About us
The Unix Section in Information Services provides a range of technical services to the University hosted on Unix and Linux systems. We also provide storage services hosted on our Storage Area Networks.
Our history
The Unix group was formed in 1980. At that time the computing environment in the University had been based around the Edinburgh Multi-Access System (EMAS) which was a highly innovative joint development between Computer Science under Professor Sydney Michaelson and the Edinburgh Regional Computing Centre (ERCC) under Dr G.E. 'Tommy' Thomas.
Other operating systems had made their presence felt in Edinburgh, namely various Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) operating systems that were common in academia at the time running on DEC's PDP range of machines, particularly the PDP-11.
The PDP-11s had their own proprietary operating systems, but Unix from AT&T's Bell Labs had been ported to this hardware. A community of the five University departments who ran Unix at the time began to develop and the University Unix Committee was formed.
One of the goals of this committee was to put pressure on ERCC to provide central support for this operating system.
Our role
Over the years our role within EUCS, as ERCC had become, expanded to encompass the management of more and more of the University's critical systems and services.
From Unix timeshare, to mail, to USENET news, Domain Name Service and web services, the Unix Section plays a role in the provision of many of the most utilised and sometimes overlooked services, which are 'just there'.
In 2006 we expanded our role to include support for research computing, taking on the management of the Edinburgh Compute and Data Facility services.
This facility comprised the Eddie compute cluster and also storage facilities and services on the research SAN.
This article was published on Jun 15, 2011