Table of Contents
I. Introduction to the UF Astronomy Computing Environment
The computing environment at the University of Florida Astronomy Department
primarily consists of workstations running the Linux and
Solaris operating systems. Linux and Solaris are implementations of
the UNIX operating system. This document is geared toward new
users in the Astronomy Department that will be using our UNIX
workstations. Throughout this document, the generic term unix will
be used when referring to both the Linux and the Solaris operating systems. We
specify either Linux or Solaris directly when the material is specific to one
or the other.
Your Astronomy Account
Eligibility
Every faculty, staff, post-doc, and graduate student is entitled to an
account on the departmental computing system. Undergraduate students may
receive an account after approval from their advisor. Accounts may also be
issued for collaborative work at the discretion of the system manager. All
Astronomy users must fill out the account request form, which is available
on the web at
http://www.astro.ufl.edu/it/docs/astro-application.pdf, before their
account will be created.
Services Offered
An Astronomy account provides access to the departmental unix machines,
electronic mail, web publishing space, printing, and disk storage. All
users are initially given one gigabyte of storage in their home directory;
the amount of storage may be increased if there is valid academic need.
Rules and Policies
The use of the Department of Astronomy computing facilities is a privilege
and not a right. All users of Astronomy computing resources are bound by the
rules that are outlined in the University of Florida Acceptable Use
Policy. You may read the policy online at
http://www.it.ufl.edu/policies/aupolicy.html.
In addition to the rules outlined in the UF Acceptable Use Policy, all
UF Astronomy users must abide by the following rules:
- Do not disrupt other users of the network - The system manager
reserves the right to temporarily disconnect any user, or machine, which
causes a disruption in service to other users within the department.
- Do not attempt to steal another users account - Any attempt
to gain access to another users account, either through the use of tools
such as crack, or through social engineering, will result in an
immediate termination of your account. Additionally, we reserve the right
to contact the general counsels office, university police department, and
student honor court.
- Do not give out your password - Do not give out your password
to anyone. Anyone caught sharing their account with another
user will have their account disabled. The account will only be re-enabled
after a meeting with the system manager.
- Do not engage in piracy - Do not engage in the sharing or copying
of copyrighted material. This includes software, music (i.e. mp3's), and
movies.
Repeat offenders may find their access revoked indefinately.
Astronomy account as opposed to Gatorlink account
The University of Florida will provide a Gatorlink account to every faculty,
staff, and student at the University. Gatorlink accounts provide limited
e-mail, internet dialup access, and access to the CIRCA computer labs.
Additionally, there are some services at the university, such as the
ISIS course registration system, which can only be used with a gatorlink
account.
Your gatorlink and astronomy accounts are two seperate accounts. If you
are having problems with your gatorlink account you will need to contact
the UF Computing Help Desk either on the phone at 392-HELP (392-4357) or
by visiting their offices in 520 CSE.
II. Unix Concepts and Commands
Both Linux and Solaris share several commands between the two operating
systems. This section is intended to give a brief overview of several
common unix commands and is geared towards first time users of a unix
environment.
The C Shell
She Sells Sea Shells by the Sea Shore. At least that's how the old
tongue twister goes. Although the new unix user may feel as daunted by their
first interaction with the C Shell as if they were required to repeat the
above phrase, with a little bit of patience and this guide you will be zipping
along in no time.
Although our Linux and Solaris workstations provide a graphical interface,
most users find that over time they can be more productive by using the
interactive shell. Once you have logged into a workstation, you can open
a shell by selecting either the terminal icon, or the hosts menu option
(add pictures of gnome2/xterm and solaris / hosts).
Helpful Commands
There are some commands in unix which you may find useful. The first two
allow you to look up help pages for any unix command, they are man
and apropos.
The man command allows you to view the system documentation for
a given command. In most cases, the man command will be your first point
of reference for any standard unix command. The help pages will usually
provide you with command line options, history of the command, and even
the program authors contact information.
An example of proper usage of the man command follows:
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An example of using a man page
ken@dali:~> man ls
LS(1) User Commands LS(1)
NAME
ls - list directory contents
SYNOPSIS
ls [OPTION]... [FILE]...
DESCRIPTION
List information about the FILEs (the current directory by
default). Sort entries alphabetically if none of -cftuSUX
nor --sort.
Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for
short options too.
-a, --all
do not hide entries starting with .
...
AUTHOR
Written by Richard Stallman and David MacKenzie.
REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to .
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying condi
tions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY
or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
SEE ALSO
The full documentation for ls is maintained as a Texinfo
manual. If the info and ls programs are properly
installed at your site, the command
info ls
should give you access to the complete manual.
ls (coreutils) 4.5.8 February 2003 LS(1)
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Apropos is similar to man in that it provides you with a method to
get help with unix commands, however instead of providing you information
on a single command, it allows you to search the entire volume of man pages
for any command which matches your search criteria. For example, if you knew
you wanted to use a command to check the amount of free disk space you had
available to you, but were not sure which command would give you this
information, apropos could help you find the correct command.
An example follows:
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Example of using apropos
ken@dali:~> apropos 'disk space'
df (1) - report filesystem disk space usage
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By looking at the result of the apropos query, it appears that the command
df might be the command which will tell me the amount of free disk
space available. Viewing the manpage for df, by issuing the command man
df confirms that df is the command I was looking for.
Security
One of the first things you should do when you login for the first time is
to change your password to something that only you know. You can use the
passwd command to set your password. It is recommended that you
choose a password that is alpha-numeric and not a dictionary word. An
example of a good password is A^q!lsh%2 and an example of
a bad password is catfud.
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Here's an example of changing your password
ken@dali:~> passwd
Changing password for ken.
Old Password:
New password:
Re-enter new password:
Password changed
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Whenever you are going to be away from your computer for an extended period
of time, such as when you leave for the day, or during lunch, you should
lock your screen. This is especially important if you are running any
programs because when the screen is locked, no one else can do anything to
your computer because you must enter your password to unlock it. You can
lock your screen by selecting Lock Screen from the KDE Start Menu.
You can also set your screen saver preferences so that the screen is
automatically locked after you are idle for a specified number of minutes.
This can be done by selecting Utilities--Desktop--Screensaver from
the KDE start menu, then checking the box at the bottem labeled
Lock Screen After, then select the number of minutes.
Unix is a Multi-User Operating System
Unlike MS-Windows PC's which you may be familiar with, unix systems are true
multi-user systems. This means that while you are sitting at the keyboard and
monitor attached to the computer, other people may also be logged into your
computer running jobs. It is not uncommon for some researches to harness the
combined computing power of all of the computers in an environment during
non-peak hours by running jobs on multiple hosts. Because running jobs on
another computer might impact the performance for the primary user, it is
considered bad etiquette to login to another computer to run jobs without
first getting approval from either the primary user, or the system
administrator.
You can use the who and w commands to see the users that are
currently logged into your workstation. Unlike who, which only
displays the users logged in, and where they are coming from, w also
displays the program they are currently running as their foreground task.
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Here's an example of using the who command
ken@dali:~> who
ken :0 Aug 3 17:20 (console)
ken pts/0 Aug 3 17:20
ken pts/1 Aug 14 07:59
jojo pts/6 Aug 14 09:31 (callisto)
homer pts/7 Aug 14 09:32 (europa)
frank pts/9 Aug 14 09:34 (polaris)
Here's an example of using the w command
ken@dali:~> w
09:37:19 up 10:21, 11 users, load average: 0.03, 0.07, 0.01
USER TTY LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
ken :0 03Aug03 ?xdm? 8:41 0.00s -:0
ken pts/0 03Aug03 10days 0.00s 0.58s kdeinit: kwrited
ken pts/1 07:59 1.00s 14.89s 0.01s w
jojo pts/6 09:31 5:14 0.04s 0.02s vi a_cool_program.f
homer pts/7 09:32 3:16 0.09s 0.01s /astro/depot/iraf/iraf/cl
frank pts/9 09:34 2:39 0.13s 0.11s xclock
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If you would like to get more information about a particular user, such as
their full name, you can use the finger command. Finger will tell
you information about how long they have been logged into your system, whether
or not they have mail, and if they have a .plan file, it will display
the contents.
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Here's an example of the finger command
ken@dali:~> finger homer
Login: homer Name: Homer J. Simpson
Directory: /astro/homes/homer Shell: /bin/tcsh
On since Thu Aug 14 09:32 (EDT) on pts/7, idle 0:11, from europa
No Mail.
Plan:
Mmmmm, donut
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CTRL-ALT-DELETE?? What CTRL-ALT-DELETE?
Most people are familiar with CTRL-ALT-DELETE, which will reboot a Windows
machine if it is locked up. However, on Linux/UNIX systems, you should
use CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE instead if the system is frozen. This key
combination does not reboot the machine, but will log you out and return to
the login screen. CTRL-ALT-DELETE will actually not even work on Solaris
machines. It will work on Linux machines, but should not be used.
Internal Commands
Tab Completion: when typing a command or a filename, you only need
to type the first part and then hit tab. The rest of the command
or file will be automatically completed for you. For instance, type
ls /a and press tab, and it will auto-complete for you to
ls /astro/. However, if you then type 'd', giving you
ls /astro/d and press tab, it will not auto-complete
because there are two options. Instead, it will list these options for you:
data/ and depot. Similarly, typing in moz and
hitting tab will result in mozilla.
Ampersand (&) Normally, jobs are run in the foreground. That is,
if you type a command, such as xv, while that program is running,
you are unable to use the terminal you started the job from. Typing a command
followed by an & causes that process to be run in the background
so that you can continue using your terminal as normal. The process id number
of the job will be given in your terminal.
Suspending jobs If you are running a job in the foreground, you can
suspend that job by pressing CTRL+Z.
A job running in the background or a suspended job can be resumed in the
foreground by the command fg. A suspended job can be resumed in the
background by the command bg. The jobs command can be
used to list all jobs that are suspended or running in the background.
example
homer[~] xv
homer[~] xv &
[1] 18590
homer[~] fg
xv
[1] + 18590 Suspended xv
homer[~] jobs
[1] + Suspended xv
homer[~] bg
[1] xv &
homer[~] jobs
[1] Running xv
homer[~]
[1] Done xv
homer[~]
The first command, xv starts the program xv in the foreground. The
terminal does not offer me another command prompt until I quit xv. The
second time, I enter xv &, which runs xv in the background. I
am given its process ID and then immediately given a command prompt. xv
runs the same either way. I can change the xv running in the background to
the foreground by typing fg. If I want to use the command prompt
with xv running in the foreground then I press CTRL+Z, which suspends
the job xv. I can use the jobs command to see all jobs that are
currently suspended or running in the background. Typing bg
resumes the suspended job xv in the background and again, I can check this
with the command jobs. Finally, when I quit xv if its running in
the background, then a notification that the job is done pops up in my
terminal.
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A job running in the foreground can always be aborted by pressing
CTRL+C. You can close a terminal window (or log out if you are
ssh'd into another machine) at any time by typing the command exit
or pressing CTRL+D.
Switching to a terminal window and restoring X11
Sometimes, a bug in a program like mozilla may cause the X11 windowing
system to freeze. If this happens, instead of forcing a logout with
CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE, you can try switching to a terminal window
with CTRL+ALT+F1. This allows you to login to a text-based
terminal window. You can then run a ps aux or top
to get the process ID of mozilla (or whatever the offending program is)
and kill that process (see Processes and Jobs, below). You can
then press CTRL+ALT+F7 to return to X windows and see if the problem
is fixed.
Dot files and .cshrc
In UNIX systems, lots of information, be it about your system preferences,
or information from a program, is stored in dot files. If you do a
ls -d .* in your home directory, you will see that there are lots
of files beginning with a ., such as .cshrc (see below),
.history (containing a history of your most recent commands),
and more program specific files such as .pinerc (the pine
configuration file) or myabe even .gatorplot (the GatorPlot
configuration file). You will also notice several directories such as
.java, .mozilla, and .xmms that contain
configuration files and preferences for these programs. Normally when you
do a ls, these dot files are not listed (i.e., they are hidden
files) so you must do a ls .* or ls -d .* to list them.
They are hidden because they generally should not be edited. They contain
information that a program saved in a particular format to be able to
recall the next time the program is run. Modifying these files could thus
result in messing up the program or at least your preferences. For instance,
instead of modifying .pinerc directly, you can go into setup from
within pine and change options that will then be saved automatically to
the .pinerc file.
One very important dot file is .cshrc, which is executed everytime
you login or open a terminal window. Make sure you never delete the
line "source /usr/local/lib/global.cshrc" from your .cshrc file. This
line runs the global astronomy .cshrc file which sets up various things such
as your mail directory, and your path. Your path is a set of
all directories that UNIX will look in when you type a command. If an
executable file of the name you type in (anything from ls to
mozilla) is found in your path then that file is executed. Otherwise,
UNIX will return a command not found error. In your .cshrc file,
you can setup a modified path for yourself. Use the command set path
= (/usr/local/bin /local/bin /usr/bin /astro/data/homer0/warner/usr/bin ...)
. List all directories you want included in your path within the
parentheses. Another feature that can be set in your .cshrc
file is your default printer. You should see a line similar to:
setenv PRINTER watson (or if not, you can add it). Change watson
to dept, office, or whatever you want your default printer to be. One
other important thing that can be set in your .cshrc file is your
IDL_PATH. Similar to your path, your IDL_PATH is the
set of directories that IDL looks in for procedures and functions.
In order to use all contributed IDL software such as the entire astroLib
package, GatorPlot, and my other contributed functions and procedures such
as strparse and get_color, you MUST have the following line in your .cshrc
file: "setenv IDL_PATH +$IDL_DIR/lib:+$IDL_DIR/contrib:+$IDL_DIR/examples"
.
Directory Structure
The first thing to understand is the way that files on a unix system are
organized. Like other operating systems you might have used, unix uses a
directory structure to organize and store its files. You can quickly
understand the unix directory structure by thinking of it as a tree.
A tree's base is made up of roots, and from these roots the tree grows outward,
forming branches. The root of the unix directory structure is called
/. and is often referred to as root. All other directories
branch from the root.
| / as the top level directory. |
|
/ (Root) |
Any directory that branches out from / is a subdirectory. Immediate
subdirectories of / are /bin, /usr, /mnt, and
/astro.
| The subdirectories of /. |
|
 |
But the directory tree doesn't stop there. Subdirectories can also have
subdirectories of their own. For example, /data, /depot,
and /homes are all subdirectories of /astro.
| The subdirectories of /astro. |
|
 |
/homes, /data, and /depot are subdirectories of
/astro. Files located in /depot would be three directories
deep (directory position is referred to in terms of depth). The full address
of a file called myfile located in /depot would look like
this:
/astro/depot/myfile
Why? Because myfile is located in /depot which is a
subdirectory of /astro which is a subdirectory of /.
This long form of the address is called the full, or absolute, path.
| The absolute path for /astro/depot. |
|
 |
When working inside of a terminal window on a unix system, the easiest way
to verify the directory you are currently in is by using the pwd
command. Unix systems will respond by reporting the current directory that
you are in.
| Where am I?? Why let's ask PWD! |
|
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File Naming Conventions and Wildcarding
One important difference between unix and other operating systems is the way
in which files are named. Unlike Microsoft Windows or the MacOS, unix file
names are case sensitive.
For example, on a Windows machine if you were to name a file
MyProgram.c you would be able to access it by referring to the
names myprogram.c, or MYPROGRAM.C or even
MyPrOgRaM.C and Windows will give you the same file every time.
Unix systems on the other hand are case sensitive. To unix, there is a
difference between a file named MyProgram.c and myprogram.c,
or even MyProgram.C.
The unix shell allows you to specify a wildcard in place of
characters. Wildcards allow you to list a group of files based on a pattern
rather than precisely specifying the exact file name. There are two primary
wildcard characters in unix, * and ?.
The asterisk (*) matches any pattern. For example, let's say you wished to
search your directory for all filenames ending in txt. To do so,
you could use the directory command (ls) in combination with the asterisk (*),
like this:
This command tells unix to get all files begin with anything that end in txt.
The results could include notes.txt, Homework_Assignment_txt,
and shortcuts-txt. You can even nest asterisks in your searches,
like so:
The above example would find a file named atext, and a file
named 2003-taxes, as well as a file named latex.
The question mark is a little more precise. It matches only on a single
character. If we were to replace the asterisks with question marks
from the above example, so that we were searching on ?t?x?, the
only file that would be found would be atext.
File Ownership and Permissions
Every file and directory on a unix system is "owned" by a user and a group.
A group is a collection of users, and every user is a member of a group.
On our system, most graduate students are members of the gradstu group
while most staff are members of the staff group. A user can be a member
of more than one group, thus allowing the ability to access files and
directories restricted to different users.
When ever you create a new file or directory it is automatically owned by you
and your primary group.
All files and directories on a unix system have special flags which
tell the operating system who is able to read, modify, or run the file if
it is a program. These flags are referred to as file permissions
and there are three sets of file permissions for every file and
directory on a unix operating system. The first set of permissions specify
what the owner of a file may do, the second set specify what
group members may do, and the final set specifies what everyone
else on the unix machine may do.
There are three primary flags for every file. They are Read,
Write, and eXecute. They are represented by the letters
R, W, and X respectively.
Let's look at some files and see how file permissions work. Below
is the output of the directory command, ls -l. We will go
into more details on how to use the directory command later.
-rw-r----- 1 ken sysadmin 21398 Dec 22 2002 add-folder.png
-rw----r-- 1 ken sysadmin 20474 Dec 22 2002 filter-folder.png
-rw------- 1 ken sysadmin 17260 Dec 22 2002 filter-name.png
-rw-rw-r-- 1 edmeades sysadmin 21470 Dec 22 2002 filter-subject.png
drwxrwxr-x 2 ken sysadmin 512 Jul 29 13:54 images
-rwxr-x--- 1 ken sysadmin 6944 Jul 29 13:54 soffice
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The first column contains the file permissions for the file owner,
group owner, and everyone else. The second column specifies the number of
links each file has, and it is not important at this time. The third
column lists the owner of a file. The fourth column lists the
group owner of a file. The fifth column lists the size
for each file. The sixth, seventh, and eighth columns list the date
and if the file was created in the current year, the time. The final
column lists the name of the file.
The file permissions are broken down into ten flags. The first
flag specifies if the file is a special kind of file, such as a directory.
The last nine flags are broken down into groups of three flags each
for the file owner, file group, and everyone else. The basic flags are
r - read, w - write, and x - execute.
If you were to see the permissions -rwxr-x--- that would specify
that the file is not a special file, the owner can read, write,
and execute the file, members of the group can read and execute the
file, and everyone else is prevented from accessing the file.
In the directory listing above, we see that the file add-folder.png
is owned by the user ken, is owned by the group sysadmin,
and is 21398 bytes big. The owner of the file, ken,
has the ability to read and modify the file. All members of the group
sysadmin can read the file. All other users on the system are unable
to access the file.
Looking at the file filter-folder.png we see that it is owned by
the user ken and the group sysadmin. The file owner
is able to read and modify the file. Although there are no permissions
specifically granted to the members of the sysadmin group, because
all users on the system are allowed to read the file, members of the
sysadmin group can also read the file. On the other hand, the file
filter-name.png is restricted so that only ken may
modify or access the file.
The file filter-subject.png is owned by the user edmeades
and the group sysadmin. Because the permissions are set to allow
members of the sysadmin group the ability to modify the files,
assuming that he is a member of sysadmin, the user ken
would be able to modify the file.
The file images is a special file. The special flag d tells
us that this file is a sub-directory. Both ken and members of the
group sysadmin are able to create files in the images subdirectory,
and all users may read files that are placed there.
The final file in our directory listing, soffice, is a program. The
x flag specifies that it is an executable and can be run only by
ken and members of the sysadmin group.
File permissions can be changed by using the chmod command. We will
discuss the chmod command in detail later.
Useful File and Directory Related Commands
The 'ls' command
The ls command provides all kinds of information on files: owner, group,
permissions, and more. There are a lot of command line options for ls, but
the most frequently used (and arguably the most valuable) is -l,
which gives a long listing with all the important details.
example
Here's a listing for the a directory called chora, first without the -l
option, then with it:
poe> ls
batcave/ index.html~ poetics.html s.index.html
digital.panic.url instructions/ poetics.html~ sources/
images/ nandu/ register.html tmp/
index.html playtime/ register.html~ ulmer/
poe> ls -l
total 25
drwxrwsr-x 2 cdilger2 chora 512 Nov 13 17:58 batcave/
-rw-rw-r-- 1 cdilger2 chora 56 Nov 07 08:13 digital.panic.url
drwxrwsr-x 2 cdilger2 chora 512 Nov 07 08:23 images/
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jdoe chora 997 Nov 15 18:27 index.html
-rw-rw-r-- 1 cdilger2 chora 748 Nov 07 09:10 index.html~
drwxrwxr-x 2 jhsiao chora 512 Nov 14 12:26 instructions/
drwxrwxr-x 3 jdoe chora 512 Nov 17 22:55 nandu/
drwxrwxr-x 2 jdoe chora 512 Nov 13 16:51 playtime/
-rw-rw-r-- 1 cdilger2 chora 1058 Nov 08 07:44 poetics.html
-rw-rw-r-- 1 cdilger2 chora 748 Nov 07 09:10 poetics.html~
-rw-rw-r-- 1 cdilger2 chora 585 Nov 15 18:23 register.html
-rw-rw-r-- 1 gulmer chora 867 Nov 08 11:34 register.html~
-r--rw-r-- 1 jdoe chora 1103 Nov 14 23:30 s.index.html
drwxrwsr-x 2 cdilger2 chora 512 Nov 07 08:23 sources/
drwxrwxr-x 2 jhsiao chora 512 Nov 13 16:57 tmp/
drwxrwsr-x 2 gulmer chora 512 Nov 15 18:19 ulmer/
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One more note... If you provide ls with the name of a file it will try
to list just that file for you. If that file is a directory, it will try to
list the contents of the directory. You can list just the directory itself
by issuing the -d parameter to ls, like so: ls -d nandu.
The cd command
To change from your present working directory to another, use the cd
command:
example
I executed the following short sequence of commands to change from my home
directory to fugu0 and back.
fugu[~] pwd
/astro/homes/ken
fugu[~] cd /astro/data/fugu0/ken
fugu[fugu0/ken] pwd
/astro/data/fugu0/ken
fugu[fugu0/ken] cd ~
fugu[~] pwd
/astro/homes/ken
fugu[~]
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What's with the tilde?
The tilde is Unix shorthand for my home directory. The tilde combined
with a username is shorthand for that user's home directory. So, although my
home directory is /astro/homes/ken, the command:
Will take me there. Likewise if you would like to visit my home
directory, you should issue the following command:
But you'll find that the permissions are set so that you won't be able
to do much once you're in there..
The mkdir command
The mkdir command allows you to create new directories.
example
Here's how to make a new directory under the present working directory and
verify its existence (of course, the pwds are merely illustrative and very
likely gratuitous):
poe> pwd
/astro/homes/jdoe/public_html
poe> mkdir my1stDirectory
poe> ls -l
total 1
drwxr-xr-x 2 jdoe f96-9042 512 Nov 17 22:55 my1stDirectory/
The "d" in the first column of the directory listing indicates that the file
my1stDirectory/ is a directory.
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You can use the command rmdir to remove an empty directory.
The rm command
The powerful rm command deletes files, period. So be careful using
it. You should never issue the command rm -rf * because
that will delete everything under your current directory.
example
I used ls to get a list of files, then rm to remove the ones I
did not want:
poe> ls
index.html comma.gif pix/
poe> rm comma.gif
poe> ls
index.html pix/
Thet file's now gone, forever.
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The rmdir command
To delete a directory, there are two options. First, you can issue a
rm -r command, which will recursively delete all files and subdirectories
within the directory and finally delete the directory itself. Second, if the
directory is already empty, you can use the rmdir command. This is
a safer alternative because it will fail if the directory is not empty.
example
I used rmdir to delete an empty directory and tried to delete a
non-empty directory:
poe> ls
empty non-empty
poe> ls empty
poe> rmdir empty
poe> ls
non-empty
poe> ls non-empty
something.txt
poe> rmdir non-empty
rmdir: `non-empty/': Directory not empty
non-empty was not deleted and something.txt is safe.
|
The cp command
The cp command allows you to make a copy of one or more files. To
copy a directory, use cp -r, which will recursively copy all files
and subdirectories of that directory.
example
Here's an example of copying a file:
poe> ls
index.html
poe> cp index.html index_copy.html
poe> ls
index.html index_copy.html
index_copy.html is an exact copy of index.html.
|
The mv command
The mv command allows you to rename or move a file or
directory.
example
Here's an example of moving files:
poe> ls
index.html pic.jpg pix/
poe> mv index.html index_old.html
poe> ls
index_old.html pic.jpg pix/
poe> mv pic.jpg pix
poe> ls
index_old.html pix/
poe> ls pix
pic.jpg
The first mv command renamed index.html to index_old.html and the
second mv moved the file pic.jpg into the pix directory.
|
The chmod command
The chmod command changes file permissions for a file or directory.
It can be used in one of two ways. First, with an argument that is a
combination of the letters 'ugoa' then +, -, or
=, then a combination of the letters 'rwx'. The first set
of letters controls which users have access to the file: the user who owns it
(u), all users in the file's group (g), other users not in
the file's group (o), or all users (a). A + will
cause the permissions selected to be added to the existing permissions of
the file, a - will cause them to be removed, and an = causes
them to be the only permissions a file has. The second set of letters selects
the new permissions for the file: read (r), write (w), and
execute (or for directories, allow access to) (x). The second method
of using chmod is by giving a 3-digit numeric code where each number is from
0-7. The numbers are obtained by adding up bits with values of 4,
2, and 1, which represent read, write,
and execute, respectively. The first number represents the permissions for
the user who owns the file, the second number other users in the file's group,
and the third number other users not in the file's group.
example
Here's an example of using chmod to change file permissions:
homer[handbook/test] ls -l index.html
-rw------- 1 warner students 9 2004-08-11 13:04 index.html
homer[handbook/test] chmod a+r index.html
homer[handbook/test] chmod 644 index.html
homer[handbook/test] ls -l index.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 warner students 9 2004-08-11 13:04 index.html
At first, the file index.html is only readable and writeable by the owner
of the file. The first chmod command adds read permission to the
file for all users. The second chmod command performs a similar task,
but is more specific. This command enables read permission to the file
for all users, but specifies that only the file's owner has write permission.
|
The df command
The df command displays the amount of disk space available on each
filesystem listed. If no argument is given, the space available on all
currently mounted filesystems is shown.
example
Here's an example of df:
homer[~] df / /usr
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hde5 1034244 844276 137428 87% /
/dev/hde8 3222000 1730684 1327644 57% /usr
homer[~] df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hde5 1034244 844276 137428 87% /
/dev/hdf5 39516216 8372888 29136012 23% /mnt/backup
/dev/hde9 71368592 63593504 4149692 94% /scratch
/dev/hde6 520824 24604 469764 5% /tmp
/dev/hde8 3222000 1730684 1327644 57% /usr
/dev/hde7 248895 105040 131005 45% /var
tmpfs 257400 0 257400 0% /dev/shm
woodstock.astro.ufl.edu:/export/mail
9874947 2144659 7236541 23% /var/spool/mail
woodstock:/export/homes/warner
205316023 139100259 49790483 74% /astro/homes/warner
|
The du command
The du command displays the disk usage of each file listed,
recursively for directories. If no argument is given, the disk usage
of the current directory (and recursively of all subdirectories) is shown.
Setting the c flag produces a grand total, and the s flag
displays only a total for each argument.
example
Here's an example of du:
homer[~] du IDL5220/
14 IDL5220/HW1
73 IDL5220/HW2
11 IDL5220/HW3
430 IDL5220/HW4
4 IDL5220/HW5
3 IDL5220/HW6
27 IDL5220/HW7
700 IDL5220
homer[~] du -cs idl_apps/ IDL5220/
19285 idl_apps
700 IDL5220
19985 total
|
The file command
The file command displays information about one or more files.
example
Here's an example of file:
homer[~/public_html/handbook] file *
index.html: HTML document text
pwd.gif: GIF image data, version 89a, 300 x 186
test: directory
|
The grep command
The grep command searches the input files (or standard input if no
files are named) and returns all lines containing the specified pattern.
example
Here's an example of grep:
homer[~/public_html/handbook] grep Under index.html
account on the departmental computing system. Undergraduate students may
N 81 Aug 14 Dianne Underwood (7466) Re: [NETMGRS] urgent scan for more dan
homer[~/public_html/handbook] ps aux | grep moz
warner 9371 0.0 0.2 2740 1256 ? S Aug10 0:00 /bin/sh /astro/ho
mes/warner/homer0/usr/local/netscape/run-mozilla.sh /astro/homes/warner/homer0/u
sr/local/netscape/netscape-bin
The first grep command searches the file index.html and returns every
line containing 'Under'. The second one takes the list of running processes
(see Processes and Jobs, below) from standard input and returns every line
containing 'moz'.
|
The ln command
The ln command creates a link to a target directory. You almost
always want to use the form ln -s to create a symbolic link instead
of a hard link.
example
Here's an example of ln:
homer[~] ln -s /astro/data/homer0/warner/ homer0
homer[~] ls -l h*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 warner students 26 2003-02-13 16:00 homer0 -> /astro/dat
a/homer0/warner/
I now have a link in my home directory to my data directory. Now, when I want
to list the files in my data directory, I can simply ls homer0 instead
of specifiying the full path: ls /astro/data/homer0/warner/.
|
More and Less
more and less are utilities that allow you to view and
scroll through text files. In both more and less, the
space bar scrolls forward a page, and q quits. less
provides more options, and also allows for scrolling up and down with
both the cursor keys and page up/page down keys. The syntax is simply
more filename or less filename.
The wc command
The wc command prints the number of lines, words, and bytes,
respectively, for each file and a total line if more than one file is
specified. If no file is specified, standard input is read.
example
Here's an example of wc:
homer[~/public_html/handbook] wc index.html
1577 8113 58302 index.html
index.html is 1577 lines long, with 8113 words and 58302 bytes (characters).
|
Compressing/Uncompressing Files with tar and gzip
It is very common in UNIX for a file that you download to be compressed
with one or both of tar and gzip. A gzipped file has the extension
.gz and can be uncompressed with the command gunzip
file.ext.gz. file.ext.gz will no longer exist and will be replaced by
the uncompressed file.ext. A tarred file has the extension .tar
and can be uncompressed with the command tar xvf file.tar. Unlike
after gunzipping files, file.tar will still exist, but the contents of the
archive will be extracted with their full path. Commonly, tar files contain
directories with several files in them. Most files you download on UNIX
systems will be compressed with both tar and gzip and have the extenstion
.tar.gz. These files can be gunzipped and untarred with one
command: tar xvfz file.tar.gz. The z flag to tar tells it
to gunzip the file as well. file.tar.gz will still exist, and the contents
of the archive will be extracted with their full path.
example
Here's an example of gunzipping and untarring a downloaded file. The file
linux-ar-405.tar.gz contains adobe acrobat for Linux. Now if I want to
install the latest version, I download this file from adobe's website,
then uncompress it:
homer[programs/test] ls
linux-ar-405.tar.gz
homer[programs/test] tar xvfz linux-ar-405.tar.gz
ILINXR.install/ILINXR.TAR
ILINXR.install/INSTALL
ILINXR.install/INSTGUID.TXT
ILINXR.install/LICREAD.TXT
ILINXR.install/READ.TAR
ILINXR.install/ReadMe
homer[programs/test] ls
ILINXR.install linux-ar-405.tar.gz
homer[programs/test] ls ILINXR.install/
ILINXR.TAR INSTALL INSTGUID.TXT LICREAD.TXT ReadMe READ.TAR
The original .tar.gz file still exists, and the contents of it have been
extracted to the directory ILINXR.install. This directory contains among
other things, a ReadMe text file and an executable INSTALL script that will
perform the installation of Adobe Acrobat for you.
|
You can also create your own archives with gzip and tar.
gzip works the same way as gunzip: enter the command gzip file.ext
and file.ext will be replaced with the compressed file.ext.gz. To create
a tar archive, you use the tar command again, but with the c flag
(create) instead of the x flag (extract). The first parameter tar
takes is the archive name, and then you can list as many files and/or
directories as you want. Therefore, tar cvf file.tar file1.dat file2.dat
dir1 would create an archive of the files file1.dat, file2.dat, and
the directory dir1, including every file in that directory and its
subdirectories. The archive would be named file.tar. Again, if you want
to directly create a .tar.gz file, you can use the z
flag of tar to do this in one step.
example
Here's an example of creating a .tar.gz file in one step.
homer[~/IDL5220] ls
contour.dat HW2.pro HW4 HW4.ps HW6.pro space.pro
HW1 HW3 HW4.fits HW5 HW7 test3.dat
HW1.pro HW3_first.pro HW4.jpeg HW5.pro HW7.pro
HW2 HW3.pro HW4.pro HW6 M7.fits
homer[~/IDL5220] tar cvfz HWs.tar.gz HW*.pro
HW1.pro
HW2.pro
HW3_first.pro
HW3.pro
HW4.pro
HW5.pro
HW6.pro
HW7.pro
homer[~/IDL5220] ls
contour.dat HW2.pro HW4 HW4.ps HW6.pro M7.fits
HW1 HW3 HW4.fits HW5 HW7 space.pro
HW1.pro HW3_first.pro HW4.jpeg HW5.pro HW7.pro test3.dat
HW2 HW3.pro HW4.pro HW6 HWs.tar.gz
As you can see, wildcards can be used when compressing files. The archive
HWs.tar.gz contains all 8 files beginning with HW and ending with .pro in
this directory.
|
Processes and Jobs
Each command you run in a UNIX environment spawns its own process or
processes. These processes are all run simultaneously by the UNIX kernel,
which is known as multi-tasking (something that is somehow still not fully
implemented in Windows). The UNIX kernel keeps track of all processes
running, dividing its time among them based on the priority of each process.
The way this works is that UNIX will execute some instructions from process
A, then set it aside and execute some instructions from process B, and so on,
constantly switching tasks. Each process is assigned a unique process
ID (pid).
The ps command
The ps command displays a list of the current running processes.
It is generally used in the form ps aux, which will list all
processes that any user is running on the computer, long with useful
information such as the user, process id, and cpu and memory usage. Since
this list can be long, it is sometimes useful to combine the ps
command with grep (see above) to search for a pattern.
example
Here's an example of ps:
homer[handbook/test] ps aux
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1 0.0 0.0 620 72 ? S Jul20 0:05 init [5]
root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Jul20 0:03 [keventd]
root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Jul20 0:11 [kapmd]
root 4 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SWN Jul20 0:00 [ksoftirqd_CPU0]
root 5 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Jul20 0:15 [kswapd]
warner 9371 0.0 0.2 2740 1256 ? S Aug10 0:00 /bin/sh /astro/ho
warner 14221 0.0 2.5 27468 13276 ? S 15:47 0:01 kdeinit: konsole
warner 14222 0.0 0.3 3256 1788 pts/6 S 15:47 0:00 -bin/tcsh
warner 14314 0.0 29.2 199896 150392 ? S 16:09 0:00 /astro/homes/warn
warner 14315 0.0 0.1 2672 720 pts/6 R 16:11 0:00 ps aux
homer[handbook/test] ps aux | grep moz
warner 9371 0.0 0.2 2740 1256 ? S Aug10 0:00 /bin/sh /astro/ho
mes/warner/homer0/usr/local/netscape/run-mozilla.sh /astro/homes/warner/homer0/u
sr/local/netscape/netscape-bin
warner 14317 0.0 0.1 1828 616 pts/6 R 16:12 0:00 grep moz
Notice that in the first usage, ps cuts off the command name after a few
characters, but when used in conjunction with grep to search for a
pattern, it prints the entire command.
|
The kill command
The kill command can be used to force a process to terminate, for
instance if that process is frozen. You may only kill processes that you
started. If a process still does not respond to the kill command,
you can use the -9 option to force termination. Note that you must
first find the pid of the process using the ps or
top command.
example
Here's an example of kill:
homer[handbook/test] ps aux | grep moz
warner 9371 0.0 0.2 2740 1256 ? S Aug10 0:00 /bin/sh /astro/ho
mes/warner/homer0/usr/local/netscape/run-mozilla.sh /astro/homes/warner/homer0/u
sr/local/netscape/netscape-bin
warner 14317 0.0 0.1 1828 616 pts/6 R 16:12 0:00 grep moz
homer[handbook/test] kill 9371
If mozilla was not responding, I could look up its pid using ps and
then terminate it using kill. If the process still did not terminate,
I could try again with kill -9 9371 and force termination.
|
Niceness
The niceness of a process allows you to control to some extent that processes
priority and thus how much CPU time it gets. If you are running a process
in the background, or on someone else's machine, you would want to give it
a niceness of 19, which is the lowest priority. That way, other processes
would get higher priority for CPU time and your process would only use
the CPU when it is available, which should limit the amount your process
slows down the other processes that are being run on the machine. The
highest priority for a niceness is -20.
The nice command
The nice command allows you to run a program with a modified
priority.
example
Here's an example of nice:
homer[~/homer0/Ledd] nice ./calctemplate
The calctemplate program is run with a lower than normal priority.
|
The renice command
The renice command allows you to change the niceness of one or more
running processes. Optional flags include p, which allows you
to list process IDs, g, which allows you to list process group IDs,
and u, which allows you to list usernames.
example
Here's an example of renice:
homer[~] renice 19 -p 9376
homer[~] renice 19 -u homer
The first example renices process 9376 to niceness 19, while the second
example renices all processes that the user homer is running to niceness 19.
|
The top command
The top program provides a real-time display of system information
as well as the current running processes. It will constantly update every
couple of seconds, showing the current overall CPU and memory usage, as well
as the pid, user, priority, niceness, and CPU and memory usage of
each process. You can change the niceness of a process from within top
by pressing r while top is running, then entering the pid
of the process to renice and the new niceness value. To quit top, press
q. Note that top itself can consume a lot of CPU time, so you should
not keep it running for very long.
example
Here's an example of top:
homer[handbook/test] top
top - 16:58:57 up 22 days, 9:15, 6 users, load average: 17.09, 17.07, 17.05
Tasks: 118 total, 1 running, 115 sleeping, 0 stopped, 2 zombie
Cpu(s): 2.7% user, 2.4% system, 0.2% nice, 94.7% idle
Mem: 514800k total, 482860k used, 31940k free, 88064k buffers
Swap: 529160k total, 47760k used, 481400k free, 110056k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
14221 warner 15 0 13948 13m 11m S 1.6 2.6 0:04.56 kdeinit
14484 warner 20 4 972 972 744 R 1.6 0.2 0:00.21 top
13667 warner -51 0 2308 1052 684 S 0.7 0.2 158:12.13 artsd
2362 root 15 0 124m 32m 12m S 0.3 6.5 75:35.49 X
13711 warner 16 0 4772 2672 2020 S 0.3 0.5 68:31.03 suseplugger
9376 warner 15 0 150m 149m 26m S 0.3 29.7 32:20.82 netscape-bin
1 root 15 0 88 72 52 S 0.0 0.0 0:05.30 init
2 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:03.18 keventd
3 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:11.35 kapmd
4 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.03 ksoftirqd_CPU0
5 root 19 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:15.33 kswapd
6 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 bdflush
7 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.62 kupdated
8 root 16 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:07.60 kinoded
9 root 25 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 mdrecoveryd
13 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.70 kjournald
411 root 19 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 kjournald
412 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.52 kjournald
413 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:02.49 kjournald
414 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.70 kjournald
|
Printing Commands
Printing on Linux
Printing on Linux systems is done with the lpr command. Unless
otherwise specified, lpr will send the file to your default printer
(set in your .cshrc) file. Using the P flag allows you
to specify a printer (see list of printers in VII, below). The lpq
command allows you to check the current status of the print queue for a
printer, and the lprm command cancels print jobs from the queue.
Both lpq and lprm accept the P flag to specify
a printer. By default, lprm cancels the current job, but you can
optionally specify a job ID (obtained by using lpq) to be cancelled.
Note that ASCII text files and postscript files can both be sent directly to
the printer with the lpr command.
example
Here's an example of printing on a Linux system:
homer[handbook/test] lpr index.html
homer[handbook/test] lpq
watson is ready and printing
Rank Owner Job File(s) Total Size
active warner 986 index.html 1024 bytes
homer[~/homer0/astro-ph] lpr -Pwatson APJS108.ps
homer[~/homer0/astro-ph] lpq -Pwatson
watson is ready and printing
Rank Owner Job File(s) Total Size
active warner 989 APJS108.ps 8857600 bytes
homer[~/homer0/astro-ph] lprm -Pwatson
homer[~/homer0/astro-ph] lpq -Pwatson
watson is ready
no entries
If I had more than one job in the queue, I could specify to lprm which
job I want cancelled, e.g. lprm -Pwatson 989.
|
Printing on Solaris
Printing on Solaris UNIX systems is very similar to printing on Linux systems.
Instead of lpr though, use the command lp -d. The d
flag is the same as the P flag for lpr in Linux, and
specifies the printer the job should be sent to. The command lpstat -d
allows you to check the current status of the print queue on the
printer specified by the d flag. The command cancel -d
cancels print jobs on the specified printer. Just like lprm, the
job id can optionally be passed to cancel.
example
Here's an example of printing on a UNIX system:
homer[handbook/test] lp -d watson index.html
request id is watson-992 (1 file(s))
homer[handbook/test] lpstat -d watson
system default destination: watson
|
Text editors
vi
vi is a basic text editor that can be used to create and edit ASCII
text files. To open a file for editing, type vi filename. If the
file does not exist, it will be created. vi has two modes: input mode
and command mode. When in input mode, you can enter
text, and while in command mode, pressing certain keys corresponds
to commands such as delete or undo. vi starts in command mode when
you first open a file. To switch to input mode, press i.
To switch back to command mode, press Esc. Within vi,
the arrow keys can be used to scroll up, down, left, and right.
: Commands: Several commands in vi are executed by typing :
then the command.
| :w |
|
Save changes to the file |
| :wq |
|
Save changes to the file and quit |
| :q! |
|
Quit without saving any changes to the file |
:h |
|
Bring up the online help |
| :redo |
|
Redo the latest changes (see u below) |
Command mode commands: When in command mode, typing these character
sequences will result in the following operations. Also note that entering
a number and then a command will result in that command being repeated
the specified number of times. For instance, pressing 12x will
result in the next 12 characters being deleted. Similarly, typing
150 and then pressing the down arrow will result in moving
down 150 lines in the file.
| x |
|
Delete current character |
| D |
|
Delete the rest of the current line |
| dd |
|
Delete the entire current line |
| i |
|
Enter input mode |
| o |
|
Insert a new line below the current line and enter insert mode |
| J |
|
Join the current line and the line below it into one line |
| u |
|
Undo the latest changes |
| Esc |
|
Abort any partially entered command |
Searching with /: vi has no search and replace function, but you can
search for a pattern by pressing / and then entering the pattern
you want to search for. For instance, typing /Gators and pressing
enter would search for the next occurance of the word Gators (note that this
search is case sensitive) in the file. If it is not found between the current
line and the end of the file, vi will continue its search by wrapping around
to the start of the file, until it gets back to the current line. When
searching, a . represents a wild-card. So searching for
/Ga.ors would find Gators as well. In order to include a special
character, such as ., /, or \ in your search,
you must escape that character with a \. So to search for
"/table", you would actually enter /\/table.
pico
pico is another basic text editor that can create and edit ASCII
files. Its interface may be familiar for users of pine. Unlike
vi, there is no command mode. Simply open a file and start typing.
To delete characters, use either the backspace or delete key.
To open a file, type pico filename. If the file does not exist,
it will be created. Commands in pico are performed by pressing
CTRL plus a letter and are shown at the bottom of the screen when
editing a file. Below is a list of some of the major commands.
| CTRL+X |
|
Exit. You will be asked if you want to save. |
| CTRL+O |
|
Write output. You will be prompted for the filename. |
| CTRL+R |
|
Read File. The selected file will be pasted into the current document.
|
| CTRL+W |
|
Search |
| CTRL+K |
|
Cut the current line of text. |
| CTRL+U |
|
Uncut the last line(s) of text that were cut. |
| CTRL+C |
|
Give information about the current cursor position. |
| CTRL+G |
|
Get help |
In pico, you can scroll using the arrow keys as well as page up and
page down.
emacs
emacs is another popular text editor. Unlike vi and
pico, emacs opens up its own new window with a GUI.
Therefore, it is possible to run in the bacground, e.g. emacs
filename &. emacs also has no command mode, so you can simply
open a file and start typing and delete characters with either the delete
or backspace key. You can scroll using the arrow keys and page up and page
down. One advantage of emacs is that unlike vi and
pico, it allows you to search and replace. emacs has several
icons you can click on to
perform functions such as load, save, delete, cut, paste, and even print.
It also has a menubar at the top with many more options. Nonetheless, there
are still keyboard shortcuts that can be useful when using emacs.
| CTRL+X then CTRL+C |
|
Exit. If the file is unsaved, you will be asked if you want
to save. |
| CTRL+X then CTRL+S |
|
Save |
| CTRL+X then CTRL+F |
|
Open File |
| CTRL+K |
|
Delete the rest of the current line |
| CTRL+Space |
|
Set a mark. You can then highlight text by scrolling with the arrow keys.
|
| CTRL+W |
|
Cut text |
| ALT+W |
|
Copy text |
| CTRL+Y |
|
Paste text |
| CTRL+_ |
|
Undo |
nedit
nedit is another text editor that opens in its own new window and
has a menubar at the top with lots of options. Again, you can simply open
a file and start typing and use the delete or backspace key to delete
characters. You can scroll with the arrow keys and page up and page down.
nedit, like emacs, allows you to search and replace. It
also allows you to create macros. Below are some common keyboard shortcuts:
| CTRL+Q |
|
Exit. If the file is unsaved, you will be asked if you want
to save. |
| CTRL+S |
|
Save |
| CTRL+O |
|
Open File |
| CTRL+N |
|
Cut text |
| CTRL+C |
|
Copy text |
| CTRL+V |
|
Paste text |
| CTRL+A |
|
Select All |
| CTRL+Z |
|
Undo |
| Shift+CTRL+Z |
|
Redo |
| CTRL+F |
|
Find |
| CTRL+P |
|
Print |
| ALT+X |
|
Execute shell command |
A really neat feature of nedit is that it allows you to execute a
shell command that will be added to the document. For instance, select
Exectue Command from the Shell menu, then type ls and the directory
listing will be pasted directly into your document.
Reference material on Unix
Books: The complete Idiots Guide to UNIX
III. Disk Space, Quotas, and Tape Backups
/astro hierarchy
As mentioned above, the root of the UNIX directory structure (the absolute
top level directory) is / and one of its immediate subdirectories
is /astro. /astro containes three subdirectories:
/data, /depot, and /homes.
The data hard drive for your local computer is located at
/astro/data/computer_name0 (e.g. /astro/data/homer0) and is
where you should store most of your data. Note the the path /scratch
refers to this same hard drive. For instance, when I am logged into homer,
typing cd /astro/data/homer0 is equivalent to cd /scratch.
Both commands change directories into my local hard drive. I can then create
a subdirectory within /astro/data/homer0 for myself (mkdir
warner) and my data would then be stored in
/astro/data/homer0/warner, which is equivalent to
/scratch/warner.
Because anyone may create files in the /scratch volume, we
recommend that each user create their own directory and store their
data in that location to avoid confusion and name space collision.
Thus, user warner would create a directory named
/scratch/warner and would then store his important files
there.
/astro/depot contains software that has been installed systemwide,
such as the IDL programming language, jdk (java developer's kit), and
adobe acrobat.
/astro/homes is where every user's home directory is mounted. Your
home directory is /astro/homes/username, which is also represented
in UNIX by ~. /astro/homes is a very large, expensive
disk, and since it contains everyone's home directory, there is a quota of
1000 MB of file storage on it. If you go over this 1000 MB soft quota,
you will be notified by e-mail and have 1 week to get back under the quota
before anything is deleted. There is a hard limit of 1250 MB. If you surpass
this limit, write access will be disabled for your home directory. At any
time, you can check how close you are to the quota by typing the command
quota -v.
The primary purpose of the disk quota is to act as a sanity limit, and prevent a user from accidentally filling up the entire home volume and disrupting everyone else in the department. If you need additional quota space, send an email request to admin@astro.ufl.edu.
What is/is NOT backed up
USERS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR BACKING UP THEIR OWN DATA DIRECTORY FILES!!!
ONLY /astro/homes IS BACKED UP!!! Therefore, it is generally a good
idea to keep a copy of important files in your home directory. But large
amounts of raw data should be kept in your data directory because of the
quota on /astro/homes. /astro/data/computer0 (i.e.
/scratch) is NOT backed up and it is not good to find this
out the hard way if your hard drive ever fails. You are encouraged to backup
your own data directory by whatever means you choose. You could periodically
make backups to CD-Rs or DVD-Rs or if you have a second hard drive in your
machine, periodically make a backup copy on that second hard drive.
The department has a few tape drives, including a DDS4 drive, 8mm
exabyte, and DLT drive. These drives are located in room 309 and are
labeled. Users can use the tar utility to extract or write
data on tape, and can use the mt utility to seek different
tape records. The man pages for mt and tar will provide more
information.
Publishing your webpages
Everyone with an astro account is allowed to setup a personal webpage.
Simply create a directory called public_html in your home directory
and make sure that everyone has r and x permissions to
this directory. Everything placed in this directory will be accessible
via the web. The URL for your website will be
http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~username. Therefore, if you create a
file ~/public_html/index.html, that file is on the web at
http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~username/index.html. You can create
as many subdirectories (and levels of subdirectories) as you want within
your public_html directory.
IV. Electronic Mail, Remote Access, and Transferring Files
Electronic mail
Every user with a login is automatically given an e-mail account. Your e-mail
address is xxxxxx@astro.ufl.edu, where xxxxxx is your
userid. We provide multiple methods of checking your mail, as well as provide
active spam filtering using a combination of spam-assassin and real-time
black-hole lists.
Webmail
Probably the easiest method to check your mail while travelling is by using
our webmail server. Our webmail system is easy to use yet provides support
for multiple folders, address books, and filtering. You can access our
webmail system by visiting http://webmail.astro.ufl.edu.
If you've ever used Yahoo!, Hotmail, or another web-mail system, you'll find
our webmail system to be very similar in capability and ease of use.
PINE
We recommend that users use the pine program for checking their e-mail
when they are logged into any of our unix machines. Pine is easy to use, yet
very powerful. It can be configured to automatically filter your incoming
mail into different mailboxes, it can manage address books, and it can allow
you to view attachments. Pine is also very intuitive to use with an easy to
understand menu system. Below are some screen shots showing pine in action:
|
Here's the main menu in PINE:
PINE 4.44 MAIN MENU Folder: INBOX 82 Messages
? HELP - Get help using Pine
C COMPOSE MESSAGE - Compose and send a message
I MESSAGE INDEX - View messages in current folder
L FOLDER LIST - Select a folder to view
A ADDRESS BOOK - Update address book
S SETUP - Configure Pine Options
Q QUIT - Leave the Pine program
Copyright 1989-2002. PINE is a trademark of the University of Washington.
[Folder "INBOX" opened with 82 messages]
? Help P PrevCmd R RelNotes
O OTHER CMDS > [ListFldrs] N NextCmd K KBLock
Here's the menu you see when you select a mail folder:
PINE 4.44 FOLDER LIST Folder: INBOX 82 Messages
INBOX sent-mail saved-messages IMPORTANT
INBOX.Drafts INBOX.Sent INBOX.Trash aaron
ad admin alex amd
ana anthony apple asr
? Help < Main Menu P PrevFldr - PrevPage A Add R Rename
O OTHER CMDS > [View Fldr] N NextFldr Spc NextPage D Delete W WhereIs
Here's what it looks like when you browse a mail folder:
PINE 4.44 MESSAGE INDEX Folder: INBOX Message 82 of 83 NEW
N 71 Aug 13 E-LOAN (17K) ARMs: Your lowest rate option
+ 72 Aug 13 Sallot (625K) Fw: LAUGH OUT LOUD CUTE!!
73 Aug 13 CERT Advisory (9475) CERT Advisory CA-2003-21 GNU Project F
N 74 Aug 13 ScanSoft, Inc. (9099) ScanSoft Customers: Protect your syste
+ 75 Aug 14 Thor Mitchell (2277) Re: Break week lunch?
+ 76 Aug 14 Jon Martin (2023) Re: Break week lunch?
77 Aug 14 John Oliver (1952) Data on scope PC
+ N 78 Aug 14 Jaime O'Dell (30K) Fwd: 1st Place Sports Newsletter
A 79 Aug 14 RA Kowalski (2987) Re: Data on scope PC
N 80 Aug 14 Marta L. Dickerson (1686) Buy Sildenafil Citrate Online
N 81 Aug 14 Dianne Underwood (7466) Re: [NETMGRS] urgent scan for more dan
N 82 Aug 14 Francisco Reyes (1511) Mars!
N 83 Aug 14 Philip Chase (5309) [NETMGRS] Scanning aid for RPC Vulnera
[New mail! From Philip Chase as to [NETMGRS] Scanning aid for RPC Vulnerability]
? Help < FldrList P PrevMsg - PrevPage D Delete R Reply
O OTHER CMDS > [ViewMsg] N NextMsg Spc NextPage U Undelete F Forward
And here's the message view when you highlight and read a message:
PINE 4.44 MESSAGE TEXT Folder: INBOX Message 82 of 83 ALL NEW
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 12:38:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: Francisco Reyes
To: astro.dont.spam@dont.spam.astro.ufl.edu
Subject: Mars!
Last night I got the chance to take a look to Mars with the Clark
refractor. It was around 11 PM, the planet was just a few degrees above
the Chemistry building and still low in the sky so the seing wasn't very
good. But even with the relatively bad seing, it was an amazing view. It
is BIG and I could clearly see the polar cap, even the shape of the polar
cap and some other dark features on the surface.
If you are interested in taking a look, perhaps we can meet at CTO on some
of the coming nights and I'll be happy to point the Clark to Mars.
Francisco
[ALL of message]
? Help < MsgIndex P PrevMsg - PrevPage D Delete R Reply
O OTHER CMDS > ViewAttch N NextMsg Spc NextPage U Undelete F Forward
|
For more information on having pine automatically filter any incoming spam,
please visit our page on
configuring pine to filter spam.
You can also use pine from remote by first logging into polaris and
then running pine.
Evolution
Evolution is a graphical e-mail client, similar to Microsoft Outlook. It is
only available on our linux workstations at this time, and the installed
version has a few bugs. For more information on using evolution, please visit
our web-page on configuring evolution here.
Other e-mail clients
You can feel free to use any IMAP or POP based e-mail client of your choice,
such as the Apple Mail program that comes with OS-X. However, because
we can not provide support for every mail program available, you will be
responsibile for properly configuring your own e-mail program. The following
settings should help you configure your e-mail program:
|
Standard settings for common e-mail clients:
- Incoming IMAP / POP server: mailhost.astro.ufl.edu
- Outgoing SMTP / Mail server: mailhost.astro.ufl.edu
- IMAP Folder Directory Path: Leave this blank
- Use Secure (SSL/TLS) for incoming mail: yes
- Use Secure / Authentication for outgoing mail: NO
Please note, the wording for your e-mail client may be different than what
is presented above. It is also preferrable to use the IMAP protocol
rather than POP.
|
Mailing Lists
There are a few different e-mail lists in the department of Astronomy. You
are automatically subscribed to one of the general purpose mailing lists when
your account is created. The general purpose e-mail lists are as follows:
- astro - Every user in the department receives mail from this
list.
- gradstu - E-mail list for graduate students.
- postdoc - E-mail list for post-doc students.
- faculty - E-mail list for faculty.
You can send an e-mail to any of the lists by sending the e-mail to listname@astro.ufl.edu.
Inappropriate use of e-mail
We require that our users follow the UF Acceptable Use Policy
regarding the inappropriate use of e-mail. In addition to the UF Policy, we
have the following guidelines:
- The astro list should be reserved for formal announcements and
news. It is inappropriate to send jokes, complaints, engage in arguments, or
other non-professional communication to the astro list.
- You should not send file attachments to any of the departmental e-mail
lists. Instead you should make the attachment available via the web and send
the URL.
- Treat electronic mail as if you were having a face to face communication,
and be appropriately civil and polite.
A Word About Spam
The amount of spam, also known as unsolicited commercial e-mail, that our users
receive is one of the biggest complaints we receive. We have been proactive
in using spam blocking techniques, which include Spam-Assassin and Real-Time
Black-Hole Lists, however there will always be some spam that slips through
the cracks. The problem with spam is so pervasive that recent (June 2003)
estimates show that upwards of 50% of all e-mail traffic on the internet is
spam.
We are committed to blocking as much spam as possible, but there is no real
way we can block every piece of spam without risking the loss of valuable real
electronic communications. Because our researchers and faculty may receive
e-mail from people they have not previously had correspondence with, it is
important that we attempt to find a balance between the e-mail our systems
discard as spam, and the e-mail they accept as being valid.
We will implement new technologies to help reduce the spam problem as they are
developed as long as the technologies will not discard valid e-mail.
logging in from remote
Because unix is a multi-user environment, it is possible to login from remote
locations to perform tasks such as checking your e-mail, printing a file, or
even running iraf.
ssh clients
In order to login from remote you will need to use an ssh client.
SSH encrypts your session so that everything you type, including your login
userid and password, are unintelligible to anyone except your computer and
the computer you are trying to login to. MacOS X and linux come with ssh
automatically, but there are also free ssh clients for Windows and MacOS 9
computers. Here is a list of common ssh clients, and where you can get them
from:
Logging into the astronomy network
Once you have installed the appropriate ssh client for your machine, you can
then login to our network. The first step is to open an SSH connection to
polaris.astro.ufl.edu. Polaris is the only unix machine you may
login to from a remote location, however once you are successfully logged into
polaris you may then login to any other host on our network that you have
access to.
Because polaris is our login server, there are a limited set of
applications that will run on polaris. You can run the pine
e-mail client, you can edit documents with the vi,
emacs, and pico text editors, and you can print
documents with lpr. If you wish to perform a more complex
task, such as running an iraf session, you will need to login
to another host once you have logged into polaris through the use of
the ssh command.
|
Here's an example of ssh'ing into polaris from a remote location, and then
logging into another host on the network to run iraf.
ken@kens-computer-at-home:~> ssh polaris.astro.ufl.edu
ken@polaris.astro.ufl.edu's password:
Last login: Thu Aug 14 11:23:54 2003 from fugu.astro.ufl.
Copyright (c) 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE-p1 (POLARIS) #1: Tue Aug 5 16:49:08 EDT 2003
Department of Astronomy
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Authorized Access Only
System access is logged. If you do not consent, disconnect now.
All users are bound by the University's Acceptable Use Policy.
http://www.it.ufl.edu/policies/aupolicy.html
polaris[~] ssh fugu
Department of Astronomy
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Authorized Access Only
System access is logged. If you do not consent, disconnect now.
All users are bound by the University's Acceptable Use Policy.
http://www.it.ufl.edu/policies/aupolicy.html
fugu[~] cl
apropos ctio images nmisc proto tables
ared dataio ingrid_ql noao softools utilities
color dbms language obsolete stsdas xray
cosmopack guiapps lists plot system
cl> logout
|
If logging in from remote, we recommend that you login to your primary
workstation so you minimize the impact to users of other machines. In the
above example we used ssh to connect to the host fugu.
Transferring files from remote
There may come a time when you need to transfer files into or out of the
department. You may also wish to make files available so that external
collaborators may access them. There are three primary methods you can use to
transfer files into and out of the department, ftp, sftp and
http.
FTP
The FTP protocol is probably one of the most common and popular
methods of transferring files on the internet. Because your password is sent
in cleartext when using ftp, we recommend that users only use anonymous ftp to
transfer files into and out of the department network. We will most likely
disable regular logins via ftp by the summer 2004 semester.
Transferring files OUT from Astronomy via ftp
To make files publically accessable via ftp, you must first create a user
directory in /astro/data/ftp/pub. When you create the directory you should
name it the same as your userid.
|
Here's an example of setting up your public ftp space
fugu[~] whoami
ken
fugu[~] cd /astro/data/ftp/pub
fugu[ftp/pub] ls
aaron boony elston gustaf klwu mbarker packham TRecs
ana canaricam eric hamann lada muench rfrench vicki
anthony confels6 flamingos2 hon levine noah roger wilson
ashley dietrich Flamingos2PO hsmith ludmilla novotny sideris xu
ata edwards Flamingos VLT julian May,02 oliver tiede
fugu[ftp/pub] mkdir ken
fugu[ftp/pub] ls
aaron boony elston gustaf ken May,02 oliver tiede
ana canaricam eric hamann klwu mbarker packham TRecs
anthony confels6 flamingos2 hon lada muench rfrench vicki
ashley dietrich Flamingos2PO hsmith levine noah roger wilson
ata edwards Flamingos VLT julian ludmilla novotny sideris xu
fugu[ftp/pub]
|
Once you have created your directory, you can then copy any files you wish to
make publically available to the directory.
|
Here's an example of copying a file to your public ftp space
fugu[~] cp spring-break-projects.txt /astro/data/ftp/pub/ken/
|
Your files are now accessible via anonymous ftp at
ftp://astro.ufl.edu/pub/username to anyone on the internet.
|
The file is now publically available:
fugu[~] ftp
ftp> open astro.ufl.edu
Connected to astro.ufl.edu (128.227.184.2).
220 ProFTPD 1.2.8 Server (Astronomy FTP Server) [polaris.astro.ufl.edu]
Name (astro.ufl.edu:ken): anonymous
331 Anonymous login ok, send your complete email address as your password.
Password:
230-
Department of Astronomy
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Authorized Access Only
System access is logged. If you do not consent, disconnect now.
All users are bound by the University's Acceptable Use Policy.
http://www.it.ufl.edu/policies/aupolicy.html
Welcome to University of Florida Department of Astronomy.
You may retrieve files from the /pub directory.
All files from the /upload directory are automatically removed each night
at 2am EST. If you wish to keep a copy you MUST login via SSH to your
unix account and copy the files elsewhere.
Please contact admin@astro.ufl.edu if you have any questions.
230 Anonymous access granted, restrictions apply.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> cd pub/ken
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> ls
227 Entering Passive Mode (128,227,184,2,9,152).
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list
-rw-r--r-- 1 ken wheel 347 Aug 14 17:45 spring-break-projects.txt
226 Transfer complete.
ftp> quit
221 Goodbye.
|
Because the amount of space that is available for public ftp uploads is
limited, we request that you remove files from your public ftp space once they
have been transferred.
Transferring files INTO Astronomy via ftp
Anonymous users may upload files into our ftp server in the directory
ftp://astro.ufl.edu/upload. Because anyone on the internet may
upload files into our ftp server, we have two restrictions on the upload
directory; files in the upload directory can not be downloaded via ftp and
the upload directory is automatically erased every morning at 2am EST.
These restrictions are in place to prevent people from using our ftp server to
engage in illegal activities.
Once you have uploaded a file into the upload directory, you MUST
login via ssh and copy the file to another location otherwise it will
be automatically deleted. You can access the files from the directory
/astro/data/upload.
|
Here's an example of uploading a file via anonymous ftp, then copying it to a
secure location
ken@home:~> ftp
ftp> open astro.ufl.edu
Connected to polaris.astro.ufl.edu.
220 ProFTPD 1.2.8 Server (Astronomy FTP Server) [polaris.astro.ufl.edu]
Name (astro.ufl.edu:ken): anonymous
331 Anonymous login ok, send your complete email address as your password.
Password:
230 Anonymous access granted, restrictions apply.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> cd upload
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> binary
200 Type set to I
ftp> send introduction.html
local: introduction.html remote: introduction.html
227 Entering Passive Mode (128,227,184,2,9,155).
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for introduction.html
100% |*************************************| 48282 548.16 KB/s 00:00 ETA
226 Transfer complete.
48282 bytes sent in 00:00 (475.32 KB/s)
ftp> quit
221 Goodbye.
ken@home:~> ssh polaris.astro.ufl.edu
ken@polaris.astro.ufl.edu's password:
polaris[~] cp /astro/data/upload/introduction.html public_html/
polaris[~] logout
|
Using SFTP
If you would like to login and transfer files directly to and from one
of your directories, you can use the SFTP protocol, which is the
same as FTP except that all operations are performed over an encrypted
ssh transport. Just like ftp, sftp enters an interactive
command mode after logging into the specified host. To use sftp, enter
the command sftp user@hostname, e.g. sftp
warner@polaris.astro.ufl.edu You do not need to set the type to
binary or ASCII in sftp because it autodetcts the type of the
file you are transferring. Just like with ftp, you use the
commands get and put to download and upload files,
respectively. sftp supports wildcards, so the command
get *.fits will download all files ending in .fits from the current
directory on the remote host to the current directory in your local computer.
Several of the more important commands that can be used in the interactive
command mode of sftp are listed below:
| cd |
|
Change remote directory to specified path |
| lcd |
|
Change local directory to specified path |
| ls |
|
Perform the ls command on the remote computer |
| lls |
|
Perform the ls command on the local computer |
| get remote_file [local_file] |
|
Retreive the specified file from the remote computer and download it to
the local computer. If no local filename is specified, the same name from the
remote computer is used. |
| put local_file [remote_file] |
|
Retreive the specified file from the local computer and upload it to
the remote computer. If no remote filename is specified, the same name from
the local computer is used. |
| mkdir |
|
Create a new directory on the remote computer |
| lmkdir |
|
Create a new directory on the local computer |
| rm |
|
Remove files from the remote computer. |
| quit |
|
Exit sftp |
example
Here's an example of using sftp:
homer[~] sftp cwarner@grove.ufl.edu
Connecting to grove.ufl.edu...
cwarner@grove.ufl.edu's password:
sftp> cd public_html
sftp> put temp.txt
Uploading temp.txt to /u4/r/cwarner/public_html/temp.txt
temp.txt 100% 52KB 0.0KB/s 00:00
sftp> quit
homer[~]
I connected as cwarner to the remote computer grove.ufl.edu and uploaded the
file temp.txt into my public_html directory.
|
V. Useful Applications
AIPS
AIPS is an image processing package that is primarily used with radio
data. If you have questions about AIPS, you can contact Veera
Boonyasait at boony@astro.ufl.edu.
C Programming Language, GCC
C and C++ as everyone knows are very powerful and widely used programming
languages. C and C++ programs can be compiled with gcc, the standard
GNU C/C++ compiler. If you have any questions about the C language or gcc,
you can contact Eric McKenzie at eric@astro.ufl.edu. If you have
C++ questions, try looking at
the cplusplus.com tutorial.
ds9
ds9 is an image viewer that works in conjunction with IRAF. For questions
about ds9, you can contact Aaron Grocholski at aaron@astro.ufl.edu.
Fortran Programming Language, G77
Fortran is the language that used to be the standard for writing scientific
applications before C/C++ and IDL came along. Still, some people use
fortran, mostly when dealing with legacy code. Fortran programs can be
compiled with g77. If you have any questions about the Fortran
language or g77, you can contact Mike Barker at
mbarker@astro.ufl.edu.
GatorPlot
GatorPlot is a software package designed in IDL to interactively plot, fit,
and manipulate data from one or more FITS or ASCII files or functions.
GatorPlot can be used via an interactive graphical user interface or
its own scripting language, GPScript. In order for GatorPlot to work
your .cshrc file must be properly configured. It must contain
the line setenv IDL_PATH +$IDL_DIR/contrib. GatorPlot can
then be run simply by typing gatorplot at an IDL prompt or
GPScripts can be run by typing gatorplot,script='scriptname'
at an IDL prompt. Documentation is available on the web at
http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~warner/GatorPlot/ and a PDF version of the
documentation is available here.
If you have any questions about GatorPlot, you can contact Craig
Warner at warner@astro.ufl.edu.
Gypsy
Gypsy is another application that works with radio data. If you have questions
about Gypsy, you can contact Veera Boonyasait at boony@astro.ufl.edu.
IDL
IDL, Interactive Data Language, is a powerful array-based language. IDL is
especially good for doing scientific research because it is array based
and how easy it is to create plots, among other reasons. IDL can be started
by simply typing idl at a command prompt. IDL is also very easy
to learn. Craig Warner taught a 7-week course on IDL and the notes are
available on the web at
http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~cwarner/IDL5220 If you have any IDL questions,
you can contact Craig Warner at warner@astro.ufl.edu.
IRAF
IRAF is a software package developed by NOAO to do many astronomical tasks,
from reducing observational data to plotting and fitting. Many of its
features are outdated and better done in IDL or GatorPlot, but it is also
still the best available option for many other tasks.
Before running IRAF for the first
time, you must type mkiraf to setup an IRAF folder for you with
neccessary parameter files. To run IRAF, you must be in this IRAF folder
and type cl at a command prompt. If you have any IRAF questions,
you can contact Aaron Grocholski at aaron@astro.ufl.edu.
IRAF should be run from a special, graphics-specific terminal called
xgterm. There is one caveat, however--when running IRAF from an xgterm,
the backspace key does not work unless you have completed the following
steps:
- Change directory to your iraf directory. This is the directory in
which you executed 'mkiraf', so contains login.cl
- Create a file called 'loginuser.cl'
- Add the following line to the loginuser.cl: !stty erase ^H
Backspace should now work normally.
Java programming language
Java is a very powerful, cross-platform, object-oriented programming language
developed by Sun Microsystems. Java is somewhat similar to C++, but
easier to use, and because it is cross-platform, much easier to write
graphical applications in. Java can also be used to write applets for web
pages as I'm sure everyone knows. We have JDK 1.4.1 installed. Java
programs can be compiled into java bytecode by the command javac file.java
. This produces a .class file containing java bytecode. This bytecode
is platform independent and can be run by typing java file. Notice
that you omit the .class when running a java .class file. If you have
any java questions, you can contact Craig Warner at
warner@astro.ufl.edu.
Star Office
Star Office (or openoffice.org) is a fully featured office software package
equivalent to MS Office. Star Office can be used to create documents,
spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, and more. In addition, Star Office
can read and write MS formats so you can import and export files compatible
with Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. If you have any questions about Star
Office, you can contact Eric McKenzie at eric@astro.ufl.edu,
Craig Warner at warner@astro.ufl.edu, or anyone else on the IT
staff.
SuperMongo
SuperMongo is a program that is used to create plots from ASCII text files.
It is often used in conjunction with the results from C and Fortran programs.
However, in most situations, IDL or GatorPlot are much easier to use when
creating plots. If you have questions about SuperMongo, you can contact
Valerie Mikles at mikles@astro.ufl.edu.
ximtool
ximtool is another image viewer that works in conjunction with IRAF. For
questions about ximtool, you can contact Paola Rodriguez at
paola@astro.ufl.edu.
Other software
acroread: a program to view and print PDF files.
cdrecord/dvdrecord: If your computer has a CD or DVD burner, you
can use this command to write CDs or DVDs. You first need to figure out
what device your burner is. Do this by typing cdrecord -scanbus.
Once you have the device number, you can burn an iso image with the command
cdrecord -v -speed=16 -data -dao -dev=0,0,0 cd.iso. You can change
speed and dev to suit your recorder. To burn a dvd, simply use the command
dvdrecord instead of cdrecord with the same options. To burn an audio CD,
try cdrecord -v -speed=4 -audio -dao -dev=0,0,0 track01.wav track02.wav
and so on, listing all the tracks. Optionally, you could use a
wildcard: track*.wav
gaim: an instant messenger client compatible with AOL, ICQ, Yahoo,
and MSN messenger.
gimp: the GNU Image Manipulation Program. The GIMP is a very
powerful image processing package.
gv: gv is a program to view and print postscript and PDF files.
mkisofs: mkisofs can be used to make an iso file system image
that can be burned to a cd or dvd. You may want to use the format
mkisofs -lJr -o image.iso directory_name to create an iso image
of that directory. The l specifies that long filenames will be allowed,
the J that Joliet directory records will be generated, and r that rock
ridge extensions will be generated.
mozilla: Mozilla is a fully featured web browser. We currently
have Mozilla 1.4 installed, which corresponds to Netscape 7.
mplayer: mplayer is a movie player for Linux and should play
any MPEG, AVI, Quicktime, or WMV video. Simply type mplayer file.mpg
. mplayer can also be configured as a plugin for Netscape or Mozilla.
xmms (audio player): xmms is the Linux equivalent of winamp. It
will play mp3s and wav files. You can setup your own playlists, customize
the look with skins, and pretty much anything else you can do on winamp.
xv: xv is a program to view and manipulate images.
If you have questions about any of these programs or Linux/UNIX in general,
contact the IT staff: David Edmeades, Ken Sallot, or
Craig Warner.
VI. Location of Printers and Printer Names
The department maintains several printers which are available for business
use. They are:
| Printer Name | Printer Type | Location | Special Features |
| watson | HP LJ4000 | SSRB 221 | |
| office | Lexmark E250dn | SSRB 213 | Duplex mode only |
| officesing | Lexmark E250dn | SSRB 213 | Single Sided |
| color | Lexmark C510 | SSRB 213 | Color, Duplex |
| colort | Lexmark C510 | SSRB 213 | Color printer, transparency tray |
| colorsing | Lexmark C510 | SSRB 213 | Color, single sided |
| dept | Lexmark T642 | SSRB 213 | Duplex |
| deptsing | Lexmark T642 | SSRB 213 | Dept, single sided |
| thirdfloor | Lexmark E250dn | SSRB 309 | Duplex mode |
| thirdfloorsing | Lexmark E250dn | SSRB 309 | Single sided |
| irlab | Lexmark E240n | SSRB 401 | |
| admin | HP LJ4000 | SSRB 211 | Administrative use only |
| gatirprint | HP LJ4000 | SSRB 423 | Inst Group |
The color printer is extremely expensive to operate, so please only print to
the color printer when you really need to. By setting the PRINTER
environment variable in your .cshrc file, you can select the printer
that is closest to you as your default printer. A sample .cshrc which
sets the default printer to watson would look like:
#
# Please do not delete the following line.
source /usr/local/lib/global.cshrc
#
setenv PRINTER watson
|
VII. Bringing your own computer equipment
Users may choose to bring in their own computer equipment if they
choose. For example, many graduate students have decided to bring in
their own laptops and use them for some of their work.
However, before any computer is connected to the department network,
users will need to register the machine with the IT staff in
accordance with the departmental network
connection policy. Users who wish to bring in their own equipment
should probably familiarize theirselves with the policy, especially
the section on Computers Managed by Others.
Users may also access their home directories from remote locations by
using the campus VPN
Service. Users wishing to use the campus VPN will need to contact
the departmental systems staff and request assistance in configuring
this service.
VIII. Contacting the IT Staff
Our hours: 8:00am-4:30pm, M-F.
Highly preferred method of contact: send an e-mail to
admin@astro.ufl.edu.
Phone extensions: x248 (Ken Sallot), x252 (Matt Glover), and x230 (Craig
Warner).