Getting started at EPITA

Starting at EPITA #

Introduction #

Welcome to EPITA! The school has numerous digital tools that you will use throughout your studies.

Before starting, it’s essential to understand the IT ecosystem of EPITA. As it can sometimes cause confusion, it is crucial to grasp this environment. IT is managed by two distinct services: the Informations Technologies Department of the IONIS group (also known as the Bocal), and the Forge service of EPITA.

IONIS IT department manages the common services for all schools in the IONIS group, including Microsoft 365 accounts, school Wi-Fi (or more generally networking), door access control, and video surveillance. As students, you will never interact with this IT department directly because it does not provide direct support to students. In case of a problem, you must contact the designated contacts at the school based on the nature of the issue.

The Forge is the EPITA service responsible for responding to technical needs related to pedagogy. Among these technical needs, we find the computer rooms (over 1,000 workstations), the intranet of projects, its automatic correction infrastructure, and the school’s server infrastructure. We also provide a number of tools such as Moodle, GitLab, and many others. In general, we are the primary contact for technical questions.

The Forge has a documentation to respond to a maximum number of questions related to our tools and those provided by IONIS. It is essential to consult this documentation to inform yourself about the tools and also in case of a problem to verify if it is possible to resolve it on your own.

In case of a problem and after having thorougly consulted our documentation, you can contact the Forge through tickets by sending an email to tickets@forge.epita.fr. It is mandatory to use your EPITA email address unless you have lost access to your account, in which case we invite you to monitor your spam folder because our responses tend to appear there.

Our ticket email is the only authorized method of communication with our service. We do not accept visits in our offices or solicitations on other means of communication (Discord, phone, etc.), your message will be ignored in the best case scenario.

EPITA Accounts #

During your studies, you have two accounts that allow you to connect to different tools.

IONIS Account #

The IONIS account (also known as the Bocal account) allows you to connect to the tools used at all schools in the IONIS group. Among these tools, we find:

The login credentials for this account are sent to you via SMS at enrollment (or by email if you do not have a French mobile phone number yet). The SMS is sent by EPITA, the email is sent by noreply@console.bocal.org and has the title “Console BOCAL EPITA PASSWORD”.

In case you have not received anything or forgot your password, please follow our password recovery guide. You will need to provide your EPITA email address to continue the procedure.

It is not possible to set your own password, it can only be generated by following the above procedure.

Forge Account #

The Forge account allows you to access the tools specific to EPITA. Your Forge credentials allow you to connect:

When you arrive at school, you do not have a predefined password on your Forge account. You must set it yourself by following the procedure:

  • Go to Forge ID
  • Click on Sign in then Password recovery then Instant recover with Microsoft 365
  • You will be redirected to Microsoft 365 to connect using your IONIS credentials (if this is not already the case).
  • Click on Accept when Microsoft asks for permission to connect to CRI Intranet app.
  • You will be redirected to Forge ID with a form asking you to choose a password respecting certain complexity constraints. Choose a password and remember it well.

Forge accounts are created relatively late, so it is possible that you will not be able to set one up immediately. If this is the case, we invite you to try again later. If your account is not functioning correctly at school, please contact us by ticket.

Computer Rooms #

EPITA is equipped with computer rooms commonly referred to as machine rooms on all its sites. The Forge guarantees the proper functioning of computers.

At the Kremlin-Bicêtre and Villejuif sites, machine rooms are accessible 24/7. We do our best to ensure that a maximum number of workstations work properly, so we ask you to respect certain rules to not harm our work:

  • Do not eat
  • Do not drink anything other than water from an empty bottle
  • Do not damage equipment: if the material degrades, we do not replace it before the following semester or next year
  • Do not disconnect any cables (power, RJ45, HDMI, etc.)
  • You have the right to bring your keyboard and/or mouse, but only to plug them into free USB ports

Finally, in order to respect your classmates and instructors, it is mandatory to have proper hygiene. The computer rooms tend to end up smelly quite fast…

All these rules are detailed in the machine hall charter that you must read and respect. In case of non-compliance with these rules, the sanctions will range from deactivating your account and a temporary exclusion to a disciplinary council.

If you notice a problem on a computer in the machine hall, please notify us on our Fleet Manager site.

AFS #

The AFS (Andrew File System) is the storage space allocated to each student allowing you to store files persistently between different sessions on any computer in the machine hall. Each student has 2GB of storage. Any file stored outside your AFS storage will be lost after a reboot of the computer.

Be careful, this storage space fills up quickly and can cause problems for you if you have reached your quota. Stay vigilant about your usage of the space.

News #

The news site is one of the primary means of communication at EPITA. They are used by students and assistants to transmit announcements to the promotion. For ING1, they also allow you to ask questions related to projects and workshops during the year.

It is essential to take note of all posted news on the site. To avoid missing any information, we invite you to activate notifications via email on the categories that interest you.

News are publicly available at the school level or by promotion and are therefore a place for respectful and professional discussions. It is essential to write polite and considered messages to have quality exchanges.

End #

The tour of digital tools is over. Do not worry if you do not understand everything or if some information seems to be missing, all the necessary information will be covered during your first weeks of pedagogical activities. Welcome again to EPITA and we wish you a great scholarship!