7. Miscelaneous things.
1. Accounts at ECR.
Any person who is doing any subject that is offered by a department
within the Faculty of Engineering is entitled to an E.C.R. Account.
Any Staff member who is part of the Faculty of Engineering is
entitled to an E.C.R. Account.
In general, no. Unless you are doing some Faculty of Engineering related
subject then you can't have an E.C.R. account.
If you had an account last year, then it's simply a matter of having
your old account un-expired. To have your account un-expired, you fill
in a declaration form, and present this, yourself and some evidence that
you are actually enrolled in the current year to the Duty Programmer.
Your password and login name, as well as all your data and files are exactly as
they were from last year.
If you didn't have an account last year, then you must run the account
creation program. Instruction sheets are available from the various
document holders within the facility, as well as from the staff.
The account creation program will gather some details from you that are
required to actually make the account. After running the program, you
must fill in the declaration form, and present this, yourself and some evidence
that you are actually enrolled in the current year to the Duty Programmer.
After validating that you have run the account program, and that you are
enrolled, the Duty Programmer will make the account.
Note that in 1999 the old PC laboratory no longer exists (now to be known as
Laboratory 5) and has been replaced with NT workstations similar to those
in Laboratories 2 and 3. With this the old account segregation from
Laboratory 5 on the first floor and those accounts generated on the
second floor no longer exists. An account created on either floor will
work on the opposite floor as too do the passwords.
That depends largely on what you are studying. There is much mysterious software
available that you can use, however as we don't know the specifics of the
subject you are studying, it is very difficult to say.
For the Unix systems, you should make sure you at least attend the introductory
CompSci lectures.
NO!
Your account is provided for your academic use only. You have signed an
agreement stating that you will not allow anyone else to use your account.
Allowing your friends or family to use your account is dishonest as it means
they are using a resource for free that is strictly provided for academic
purposes only. It also constitutes a serious security problem.
If, despite the above, you do allow someone else access to your account, you
run the risk of
- Being caught, which possibly means account suspension.
- Having the "other" person mis-use the account, like
sending abusive email, or accessing pornography, or any number of
other illegal activities over the communications network services.
- Having the "other" person damage your files, or cause
you to reach your quota limits.
To reiterate:
- The account is provided for your academic use only.
- You signed an agreement stating that you wouldn't.
- It's against the rules, the local rules, the University rules,
and State and Federal laws.
- It's dangerous.
- There are serious security problems.
- This University finances your computer usage via a number of means.
This funding is not unlimited. Allowing other people who are not studying
at this University, let alone this faculty, is clearly abusing the access
that you already have.
NO!
You are using the other persons account. No matter how innocent your motives,
computer systems are simply unable to assertain if you are a good guy
or a bad guy. Multiply this by the number of users on this system, and the
problem quickly escalates.
2. Accessing your account.
Logging in is simple, on a UNIX machine and at the prompt login:
simply type your username and then the return key, then at the
prompt Password: type your password (make sure no-one is
watching but relax, the keys you type here are not echoed to the screen)
and again the return key. Assuming your password was correct, you
should now login automatically.
Logging out is also simple. Select the Logout or EXIT option
from the windows root-window menu with your mouse right hand button
if you are on a UNIX system. Or type the word logout if you are remotely
connected to ECR.
Yes. You should note that ECR Doesn't have any modems! ITS runs most of the modems. Comp-sci also has a modem pool , from which, if you know the password, to can connect to Comp-sci machines
only.
ITS modem access is not generally available to undergrads.
For those who choose or wish to dial-in to Melbourne University you are advised to get a account with an approved Internet Service Provider (ISP).
Different systems and communication programs will have different connection procedures. We can not offer any help with this.
To use the ITS modems you have to be a postgrad or staff member at this
university. You must get a letter of request for a special ITS 'PPP' account signed by the head of your department. Contact ITS for more information.
Yes, you can run SLiRP. It is installed (so there isn't any reason for you to
keep your own copy!). The program name is slirp. It is completely unsupported by ECR and you are basically on your own. More information may
be found in the slirp docs, or at the slirp site.
Of course connecting via SLiRP is to our UNIX environment as ECR does not
provide any remote connection services to the Windows NT environment.
The telephone network used mainly for voice can be noisy at times and was
not designed to run modems and computer connections. You are advised to
check the following before complaining about disconnections with your
modem.
Ensure that the line is "noise" or "crackle" free. Just listen to it.
Ensure that you do not have interfering services on your line like,
Call-Waiting or any service that checks your line from time to time
as these do send signals to your telephone line that most modems hate.
If you have to have these extra services on your telephone line then
get ANOTHER telephone line for your modem. There are dial codes you
can use to switch on or off various services but this costs you each time
you use them.
Ensure that your modem is THE ONLY item connected to your phone line,
most tone phones rely on charging internal circuits (like programmed numbers)
from the telephone line and will make a connection every 15 minutes or
so and this too can cause modems to behave poorly. Disconnect answering
machines and facsimiles.
IN essence, your telephone that serves a modem should be a BARE service
with no extra features or services and noise free and you should have a
reliable and fast service.
Yes. You may telnet or ftp to the machine gromit.ecr.mu.oz.au
from sites external to the University.
With very few exceptions, outside connections are allowed only from
sites within Australia.
Also note that gromit will reject remote connections under a number
of circumstances - particularly when the remote site has incorrectly configured
and/or unavailable DNS services.
The only way to fix this is to either change your ISP or complain
to your ISP and get them to fix Their DNS. That is, this is a fault with
the ISP, not gromit!
Specifically, gromit requires that there are both valid forward and reverse DNS entries for all connections made to it. Quite often, ISPs do not provide
valid reverse DNS entries for their dialup connections.
Also note that as an ISP expands their services, they quite often fail
to correctly configure any new "connection" points into their DNS - this result
s in connections being accepted sometimes (on the existing correct DNS entries)
and being rejected at othertimes (on the non-existing or incorrect new DNS entr
ies). Again, complain to your ISP.
This is true ONLY for UNIX style
connections as ECR does not provide any remote services to Windows NT.
If you need to access a machine other than gromit via your ISP, you must first
telnet to gromit, then either telnet or rlogin to the desired machine.
Yes. You can use either of the usual email programs from within
a text window, or you can access the ECR POP server.
It means that you are not typing the correct user name/password
combination. You have perhaps forgotten one, the other or both.
These computers do not randomly change your passwords! (As users often insist
is this case!).
If you are not simply mis-typing, you should see the Duty Programmer or
a staff member. Also ensure that you do not have CAPS-LOCK set, that is, typing capitals in your login/password combination where you should not.
See above.
It generally means you've been naughty
- please see a staff member.
There will be some strange directories and files located in your home directory.
To see them issue the command ls -a or ls -a | more
and note the following.
A directory exists call ".ntnetscape" and this directory holds all your PC net
scape preferences.
You also may have a link called .ntprofile that is a link to where all your
NT roaming profile data lives. This directory
has all your environment information within to configure a Windows NT computer
should you choose to use a PC at some time. You should NOT remove or alter anything
inside this directory otherwise you will experience wierd behaviour when you
try to use a Windows NT Workstation.
Other files that start with a . (dot) are used by various utilities
to configure themselves and in general should not be altered unless you are
prepared to fix them up yourself. Files and Directories named like
- .netscape
- .bashrc
- .cshrc
- .profile
- profile
- .xsession
- .4Dwmrc
- .fvwmrc
- .login
- .logout
should be left alone. So if you break it you fix it policy holds at ECR.
3. Using E-mail
Your email address at ECR is your user name prepended to
'@ecr.mu.oz.au'. For example, if your username was blerkie
Then your email address would be blerkie@ecr.mu.oz.au.
Within the
Computer Science department, if you are an undergraduate, then your email
address would be blerkie@students.cs.mu.oz.au
The two email addresses are essentially completely independent. You can however
have mail from one automatically forwarded to the other. It is entirely up to
you which address you wish to use as your primary email address.
The email at ECR is a simple consequence of having an account on the system.
There's no magic in it, it just happens that way on a UNIX system.
The concept of 'an email account' is inappropiate here.
There are literally dozens of email reading and sending programs that
can be used. The most popular ones are:
Use pine. If when pine notices that there are attachments, it will
display a ViewAttch menu option. If you select this, you will be presented
with a list of the attachments and can select which one to view. Sometimes
pine doesn't know how to display an attachment, like an MS word document
on a UNIX system, so you have the option of saving it to a file and viewing it
elsewhere.
We do not recommend following the trend of sending everything as attachments. You have no idea what software the person receiving the message has
and thus you can't know that they can successfully deal with the attachment.
All of the above email reading programs can also send email. You
just require the recipients email address, and, following the help directions
of each particular program, sending mail will become second nature.
Yes, you can telnet to gromit.ecr.mu.oz.au (but see note
2.3) and use any of the text based email readers, or you can configure
your local email reader to use a POP server located at ECR.
Yes. The address is pop.ecr.mu.oz.au
Note, unless you are in the ecr.mu.oz.au domain
(using slirp perhaps), you wont be able to relay mail through
this or any other ECR mail server.
You need to create a file in your home directory named ".forward"
(without quotes) NOTE: the "." (DOT) is important in its name.
Within this file you place the email address you wish your email
forwarded to.
Make sure that you do not create a forwarding loop by forwarding
to New-email-address only to have that address re-forward the email back
to your Old-email-address. This will result in the email being lost and the
sender getting angry.
To stop forwarding just remove the ".forward" file.
You can send email to any valid internet email address. There are
no restrictions imposed by ECR on the destination address.
- You only have 1M bytes of spool area for your incoming
mail messages. This means that if you don't regularly read your mail,
your quota might be exceeded and you will not be able to
receive email until you reduce your disk usage.
- You are not to use your email access for any commercial
purpose.
- Bulk email is banned. This means that you are not to
attempt to email to "everyone" on the system at once.
- Mail 'bombing" is banned. (That is, where you send many, many
meaningless messages to the one address).
- Chain email is banned. You are not to ever initiate or
forward chain mail (eg. Send this message on to 20 of your friends...)
- Spam email is banned. You are not to ever initiate or forward
unsolicited email of a commercial or offensive content.
- Email harrasment of any kind will result in immediate suspension
- Any attempt to forge any part of an email message will make
you a sure candidate for account suspension.
SPAM email is a huge problem. At ECR, we attempt to filter out many
messages from spam email sites. However, it's impossible to know all such
sites, particularly if the headers of the messages have been forged.
If you receive spam email, you should never reply to a 'remove'
email address unless you are absolutley sure that it is a valid service.
Quite often, these 'remove' reply addresses are simply a way of the spammers
confirming that they have a valid email address.
You can ask a staff member to have the offending site from which the
spam originated added to the blocked list. Currently, we can filter on
the domain name from where the mail says it comes from, an actual users
email address, or sites that the message has passed through on it's way here.
The information you supply should include the full headers of the offending
email message.
4. Web Pages
Yes.
- Go to your home directory and make a subdirectory called 'public_html'.
- Make this subdirectory world searchable/readable with 'chmod a+rx public_html'.
- Place in this directory a file called 'index.html' and make it world readable. (chmod a+r index.html)
This is your homepage. It is referenced with the URL 'http://www.ecr.mu.oz.au/~yourusername/'.
- Don't forget to make any other files in your public_html directory world readable as well.
-
The easiest way to get an index.html file is to copy other peoples index.html
files. You just save the file from mosaic/netscape/lynx etc.
-
Make sure that your own home directory is "searchable" (cd ; chmod a+x .)
or ( chmod a+x ~)
Yes.
Simply include the line <img src=/server-cntr>
in the page that you want
to have the counter on. The web server keeps counts of all pages that
have been accessed - so don't be supprised if you have a non-zero starting
page count.
Also have a look at what not to do on a web page
- Make yourself a cgi-bin directory under your public_html directory.
.. make sure it is searchable by all.
- Put CGI scripts and CGI programs in this directory making sure
that they end with the .cgi suffix.
- If you are using C compiled CGI programs, then make sure they
are compiled on a SUN machine. (The web server is a SUN running
Solaris2.x, hence programs compiled on the SGI systems or the PC systems wont run!). A SUN workstation you may login to for CGI compiling
is named eng-c1-sun.ecr.mu.oz.au.
- If you are using perl CGI scripts, then make sure they
have #!/usr/local/bin/perl as their first line.
- You are not allowed to have anything of a commercial nature in your
page.
- You are not allowed to use copyrighted material without explicit
permission.
- You are not allowed to have offensive material, nor links to
offensive material in your pages.
Strictly speaking, you can only access things that are directly
related to your academic studies at the University.
More specifically, at ECR you may only access things that are
Directly related to core engineering subject material. That means that
if you are doing a combined degree - like Arts/Eng, then you must use the Arts
faculty computers for web access regarding the arts part of the course.
DO NOT access sites including:
- pornography (includes 'swimsuit' sites).
- audio/video clips
- non work related software (eg games)
- pirated software
- most sport related sites
- chat sites
- most travel related sites (except University sponsored travel).
- film sites.
- newspaper sites.
- radio and TV stations.
Web access costs enormous amounts. There was a time when the University
as a whole simply paid for all the web access. However, these days each particular department/faculty has to pay their own web access costs. This is why you
must use the other faculty's computers for web access to that part of your course.
If the "other" faculty would like to pay the Engineering faculty for your
share of it's web costs, things would be different, but that isn't about to
happen.
Exactly that. More details are on the Proxy page.
5. Printing.
Before you can print on any of the printers at ECR you will need to
have a print quota and in 1999 ECR reintroduced a free and limitted number
of pages for printing of class notes, a value set at 60 pages per semester
initially, and this will be alloted to each user near the beginning of
each semester. Use paper wisely as there is a limitted level of funding for
this initial gratis paper. Once you have exhausted your free paper quota
you will need to purchase at the rate of 10 cents per page (1999 pricing)
to refill your print quota.
There are print quota forms available in the various document holders
around the facility, or from the Duty Programmer or other staff.
You fill this form in and take it to the National Australia Bank
where the teller should stamp the form and take your hard earned $$.
You then bring the stamped form back to ECR and have the Duty Programmer
increase your page quota by the appropiate amount.
The command is pagequota on a UNIX workstation, and see that
there are two numbers reported reflecting how many free and how many
purchased pages remain for your use.
NOTE; The printer accounting system will preferentially
use the free quota first as you use the printers.
There is only one true print command: lpr
Nearly everything else eventually ends up calling lpr.
- To print a normal text file you type lpr filename
This, by default prints 2 pages per page.
- To print 1 page per page: lp -Plw filename
- To print without any of those headers: textps filename | lpr
- To print .dvi files:
dvips filename.dvi
lpr filename.ps
- To print from a Web brower: Just select the "Print" button.
Use the command lpq on the UNIX workstations
By default, if you send text to the printers it will print it
two pages per physical sheet.
If you have other types of files (eg PDF, DVI etc) then
the first step is to get the file into Postscript form. This varies from
format to format.
For example, when using acroread to view a PDF
file, just using the print to file option will cause a postscript file
to be written. Then, use the command mpage -n file.ps | lpr where n is the number of pages per page to send the file to the printers. Obviously you
can often combine all these steps into a pipe line. (use mpage -2 | lpr
as the print command in acroread or netscape).
6. Security issues.
You should never have hardcopies of your password written anywhere.
NO!
Don't even attempt to run any of this hacking material that is freely
available on the net. There isn't any excuse. If you are just inquisitive, run
it on your own computer systems.
University equipment is not intended as a highly secure
system. It is provided on a trust
basis. Suffice to say, any attempts to hack in
or otherwise interfere with ECR equipment would
have been intentional, as there is basic security
maintained.
As an extreme case, one person who wilfully compromised the
University computer network (1997, after some warning)
was disqualified from their degree and handed over to
the Federal Police.
While this was quite an extreme case, it demonstrates
that where appropriate, the University will treat hackers
in exactly the same was as other Federal installations
like CSIRO or Military networks.
To change your password you can login onto
a UNIX workstation and within one of the windows type the command
passwd at the command prompt.
The machine will then ask you for your old password as validation
of who you are. Respond appropriately. Then the machine will ask
you to type your new password. It will then ask you to retype the
new password just to see that you can remember it properly.
If you have been successful then use your new password in future
logins. If the computer responds with a message saying that the
password is unchanged then you will need to run the passwd
command again.
Type your password CAREFULLY. Never write your password down anywhere
and never divulge it to another person.
Note, you can change your password on a Windows NT workstation as well
and it will also change the password on the UNIX workstations. The
converse is also true.
7. Miscellaneous things.
- First, you should login to a machine that actually has
a floppy disk connected to it. Namely only the NT workstaions
have floppy disk drives in them, but there are 6 INDYs in
laboratory 4 that also have floppy drives.
- Place the floppy in the drive.
- under UNIX If copying to the floppy disk:
- Decide if the file is a text or a binary
file. If the file is a text file, you may have to run
unix2dos filename newfilename
on the file. This
appends extra Carriage return characters to the end of
each line in the file.
- To copy to the floppy disk, you type
mcopy filename a:
- If copying from the floppy disk:
- To copy from the floppy disk, you type:
mcopy a:filename .
(....note the dot at the end - this means 'the current directory).
- Decide if the file is a text or a binary
file. If the file is a text file, you may have to run
dos2unix filename newfilename
on the file. This
removes the extra Carriage return characters at the
end of each line in the file.
- Eject the floppy disk from the drive by typing
eject or eject floppy
- To find out what is on a floppy disk type mdir
- More detailed information is contained in the mtools manual pages.
If the file you wish to copy to the floppy disk is too big to fit on
the floppy disk, you can use the command:
bsplit -1000000 filename
Which will split up the file called filename into 1000000 byte
sized files named xaa, xab, xac, xad ... . These smaller files
may then be copied to individual floppy disks. To reassemble the file
on your PC, you type:
copy/b xaa+xab+xac+... filename
The first thing to do is access the situation. Are the files you deleted
important? If they are then PANIC and go through the
following:
- In Unix, there is no such thing as an undelete
command. Once you remove it, it's gone. However, we take backups daily at approximately 4:00AM each morning (except Saturdays). So, if the file exists at the time of one of these backups, then there may still be hope.
- If you create a file and then delete it between backups, then
it will not be backed up.
-
If the file was there at approx 4:00AM then to restore
it you will have to request that it be read from the backup tapes. You do this by emailing labman@ecr.mu.oz.au giving details as to when the file was last modified, when it was created, it's name, and any other data that you think is significant.
Disk space quotas ensure that you can't use more disk space than
you have been allocated. To find out your current quota and disk usage
use the command quota -v
If for some reason you require an increase in your disk space quota
you can ask the staff in room A208. You must have a valid academic reason
for an increase. If you need an extra 5 Mb, and your web home pages take
up that much, then it's pretty obvious what you should do.
There are also other "pockets" of disk space around that can be
made available for special projects.
NOTE THAT ECR RESERVES THE RIGHT TO CHANGE (ie decrease)
DISK QUOTAS WITHOUT NOTICE. Although notice will usually be
given. Disk space is not infinite, and at times usage must be even further
restricted.
You have two main places where your files may live.
- Your home directory (or H: drive on the PCs).
- Your NT profile directory (Holds things such as desktop links
and files on the PC). This directory lives in
/home/ntprofiles/your_user_name
Thus you have to check (with du -k) both of these directories
as they both contribute to your disk quota.
It is NOT A GOOD IDEA to keep your valuable
files on your NT desktop or Documents folder. You should directly save them
onto your H: drive. (But why you might ask? because NT is very stupid. When
you log into an NT machine, it downloads your roaming profile - that
contents of your /home/ntprofiles/your_user_name directory - onto the local
NT machines. You then work on this machine - possibly adding largish files
to your Desktop. Now, when you log out, NT deletes the copy
of your roaming profile off the server, then attempts to copy your locally
modified version back to the server. What happens if you have now gone over
your quota? You guessed it, it can't successfully copy the profile back to
the server - but it's pre-deleted the original one. Result - you lose all your
desktop files.
Basically, there are 4 commands that you need to use:
- newgrp group_name
Switches you to the suplimental group group_name
- umask 006
This ensures that all files you create will be readable/writable by the group you are working under.
- chmod g+rw file
Grants read/write permission to a file.
- newgrp
.... with no group name switches you back to your
login group.
There are so many reasons why a computer might appear to be non-functional
But first things first: NEVER, EVER TURN
OFF A WORKSTATION. There are probably several other users logged
onto the machine, and just because you don't get any response where you
are doesn't mean that the machine has crashed. If you turn off the machine
you will most likely cause these others to lose some of their work.
Go and see the duty programmer or a staff member.
Again, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE EVER TURN OFF A WORKSTATION,
as other people are using it at the same time via a remote
connection.
Please feel free to ask the duty programmer and/or other
staff members if you have any problems. We will try our best to
help you out [1].
If the problem is specifically related to your assignments,
then you should contact your
tutor/demonstrator or lecturer. These people are very
familiar with the requirements of the assignment so see
them first.
Generally the duty programmer and the other ECR staff
have not seen the details of your particular
assignment - they are really there to help with ECR specific
system problems. However, the particular person on duty may
well be able to help in a general sense... like helping you
determine exactly where your program "Dumped core".
If you are really, really stuck, try emailing the duty help people
Supply as much information about the problem as you can
and lets see what happens. Include the machine name,
current directory, program name, and the exact wording
of any error messages.
[1]Of course, we won't actually do your assignments for you - but we will help if we can.
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