CERI Computer Network Facts (and some opinion)

Last updated 20110616.

Bob's notes on the mac lab

Table of Contents

  1. QuickLinks
    1. ITD links (software, mail, etc)
    2. CERI links
    3. Other
  2. File Exchange
    1. Gaia
    2. umdrive
    3. ftp
  3. Email
    1. iam
    2. client setup
    3. filters
    4. lists
    5. tips
  4. Available Software
    1. Sun
    2. PC
    3. University
  5. General Use Computers
    1. Sun
    2. PC
    3. MAC
  6. Printers
  7. How to get new software and hardware
  8. Installing software
  9. Diskspace
  10. Other hardware
  11. Data Backups
  12. Off campus access
  13. CERI Computing Policy
  1. QuickLinks
    1. ITD links (software, mail, etc)
      2. UofM HelpDesk for submitting help requests (aka ARS).
      Documentation for UofM HelpDesk.
      iAM The UofM identity management site for managing email preferences, changing ph password, etc.
      ummail for receiving and sending email.
      umdrive for exchanging files both internal and external to the UofM.
      UofM Tech support
      for U licensed software, tigerlab locations, computer guides, etc.
      HPC, for information on the UofM High Performance Computing Lab.
      Spectrum, for viewing and modifying any information the UofM has (with notable exceptions).
      Training for Banner (aka Spectrum).
      Information Technology Division (ITD). The UofM offers a wealth of IT services and information. Explore the ITD page to learn more about them. Voice Mail Instructions.
    2. CERI links
      3. Using ssh and Exceed to tunnel remote Sun displays to a local PC.
      CERI internal page includes abstracts database, CERI handbook, forms, etc. Accessible only from a computer located at CERI.
      An old, though mostly still relevant short GMT tutorial.
      An old, though mostly still relevant UNIX introduction.
      CERI Tools of the Trade.
      Getting CERI Seismic Data.
      Chuck Langston's Tutorials include SAC, Matlab, and MatSeis.
      Instructions for downloading data from IRIS from Buck Grant.
      Service Request Workaround. Apparently using the link off the CERI webpage works using IE on Wintel and works for some other other browsers on other platforms for some but not all (returns a blank page after sign on). This despite that fact that the link does go to the same place. Its magic to me so just use the link here.
    3. Other
      4. SAC at Lawrence Livermore NL
      ORFEUS software page contains a ton of useful links to applications on several platforms.
      Blastwave.org has a ton of free software for solaris.
      Please email useful links to Mitch.

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  2. File Exchange
    1. Gaia
      2. If you don't already have shortcuts to this space, then right click on start and left click on Explore. In the explorer address area type \\gaia-ceri. You'll see a couple special directories here not all of which will you have write permission.

      One directory (or folder in PC speak) of importance is gaia (that's right, \\gaia-ceri\gaia). In there are all the disks for the Sun's that you can access from the PC's (e.g. \\gaia-ceri\gaia\arwen\d1 contains all the directories in /gaia/arwen/d1). It doesn't matter what's in a file so you can put PC files here and get them even if you never work with them on a sun. We do not currently have a mechanism to do the reverse (that is access PC disks from the sun).

      One directory in \\gaia-ceri\gaia of note is home (that's right, \\gaia-ceri\gaia\home) which is the same as /gaia/home if you're on a sun. This is where your sun home directory is. If you don't see your directory then just type in \\gaia-ceri\gaia\home\uuid where uuid is your user id. It will then automagically appear.

      From the sun's, you access all the sun file systems using /gaia. Your home is in /gaia/home. Disks on specific machines are in /gaia/machine_name. You can not access PC file systems from the suns.

      Note that most directories are mounted with a gizmo called automount. That means that the disks aren't actually mounted until someone or some program accesses it. So if you ls /gaia/home you won't see all the home directories; only those that have been recently accessed. You can cd into a particular directory and the automounter will mount the directory and you'll see it with ls.

    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, 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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  3. Email

    4. 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. client setup
      3. Check the ITD instructions page at http://www.memphis.edu/umtech/training/email.php to learn how to setup and use your client.
    3. filters
      4. I don't know how Live@EDU filters spam. But I haven't noticed a signficant increase in spam since the migration. So it must be at least as good (or bad depending on your perspective) as message marshall (what was formerly used)>
    4. lists
      5. ITD maintains a listserver and CERI paprticipates in 6 of them. Note that at the present time, all CERI students and faculty are academically affiliated with DES, hence the DES lists contain the respective CERI lists (e.g. there is no need to send to both students and to desstudents). All lists are @memphis.edu.
      3 CERI lists
      ceri_studentsAll CERI students
      ceri_staffAll CERI staff
      ceri_facultyAll CERI faculty
      4 DES lists
      ceri_desstudentsAll DES grad students
      des_undergradAll DES undergrad students
      ceri_desfacultyAll DES faculty
      ceri_desAll DES (including staff)
      The above lists are also on the CERI phone list that is updated and distributed monthly.
    5. tips
      6. Tips are always appreciated. Greenbacks are best.

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  4. Available Software
    1. Sun
      2. I probably missed alot here.
      SAC
      GMT
      PASSCAL
      Hypoellipse
      Xpick
      fpfit
      focmec
      LandMark
      Matlab
      Sun C and Fortran compilers
      GNU
      TeX
      Alchemy
      Perl
      xv
      ghostview
      Firefox
    2. PC
      3. I probably missed alot here.
      MicroSoft Office
      Symantec NAV
      Mozilla
      Adobe Illustrator
      Adobe Photoshop
      Matlab
      ArcGIS
      Nero
      Exceed
      SSH

    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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  5. General Use Computers
    1. Sun
      2. Workstations in the sunlab and some servers in the machine room are available for general use. They include: segovia, tesuji, aji, arwen, baggins, tetemeko, bbking, and pisgah. Servers are enigma and galileo. Note that galileo is only for running Landmark processes. There are also three suns in the PC lab: precious, numenor, and mithril.
    2. PC
      3. Workstations in the PC lab include Lorien, ENT-CERI, Treebeard, Isengard, fangorn, ceri-warthog, and ceri-balrog. As each PC eventually gets upgraded, it is quite likely to have "ceri-" preappended to its' current name (PCs such as ceri-warthog already have). The reason for this is that the University Windows "domain" (UOM) includes all the PCs at the University which are part of active directory and depend upon those names being unique. "ceri-balrog" was origianlly just "balrog" until someone else at the university decided to name a newly added PC "balrog" and riotous fun ensued with both PCs claiming to be the real balrog.
    3. Mac
      4. Bob's notes on the maclab.

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  6. Printers

    7. 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 0-4 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. House 0 is next to house 1 nearest the church property to the east. The long building in the rear where the library is located is house 4. The printers are:

    House 4
    3892_hpcolorColor printer house 4 in grad area.
    3892_gradB&W in house 4 grad area
    3892_hpxlfpLarge format plotter in house 4 grad area
    House 3
    3876_hpcolorColor printer in house 3 next to the Oyo
    3876_gradB&W in house 3 sunlab
    3876_langstonB&W in house 3 at the end of the hall
    House 2
    3890_hpcolorColor printer in house 2 copier room
    3890_copyB&W in house 2 copier room
    House 1
    3904_hallwayB&W in house 1
    3904_tekColor printer in house 1
    House 0
    usgsB&W in house 0 (3918_usgs on suns)
    usgs_hplfpPlotter in house 0 (not available on suns)

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  7. How to get new software and hardware

    8. The same way you get anything else. You get a quote and include it along with a memo and account number to Sheila Davidson. The CERI computer staff can assist you in getting quotes and indeed to assure the proper educational discount, you should avail yourself of this. The computer staff however, do not have purchasing authority.

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  8. Installing software

    9. If you need administrative privileges you can't. In that case you will need to convince Mitch Withers that this is something of general use to CERI. It will then be installed on all publicly available machines of the appropriate platform.

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  9. Diskspace

    10. On the PC's you have 1 Gigabyte of space on the so-called Z drive. This is your default network home directory on the PC. Things you want stored on the "Z:" drive you generally need to take some action to copy or save there. If it isn't already, this can be mapped as your network "Z:" drive using "\\sabaki\home\".

    You may also store data on the local PC drive, though it may get wiped out without notice. It is advisible to save your work periodically to an external USB drive, flash drive, the "Z:" network drive, or a DVD. The house 4 (3892) grad lab PCs all have CD/DVD writers installed, as well as Nero CD/DVD burning software. CDs and DVDs are nearly always far less expensive than your lost time even using the hourly wage rates in effect in 1910.

    On the suns, the default quota for home directories is 1 Gigabyte. If your needs exceed this you may wish to speak with your advisor or supervisor about obtaining additional storage.

    There are also two areas for miscellaneous temporary storage: 200GB and workdisk. /gaia/scratch/200GB is intended for longer term temporary storage. Please be tidy and clean up after yourself. It only contains 226 Gigabytes, currently, so you if use them 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.

    The directory /gaia/workdisk contains a monday and a thursday directory. The monday directory is cleaned every monday. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine when the thursday directory is cleaned. This is for temporary storage and files will be deleted as scheduled. The contents of /gaia/workdisk 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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  10. Other hardware

    11. Networked Scanner in house 1 outside rm 218.

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  11. Data Backups

    12. Data on the servers are backed up daily. The exceptions to this are scratch, workdisk, ftp, and galileo. The purpose of the backup is to recover from disk failure. It is NOT to recover goofs like restoring files you accidentally removed. (We would need to interrupt the normal backup routine to recover your file and that would make me very unhappy). Instead you should back up your own data to an external disk, tape drive, memory stick, or whatever.

    The Galileo disks exceed our backup capacity. The operating system and software partitions are backed to tape after significant changes. The data directories are NOT backed up. There is a DAT72 tape drive in the sunlab (or hopefully will be by the end of September, 2007) so that individuals may back up their projects using the OpenWorks or ProMAX project backup and restore utilities. Note, do not use standard unix tools (e.g. tar or ufsdump) on files. LGC projects are smeared across several partitions which does not lend itself to unix partition or directory related backup utilities.

    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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  12. Off campus access

    13. We allow ssh access to the suns 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. 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 at all possible.

    When you give your remote IP address to tech staff to gain access, please note that 192.168 addresses are not routable addresses. They are normally managed behind a firewall by an ISP and to the outside world, you appear to be logging in from a different, public internet address. In this case you can use tools like ipconfig to discover your address or arrange with computer staff a specific time and host where you will attempt to login so that we can monitor the logs and discover your ip that way.

    Of course all the other web based apps like umdrive, etc are externally available.

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  13. CERI Computing Policy

    14. Everything has rules. The CERI handbook has a section for the ones that apply to the computers. (The handbook will be updated in 2007).

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