Physics Intranet computing:department:unix

Backups on Unix

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:08:06 -0600

Home Directories The system and user home areas of the centrally-supported UNIX and Linux systems are backed up daily. Daily and weekly snapshots are available in /backup/by_date in case you need to recover files. A Backups shortcut is also provided under both GNOME and KDE which points to this directory.

Linux Desktop Environment

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:06:59 -0600

Two desktop environments are available on the linux systems: KDE and GNOME. The default is KDE. To switch desktop environments you must be logged out and at the hellolinux login screen. Click Options and then Select Session... Changing screen resolution KDE If you want to change your screen resolution from the system default, you can use the screen resize and rotate utility, under the system tools KDE menu.

Home Directories and other file storage

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:09:05 -0600

Home directory Your home directory on the Unix cluster has a usage quota, to avoid too much space being taken by individual users (we are mainly limited by how much data we can back up). To find your quota and current usage, you can use this command:

FTP service on Unix

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:14:10 -0600

FTP server access For security reasons we no longer offer any FTP servers (although the client ftp command, to connect to other FTP servers, is still available). To access your own files from outside, you should use a secure file transfer system such as SCP or SFTP. If you need SFTP software for Windows or Mac, see our SSH software page.

Unix and Linux at Tate Lab

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:17:48 -0600

The main systems in the Tate Lab Unix network are Intel servers and workstations running Scientific Linux, and Alphaservers running Tru64 UNIX. Our systems support both general departmental and student computing, and research activities within the High Energy Physics, Nuclear Theory and Cosmology groups, the Theoretical Physics Institute, and Astronomy department.

Kerberos on Unix

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:04:00 -0600

At present, only Kerberos client applications are supported. On Tru64, the kerberized versions of telnet and ftp can be found in /usr/local/bin. On Linux, they are present in /usr/kerberos/bin.

Email on Unix and Linux

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:28:18 -0600

For most users we recommend using Thunderbird. More detailed instructions on how to configure this are included on our general mail support pages. For users accessing Unix via a terminal application (such as ssh), Pine is a popular mail program, and can be run simply by typing pine. A good place to find information on Pine is the Pine FAQ. Another good mail program is mutt (Mutt Manual).

Editing Documents

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:10:12 -0600

Both OpenOffice and Microsoft Office 2003 (Word, Excel and Powerpoint) are available on the linux systems. You can find these programs either in the KDE/Gnome start menus, or you can run them from the command line using the commands winword, excel or powerpnt (or the OpenOffice equivalents oowriter, oocalc, and ooimpress).

Printing from Unix

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:18:44 -0600

For complete information on printing commands and options, please refer to the CUPS (common unix printing system) User Manual at (within Tate Lab) or . The command to print from a Unix system to any of our network printers is:

Public Key Authentication

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:09:46 -0600

Public key authentication allows you to prove your identity to the physics unix machines--and thus login--without the use of your account password. Managed Systems Public and private key pairs are already available for all users on department unix machines. As a result repeated password entry is unnecessary when connecting to other managed machines. Additionally, the same functionality can be configured when using department windows machines to SSH into unix machines.

Removable Media

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:02:18 -0600

To access data CDs and hot-plugged USB storage devices on linux workstations, simply insert the CD or connect the device. The media should mount automatically, placing an icon on the desktop and opening a listing of the files on the device. This also adds a corresponding entry under /media with a name based on the label of the media.

Physics and Astronomy-related software

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:29:03 -0600

Many packages such as cernlib, root, geant, etc are provided via the UPS product manager. Use the command ups list -aK+ to get a brief listing of all such packages. More information is available in our introduction to UPS. General Software and Packages These applications and packages are available to all users by default.

Software Development Tools

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:35:02 -0600

Alternative versions of compilers (eg, gcc) and libraries (eg, cernlib) may be available via the ups system. Linux Tools * gcc, g++, g77, gfortran Documentation * Java 2 SDK Documentation * Intel Fortran compiler version 8.1 (command ifort) Documentation * Intel's newest Fortran license agreements no longer allow free academic use, so version 8.1 is the latest version available for use.

Using keychain with SSH

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:59:39 -0600

If you use ssh's built in public-key/private-key passwordless authentication with an encrypted private key, you may find it annoying to enter the private key password in all the time. ssh-agent provides some releaf for the problem, but not to as far an extent as we would hope. So, the nice folks at IBM created keychain.

Available Systems

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:57:23 -0600

We have a large number of linux systems available. Some are available for general use, while some are for the use of specific research groups. You can find a list of available linux systems on this page, along with the research group (“cluster”) they belong to and the amount of data disk storage.

TeX and LaTeX

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:10:05 -0600

TeX and LaTeX is a mathematical computer typesetting system much used for scientific documents. To use the system effectively, you probably have to refer to one of the reference manuals. The LaTeX “bible” has always been LaTeX: A document preparation system by Leslie Lamport. Some good online guides to start with also include:

Text File Editing

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:36:41 -0600

Several editors are available, including vi, emacs, XEmacs, nedit, and pico. If you are using an X-windows (graphics) terminal, We recommend two editors: NEdit and XEmacs. NEdit is probably the simplist one to start with. To edit a text file, type the name of the editor you want followed by the name of the file. For example:

Scheduled Updates

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:55:54 -0600

Departmental Linux systems may be restarted from time to time in order to stay current on security updates. Updates are automated, and will take place near the 1st of the month, and only where and when needed. In general, we will schedule a restart when a newer kernel has been installed but is not yet running.

Web browsers

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:13:16 -0600

Several web browsers are available on the Unix and Linux systems. The browser we recommend and support on linux is firefox. * SL5 linux ships with firefox 3.0 by default. Some linux systems may also have Microsoft Internet Explorer available, as part of the Crossover Office installation, but we do not recommend or support its use.

X Windows security

Mon, 18 May 2009 17:21:18 -0600

The X window system poses a serious security risk if it is not properly secured. If your X11 server (the screen, keyboard and mouse of any Unix system) is insecure, it will allow any other program on the internet to copy your screen's contents, capture your keystrokes, and sometimes forge keystrokes as if you typed them yourself.