News

In March we announced the new, self-hosted Jitsi installation at meet.science.ru.nl and the retirement of the old one. We have now enabled the whiteboard feature on meet.science.ru.nl. It had already been available for testing on our test installation at jt.science.ru.nl. The whiteboard lets a meeting moderator open a shared canvas that everyone in the call can draw on at the same time — handy for brainstorming, sketching a diagram, or working through a problem together. It is powered by Excalidraw, the open-source whiteboarding tool that Jitsi integrates. ...

In a previous news article we announced the availability of a local LLM with no connection to big tech. We haven’t really advertised it further, but we can say it has proven popular. Part of the reason to launch was to discover bottlenecks, well, we’ve discovered bottlenecks. Currently there are ~200 registrations and ~10 people online concurrently. Heavy users may have noticed that the service can be slow at times. Plans In order to make more efficient use of our server, we will: ...

The latest version of Matlab, R2026a, is available. The software and license codes are directly available for Science accounts and can be requested by other entitled users by sending mail to the helpdesk. The software can also be found on the install-share. All C&CZ-managed Linux machines have this version installed, the older version (/opt/matlab-R2025b/bin/matlab) will be available temporarily.

Please be informed that the B-Fac Active Directory Domain will be permanently decommissioned on August 1st during the summer break. As a result, logging into Windows PCs using a science domain account will no longer be possible after this date. It is essential that all laptops and PCs running Windows 11 currently linked to the B-Fac domain are transitioned to local accounts before August 1st. Additionally, the virus scanner on these devices must be replaced. ...

Starting in the summer of 2026, Windows will be removed from the PCs in the computer labs in the Huygens building (TK023, 029, 075, 206, and 625). Linux will remain available on these PCs. In the summer of 2027, computers will be removed from 4 of the 5 labs; the 75 PCs in the largest room, TK075, will remain. See available computer labs for more details.

See the Uncloud howto for tips and details on how to run your cluster. Some time ago C&CZ experimented with remotely managing docker containers. This turned out to be a success and a failure. A success because it filled a niche, and a failure because we had not thought through all the security implications. We are currently looking at launching a new system for managing containers called Uncloud. The security boundary for this will be a virtual machine. I.e. we supply you with a virtual machine with Uncloud running and you and your colleagues can control it using the Uncloud tooling. ...

The latest version of Maple, Maple2026, for Windows/macOS/Linux can be found on the Install network share and has been installed on C&CZ managed Linux computers. License codes can be requested from C&CZ helpdesk or postmaster.

Technical update for mail‑domain DNS administrators What and why we are doing this With the new setup we are renaming our mail‑component servers so that their names reflect the function they perform in the mail chain. This change has no impact on end users, but it makes troubleshooting and future feature implementation easier because we can immediately identify the machine involved. First step We have renamed mx3 to inboundmx3. Because this is essentially only a DNS change, we have also updated all MX records we manage. Domains for which we provide mail but do not control the DNS must be updated by their own administrators. ...

For a long time, at least since before Covid-19, we have hosted a local jitsi meet installation. The installation was becoming a bit old and stuffy, so time for a new version and a new name. Meet is our new jitsi install for general use. Jitsi Test is our test jitsi install, when we test new features here, so can you. 2026-03-03: The *old jitsi will be retired soon, so please go try the new one. ...

Enhanced Email Security We are pleased to announce we have completed the first step in the update to our email system. This will improve the security and reliability of your mail handling. As part of this upgrade, we have introduced new software at the start of our email flow (on the inbound MX servers). This advanced system now evaluates incoming emails to determine if they are legitimate. If an email fails to meet the required standards or appears very suspicious, it will be blocked at the entry point, in accordance with RFC guidelines for mail transport. This is a crucial first step toward creating a safer and more secure email environment for everyone. ...