News and Updates

Our production server and VM host, nest, has been upgraded with more RAM! We are now running with ~500 GiB total, enabling us to have faster and more reliable experiences across the board, and add new VMs to support future projects. As always, you can make use of our hardware by SSH'ing into ssh.sccs.swarthmore.edu or requesting specific resources. Also, robin (SSH server) has been updated to Fedora 41!

The SCCS Course Planner has been updated for Spring 2025 classes! We would also like to announce that Scheduler v2 is on the way, and should be in beta in the next couple weeks. This major update will include plan syncing with your SCCS account, a much more robust planning system, a cleaner and more responsive UI, and more! Keep an eye out for an announcement soon regarding its availability.

For a few years, SCCS has operated a Minecraft Server for the Swarthmore community. However, server whitelisting and performance were tanked when we migrated to our new server last year. We are pleased to announce that once more you can whitelist your Minecraft account and join our server! See Minecraft for details. Also check out the online map!

SCCS Sites is our self-hosted Wordpress service that enables students with no CS experience to design and deploy personal websites. Today, we added and enabled WAY more themes, bringing our total supported default theme cound to 126! If you want a particular theme we don't have installed, find it on their site and email staff.

We are pleased to FINALLY announce the OFFICIAL RELEASE of The Cygnet, version 2.0! Cygnet is one of our longest-running services and we are happy to be delivering its biggest overhaul since its inception. The biggest improvements are a brand-new UI and the ability to sign in and make changes to your account without emailing us! Also new are the pronouns field, higher-res images, and the Filters box.

robin and its predecssors have had Linuxbrew, the Linux version of the popular Mac package manager brew, set up for manu years. This is a powerful tool because it allows non-admin users to install packages themselves. Recently we discovered an issue where packages could not be updated or installed in some contexts but we are happy to report it should be fixed now. For documentation, see the Homebrew site.

SCCS hosts a public, high-resource, student-administrated server VM for the Swarthmore community to use. The current VM, robin, runs Fedora Server and can be accessed via SSH at robin.sccs.swarthmore.edu. However, we have also recently opened Web access via Cockpit, allowing users to use a terminal and view stats without needing an SSH client. Head to the site to try it out!

The SCCS Course Planner has been updated for Fall 2024 courses! Get started planning your next Swat semester with a modern tool that's mobile friendly and doesn't require a VPN. Remember to Ctrl+Shift+R to make sure you're on the latest version.

SCCS has deployed an instance of LanCache, a service that replaces your default DNS servers to redirect game downloads through a faster local server. This allows us to cache terabytes of popular games to provide a much faster download experience. Take advantage of this by setting your default DNS server to 130.58.218.30.

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SCCS has long provided a public SSH server for its users, and with our latest server upgrade this has become a lot more powerful. To better enable the Swat community to log into our public server ( robin ), we have introduced SSH pubkey management in your account settings here on our site!

The SCCS Game Pit is open! Use your OneCard between 7AM and 10PM every day to access the space in Clothier basement. We have a projector and Nintendo Switch hardware, with more available to borrow by request.

The SCCS Dining Browser Extension now includes the ability to turn on and off dietary tags. No more cluttered and confusing Dash menus!

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The SCCS Course Planner has received a number of updates from last spring through this summer to make your experience better!

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The SCCS Course Planner has been updated for Fall 2023 (and to parse the new TriCo Course Guide layout)! As always, you can plan your classes, export for calendar services, and share with friends. Feel free to email us if you have any questions or suggestions.

We now have an Instagram! Follow us at @swatsccs for news, service updates, and more.