This lab is used as an instructional resourse for Astr 310, Astr 311, Astr 101, Astr 102. Also commencing 2006-01, for Astr 405. Prior to 2006-01-01, this lab was populated with Windows NT 4.0 workstations which used the Physics clab domain: anyone with a "physics" account could login & use these systems in non-scheduled hours. Currently, these systems authenicate passwords with the local files only, so the lab is not now a general dept resource.

The lab computers and monitors were upgraded at the end of term 2005. (Varsity Computers provided the hardware). There are 18 systems with 80 Gbyte Hard drives plus 2 with 200 Gbyte hard drives. One of the latter, betus is a NFS file server & the other, "gambolous", is "headless" & is meant to be a warm spare for either the lab workstations or "betus". 19 Viewsonic LCD monitors.

All the systems are all "stand-alone" Linux systems running Fedora Core 4. One of the systems was configured with the needed software & a disk image of this was taken with g4u (ghost for unix -- a disk cloning program) which ftp's the image to "betus". The latest image is henn312.20060103.gz

There is a single account for use by the 100 & 300 level courses, "user". The Astr 405 students have individual accounts with their home directories set to /a405/username, which is NFS mounted from betus.

Here is the layout of the systems on the benches.