Info Glossary - the most important organisational and technical terms

Glossary - the most important organisational and technical terms

2FA

Two-Factor-Authentication (2FA) is used to increase the security of a users authentication to a service. To make this possible authentication is done using two independent components. We try to provide 2FA for as many services as possible if the service can be reached from outside the network of the institute or is especially critical security wise. Currently the Google Authenticator (Wikipedia Link) is the tool of our choice.

Antarktis/Kalahari/Deneb/Terminus/Sibirien/Gobi/Taklamakan/DSL

These are the names of the student computer pools. A desert is used for the name in most cases. Please see our webpage concerning our rooms.

APR / WPC

This stands for Arbeitsplatzrechner or WorkPlaceComputer.

Campus/LMU Account

The LMU provides a central identity management service for all members of the university. This service manages common information on the members, service user accounts and passwords for these user accounts. These user accounts were called Campus Account before 2017 and are called LMU Account since.

Please note the infos of LMU concerning this.

CIP

Is short for Computer-Investment-Programm. The CIP was used by the federal government to finance the IT used for teaching at german universities. This financing was replaced by a purely federal state based financing around 2010. The name stuck and is widely used to refere to the rooms (CIP-Pool aka student computer rooms) and the accounts (CIP Account) which are used for most of the services for students at the institute.

Container

Container or Operating-system-level_virtualization (Wikipedia) is a method to isolate whole systems or parts of one from one another and the host system. We support this technology for normal users since fall 2018. Depending on the used container system the three important OSs Linux, Windows and MacOS are supported. Additional information can be found here: LXC, Docker, Kubernetes, Namespaces, flatpak, alpine, CoreOs

Eduroam

Eduroam aka Education WLAN Roaming, is the authentication procedure for a worldwide WiFi service established specifically for members of research and university like teaching institutions. Here Eduroam access is based on the LMU account. Further information on Eduroam, the Eduroam WiFi at the LMU and on how the authentication procedure works can be found here.

You can also use the Bayern-WLAN at the LMU. This WiFi network can be used by anybody without the need for an account. (Infos).

Firewall

A firewall is a physical or virtual component of a network or IT device which limits network connections or service access out of security considerations. Firewalls exist on several network levels. Some firewalls inspect every network packet while others may only concern themselves with a service protocol like http. Information on network firewalls relevant to you can be found here.

Helpdesk

The place to go to or call/mail when you have an issue with IT services. There are different contact persons depending on the service. The most important are the LMU IT-Servicedesk, the LRZ Servicedesk and last but not least the RBG Consultation Hours.

Homepage

Name for the start page of a web presence. Sometimes used for the entire web presence as well. You can create your own homepage. More information can be found here.

Home directory

Name for the directory in the network file system that holds your own files. Your home directory or homedir for short is available on every PC in every CIP-Pool managed by the RBG. The homedir has a limited disk quota. You should not use your homedir to store large amounts of data or temporary computational intermediary results.

IFI

IFI aka Institut für Informatik an der LMU.

Account

Name for the authentication data for one or more services. At the LMU different accounts are issued and managed by sometimes different organisational units.

Most accounts have one of the following scopes:

  1. Accounts for a specific service. These are managed inside the service most of the time.
  2. Accounts for an organisational unit of the LMU, e.g. the student services at the IFI.
  3. Accounts for the LMU (LMU-Account).
  4. Accounts for LRZ services (LRZ-Account).

Different services can have different accounts. Sometimes several accounts can be valid for authentication to a service.

Command-line

You use a command-line to issue commands to the operating system or a programm via the keyboard. The line in command-line signifies that the written command will be executed only upon ending the line of input by pressing ENTER. It most often means that you are to work with a shell when someone speaks of using the command-line.

LFE

LFE aka Lehr- und Forschungseinheit (Teaching and Resrearch Unit). The Institut für Informatik has different LFEs, the focus of which is denoted by their attached name. e.g. LFE database systems (LFE DBS). A LFE has at least one chair.

LMU

LMU aka Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

LRZ

LRZ aka Leibniz-Rechenzentrum. The LRZ is a provider of some central IT services for research and university facilities in Munich

LSF

LSF aka Lehre-Studium-Forschung. Not only can you get a current list of all courses the LMU has to offer but you can also perform many course related management tasks here.

MWN

MWN aka Münchner Wissenschaftsnetz. The IP network of the research and university facilities in Munich opereated centrally by the LRZ. The link to the rest of the internet is provided by the DFN X-Win.

Portal

Name for a website which concentrates informations and web services for a specific area or user group. Important portals are e.g. Uniworx, LSF, CipConf and the LMU-Portal.

RBG

RBG aka Rechnerbetriebsgruppe (Computer Administration Team). At the LMU commonly used term for the organisation responsible for the operation of the IT equipment. Different RBGs are located on different levels throughout the LUM. Most often at the level of institute and sometimes at faculty level.

remote usage

IT services which can be used from a remote location (e.g. not the university or institute) and sometimes even mobilely. These are for example a remote console session either through SSH or graphically through RDP. Some services are remote services per se like eMail(imap).

Ressource

Resources is a important term. You should be cognizant of the limits of the available resources because otherwise you might hinder other users unnecessarily or your own IT projects might fail.

RDP

RDP aka remote desktop protocol allows you to open a graphical user interface on one of our machines remotely from e.g. at home.

shell

Keyboard entry and text output based interface between the user on one side and the OS or a programm on the other side. The term commonly also refers to a OS-control- and command-line-interpreter-programm which exists in similar form on the three major OSs. On Linux there are for example bash, zsh and sh. On Windows you have the Power Shell and on MacOS the Unix-Shell.

ssh

ssh aka secure shell is a protocol as well as a (remote) service and a shell. ssh offers very secure authentication mechanisms as well as secure communication. The authentication can be done interactively through username and password and non-interactively with ssh keys or certificates. There exist other services built on top of the ssh protocol, e.g. scp, sftp, tunnel through ssh.

Uniworx

Uniworx is the IFI run course-, exam- and homework-management system. Access is provided through the LMU-Account amongst other means.

VM / virtual machine

With VM one computer simulates other computers. Services often run on a virtual machine because most servers are not fully utilized by just one service but managing multiple services on the same server gets complicated fast. With vitualization multiple VMs run on one physical machine. Security- and other isolation-considerations can lead to the use of VMs too.

We make wide use of this technology on our servers. Normal users can run virtual machines on our APRs too. Some interesting headwords: virtualbox, xen, vmware, proxmox.