The following form is primary intended for new postdoctoral researchers and new doctoral students of D-MATH, that wish a laptop instead of a desktop (see also Standard IT equipment).
Note: the laptops are ordered via the Projekt Neptun and the next sales window is from 1 to 29 September 2025. However, for practical reasons, we only will accept orders until 25 September 2025.
Order request form
The operating system can be chosen between Fedora Linux (with a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 2-in-1) or macOS (with a MacBook Pro). The standard keyboard is a US keyboard (possibly US International), and requests for a CH keyboard will be fulfilled where possible.
The softphone can be used in the home office, at the shared desk or for mobile working. A softphone is software that is installed on a PC, laptop or mobile device to operate telephony as a software solution. This means that conventional number telephony can also be used regardless of location, for example from the home office or at shared desks, and is no longer tied to a desk phone.
Softphone telephony can be used by all ETH Zurich employees who have been assigned a landline number. Softphone telephony is available free of charge.
On all macOS clients managed by the ISG D-MATH, the softphone app UCDesktopApp should already be installed. If this is not the case, you can install it using the ETH Self Service app: search there for “OpenScape“.
Note: once started and signed in, the app will then start automatically every time you login to your computer.
Linux Users
For Linux there is not a real softphone client and the recommend way to use it, is via a browser like Google Chrome. Therefore, on all Linux clients managed by the ISG D-MATH, we installed an app called ETHZsoftphone which starts Google Chrome and open the URL of softphone.
To start automatically the softphone app upon login (which is recommended), start the Tweaks tool, select Startup Applications in the left side bar and add the “ETHZsoftphone” app (see also here).
Headset
You can pick up a USB-A or USB-C headset from our office.
Generic ETH instructions
Here you find also for instructions to use softphone on an Android smartphone or an iPhone:
You can access your files that you have on the server via Samba (recommended for administration staff and also for all macOS users) or via SSH (ssh, sftp, rsync, unison, …)
Access via Samba (VPN needed!)
Connect to:
smb://shares.math.ethz.ch (macOS & Linux)
\\shares.math.ethz.ch (Windows)
and login with your eth-username and your e-mail password.
MacOS
Select the Finder, in the menu Go, click on Connect to server…, enter the address smb://shares.math.ethz.ch, click on Connect and authenticate. Afterwards you will be prompted to select a “volume” like “your-eth-username”, “www” or “share-xyz”.
Linux
Open Files (Nautilus), click on Other Locations, enter the address
smb://shares.math.ethz.ch/NAME_OF_THE_SHARE
click on Connect and authenticate.
Windows
Click on the Start button, enter run, enter the address \\shares.math.ethz.ch and authenticate. Afterwards you will be prompted to select a share like “your-eth-username”, “www” or “share-xyz”.
Access via SSH
The official SSH/SFTP server of the D-MATH is sftpmath.math.ethz.ch but with the “home office” setup (in particular using the “math-guest” or the “math-clients” VPN) you can access almost all linux computers of the department, in particular all Central Clients (ex. ion-*, ada-*).
Please be careful when using external cloud services (such as Overleaf, Dropbox, DeepL, …) and try to make regular backups on your local device (laptop) or, even better, on the departmental file server.
The usage of some external cloud services has been approved (at least partially) by the CISO and the central IT services.
All the accounts of D-MATH members are going to be migrated to the Microsoft cloud in the week of October 21 – 25, 2024.
This means that all the mail accounts will have to be reconfigured, i.e. the old mail account has to be deleted from your mail application and then the new account has to be added. You’ll find links on how to do that below.
By following the few steps below, you can send a request for a room reservation. Your request will then be reviewed and approved or rejected in a reasonable time frame.
The following setup can be used to setup a moodle development environment, with rootless podman:
# D-MATH link podman-compose
ln -s /usr/bin/podman-compose ~/bin/docker-compose
# D-MATH clone moodle-docker repo
git clone https://github.com/moodlehq/moodle-docker.git
cd moodle-docker
# D-MATH set variablesexport MOODLE_DOCKER_DB_PORT=15432
export MOODLE_DOCKER_APP_VERSION=18080
export MOODLE_DOCKER_SELENIUM_VNC_PORT=15900
export MOODLE_DOCKER_WEB_PORT=18000
# Change ./moodle to your /path/to/moodle if you already have it checked outexport MOODLE_DOCKER_WWWROOT=./moodle
# D-MATH add custom configuration
cat <<EOF > local.yml
services:
webserver:
volumes:
- "${MOODLE_DOCKER_WWWROOT}/../moodledata:/var/www/moodledata"
db:
environment:
PGDATA: /var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata
volumes:
- "${MOODLE_DOCKER_WWWROOT}/../database:/var/lib/postgresql/data"
EOF
# Choose a db server (Currently supported: pgsql, mariadb, mysql, mssql, oracle)export MOODLE_DOCKER_DB=pgsql
# D-MATH creating files with group access for moodle codeumask 007
# Get Moodle code, you could select another version branch (skip this if you already got the code)
git clone -b MOODLE_404_STABLE git://git.moodle.org/moodle.git $MOODLE_DOCKER_WWWROOT# D-MATH add folder for moodle data
mkdir moodledata
mkdir database
# D-MATH setgid for automatic setting group permission
chmod 2770 moodle
chmod 2770 moodledata
chmod 2770 database
# Ensure customized config.php for the Docker containers is in place
cp config.docker-template.php $MOODLE_DOCKER_WWWROOT/config.php
# D-MATH set the permission to 33 inside the container for moodle code
podman unshare chown 33 -R moodle
podman unshare chown 33 -R moodledata
podman unshare chown 999 -R database
# Start up containers, choose docker.io to download the images
bin/moodle-docker-compose up -d# Shut down and destroy containers#bin/moodle-docker-compose down
Above we set the webserver port to 18000 so this means you now need connect to http://localhost:18000 in your browser to see the application.
Volume Permissions
If you have added new files from outside the container, you need to re-apply the correct permissions. Let’s say you have added files inside the moodle folder, then you need to run the following command:
# set the permission to 33
podman unshare chown 33 -R moodle
Visual Studio Code
To prevent the above Volume Permission problem, you can connect your locally installed Visual Studio Code to the running container:
If you want to develop something for kubernetes, you may need to run minikube. This can be done on our linux installations, the following commands should start a working “kubernetes cluster” on your installation:
mkdir ~/bin/
wget https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64 -O ~/bin/minikube
chmod 755 ~/bin/minikube
cd ~/bin/
./minikube config set rootless true
./minikube config set driver podman
./minikube config set container-runtime containerd
./minikube start --cni calico
After minikube has started you can check all running pods with the following:
minikube kubectl -- get pods -A
You can also install kubectl and helm in your ~/bin if you like:
Please read the following two articles if you plan to install ETH licensed software on a private device and/or if you plan to use ETH licensed software for private purposes (like writing a cancellation letter for your flat with Microsoft Office ;-):
Bevor ein ausgeliehenes iPad an die ISG zurückgebracht werden kann, muss ein Reset gemacht werden. Anderenfalls haben wir von der ISG keinen Zugriff auf das Gerät und können es nicht weiter verleihen.
Es wird eine Internet Verbindung benötigt um den Reset durchzuführen. Hier der Link, wie dies gemacht wird:
We offer the following standard hardware to our staff:
Linux desktop computer: e.g. Esprimo Q958 with 8-Core Intel i7
Mac desktop computer: e.g. Mac Mini with 6-Core Intel i5 or Apple Silicon
Linux laptop computer: e.g. ThinkPad X1 Yoga, ev. ThinkPad X1 Carbon; or a Laptop that is up to 4 years old
Mac laptop computer: e.g. MacBook Pro 14″ with Apple Silicon; or a MacBook Pro that is up to 4 years old
Additionally you can get 1 screen (EIZO 24″ or 27″) (upon request 2, if supported by the hardware) and a docking station and some adaptors if you have a laptop.
You can get a desktop computer more or less immediately (1-2 days). New laptops are usually ordered during the Neptun period, ie. 2 times a year (middle of February – middle of March and September). They have a delivery time of 6-10 weeks (or even longer).
If you decide to have a laptop computer and we don’t have one in stock, you can start with a desktop computer and change later or you can use your private laptop computer until the one provided by the department has arrived.
