If you don't know much about Unix, you might find a simple introductory text to learn the basic ideas and commands. You will also need to learn to use a text editor, probably either VI or Emacs. I have command reference sheets for Unix, VI, and Emacs in my office (315) if you need them.
I advise all users to skim through this entire document from time to time to be aware of what software has been installed, what printers are available, etc.
The main places to find help are the man pages, /opt/lib, and this document. To read the man page for a program, such as pgp, type
man pgp
I have put additional information for some programs in /opt/lib and /opt/doc. For more in-depth information about PGP, look in /opt/lib/pgp; for information on the elm mail reader, look at /opt/doc/elm.
Your account will work on about 20 different Sun and Linux computers. You will have the same password, mail, and configuration files from any of these supported machines
Most of the basic user files provided by the operating system can be found in /usr. The additional software which I have installed can be found in /opt. Home directories can be found under the /home directory.
When you log in, you will get the tcsh shell by default. This shell will first execute the default files /etc/.login and /etc/.cshrc. These files will set up your environment so that nearly all programs execute properly. In addition to this, you may want your own files to set up your preferred aliases, etc. I suggest you use mine to get started, then make changes as necessary. To get my startup files, execute the following:
mv ~/.cshrc ~/.cshrc.old mv ~/.login ~/.login.old cp ~ward/.cshrc ~/ cp ~ward/.login ~/
These default files have been written to be compatible with both Sun and Linux, so the same startup file can be used for both platforms.
The following computers are server-only, and do not accept user logins.
A log of recently installed software can be found in /opt/package/SOLARIS.LOG. WARNING: The current system administrator hasn't been updating this log file. Shame on him!
EXECUTABLE DESCRIPTION a2ps ASCII to PostScript converter acroexch reads Adobe Acrobat files (pdf files), see also "distill" acroread reads Adobe Acrobat files (pdf files) analog web server log analyzer answerbook in-depth information about installed Sun software atplot plot atmospheric transmission, absorption, or emission at CSO CC Sun SparcWorks c++ compiler cc Sun SparcWorks c compiler clue CSO humour -- try it and find out codev Code V optics design program -- only available on Tarsus cpw calculates coplanar waveguide transmission lines distill generates PDF files from Postscript dsb double sideband -- look at atmospheric transmission at CSO dvips converts dvi file to postscript and prints to default printer elm mail reader emacs gnu emacs text editor. Can run under X enscript print ascii files or convert them to postscript exmh an X front end for mh written in Tcl/Tk expect automate text-mode programs f77 Sun fortran compiler hfss High Frequency Structure Simulator (microwave field simulator) hpads HP Advanced Design System, simulates circuits and structures g++ gnu c++ compiler gcc gnu c compiler gdb gnu debugger ghostview program to view Postscript files glimpse text search engine gnuchess text-based chess program (see xboard, below) gs ghostscript postscript viewer gzcat decompress gzipped files to standard output gzip, gunzip gnu file compression and decompression httpd web server daemon -put html documents in directory ~/public_html idl interactive data language, see section IDL, below inews post articles to news server, used by trn info GNU hypertext help system jed a nice editor with emacs keybindings latex convert latex files to dvi (device independent) formats latex2rtf convert latex files to Microsoft Rich Text Format ledit layout editor, for making circuit masks lynx text-based web browser lvg Peter Schilke's LVG simulator, requires environment variable LVG_Data lvg_gui front end GUI for Peter Schilke's LVG simulator mae Macintosh emulator math runs Mathematica in a VT window mathematica runs Mathematica's XWindows front end matlab interactive math program for XWindows mcvert converts to and from Macintosh encoded file formats (hqx, bin) message display the message of the day mstrip calculates microstrip transmission lines mtv mpeg-1 movie viewer mh mail reader that works off of the command line mpack pack a file in MIME format munpack unpack a MIME or split-uuencode file mutt mail reader ncftp a replacement for the Unix ftp client netscape3 web browser - copy ~ward/.mailcap into your home directory netscape version 4.6 is heavier, but supports Java 1.1 olvwm large virtual desktop for openwindows, use ~jonas/.login pcircuit Jonas's two port microwave simulation program perl scripting language pgp public key encryption for more private email pgplot plotting libraries installed in /opt/lib and /opt/pgplot pico simple text editor used by pine pine user-friendly mail program printing display information about printing privtool pgp mail tool for encrypted email, see /opt/lib/privtool.mailrc procmail mail preprocessor (called from .forward) pstoedit convert postscript files to editable objects rcs GNU revision control system realplay real audio player. Copy ~ward/.mailcap and ~ward/.mime.types. recipes numerical recipes libraries in C (K.R. and ANSI) and Fortran look in /opt/recipes... for include files, etc. rtf2latex convert Microsoft Rich Text Format to latex saoimage use for viewing astronomical images scp secure replacement for rcp, to copy files across the network skyview image processing software in /opt/skyview slrn news reader snapshot capture images of the screen software display the list of software available on the Suns ssh secure replacement for rsh, to execute a command remotely supms calculates superconducting microstrip lines tcl/tk a scripting language with a GUI toolkit tex typesetting program - produces dvi file tkdesk a graphical file manager top view information about the top cpu processes traceroute used for debugging internet routing trn threaded news reader uap very useful astronomy package viewfax a simple X11 program to view fax files workman plays music CD's through CD-ROM headphone jack xanim xwindows movie viewer xbiff announces arrival of new mail xboard xwindows chess program xdvi xwindows dvi viewer xemacs superset of emacs--supports Japanese input xephem gives a map of the sky from any place on Earth xfig xwindows drawing program xinitremote run XWindows over a serial line xmgr XWindows graphing program xpostit An on-screen Post-It note Xremote run XWindows over a serial line (see also xinitremote) xv xwindows image viewer xxgdb xwindws front-end for gnu debugger (gdb) zsh an alternative to tcsh
Aips used to be installed in /home/aips1/aips. It hasn't been maintained since Dave Mehringer left the group. See Jon Kawamura (kawamura@submm) for more information.
Anonymous ftp is available on ftp.submm.caltech.edu. You may create your own directory in /home/ftp/pub/ and put anything you want made publicly available in it. Make sure that all users have read permission for all files and directories, but DON'T have write permission anywhere. Only advertise the name "ftp.submm.caltech.edu," as the this alias will always be correct, even if the physical location of the server changes.
If you want people to be able to drop files off into your ftp directory (including yourself) then cd /home/ftp/pub/. Then cd into your directory. Then "mkdir uploads" followed by "chmod 777 uploads". Now people will be able to drop files off into your uploads directory.
The ftp server supports automatic tar, gzip, and compress. For example, if you want to get a directory "foobar" and its contents as a tarred, gzipped file, do "get foobar.tar.gz". If you want to get a file bar.gz and want it automatically unzipped, do "get bar".
We currently have three floating node licenses for AutoCAD. Be sure to properly exit AutoCAD when you aren't using it to free up the license for others. The command for starting AutoCAD is "acadr13."
DXF To Gerber Postprocessor
For converting AutoCAD circuit board files to Gerber format. Must have /opt/gerber in your default search path.
asm500 XWindows front end gbr2dxf gbrvu Gerber file viewer
Cadence is a very powerful electronics CAD program. It is run from a computer in the LIGO group, so it depends on a decent network connection. Cadence currently doesn't run on our system, so if you want to use it you will have to arrange to have it set up. Your account may need special configuration files to get your environment set up for Cadence.
Here is a sample of what's available:
openbook online documentation on all Cadence software syslab start systems tools interface icds start ic tools interface
Code V has been installed on Tarsus. Since the license is only valid on Tarsus, you must run it from a Tarsus window.
The command "codev" is aliased to start Code V.
There is currently only one printer installed on Code V, "color," which is the color printer in Dustin's office.
Since there is only one license, be sure to quit Code V when you aren't using it. If you get a window complaining about license problems, you can read the license log file in /var/opt/ora_lm.log to see who is using the license.
Darren Dowell (cdd@submm) is now maintaining our installation of Code V. If the information listed here is out-of-date or you have other Code V related problems, please see Darren. Darren probably also has extra Code V manuals if you would like a set.
We have two C compilers, cc and gcc. We also have two C++ compilers, g++ and CC. We have one fortran compiler. Look through Installed Software above for more information.
To dramatically speed up fortran programs, try compiling with
f77 -fast -x04 -depend -dalign
We also have Sun's Java Development Kit. See Java Support below.
There are several different mail programs available for the Sun cluster. I recommend using pine or dtmail. Emacs and either "mail" should work fine, but don't expect to get too far with the mailtool or netscape. Here is a list of available mail programs:
/bin/mail /usr/ucb/mail pine dtmail elm mh exmh emacs netscape mailtool privtool mutt
If you wish to use an external program on a PC or Mac which supports the pop3 protocol, such as Eudora, you should configure it to read your mail from submm.caltech.edu. Be sure to change the defaults to check your mail no more often than every five minutes. Please note that pop3 is not a secure protocol, and using it could make it easy for people to break into our computers. For this reason, you may need to talk to me to have pop3 turned on for your account if you wish to use it.
Mail sent to any Sun or Linux computer on our subnet will always be readable from any of the Sun or Linux computers on the subnet. It doesn't really matter what you use for your email address or where you read your mail, but be forewarned that everyone in the outside world will always see your mail as being from
something@submm.caltech.eduI recommend disseminating @submm.caltech.edu as your official email address, then reading and sending mail from whichever computer is most convenient.
If you wish to encrypt your email, Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is available. Read the man page and check the additional documentation in /opt/lib/pgp. Privtool is an XWindows front end for PGP. I prefer using some very simple filters that I have installed in my account for Pine.
Executables are in /opt/gag/exe/bin Documentation is in /opt/gag/exe/doc.
GILDAS Grenoble Image and Line Data Analysis System - contains the programs astro, cfits, class, gfits, greg, graphic, mapping, vector all the programs have on-line help. further questions to Darek Lis (dcl@medoc) astro program to plot source visibilities cfits program to translate CLASS and FITS spectral data formats back and forth class spectral line analysis program used for the CSO gfits program to translate GILDAS and FITS image formats back and forth graphic greg+vector greg GREnoble Graphic - multi purpose plotting program, e.g. to produce maps current version supports grey scale and color plots mapping interactive program to CLEAN interferometer maps vector program to access tasks for image manipulation (regridding, rotating, fitting etc.) of images and data cubes - no graphic interface
HPADS, HFSS, and Momentum are simulation programs for microwave and RF design. Talk to Goutam Chattopadhyay for more information about these programs.
IDL is a computing environment for the interactive analysis and visualization of data. IDL integrates a powerful, array-oriented language with numerous mathematical analysis and graphical display techniques.
The most recent version of IDL (currently v5.2) is licensed on Moria only. Six users are allowed at the same time. If the license manager is down, e.g. after a computer reboot, it can be restarted by typing "idl_lmstart" on the unix prompt, by any user.
IDL can run in a simple text command line interface by typing "idl" at the UNIX prompt. Alternatively, a more sophisticated X-window interface is started with "idlde". The complete IDL help pages are available in an X window either by typing "idlhelp" on the UNIX prompt or "?" at the IDL prompt. First time users are recommended to view the capabilities of IDL by typing "idldemo" on the UNIX prompt or "demo" at the IDL prompt.
For more information on IDL or reduction applications running within IDL (such as for the Infrared Space Observatory), contact Adwin Boogert, boogert@submm.caltech.edu.
We may have multiple versions of Java installed. Version 1.2.1 is installed on most of the Suns, and is quite fast. You can also run Java applets from Netscape.
javac compile a java application java run a java application appletviewer test a java applet
We have two licences for L-Edit but you need a dongle (hardware keycode DB9 plugin) to run it over a Windows machine. The dongles and the installation cdrom are at disposal in the office of the system administrator.
There are several packages installed for mathematics and plotting. Mathematica has both a text-based version, math, and an XWindows version, mathematica. Matlab and IDL are also installed.
All of the above also do plotting. Xmgr is a nice, simple XWindows plotting package. Greg is also a useful plotting program, but be prepared to learn its text-based interface.
XV is a good program for simple image manipulation. Xanim and mtv can play some movie formats.
Immediately after getting a new account and periodically every few months after that you should change your password. This is usually done with the passwd or yppasswd command. Changing your password on one Sun or Linux computer will change it for all of the Sun and Linux computers.
You must be careful to select a good password and protect it to keep your account from being broken into. The password should be 6 to 8 characters long and should be a mixture of upper case, lower case, numbers, and symbols. Don't just pick a word or name and expect that to be good enough. Rather, think of some sentence you think you can remember and use the first letter from each word, sticking in one or two capital letters and numbers or punctuation marks to be safe.
It is advisable to use one password for computers on our subnet and a different one for computers outside our subnet. It is also a good idea to not type your password over unsecure networks. This usually happens when you use telnet or ftp. A good alternative is secure shell. Secure shell will run an encrypted session to prevent people with packet sniffers from eaves-dropping on you. Consider using the following replacements:
ssh replaces rsh and rlogin sftp replaces ftp (file transfer protocol) scp replaces rcp (remote copy)This will only work when communicating with other computers running secure shell. Most Hawaii computers, including Hapuna and Kilauea, are running secure shell. ITS is running an older version of secure shell, so you may need to use ssh1 or scp1 for backward compatibility.
epstool has been installed in /opt/bin.
pstoedit converts postscript to other editable formats.
The "psutils" package has been installed, providing the following programs and scripts:
psbook rearranges pages into signatures psselect selects pages and page ranges pstops performs general page rearrangement and selection psnup put multiple pages per physical sheet of paper psresize alter document paper size epsffit fits an EPSF file to a given bounding box getafm (sh) outputs PostScript to retrieve AFM file from printer showchar (sh) outputs PostScript to draw a character with metric info fixdlsrps (perl) filter to fix DviLaser/PS output so that PSUtils works fixfmps (perl) filter to fix framemaker documents so that psselect etc. work fixmacps (perl) filter to fix Macintosh documents with saner version of md fixpsditps (perl) filter to fix Transcript psdit documents to work with PSUtils fixpspps (perl) filter to fix PSPrint PostScript so that psselect etc. work fixscribeps (perl) filter to fix Scribe PostScript so that psselect etc. work fixtpps (perl) filter to fix Troff Tpscript documents fixwfwps (perl) filter to fix Word for Windows documents for PSUtils fixwpps (perl) filter to fix WordPerfect documents for PSUtils fixwwps (perl) filter to fix Windows Write documents for PSUtils extractres (perl) filter to extract resources from PostScript files includeres (perl) filter to include resources into PostScript files psmerge (perl) hack script to merge multiple PostScript files
The printers on the network will only print PostScript (and maybe ASCII) files. If you have a PostScript file that you would like to print, use the lp command:
lp -d printer_name filenamewhere "printer_name" is any queue from the following list:
PRINTER LOCATION QUEUE
HP 4500 DN Dustin's office color color, duplex
color_simp color, simplex
gray gray scale, duplex
gray_simp gray scale, simplex
transparency manually fed, color, simplex
HP 5 SiMx Basement labs lab duplex, 8.5x11
lab_simp simplex, 8.5x11
lab_dup_big duplex, 11x17
lab_simp_big simplex, 11x17
HP 4000 N Visitor office 4th_floor gray scale, simplex
You may use the command "lpstat -a" to see what printers are installed.
The utilities enscript and a2ps are available to convert plain text to postscript. The easiest way to print an ascii text file is
enscript -M Letter -P printername textfilename
(Without the -M option, the formatting will default to A4 paper size.)
To check the print queue, use either of the following commands:
lpstat -o printer_name lpq -P printer_name
To remove a job from the queue, use the following command:
cancel jobid
If you read this file and tried the commands, but cannot print or think that something is broken, talk to Mike Thielman or John Ward.
The following shells are installed for interactive and scripting uses.
/bin/sh decent scripting tool; horrible for interactive use.
/bin/ksh superset of sh.
/bin/csh this one stinks. use tcsh instead.
/bin/tcsh good interactive shell, bad scripting shell. Use sh/ksh instead.
/opt/bin/zsh a good shell to graduate to if you like ksh. has nice
interactive and scripting features, but is kind of big.
The default login shell is tcsh. Don't expect any sympathy if you pick anything else and things go wrong.
Microwave simulation package, good for wave guides, transmission lines, etc. The license server is running on Moria and the licence manager on Socrates. See documentation in /opt/sonnet/manual.
There is a 4 mm tape drive on Mordor. It works with 90 meter tapes only. It is installed as /dev/nrst11 and /dev/rmt/1. We also have a DLT, but it isn't hooked up at the moment. Contact Darek Lis if you must use the DLT.
tcl, tk, and expect are installed on the Suns. These are great tools for adding X-Windows interfaces to simple text-based programs. Included are:
tclsh Sinple shell containing tcl interpreter wish Simple windowing shell
A complete typesetting system. Generally, you convert a text file to a dvi file using "tex" or "latex". Then preview the dvi with "xdvi" or print it with "dvips".
dvips converts dvi file to postscript and prints to default printer latex convert latex files to dvi (device independent) formats latex2rtf convert latex files to Microsoft Rich Text Format rtf2latex convert Microsoft Rich Text Format to latex tex convert tex files to dvi (device independent) formats xdvi xwindows dvi file viewer
If you wish to convert your postscript file to pdf, use the program "distill".
Samba, a program that allows Unix servers to serve files and printers to Windows clients, has been installed on Tacos. This machine should show up under the group SUBMM from Windows clients. To use samba, you need to have samba configured for you, see me (ward@submm) to do this. After your account is set up for Samba, you should be able to mount your home directory on a Windows machine in the same way as if Tacos were a Windows server. For example, I can mount my home directory as drive "K:" using the network path \\tacos\ward.
There are several www browsers installed on the Suns. Netscape is probably the most popular. Lynx runs in a simple text window with no graphics, and is faster over slow network or modem connections. HotJava is written in Java and runs Java applets well.
Web documents can be put in the directory ~/public_html. They will then be accessible from http://www.submm.caltech.edu/~yourname/ Executables go in /opt/httpd/cgi-bin. You will have to log in to Moria to have write permission to the cgi-bin directory to add executables. Be very careful how you write your cgi program to not leave security holes. I strongly encourage you to write your cgi programs in perl running perl with the "-T" option.
All web documents should be visible from the address starting with
http://www.submm.caltech.edu/
Never use any machine name except the alias www, because actual machines might move around in the future, but the alias www will always be correct. Links pointing to "socrates," "tacos," etc. will almost certainly break.
You can obtain an analysis of the access log by looking at the log report.