Technical information for teachers

See also information for staff and classrooms outside the FI campus (faculty login authentication required).

Audiovisual equipment, data projectors

Video streams from the lecture rooms: A217, A218, A318, A319, A320. The audio for the stream and recording is captured here by motion microphones - it is not strictly necessary to take a microphone. Recording from all classrooms is available from IS Study Materials as standard, once access rights have been confirmed by the lecturer.

Requests for streaming and recording in other classrooms are collected at .

Instructions for using the technology:

Classrooms with Linux PCs: Technical manual for teachers in Linux classrooms,
A2 and A3 classrooms: PC classrooms, lecture theatres by location (20, 40, 80),
classrooms in C: lecture room C416.

Ceiling projectors are available in other classrooms. The key to the locker with the projector remote can be borrowed for the whole semester from the secretary (office B513), or if you have a key to an office, it can also be used to open the locker. If projection is needed in other areas, a portable projector can be borrowed on a short-term basis from the concierge desk.

Problem solving and non-standard situations

See Addresses for submitting questions and reporting problems.

Software in the PC classrooms for teaching

Well in advance (at least two weeks) before the start of the teaching session, the software requirements for the actual teaching session should be reported, i.e. specifying which software, in which version, in which classrooms and from when it should be available. Information should be sent to , or , or both, depending on the type of operating systems on the computers in the classrooms. It is advisable to test the functionality of the required software before the start of the course.

Faculty services (GitLab, etc.) for teaching

In the faculty GitLab, it is possible to arrange for the creation of groups that can be automatically synchronized according to the teachers and/or learners of the course.

If you are interested in a course site, see the site options, where you will likely be interested in the GitLab Pages or Web Directory Space sections.

Similarly, in Stratus.FI faculty virtualization, we can provide groups of people that can be automatically synchronized by course learners. It is also possible to produce private networks, e.g. for teaching networking courses. With early agreement , it is also possible to provide bulk environment preparation - see example in our blog.

Ensuring awareness of operating rules

For courses in computer labs, students (but also teachers) should be aware of the operating rules and must follow them. In particular, this includes not tampering with cabling in classrooms (except for cables to connect their own machines) or not shutting down/restarting machines.

In the case of a course that involves running more demanding calculations, students must be informed of the rules for running demanding processes.

In the event of a breach of the rules, the student's account may be temporarily blocked, regardless of the complications that result for the student.

The network in the classrooms

Departments typically have an Ethernet cable in the teaching rooms that will provide an Internet connection after authentication via https://wifi.fi.muni.cz/ with faculty credentials. (A more reliable and faster alternative to Wi-Fi , wlan_fi, can be used.)

Testing in the computer lab

Large courses may also use the PC hall (room B106) with 73 Linux and 20 dual-boot computers during the exam period. Dual-boot computers are on Linux by default during the exam period; 6 macOS cannot be used for testing. Appointments must be booked with IS:

If needs can be covered by other computer labs, prioritize them.
Book at least a week in advance - the PC hall is also used by students for free work.
Minimise the number of exam days in the PC hall. Prioritise use of free time slots on days with another exam.
Book time slots continuously from the morning so that the exam block is first and then the PC hall is free for learners for the rest of the day (from 18:00 at the latest).
If possible, at least one PC room should be available for learners as a substitute during the exam period.

Exam modes can be used by arrangement with unix@fi or win@fi (see following sections). Report requests early; for exam sessions with a limited environment, or if you have not used the exam mode before, report at least one month in advance!

Send the exam dates as an export from IS in CSV format (manual transcription is strongly discouraged - it is error-prone). Select CSV format for Excel and UTF-8 encoding (without BOM). Also specify the length of the terms.

Exam session with IS answer sheet

On Linux and Windows computers, it is possible to use a special restricted session in which learners can only access a predefined URL in the browser (typically the IS answer key) via the home page. In this session, the following are not possible: manipulation of the address bar, access to other programs and files on the PC.

To use this exam session, please send the times and rooms of the exams to and/or (depending on the computers requested), and for each time the URL of the answer key in IS (this is the address of the file with the extension .qref). For Windows classrooms, please indicate whether you want to keep any of the computers in normal teacher mode.

Starting and stopping answerphone mode on Linux computers will require action in Faculty Administration by the supervisor at the beginning of the exam. Details will be communicated by administrators. Be sure to end the exam session at the end (Linux) or make sure students have logged out (Windows).

Exam session with restricted environment

In Linux classrooms and halls, you can use (not only) a restricted environment for programming exams, where students can use text editors, programming language interpreters, etc., but cannot access the Internet or their own files.

We will adapt the session parameters (available software from modules and regular sessions, network limitations, available off-line documentation) to your course. The method of distributing assignments and collecting solutions also needs to be arranged in advance; currently, connecting to the Frag system and submitting through the web application on Aise works. We can make other methods work as needed. In order to allow students to try out the special session for real, we are allowing one computer in the computer lab to be dedicated to run a demonstration mode of the session permanently.

The start of the session and each term is controlled manually by the instructor using the Faculty Administration application, in which the instructor has the right to operate the classroom machines at the agreed times. At the end of all terms, the tutor must cancel the restricted session again to bring the computers back to normal.

If you are interested in using this exam session, please contact well in advance to discuss the technical details. If you would like to use the regular Windows PCs (Titans in the hall) outside of the exam period, add to your mailing list.

Use of containers in Linux classrooms

If you plan to use Podman containers in your Linux classroom, keep in mind that containers can use a lot of local shared disk space (containers are stored in /var/tmp/containers) and try to conserve it:

Fixed student seating arrangements (also avoids repeated downloading of images)
Prefer already built images (Docker Hub or GitLab Container Repository) over builds by learners
to reduce the network load (parallel initial download on first use), pre-preparation can be arranged for larger images
we do not guarantee that the data in /var/tmp/containers will last for the entire semester
after the work is done, ensure cleanup: podman system prune -a deletes completed containers and images

Classroom seating charts

If you want to get an up-to-date overview of the students enrolled in the computer rooms, you can use the room map.

You can use the seating charts to allocate students for exams in classrooms and lecture rooms.

Bulk transfer between ucho and faculty login

You can use the scripts uco2login and login2uco, which are hosted on the Aisa and Anxur servers, to transfer between the uco and faculty logins.

For use, see uco2login --help.