CERI Computer Network

Last updated 20180730.

Bob's notes on the mac lab

Table of Contents

  1. Passwords
  2. QuickLinks
    1. ITD links (software, mail, etc)
    2. CERI links
    3. Other
  3. File Exchange
    1. Gaia
    2. umdrive
    3. ftp
  4. Email
    1. iam
    2. lists
  5. Available Software
    1. Mac
    2. PC
    3. University
  6. General Use Computers
    1. Sun
    2. PC
    3. MAC
  7. Printers
  8. How to get new software and hardware
  9. Installing software
  10. Diskspace
  11. Other hardware
  12. Data Backups
  13. Off campus access
  14. CERI Computing Policy
  1. Passwords
    Most people at CERI have two accounts: a uuid account, and a mac network account. See the UofM Password Security guidelines. Your uuid password should not be used for any other account. You access the PC's in the Mac Lab using your uuid account and you access the Macs using your CERI mac network account (CERI policy requires your mac network password be different from your uuid password). Manage your uuid password using iam.memphis.edu. Manage your mac network password from the terminal utility command line (Applications->Utilities) using the passwd command with the -i option: passwd -i opendirectory.


  2. QuickLinks
    1. ITD links (software, mail, etc)

      2. Most of these links require the UofM Single sign-on (sso). The same uuid and password as your email.

      Campus Wireless Network
      UofM HelpDesk via the Self-Service Portal.
      iAM The UofM identity management site for managing email preferences, changing ph password, etc.
      ummail for receiving and sending email.
      UofM OneDrive provides 1TB of cloud based storage via Microsoft. umdrive for exchanging files both internal and external to the UofM.
      HPC, for information on the UofM High Performance Computing Lab.
      Information Technology Division (ITD). The UofM offers a wealth of IT services and information. Explore the ITS page to learn more about them.
      Voice Mail Instructions.

    2. CERI links
      3. CERI internal page includes abstracts database, CERI handbook, forms, etc. Accessible only from a computer located at CERI.

      These tutorials are getting long in the tooth. Students should consider enrolling in CERI 7104, Data Analysis in Geophysics.

      Getting CERI Seismic Data.
      Chuck Langston's Tutorials include SAC, Matlab, and MatSeis.
      Instructions for downloading data from IRIS from Buck Grant.

    3. Other
      4. Software at IRIS
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  3. File Exchange
    1. Gaia
      2. Networked macs have home directories in /gaia/home which is also /gaia/macspace from the suns. Likewise networked suns have home directories in /gaia/home with is also /gaia/sunspace from the macs.

      For un-networked systems, from a Mac, the access to GAIA space is of the form smb://cifsgaia/gaia (and you have to login using your campus Active Directory account). From a PC it would be something like \\cifsgaia\gaia (the other entries adapted accordingly).
    2. umdrive
      3. This is a nice utility to share specific files. You can make them so that everyone in the world can see them, only people with UofM accounts can see them, or only specific people at the UofM can see them (same applies to write permission). It gets a bit clunky if you have a bunch of files and very time consuming if you want to upload an entire directory tree. But otherwise its pretty good. Try it at umdrive.memphis.edu.

    3. ftp
      4. If you really have to (ftp is unsecure and rapidly becoming obsolete), CERI does maintain an anonymous ftp server. There are two areas to it: upload and download.

      The download area is where you can give files to someone else. In gaia space it is in /gaia/home/ftp/download. Make a directory there named for your uuid. Then copy any files you want to share with someone else into that directory. In order for them to get the files, they ftp to ftp.ceri.memphis.edu, log in as anonymous, and use their email address as the password. They then cd to download. Please remove your files after the person gets them so that this disk doesn't fill up with year old trash.

      The upload area is where other people can give files to you. In gaia space it is /gaia/home/ftp/upload. Note that when people put files there they can not see them with ls nor can they download them. Move them from /gaia/home/ftp/upload to your local directory. Files in the upload area more than three days old are automatically deleted.

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  4. Email

    5. All email is handled by the University Information Technology Division (ITD). ITD now uses Microsoft Live @ edu for email. The blessed client is, of course, Outlook. Some people use other clients (e.g. entourage, mozilla, pine) with varying levels of success. If it doesn't work, you're likely to get a blank stare from ITD if you're not using Outlook.
    1. iam
      2. This is where you can do things like change your password, forward email to a different account, establish a vanity address, etc. Its located at iam.memphis.edu. What's a vanity address? Its something that makes sense to humans (e.g. your.name@memphis.edu) instead of the goofy 8 character uuid you get assigned.
    2. lists
      3. ITD maintains a listserver and CERI paprticipates in a few of them. All lists are @memphis.edu.
      3 CERI lists
      ceri_studentsAll CERI students
      ceri_staffAll CERI staff
      ceri_facultyAll CERI faculty
      The above lists are also on the CERI phone list that is updated and distributed monthly.
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  5. Available Software
    1. Mac
      2. See the software inventory spreadsheet
    2. PC
      3. See the software inventory spreadsheet
    3. University
      4. The University Software Page contains software available to faculty, staff, and students. Please pay attention to and comply with the license agreement relevant to the application.

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  6. General Use Computers
    1. Sun
      2. There is one remaining publicly available Sun: enigma. No replacements or updates are planned for this machine.
    2. PC
      3. There are 6 PC's in the maclab on the UofM AD network available to anyone in the CERI workgroup. They are ceripl01, ceripl02, ceripl03, ceripl04, ceripl05, ceripl06.
    3. Mac
      4. There are 13 macs in the maclab: ceriml11, ceriml12, ceriml13, and ceriml20 through ceriml34 (all are iMacs). See Bob's notes on the maclab.

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  7. Printers

    8. Please don't waste paper. Each house has one or more printers available. I can never remember the address of each house so I'll call them house 1-4 here. House 3 is the most westerly nearest to Zach Curlin. House 2 is the next house east to house 3. House 1 is next to house 2. The long building in the rear where the library is located is house 4. The new MacOS doesn't like printers with names that being with numbers so mac network printer names are in parenthesis in the below table. The printers are:

    House 4
    3892_hpcolor (hpcolor3892)Color printer house 4 Mac Lab.
    3892_grad (grad3892)B&W in house 4 Mac Lab
    3892_newplot (newplot3892)Large format plotter in house 4 Mac Lab
    House 3
    3876_hpcolor (hpcolor3876)Color printer in house 3 outside Conference Room
    3876_grad (grad3876)B&W in house 3 Grad Area
    House 2
    3890_copy (copy3890)B&W in house 2 Copier Room
    3890_exten (exten3890)B&W in house 2 Chris McGoldrick's Office
    House 1
    3904_hallway (hallway3904)B&W in house 1 hallway
    3904_hpcolor (hpcolor3904)Color printer in house 1 hallway

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  8. How to get new software and hardware

    9. Get a quote and include it along with a memo and account number to Michelle Smith. The CERI computer staff can assist you in getting quotes and assure the proper educational discount. The computer staff however, do not have purchasing authority.

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  9. Installing software

    10. Software installation that requires administrative privileges on networked computers must be installed by computing staff. Discuss your need with Computing Staff and if it will be useful for others, it will be installed on the publicly accessible machines during the next scheduled lab update.

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  10. Diskspace

    11. On the PC's you have 1 Gigabyte of space on the so-called Z drive. The Z drive is now \\precious\home.

    The default home directory quota on the macs is 50GB.

    There is an area for miscellaneous temporary storage: /gaia/scratch/200GB is intended for longer term temporary storage. Please be tidy and clean up after yourself. It only contains 350 Gigabytes, currently, so you if use it all, there won't be any left for anyone else. The contents of /gaia/scratch/200GB are never backed up, so in the event of hardware or software problems, the entire contents will quite likely be lost.

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  11. Other hardware

    12. Networked Scanner in house 1 outside rm 218.

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  12. Data Backups

    13. Backups are performed nightly. See Bob's packrat announcement for more details. This is for crash recovery only and may not include all disks. A 1TB usb external drive is about $100. Everyone is strongly encouraged to perform your own backs of important data.

    DO YOUR BACKUPS. If you don't, I guarantee that eventually, you WILL lose data.

    You can also use rsync to backup files from one disk to another using these instructions.

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  13. Off campus access

    14. We allow ssh from off campus. We do not allow any other type of access. We only allow connections from known and specific computers and networks. This includes most local internet service providers ( whatsmyip.org is useful for determining your address as it appears to the outside world. If you are leaving town and need ssh access inform the computer staff of the network you will be logging in from so that we may grant access. Please do this before you leave if possible.

    You may also take advantage of the UofM VPN server by installing a client on your off campus computer. Once connected to VPN using your uuid password, you can use the terminal (Mac) or a program such as Putty (PC) to connect to machines at CERI. Instructions to set up your vpn client are available at:
    PC: https://www.memphis.edu/umtech/solutions/docs/pcvpn.pdf
    Mac: https://www.memphis.edu/umtech/solutions/docs/macvpn.pdf

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  14. CERI Computing Policy

    15. The CERI handbook, available on the CERI Internal Website for the CERI Computing Policies.

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