BU OIT

BU Linux, Departmental UNIX Services and Resources

To reduce tedious systems administration of Linux and UNIX machines, OIT Systems Support manages part of the computing infrastructure. We've created easy-to-maintain, custom BU versions of Linux and Solaris. You will find department and office machines on both the Charles River and Medical Campuses installed with a custom BU operating system base, to which a number of local programs have been added.

There are several advantages to the BU customized installations. On BU Linux and BU Solaris, security patches can be applied automatically. OIT staff review patches and push them out in a timely manner. Also, all BU custom installations are tied to the campus-wide directory and Kerberos services, so that you can use the same password and have the same user ID number as on the general academic computing cluster (ACS) and on other machines around the University.

Also, the BU Linux and UNIX machines on campus can access a centrally maintained application server to run several of our licensed programs, such as Maple, MATLAB, Mathematica, and S-Plus, eliminating the need to use local disk space and worry about program upgrades.

Because of vendor support and staff size, OIT Systems limits the number of versions of BU Linux and Solaris that are actively maintained. More information about this and all other departmental UNIX services is on the Web site www.bu.edu/systems-support.