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Welcome to the CSIF 
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CSIF FAQ
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CSIF Documentation Server QuestionsWhat is a wiki?Basically http://wikipedia.org says a a wiki is:The terms wiki (pronounced "wickie" or "weekee") and WikiWiki are used to identify either a specific type of hypertext document collection or the collaborative software used to create it. "Wiki wiki" means "super fast" in the Hawaiian language. Desktop Issues (Gnome KDE)How do I restore the default settings for the desktop?KDE:The configuration files are located in:~/.kde/share/config To reset all settings to their defaults, delete this directory and logout and login. If you only want to reset the settings for a particular part, only delete that particular file. You can also edit the config files by hand with a text editor. Gnome:The configuration files are located in:~/.gconf/desktop To reset all settings to their defaults, delete this directory and logout and login. If you only want to reset the settings for a particular part, only delete that particular file. You can also edit the config files by hand with a text editor. How do I add applets to the KDE taskbar?Applets can be added to the taskbar by right-clicking on the taskbar and selecting "Add Applet to panel..." and selecting the applet you want to add from the list.Some useful applets: Sound Mixer - allows you to mute/unmute sounds and control the volume Klipper - clipboard history and options How do I disable the ability for a user to write to my terminal?The command to block others, except root, to write to your terminal is "mesg n". If you put this in your .login file then it will permanently block others from being able to write to your terminal.Where is my user@cs.ucdavis.edu e-mail being sent?If you are an undergraduate or grad, your e-mail is being forwarded to your campus account.If you are not an undergraduate, your e-mail is being sent to the CSIF mail server, which has its e-mail mounted on the systems in the CSIF inside of /var/mail/user. You can access this mail from the CSIF systems. How do I forward my e-mail?You will need to create a file called ".forward" in your home directory. To do this, open a terminal window and type:echo email@address > ~/.forward Where email@address is the e-mail address where you want your CSIF e-mail to be sent. How do I check my CS e-mail?Log in to any of the machines in the basement of Kemper Hall (either in person or remotely). Open a terminal window (command prompt window) and type 'pine'. This will open a common UNIX e-mail reader. Type 'i' to see an index of your current e-mails. For a complete pine tutorial, click here.Note: This will not work for undergrads because their e-mail is already being forwarded to their campus account. GeneralWhy am I not allowed to run cron, at, or other programs while I'm not logged in?We do not allow processes to be run when the responsible student is not logged in. The reasons we do this include, but are not limited to: immediate accountability, easy process management, and reduction of resource abuse.I want to run non-instructional programs that use large amounts of the resources of the CSIF. Why can't I?The Campus Acceptable Use policy says this is unacceptable conduct; as it encroaches on others' access and use.I want to do non-instructional research in the CSIF. Why can't I?The Computer Science Instructional Facility is a service funded and designed for instructional coursework only. Research should be conducted on systems that are funded and designed for research.How do I start Firefox?Firefox is located in the KDE menu under Internet -> Firefox Web BrowserHow do I open a terminal?A terminal window can be brought up by right clicking on the desktop and choosing "Konsole" from the menu, from the KDE menu at System -> Terminal, or in Konqueror by right clicking on a folder and selecting "Actions -> Open Terminal Here"In Gnome, you go to Applications -> System Tools -> Konsole. Home Pages, PersonalRequesting A Usenet newsgroup.If you are requesting a UCD class newsgroup, you must be the Faculty member or Teacher's Assistant for that class or a department staff person providing support to the Faculty member. If the newsgroup is for a campus organization or department, then you must be an authorized representative of the department or organization. It takes about 3 working days to have your request processed and the newsgroup established.Please go to the Usenet Request & info page for more information and to request a Usenet newsgroup. How do I request a global newsgroup?If you see the need for a global in any of the big seven (rec,comp,general,misc,news,sci,soc), please read the articles titled "How to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal" in found here. If you are interested in a less structured alt group, please read "So You Want to Create an Alt Newsgroup" in found here. This will give you a good place to start.How do I set up a website on the CSIF?First, create a directory called public_html in the top level of your home directory by typing:mkdir ~/public_html Any HTML, graphic, or downloadable file must reside under this directory. Next, you must make the path to your public_html world readable by typing: chmod a+x ~/. and chmod 711 ~/public_html If you add pages or files to your website in the future, you will have to make them readable as well by typing: chmod 644 filename What is my webpage address or URL?Your address will be 'http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~your-user-id'.How do I password protect my webpage?First, create a .htpasswd file in your home directory by going into your home directing and typing:htpasswd -c .htpasswd username where username is the name that will be granted access to your webpage. You will then be prompted twice to enter the password for this user. If you would like to create more user accounts for your webpage, use the command line above WITHOUT the -c flag, or else it will recreate the password file and erase the other users. Now, give read permission to your .htpasswd file by typing: chmod 644 .htpasswd Next, go into the web directory you would like protected, for example if you would like your whole site protected, go to ~/public_html Now create a file in there called .htaccess and enter the information below: AuthUserFile /csifhome/yourusername/.htpasswd AuthGroupFile /dev/null AuthName ByPassword AuthType Basic require valid-user where yourusername is the username you use to log into your csif account. Change the file permission to your .htaccess file by going to the directory where you saved it and enter: chmod 644 .htaccess Now if try to access your webpage it will prompt you for a username and password. If the username and password entered do not match the username and password in the .htpasswd file, permission will be denied. I published a web page, and now the link needs to change, how do I automatically forward people to the new web page?Try this bit of code, change the example.com link to the one you would like the browser to be pointed to. <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>We've Moved!</TITLE> <meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="5;url=http://www.whereYouWantToGo.com"> </HEAD> <P ALIGN=CENTER> <FONT SIZE="+2">We've moved!</FONT> </P> <HR> <P ALIGN=CENTER> The new URL is <A HREF="http://www.whereYouWantToGo.com"> http://www.whereYouWantToGo.com</A> </P> <BR> <P ALIGN=CENTER> Please make a note of it! </P> <BR> <P ALIGN=CENTER> You will be automatically forwarded in 5 seconds. If you are not please click the link above. </P> </BODY> </HTML> OpenGLThe borders on the windows of my OpenGL application are missing?If you have desktop effects enabled, then there will be a variety of problems with OpenGL applications. You can disable the desktop effects to complete your work and then re-enable them if you wish. Disabling them should solve the problem.If you do not have desktop effects enabled, then come see a CSIF student programmer for assistance. File RestorationHow do I restore a file that has been deleted?The CSIF utilizes a filesystem backup tool called snapshots. This snapshot system create a series of directories that store exact read only copies of files for a given moment of time. The current system takes snapshots every hour for over 24 hours, and has snapshots stored daily and weekly for many weeks.Where to look for your missing backup or "snapshot" file.The snapshot system allows for the recovery of files that have existed a few hours before the file was deleted.Make sure you are in the directory that the deleted file was in. We will call the directory the file was deleted from the base directory. Once in the base directory, type: cd .snapshot The .snapshot directory holds a large number of other directories. Each of those directories holds an exact copy, or "snapshot", of the base directory for a given time. The files in those directories are read only, so one can copy them, but not write or change them. The directories in .snapshot start with the words hourly, nightly and weekly. Each of these directories also has a number, starting at 0 for the most recent and progressing towards the oldest. So, hourly.0 holds the last hourly snapshot of the base directory. nightly.0 holds the last daily snapshot taken nightly at midnight, and weekly.o holds the last weekly snapshot, taken at the last Sunday at midnight. From there the bigger the number the farther back in time the snapshot was captured. An hourly.3 snapshot was taken 4 hours ago (don't forget to count the hourly.0). nightly.22 was about 23 days ago at midnight, and weekly.2 was three weeks ago — on Sunday at midnight. How to find an exact snapshot file.In order to recover your file, do the following within the .snapshot directory of the base directory where your file was lost:find . -name "nameOfFile" If nothing is returned, the file is not recoverable. How to recover a snapshot fileSimply make a copy of the snapshot file that you wish to recover. For instance, if you lost or corrupted a file from your home directory called: ~/myfile and wanted to recover that file from 27 hours ago (remembering to count hourly.0), you would could check the file by reading it with "less": # cd ~ # cd .snapshot/hourly.28 # less myfile Then, once satisfied that this is the time period from which you wanted to restore the file you could simply copy it back to your home directory: #cp myfile ~/myfile Keep in mind that snapshot files are read only; however, you can search for, examine and copy snapshot files just like any other file. Account / File MaintenanceI have no quota left, what do I do?If you are already logged in, open a terminal, and then in the command line typemquota.pl then hit enter. Answer the on screen questions in order for it to delete un-necessary files. If the problem persists after the script is finished, you can either try to remove/compress files yourself, or you can seek help with those in the CSIF office. I want to get rid of all my folders that are m months/years/days old and older, how can I do this easily?First we need to construct the command to do this, and we will do so using find, the generic command will be: find . -maxdepth 1 -type d or f -mtime +y ! -name "file1" ... ! -name "file_n" -exec rm {} \; The maxdepth option determines how far you want the command to recurse in directories, 1 means it only looks at the current directory! WARNING!! This means that only top level directories are looked at. Even if sub-directories are more recent than their parents, they WILL be removed because the command was run at the level of the parent and the parent was old enough to be removed. This means if you wish to preserve sub-directories of a folder, exclude it from the top level command using "! -name" and then re-run the command from inside the directory you wished to preserve. Changing the depth of maxdepth does not solve this problem because it is a top down recursion, not down up. See example section below. The type option tells find what types of files to look for. So using -type f would find only regular files, whereas -type d will only find directories. The mtime option determines the last modification time in order to filter the files or directories. The +y argument to mtime works on a 24 hour basis, so a +3 means +(3 * 24) or 3 days ago. So if we used mtime +3 all files that were last modified 3 days ago and older would show up, but not files modified less than 3 days ago. Hence, if you want to remove months, it would be something like mtime +( 6months * 31 days) = 186 so the y value for the command would be mtime +186. The ! -name command tells find what files to exclude by name. So ! -name "foo.txt" would tell find to ignore the file foo.txt in the search, and to do nothing with it, or in our case, to not delete it. The same works for directories, ! -name "public_html" would tell find to ignore the directory public_html in it's search. The exec option stipulates what command is to be executed on each result that is located by find. For regular files using -type f, rm will suffice. However, when using -type d, the rm will need to be recursive, so an rm -r will be needed. If you do not wish to do this interactively (it will ask you if you want to remove the file each time, can be bad with many files) then simply add the -f flag to the rm command such as rm -f for regular files or rm -rf for directories. EXAMPLES So if I wanted to remove all files that haven't been modified in 3 months or more from my current directory, and I wanted to exclude the files foo.txt and bar.txt then I would do the following: find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -mtime +93 ! -name "foo.txt" ! -name "bar.txt" -exec rm -f {} \; If I wanted to remove all directories that haven't been modified in 5 months or more from my current directory, and I wanted to exclude the directories public_hmtl, and final_project I would do the following: find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -mtime +155 ! -name "public_html" ! -name "final_project" -exec rm -rf {} \; I want to remove all directories older than 3 months, but I know directory "finals" has newer directories and files I wish to preserve. We would do the following to accomplish this: find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -mtime +93 ! -name "finals" -exec rm -rf {} \; cd finals find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -mtime +xx -exec rm -rf {} \; xx is the time past which you want to remove the directories from inside of finals. ShellsMy shell gives me the error "Unknown colorls variable `ca'."This is currently a bug with Fedora 9. You can fix this by executing the following command:cp /etc/DIR_COLORS $HOME/.dir_colors Login / Password InformationHow do I login?The login program on the CSIF machines prompts for two pieces of information: username and password. A user must know both of these to enter the system.For new users, a list of usernames (indexed by surname) can be found in a glass case across from room 083 in the Kemper Hall basement. Your temporary password is the last 8 digits of your student ID number. (Pleasre remember to change this ASAP!) If you have forgotten either your username or password, stop by room 047 with your student ID card. What does it mean when I get logged out less than 10 seconds after logging in?This is most likely a quota issue, do the following:
If this doesn't work for you, go to room 047 for help. What do I do if I forget my password?If you have forgotten your password, stop by room 047 with your student ID card to reset your password.How do I change my password?From any CSIF machine type:yppasswd The program will prompt you for your current password, then the new password you wish to have. If you need assistance, please stop by room 047 with your student ID card. (Note: You won't be able to see the characters or asterisks you are typing for security reasons.) PrintingHow can I print multiple pages on one sheet?On any of the CSIF machines you can use the enscript command to print 2 pages on 1 sheet by typing:enscript -2r filename where '-2' prints 2 pages on 1 sheet and '-r' prints in landscape. If you are printing code, you can use: a2ps -2 --medium=letter --pretty-print filename | lpr where '-2' prints 2 pages on one sheet and '--pretty-print' tells it to use syntax highlighting. Note: Do not print PDFs or any binary files using these commands. What types of files can I print with the lpr command?You can print any ascii text file and postscript file with lpr.How do I print latex files (files that end with .tex)?Please see Prof. Matloff's Latex page for more information.How to Process Latex. How can I print from Quartus II?Select "Print to file" option when printing from Quartus II and generate a output file.Use the command lpr -P CSIF "output file" to print the output file.How can I check my printer quota?Your printer quota is printed on the header page that comes from each print job.The new quarter has started and my quota hasn't been reset!Let a assistant programmer know in room 47. They will make sure print quotas will get reset.I've reached my print quota and need to extend it!Bring in an unopened ream of printer paper along with the receipt to the CSIF Support room (Room 047). If its the end of the quarter and you don't want to bring in a whole ream, we can give you an extra 10 pages.What do I do when the printers are out of paper?If it's tray 3, nothing. We don't put paper in tray 3. If it's tray 4, report to the assistant programmer on duty in room 047. They will take care of it promptly.How do I print PDF files?Because PDF files cannot be printed directly with lpr, they must be opened with a PDF viewer and then printed with this program. Type: kpdf filename You can then print the PDF file from within KPDF. If for some reason this does not work, use the utility pdf2ps by typing: pdf2ps filename to create an identical postscript file which can then be printed using lpr. Problems Printing from Sisweb/MyUCDavisIf your having printing issues in Firefox when visiting these sites, use the Konqueror internet browser instead. It is located under Applications->Internet->Konqueror in the Default/Gnome session and in Internet->Konqueror in KDE. You can also run it through a terminal by typing: konqueror Remote ComputingI have an internet connection at home. Can I log into the CSIF machines and do work?Yes. We highly recommend that you use SSH (Secure Shell). You can get a free Window's client from ssh.com. Personal computers running Linux or Mac OS X come with SSH built in. Use the Terminal program to access it.Note : You can also connect graphically to a remote system using X Windows. How do I use SSH from home?SSH, or Secure Shell, allows you to connect to a remote computer in a secure, encrypted dialog. In order to use SSH from home with Windows, go to ssh.com and download the Windows client. This client should allow you to open SSH sessions with the computers in the CSIF.Most Linux and Mac OS X systems come with SSH in their normal distribution. Type 'ssh hostname' (within the terminal program), where hostname (for example) is 'username@pc50.cs.ucdavis.edu'. PC numbers may be chosen at will. Check CPU Load to find the machine with fastest load time. How do I use graphical programs remotely?You can setup your local computer to run GUI based programs remotely from another computer. For example, from a slow computer in the CSIF you could remotely login to a faster computer and launch Netscape, directing the faster computer to display the program on your slower computer. The same can be done from home (or other labs on campus) but only works well if you have a fast internet connection (ie, DSL or better). Some students have used this in ECS 175 to test graphics work at home.Installing X Windows on your home computer:
Run which ever X Windows solution you have chosen, for instance if you are using Cygwin you would launch a Cygwin terminal, then start X with: # startx Connect to the remote machine using SSH with X11 forwarding enabled. With openssh you can use the -X or -Y options to enable X11 forwarding (please see your SSH man page). Other SSH clients may differ in their use. Once connected, most graphical program windows will be forwarded to your local desktop. If all went well, you should now be able to open remote programs. To test it, try typing 'xclock &' or 'xlogo &' on the terminal window you have connected to the remote computer. X11 forwarding should be enabled with caution. Users with the ability to bypass file permissions on the remote host can access the local X11 display through the forwarded connection. An attacker may then be able to perform activities such as keystroke monitoring. See your SSH documentation for details. How do I SSH to the PC's with SecureCRT?To SSH to the PC's with SecureCRT, set the SSH server setting to "standard server".How can I transfer files from home to my CSIF account or person to person?One way is to e-mail the files to your CSIF account as attachments. This works best when the files are small. You can also use a floppy disk. For more information check the "How do I access the contents of a floppy?" section of the FAQ. If you wish to transfer more files you can ftp the files. For more information check the "How to use FTP" section of the FAQ.How do I use sftp or ftp?Type ftp or sftp and the remote system you are trying to connect to. For example, type 'ftp pc8.cs.ucdavis.edu' or 'sftp pc8.cs.ucdavis.edu'. You will then be prompted to login and to enter your password.Here are several commands that you might find useful:
I transferred a file from home to my CSIF account, but now there are ^M symbols at the end of each line.This is because the line break character on Unix, DOS, and Macintosh systems are all different. You can use the dos2unix command to get rid of them.How do I access the contents of a floppy disk?Mtools is a set of utilities that helps you access a DOS disk in Unix. For help with mtools, type:man mtools To access a DOS or Unix disk with the Linux machines you can also mount the floppy disk. For DOS/Windows formatted disks, type: mount /mnt/floppy For Linux formatted disks, type: mount /mnt/floppy2 When finished, unmount the disk by typing umount /mnt/floppy or umount /mnt/floppy2 Can I compile programs at home?Yes! C, C++, and Java compilers exist for most major operating systems. When working at home, make sure that your programs will run on the CSIF computers since most classes will only grade your programs if they run properly in the CSIF labs.If you use Linux at home, your distribution probably came with gcc, g++, and javac which you should be able to use for most of your work. If you use Windows at home, you can either run Linux in addition to Windows (see Prof. Matloff's Linux tutorial), visit gnu.org to find free compilers, or purchase a commercial compiler. Linux is the recommended method however since it's free and will be similar to what we use in the labs. If you use Mac OS X at home, you may have received a free Developer Tools CD with your OS. This CD includes everything you need to program from home - gcc, javac, perl, a nice IDE, etc. If you don't have the Developer Tools CD, since you are a student, you can download it for free. Go to developer.apple.com and sign up for a free ADC (Apple Developer Connection) student account. This will allow you to download the entire Developer Tools CD for free. What Windows software can I use to connect to the CSIF computers?PuTTYPuTTY is a popular Windows SSH client available here.First, download the installer given above and install PuTTY. Next, open PuTTY, and you should see something like this:  Next, type the CSIF computer that you want to connect to under "Host Name". The first part can be anything from "pc1" through "pc50", as shown below:  If you have not connected to this particular CSIF computer before, it will ask you if you trust this host. Click "yes":  Lastly, it will ask you for your username and password. As you type your password, nothing will appear on the screen, but it is still receiving your input. This is a standard security feature used in Linux and Unix systems that prevents others from even seeing how many characters long your password might be. Hit enter after typing your password, and you should be logged in:  WinSCPWinSCP is a convenient Windows GUI scp client. You can get it here.SSHHow do I setup ssh to allow me to log into a remote Linux system from a local Linux system without a password?Log into the local system.If you haven't done so already, generate a private and public key pair with the following command on the local system: ssh-keygen -t dsa -b 1024 -P "" This will produce an id_dsa.pub file which you cat into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the remote system. You should be able to login without a password now from the local system to the remote system. How do I setup ssh to allow me to log into any system in the CSIF from any system in the CSIF without a password?For this example, log into any of the systems in the CSIF.Change into your .ssh directory: cd ~/.ssh If you haven't done so already, generate a private and public key pair with the following command: ssh-keygen -t dsa -b 1024 -P "" This will create a file called id_dsa.pub. Edit the end of the last line of this file where it says "user_name@host_name", and change the "host_name" to "*" instead. For example: Change: ... doqlRG7g== moersfel@pc63 to: ... doqlRG7g== moersfel@* Save the file. Lastly, execute the command: cat id_dsa.pub >> authorized_keys You should now be able to login to all systems in the CSIF from any system in the CSIF without a password using ssh. If ssh still asks for a password, ensure that permissions for the .ssh directory are set to 700. How do I allow ssh to do X11 Forwarding?Try using the "-Y" switch to allow X11 forwarding. For example ssh -Y user@host.domain.Altera QuartusHow do I run Altera Quartus?The executable is located /opt/altera8.0/quartus/bin/quartus, but it should be in your path now so just run "quartus". When you first execute quartus you will have to add license information. In the section that says "License file" add 1700@storm. At this point it will either freeze up or crash for some reason, so kill it with "pkill quartus" and remove any "core" files that it created. However, if you did it did it correctly, the next time you run it, it will ask you if you want to start a new project. It should work fine after that.When I try to run Quartus, it gives me a "registry error". What do I do?You may have outdated/corrupt registry files. Type "rm -rf ~/.mw", which will remove your quartus configuration, including any corrupt/outdated files.How do I change the license file in Quartus?To change the license file, go to the tools option at the top of the Quartus window and then in the drop down menu, go to License File. This will bring up a new window, where you can enter the location of the License File.EclipseWhat do I do if I have a problem loading Eclipse or if Eclipse crashes on me?There are 3 different version of java in the CSIF, if Eclipse crashes or can't load you are probably using the wrong java with Eclipse. Run Eclipse with the following argument and it will use the correct version of java:eclipse -vm /usr/bin/gij Web BrowserWhat is a Firefox profile?Firefox allows users to create profiles which saves bookmarks and other preferences. Each profile has its own set of preferences and cache. To manager profiles you must run Firefox in the terminal with the argument "-ProfileManager" or add this argument to the shortcut to Firefox. To do this right click on shortcut -> click "configure button" -> click the "application" tab -> in the box "command" add '-ProfileManager" to the end of the line. This argument will have the profile manager open whenever you start Firefox; from here you can manager profiles.How can I run Firefox on multiple machines?This is a result of different instances of Firefox attempting to access a single profile. When Firefox starts it is associated with a profile to use and to modify. When a user opens a new Firefox window on the same computer there is still only one Firefox process and it still has sole access to the profile. However when a user starts Firefox on another computer it is of course a new and seperate process. If this new process attempts to also access the same profile there could be inconsistancies when modifying and accessing it between the two. They would be attempting to acces the same resouce but would be unable to coordinate between each other since they are on different machines. This is why Firefox does not allow this. To allow multiple instances of Firefox on different machines you will need to create multiple profiles for each of them to use. Read the above topic on how to do this.Why won't Firefox start?If you are trying to run Firefox on multiple computers read the topic above.If you are trying to run Firefox on a single computer and recieve the message similar to: "Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system." then there are a few steps to fix this. First check if there are any Firefox processes still running under your user ID. To do this use the command: pgrep -l -u <your user ID> firefox The "-l" option shows the name of the process and the "-u" option will only find processes under the given user ID. Make sure to use the "-u" argument with your user ID otherwise you might see Firefox processes being run by other remote users. If you find Firefox is still running (but there are no Firefox windows) use this command to terminate them: pkill -l -u <your user ID> firefox The arguments mean the same thing for pkill. If there were no running Firefox processes or killing them did not fix the problem then go to the folder: ".mozilla/firefox/" You will see folders with the format <string of characters>.<profile name> Go to the folder for the profile you cannot open in Firefox (for an explanation of profiles read the above topic about profiles). If you have never created other profiles then you will most likely need to access the default profile called "default". Inside the profile folder delete the files "lock" and ".parentlock". This should fix the problem. Note: The file ".parentlock" is a hidden file. Use ls -a to list it. If you have further issues, take a look at this page : Firefox not working Change Firefox CacheOpen a Firefox browser and go under Edit -> Preference and select the Advanced tab. Under the Advanced tab select the Network tab where you will see the option to modify the cache limit for firefox.Note: It is a good idea to limit the cache space to prevent from going over quota. Created by: system last modification: Monday 16 of November, 2009 [03:14:14 UTC] by rawat |
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