Information for CNT Instructors

This page is a portal for information and documentation relevant to CNT instructors, but not directly relevant to students.

Technical Information

Distributing Files to Student Computers

A common need of instructors is to distribute files, sometimes large files, to a large number of student computers. Examples include various software, lab files, pre-built VMs and ISO files. Because this is an ongoing need we have worked with the campus IT department to develop a method for doing this over the campus network.

All CNT instructors should have write access to the "\\obs\cntshare\Student D Drive Files" directory. Files placed in this folder are automatically copied to all PCs in the labs during the overnight hours. Students will be able to find these files in the "D:\CNT Files" folder on their individual systems the following day. If there are any problems with the automatic synchronization working please contact IT with a helpdesk request.

If you need to distribute files to students the same day the overnight sync will not work. In that case you can put files in the same location on the server and ask students to download the files themselves to their systems from the "\\obs\CNTFiles" share which they have read-only access to. Note that large files will take a long time to download, especially if an entire room is downloading them at once. You are encouraged to try to plan at least a day in advance so the files can be synced overnight. NOTE: As of 9/6/11 this share seems to have disappeared, Ben has an open ticket with IT on this issue.