dodo.kent.ac.uk is Compsoc's external access server and mail server. This machine is provided and managed by Computer Science.

Role

Simply put, dodo offers to our members what raptor is to Computer Science students.

Features

In most respects dodo is similar to the CS teaching hosts such as raptor and swallow; it's a fairly old Sun machine running the CS Solaris build. Note: dodo has now been upgraded so it is far less of an "old" machine - in fact it's the immediate predecessor to raptor.

The most useful feature for non-CS users is that it's an externally-visible machine: you can log into dodo using ssh from outside the University, and from there get to compsoc1 and other hosts. (Note that unlike other CS hosts, dodo cannot make outgoing connections to other machines on the Internet.)

Users on dodo have 200 MB of disk space. This is currently backed up, although that could be withdrawn if backup capacity is needed elsewhere, so users are encouraged not to store important data there.

While dodo isn't very quick, it does have all the software available on the other CS hosts, which'll be handy if you want to compile some software you've written on Solaris, do some computation with Matlab, or use other packages.

Mailstore

You can use dodo as your mailstore instead of Kentmail if you want -- that is, have your mail delivered to dodo instead of Kentmail and read it using Unix tools or IMAP to dodo (you can use IMAPS from outside, and use authenticated SMTP through smtp.kent.ac.uk to send mail). See the CS guide at http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/systems/mailstore.html for more information; the command to switch is "mailinfo -C". This is mostly likely to be useful if you want a bigger mail quota than you'd get on Kentmail.

There is also a web mail client: http://webmail.cs.kent.ac.uk/

Getting an account

To get a dodo account (if you're a Compsoc member), mail the Secretary at secretary@compsoc.co.uk and ask; your account should be added within a week. If you're not a Compsoc member, e-mail secretary@compsoc.co.uk to join.

Specifications

Reporting problems

If you have trouble using Dodo then please ask in #compsoc on KentIRC.

However, if you find a technical fault, or something is broken you can contact the CS systems team at cs-syshelp@kent.ac.uk.