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Where do I look for help about the
RCF system?
The web site Using the Sun Sparcserver for the First Time
should provide you with enough information
on logging in, using mail, and essential UNIX commands to get you started.
In 1537, we also provide user guides, reference manuals and books that you may sign out for a few days.
How can I find RCF documentation on-line?The RCF has on-line versions of its documentation that you can access through the RCF's WorldWideWeb Page. It includes information on the Emacs editor, the "LaTeX Local RCF Guide", "LaTeX and the amstex option", modems.
What are "man pages"?man is the command used to access the on-line reference manual pages. Suppose you wish to read more about the passwd command. If you type man passwd at the prompt, the screen will soon fill with information about how the passwd command works. Quite often, you may receive more information than you bargained for. Obviously, this requires that you know the command name.
I don't recall the exact command name. How can I find out?If you do not know a command name, getting on-line help is not the easiest thing to do. You can use apropos keyword, where keyword is a word that appears in the command description. For example, if you want to know what the pascal compiler is called, simply type apropos pascal, and you will see the following :
pc pc (1) - Pascal compiler tangle tangle (1) - translate WEB to PascalWhat other information is available?
The RCF staff is:
| RCF Director | Ken Pollard |
| RCF Staff | Alan Boulanger, Kevin Cummings |
| RCF Graduate RAs | Hugh Enxing |
Any mail sent to support@math.umass.edu, or simply to staff goes to all of the staff members.
How do I get an account?Accounts for new students are set up in the fall.
Individuals who are not members of the Department MUST
find a faculty sponsor to
co-sign an account registration
form. These forms are available from a staff member.
The RCF main computer is now the SUN Enterprise model 250, currently named Thales. Thales runs SOLARIS version 2.7, which is an AT&T System V Unix.
Sun WorkstationsPlease consult with OIT to apply for a PPP account to access the campus network. LGRT Low Rise 1st floor.
Do these machines all run the same operating systems?
Solaris 2.x (gin,tonic,saltpond)
All of these machines run some flavor of the UNIX operating system. The differences are small enough so that most of the following Unix-related commands work on all these machines. They may, however, differ quite a bit when you start using flags with your commands. If in doubt, consult the man pages. Also, programs compiled for one UNIX flavor will not run on any of the other ones.
The ls command lists the contents of the directory you are curretly in. If you want to check what directory you are in, use the pwd command (which stands for "path of working directory"). Here's an example
pollard@rcf1537-6% ls Mail letters staff ams-submissions misc sup-info bin ncaraph.l template.tex elmrc papers z-modules grades setaccounts
There are many parameters to the ls command to display specific information about the files. You can read about these using the man command. One flag of particular use is the -F flag. This tells UNIX to list your files with some extra information. Here is what it looks like:
pollard@rcf1537-6% ls -F Mail/ letters/ staff/ ams-submissions/ misc/ sup-info bin/ ncaraph.l template.tex elmrc papers/ z-modules grades/ setaccounts*
Here you can easily see which files are subdirectories because they have a / after them. Executable files are marked with a * and symbolic links would be marked with a @.
....make or remove a directory?mkdir dirname where dirname is the name of the directory you want to create. rmdir dirname to remove it.
....change directories?The rm command is used to remove (delete) files. It is very easy to use. Simply type rm filename where filename is the name of the file you want to delete. You may use wildcards (such as *) to operate on more than one file at a time. With rm this is very risky -- you can easily delete additional files unintentionally.
A safer alternative to the rm command is del. This will force the computer to ask you to confirm any file deletions, for example:
pollard@rcf1537-6% del paper1.tex rm: remove paper1.tex (y/n)?
Using del takes a bit longer, but can be much safer.
....check and change file permissions?If you do ls -l to get a "long" file listing, you will see a format like this:
-rw-r----- 1 ecke grad 9384 May 24 09:29 faq.html -rwxr-x--- 1 ecke grad 32194 May 22 08:00 a.out drwxr-x--- 13 ecke grad 1024 May 23 16:36 public_html
It shows (from right to left) the name of the file or directory, then the time it was modified last, then group membership and name of the owner, some number and access permissions. The file faq.html has read and write access for the user (leftmost column), read access for members of the same group, and no access for all others. To grant read permission to other users, type chmod o+r faq.html. To remove read permission from group members (group grad in this case), use chmod g-r faq.html.
The next example is an executable, a.out. The x in the access permissions list indicates that it may be executed by the user and members of the same group. You may use chmod o=rx a.out to make it available to all users.
Finally, there is a directory, public_html, marked as such by the leading d in the access permissions list. Note that to be accessible, a directory must have both read and execute permissions.
....redirect command input/output?In UNIX, you can tell a program that it should take its input from a file, rather than from the keyboard. command < infile > outfile ; programs you write ; error messages >& /dev/null (=nirvana)
....find out how much space there is in my account?quota -v will show you. Usually, users are given up to 10 Megabytes of disk space. If you go beyond that limit, you have a few days to remove or compress enough data to get under 10MB. The computer will remind you whenever you log in how much time you have left to do this.
Working with the UNIX shell: How do I ...When you are logged into your account, type the command passwd. You will be asked to enter a new password.
I think I forgot my password... Help!Ask staff to issue a temporary password ...
....connect from one machine to another one?rlogin machine if you have accounts on both machines (see man rlogin what to do in case the user names differ). Or, if the machine has ssh installed, type ssh machine.
....copy files between XXX.math and YYY.math?rcp machine1:file1 machine2:file2 where the name of the machine where I execute rcp may be omitted. Note that in order for this to work, the .rhosts file in both accounts must contain the names of both machines.
....copy files between a XXX.math account and an outside account?ftp machine to connect to other machine, put file to transfer to machine, get file for the reverse direction, mget f* will get all files beginning with f.
The various printing utilities have been collected into a script. This script is called print. If you simply type print at the system prompt, you will be asked which files you want to print and which printer you want to send it to (a list of available printers will be preinted on the screen if you ask). If you know exactly which printer to send your file to, you can use the print command as follows:
PRINTER NAME USE LOCATION ---------------------------------------------------------------- main high quality (high print speed) rm 1537 dept high quality (high print speed) rm 1630 post high quality (medium print speed) rm 1422 draft high quality (medium print speed) rm 1235A - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - main_duplex main printer in duplex mode rm 1537 dept_duplex dept printer in duplex mode rm 1630
Note that you can obtain two-sided printout by choosing one of the "duplex" options.
....check the print queue?If you are curious to see if your job has been printed, or if you want to know if there is a long line for a particular printer, you can use the lpstat command. You can request different types of printing status information using this command:
OPTION DESCRIPTION ------------------------------------------------------------------- lpstat -a Show if a printer is accepting jobs lpstat -d Show default destination lpstat -p printer-name Show status of specific printer lpstat -u username Show requests by username -------------------------------------------------------------------....cancel a print job?
The easiest way to cancel a print job is to issue cancel printer-name.
You can be more specific and cancel a particular job by its request-ID, which is displayed after you submit the job:
pollard@rcf1537-6% print draft testfile request id is draft-425 (1 file(s)) printout in room 1532 pollard@rcf1537-6% cancel draft-425 request "draft-425" cancelled
If you do not remember the request-ID, type lpstat and press RETURN.
user@math.umass.edu
Where do I receive my mail?On thales. Note that .forward files should only be used to direct mail to a machine outside the math subdomain.
How do I read my mail?There are several ways to read and send mail, but the RCF is recommending that you use a mail program such as pine or elm. These programs have many features making them more user-friendly than other mail programs. These include a good system for organizing your mail in a logical manner, on-screen help, and prompting for various mailing options. See the ELM handout for details. To start the ELM mailer, simply type elm at the prompt. The RCF has ELM user manuals available in rooms 1422 and 1537.
Can I send files, even binary data, by mail?Text files elm user@machine < textfile Other (note: this includes DVI and PostScript files): uuencode file -> file.uu then as above.
How do I send mail to all grads/faculty in the department?elm grad, elm faculty
What other useful aliases are defined?dept (Department Head Office), users, staff, deptstaff, grad, faculty, support
Do I get a copy when I send mail to an alias I'm on?No, there is a default set up such that you will not receive the e-mail.
I know that X. has an account at the Univerity of Y.; What's his/her e-mail address?(phone call, snail mail, Zen ; whois ; gopher ; webserver ...)
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