ISG managed laptops user documentation

Purpose

The ISG managed laptops are meant to:

• serve as a mobile frontend to interact with the D-ITET IT infrastructure
• provide the freedom of personally managing installed software

They are NOT meant to:

• serve as a repository for critical data
• provide computational resources to process your data

General setup

A local user by the same name as your ETH account has been created for you on your laptop. This is the only user account allowed to access your laptop besides the administrative account isgee. A one-time password is handed to you with the laptop, you will be asked to change it at first login.

The harddisk is encrypted and automatically unlocked at boot. Wait out any requests for an unlock password, they will disappear after a few seconds.

Save your data under /home/$USER and /scratch/$USER.
Keep in mind, there is no automatic backup preconfigured. Critical data is meant to be stored within the D-ITET infrastructure, i.e. your D-ITET home directory and project accounts.

At first login an interactive script will run to preconfigure access to ETH-WLAN, ETH-VPN, polybox and itet-stor. ⚠ Make sure your laptop has a working internet connection through the USB-C dock! Your credentials - except for VPN - will be stored in your keyring. Bookmarks to itet-stor and polybox will be added to the file manager.

Specific software is preinstalled, you are allowed to manage further software yourself.

Laptop support policy

Upon receiving your laptop you hand over the signed support policy which establishes your responsibility for maintaining your laptop's software and the extent of ISG.EE support for you with your laptop.

You are added to a mailing list where we inform you when you have to apply critical security updates or make your laptop available for maintenance.

Send any support requests regarding your laptop to support@ee.ethz.ch.

Password policy

• Do not reuse your ETH password for your local user!
• Don't use parts of your name in your password
• Use a minimum password length of 12 characters
• Use at least 3 out of the 4 character groups [UPPERCASE, lowercase, numbers, symbols]

Obtain licenses for commercial software

The preinstalled software packages Matlab and Mathematica use an ETH sponsored site license with no cost to you or your institute/group. To record demand and gauge future license requirements each software user is supposed to license the software.

Please log in to the ETH IT shop and obtain these licenses now!

Further information

The above should get you started. For further information see the articles:

• Software installation: All about preinstalled software and how to install what you need

• Optional setup: Everything else not mentioned here