New here?

This page is meant to answer the first questions concerning IT, IT services and procedures. For questions concerning the LMU or your studies please peruse the websites provided by the LMU or the institute offering your courses.

• Glossary - most often used terms
• IT of the LMU
• IT of the LRZ, a provider of some central IT services for research and university facilities in Munich.

First steps

What do I need?

• The LMU-Account you got automatically upon your enrollment is essential. Unenrolled users can request an LMU-Account under certain conditions.
• You are normally not required to provide your own IT equipment (Notebook, Home PC) but it does not hurt to have some either since it might save you some trips to the campus. It is possible that you may encounter courses during your studies which require you to bring your own notebook.

Previous knowledge

All necesarry IT knowledge can be attained through courses or self study. We expect users to be able to operate a graphical user interface and a web browser.

From our experience we know that many have problems with the following topics:

• understanding file systems and their structure/pathes. E.g. where do I find my files?
• remembering to delete old files.
• keeping an eye on ones resource usage.
• remote usage of services.
• running programms without sitting in front of the computer.
• understanding that programms can come with graphical or non graphical (text) or no user interface at all.
• knowing the command-line exists and having rudimentray skills in using it.
• separation between using an Editor / IDE to create a programm and the programm it self.
• understanding what a process is and how it is managed by the operating system.
• letting go of habitual processes and programms and getting to know differnt OSs, concepts and programms.

Access to Services of the LMU/IFI

You need an account to use most of the important services. This can be the LMU account, the CIP account or an service specific account. We try to further secure important services with 2FA. Information on the LMU/CIP account can be found in the glossary.

You automatically get access to some few services with your account. To use these and other services please peruse the service descriptions. It is important to check if the default service config meets your needs and to change this config if it is necessary.

Further basic services can be used via the LMU-Portal, CipConf or through direct contact with the provider of the service.

General Service Overview

The most important services at IFI are:

• Webmail: The Roundcube webmail system for students can be found at https://webmail.cip.ifi.lmu.de.
• Gitlab: We provide a Gitlab installation for students. Read below how to get an account.
• zulip: The chat server of IFI. https://chat.ifi.lmu.de
• CIP-Pools: There are several computer rooms for students.
• Printing: Students can use the printers in the computer rooms.

More detailed infomation can be found here

Own IT

The institute aims to provide the necessary IT and services for its courses. Naturally these resources can not be used simultaneously by all students. E.g. 1) the amount of PCs in the CIP-Pools is limited 2) our fileservers are not provisioned to be used by all users simultaneously at full capacity

There are some few courses that require you to provide your own IT (e.g. a notebook).

We generally try to design the IT requirements of the courses in such a fashion as to allow the usage of your own IT (notebook, home PC). Your own IT needs to be quite powerful if you want to do this comprehensively. Depending on the course you can use a mix of our and your own IT. A weak home PC or mobile laptop for instance could still be used if you have an adequate network connection because we provide remote access (GUI and text based) to our resources.

Operating System Choice

It is important for students with a computer science major to acquaint themselves with the most important Operating Systems. E.g. Windows is the dominant Desktop OS while Linux is by a huge margin the most used OS on embedded systems, mobile phones and super computers.

Android and iOS are more or less of equal importance in the mobile sector in our eyes.

Linux, MS Windows and MacOS are the most important OSs for desktops and notebooks. In principle any OS can be used because virtual machines and containers allow the installation of the other OSs on your own machine if necessary.

Linux in general manages to get more performance out of a machine or at least content itself with fewer resources (RAM, CPU-Power) when compared to the other OSs. This is more and more noticable as the hardware gets older.

Systems with high perfomance

Linux is surely the most flexible, powerful and cost effectiv. Followed by MS Windows and MacOS. One disadvantage of Linux is the complexity that comes with making use of the flexibility. Software for teaching and research may not be available for each of the three OSs. MacOS is the worst choice in this regard. Linux and Windows are equal overall but have different strengthes in different areas. Multimedia being a strength of Windows while software and new technology development are strengthes of linux.

Generally speaking a large amount of CPU cores and lots of RAM are an advantage. A fast mass storage device may be relevant too.

Simple system for web usage and remote access

You can use whatever you want according to your personal preferences and the size of your wallet.

Password management

You will get several accounts and the passwords for these during your studies. Taking good care of them is advised. The use of a password manager can be a great help here. With such a manager you can store passwords securely and you will not forget them. This allows you to use complex and secure passwords.

After getting a new account you should always change the password.

Which informations should I read?

As many as possible ;-)

The RBG will advise you gladly.

• Glossary - most often used terms

Guidelines

There are rules for the usage of IT services of the LMU, the MWN/Internet and the IFI in addition to the usual legal constraints.

• Please refrain from anything that might hamper others or the machines unduely.
• Commercial use of the IT is forbidden.
• Private use and/or use above and beyond the requirements of the courses is permitted because we view this as you educating yourselves.
• Please be mindful of the hardware.
• It is forbidden to eat in the CIP-Pools.

• Please keep the CIP-Pools clean and tidy.

• Rules of Conduct of the RBG
• IT Rules of Conduct of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
• Rules of Conduct of the LRZ
• Rules of Conduct of the DFN