guest accounts
under the Wesleyan faculty's name. Quotas larger than 10 Gig must be purchased.
The fileshare service includes backup and all other maintenance services.
To use this service, faculty should contact their
Academic Computing
Manager.
Obtaining New Software
Research software, unless it is directly used in teaching,
should be purchased with faculty or departmental funds. The
commercial software available on the Linux compute servers,
described above, are widely used on campus, and are supported
financially by ITS. See your
Academic
Computing Manager to request software related to instruction. Obtaining Datasets
Wesleyan subscribes to a number of Social Sciences data
services. Read more about data here.
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