Frequently Asked Questions: About the SRCF
What is the SRCF?
The SRCF is the University of Cambridge's Student-Run Computing Facility. We provide web hosting, shell accounts and various other computing services to members of the University and groups such as University societies. We are not formally supported by the University Administration in any way; instead the service is maintained by a group of volunteers.
What sort of system do you run?
We use Ubuntu Linux 8.04 (hardy) as it is free (in all senses), stable and relatively easy to maintain. We are currently running kernel version 2.6.24-19-server . Our web server is Apache for much the same reasons.
The SRCF's primary server, pip, is a dual dual-core 2GHz Intel Xeon 5130 server with 12GB of RAM and four 500GB SATA disks.
Our second server, cyclone, is a dual hyperthreaded 2.8GHz Intel Xeon server (donated by Third Light Ltd. for which we are very grateful) with 2GB of RAM and two Maxtor Atlas 10K IV 73.4GB SCSI disks. This runs, amongst other things, the SRCF Desktop service.
Our third server, earthquake, is a dual hyperthreaded 2.66GHz Intel Xeon server (also donated by Third Light Ltd.) with 1GB of RAM and seven 146GB SCSI disks.
Back in the day our primary server, kern, was a dual Athlon 1.6GHz PC with 2GB of RAM and 400GB of disk. Before that we used to run on an ancient Intel Pentium running at 166MHz with 128MB of RAM. How times have changed :)
You guys are doing a great job. How can I help you out?
We always welcome donations — as we don't charge for our services, it's the only way we can afford to buy new hardware to keep up with the demand. If you want to make a donation, please visit this page and it'll tell you what to do.
If you want to donate some time and experience to help us out, then why not join our support team? This is an email-based help list for problems not requiring administrative access to the SRCF server. If you have experience of using a website or other services on the SRCF, and want to help out, then send an email to sysadmins@srcf.ucam.org to be added to the list. Many thanks in advance to all who volunteer!
How many users do you have?
There are currently 2342 users (members with active shell accounts).
How many members do you have?
There are currently 4501 members of the society (membership is for life).
How many societies do you host?
We currently host 1115 society accounts, of which 243 are no longer maintained.