Seismology Sun System Guidelines

This guide will help familiarize new Sun system users with local procedures. It also describes important practices that help maintain good system "etiquette." Please read this entire guide before trying to use the system.

Our Sun computer system is meant to operate as a cooperative venture. All users of the system share both the freedom to do what they need to AND the responsibility to not inhibit anyone else's work. Instead of hampering users with quotas, limits, and hourly invoices, we encourage users to negotiate with each other for needed resources. Users should feel free to experiment, and should not pay too dearly for their mistakes.

This means, of course, that users must learn enough about how the system works to be able to monitor their own use of our computing resources. Users who infringe on others' resources, even out of ignorance, may find other users less willing to share in the future. Understanding this guide as well as the other introductory tutorials recommended to you, and talking with more experienced users, should prepare you for participation in this cooperative.

Naturally, each person's use of a system like ours, that is linked to national networks, must comply with all applicable University policies and State and Federal laws. The system administrator has further documents describing these. In particular, you must not use anyone else's account without written authorization from the system administrator. Except in special cases, anyone who logs in to the system must have their own account.

If you are caught violating official policies or laws, your ejection from our system will be the least of your worries. But as long as you don't purposefully 1) make inflammatory statements, 2) attempt to break and enter protected systems, or 3) copy protected material, you won't need to worry about official sanctions.

If you have a Sun workstation on your desk, then the guidelines in this section may not apply to you. However, you may not be the only user of your workstation. You likely have arranged to permit other users access to your machine's processor, disk space, or other peripherals, just as your usage affects the common file and network services. So your direct access to a workstation may imply a greater responsibility to follow all the other guidelines noted here.

For those using the generally-available facilities, Sun workstations are available in room 320 LME. Also available in this room is a Solaris Pentium and a Macintosh that you can use to access the Suns. The machines are all closely networked. No matter where you log in from, your environment, e-mail, and file system will be identical. Only in a few cases, discussed below, will you have to keep track of what machines you are actually using.

Log in to a Sun by entering your user name (which should have been assigned already by the system administrator) followed by the ``Return'' key. At the password prompt, enter the default password you have been given, again followed by a ``Return''. The ``Options'' menu at the base of the login box allows you to select the OpenWindows version of X-Windows if you prefer that to the CDE version. At this point you should see the windowing system starting up. If you have never logged in before, you may see a tutorial window that will be helpful to follow.

The key to using either of Sun's windowing systems is to point at the background of the desktop and hold down the Right mouse button. You will see a menu that is functionally the equivalent of a Macintosh's ``Apple'' menu, or the ``Start'' button in Windows 95. Many of the functions you need are on this ``background menu'' and its sub-menus. For example, when you want to log out of a Sun, you select ``Exit'' from the background menu. For another example, this guide discusses many UNIX commands below. To type those in you open a ``Command Tool'' under the ``Programs'' sub-menu of the background menu, which accepts typed commands (sort of like a DOS window under Windows 95). You may have to point at the window and click on it before you can type into it. Note that the background menu has a ``Properties'' item that brings up windows you can use to customize the look and feel of your desktop.

The Sun workstations may be almost continuously occupied by users during the day and even in the evening. Thus it is important, during crowded periods, for users to log in to workstations only when they must use X-window applications. On a PC you can write and edit documents, read and reply to e-mail, compile and debug programs, print graphics, and run several jobs at once. Please make way for users who must use interactive graphics on the workstations.

For the same reasons you should log out of a workstation if you leave the room for more than 15 minutes. Protracted calculations can be put in the background to continue after you log out. Further, you must not use any screen-locking utility that prevents other users from logging you out of a workstation and using it after you have abandoned your seat. On some workstations the screen lock comes on automatically and is difficult to disable. Still, others in the Lab find it highly inconvenient to come into LME 320 and observe an empty chair with the screen password-locked. Simply make it your practice to log out whenever you leave the room.

When you first obtain a Sun system account the system administrator will assign you a log-in name (which you should substitute for name in some of the procedures below) and tell you the default password. Your password is really all that protects us from damage by malevolent hackers anywhere in the world. So don't share passwords with anyone, or write them down anywhere. If you forget your password, the system administrator can always reset it for you.

The first thing you should do when you initially log in is change your password, by typing the ``passwd'' command. It is very important to not use any word that may be found in a dictionary, or any information about you that someone may guess, for a password. Use a nonsense word, or even better, include characters that are not the letters A through Z or 0 through 9.

Do not be surprised if your new password doesn't seem to take effect immediately, and you have to keep using your old password for a day or so. A new password takes some time to propagate through the network. If it doesn't take effect for more than two days, please notify the system administrator.

Unless you make special arrangements with the system administrator, your files will be archived and your account removed shortly after your association with our Lab terminates. If you have been given a class account, it will disappear after your grade in the course has been turned in. If you should have both a class account and a regular account, be careful to use the class account only for purposes related to your course work. Use your regular account for all research and thesis work.

In general there are three ways to find out something. In increasing order of difficulty, they are: 1) ask someone who knows; 2) look it up; or 3) figure it out. If you have questions, problems, or requests, the most satisfying solution often is to ask another, more experienced user who is doing work similar to yours. Failing that, you can send e-mail to help at mines.unr.edu to ask the current system administrator. The administrator can also forward your questions to wider-area mailing lists and bulletin boards set up for certain types of inquiries. During working hours you can also call the UNR Computing and Telecomm Help Desk at 784-4320. The staff at that number are supposed to be able to answer many UNIX- or PC-related questions that users have, and refer you to those who can solve your problem.

An easy way to look something up is with the on-line manual pages. Become very familiar with the directions given by the command "man man". It also pays to be a habitual user of "man -k keyword".

A useful resource is the link http://docs.sun.com. This site combines all Sun manual pages and Answerbooks into one searchable database. It is also possible to solve some mysterious problems by looking through the SunSolve database of system bugs and patches, on CD-ROMs you can borrow from the system administrator. While only a few good tutorial books on UNIX are available, you will often find even the printed manuals helpful as references.

One of the benefits of becoming an informed user, with some skills in a programming language and knowledge of UNIX, is that you can usually tinker and experiment with your programs or system routines to puzzle out their behavior. We try to maintain an environment that invites such experimentation.

You should be aware that the system administrators can't possibly be experts on every application that runs on the Suns. They may, however, be able to refer you to a user who is more experienced with an application. We try to put any applications suggested by users up on the system. When we do, though, we expect users who suggest an application to take some responsibility for helping others use it.

To create a home page for yourself on the Seismo web server, all you need to do is log in to a Sun, and give the command ``mkdir ~/public_html''. Now any file you put into that directory will be served by our web server automatically. If you create a file there called ``index.html'', it will be accessible via the URL ``http://www.seismo.unr.edu/~name''. Notify webmaster at seismo.unr.edu of your new page, for it to be linked from the official Seismo pages.

At the bottom of every one of your pages, we would like you to put words to the effect of ``Page maintained by Your Name; last updated Date.''

The system administrator gives users two directories for their files. These are the home and scratch directories. When you log in, you are automatically at your home directory, which has a UNIX path name something like /home/name. In this directory you can keep text, program code, mail, setup files, and other small items. The directory, together with many other users' home directories, sits on a disk that has a relatively limited amount of space.

You should keep track of the amount of space you use on the home disk as you create and modify files. In your home directory, you can give the ``du'' command to tally up all the space (in kilobytes) there and in its sub-directories. You should not in general keep more than 10 megabytes worth of files in your home directory. Commonly, when this guideline is violated, the home disk will fill up and many users will not be able to work. You can keep track of how nearly full a disk is by changing to a directory on that disk and giving the ``df .'' command.

If you use or generate large data files you should put them in your scratch directory. This is on a large disk meant for the temporary storage of large files, and is physically separate from the home disk. Its UNIX path name is something like /rumble/a4/name or /quake/s2/name. Note that rumble or quake is the name of the machine the disk is attached to, and a4 or s2 refers to one of the scratch disks on that machine.

It is possible for a user to keep even several gigabytes on the scratch disks for a short period of time. If you embark on a project requiring much space, you will probably notice (using "df") that the scratch disk you use does not have enough space. It is then up to you to negotiate with other users and the system administrator for the space you need, and for the amount of time you need it.

Additional very short-term storage is available in the ``/tmp'' directory of every machine. Execute a ``df /tmp'' command to find out how many kilobytes are available in the /tmp disk of the machine you are logged in to. Avoid filling up the last 20 megabytes of any /tmp directory. Any user can create their own /tmp sub-directory, with a ``mkdir /tmp/name'' command. Do not forget that all contents of the /tmp directory disappear the instant the machine reboots, so save your final results elsewhere.

If you will be using Macintosh applications, you may find the Using Sun Disks From Macintoshes tutorial helpful. It will show you how to mount Sun disks for use on the NSL Macintoshes, so you can make effective use of your large Sun directories instead of being constrained by the hard disks on the Macs.

You are responsible for cleaning up your scratch directories when a project finishes, and also for backing them up. The s1, s2, s3, and s4 disks on the ``unrnet'' machine are never backed up - they are an archive for data that have already been saved to permanent form. Communication and cooperation with the other users is key to making efficient use of disk resources. From time to time you may be asked by other users to archive and delete some of your scratch files. Try to keep everyone's priorities in mind.

The Sun system allows you to run very intensive programs continuing for days or weeks if necessary. However, if you run any job that takes more than 5 or 10 minutes to complete, you should run it with a large "nice" value. Otherwise users may become frustrated that your long-term process is slowing their short-term jobs.

To be somewhat nice to other users, you can run your command ``command'' with ``nice command''. To be very nice, run ``nice +19 command''. Or substitute a number between 4 and 19 into the ``+19'' above, to be moderately nice.

If you are going to repeatedly run jobs that take more than a few hours to complete, you should notify the system administrator. The administrator will tell you if any system shutdowns are planned, so you can avoid having your jobs prematurely killed.

When running intensive jobs you should also keep on top of how heavily your program uses the network. On a Sun workstation you can start a ``Performance Meter'' before starting your job. Select ``Packets'' from the meter's menu to see how much information your program demands from the network. If usage is constant, you should try to run the program on the machine that has your program's data directly on disk. For instance, if you have a program that intensively accesses files in your scratch directory /quake/s2/name, then you should log in to quake to run the program. You don't have to sit at quake's console to run programs there; see the documentation on the ``rlogin'' and ``rsh'' commands.

You can also consider temporarily copying your program's data to the executing machine's ``/tmp'' directory for fastest access; see the section above on File Space. For intensive computing that does not require a large amount of data input or output, there are five relatively fast machines available. Execute an ``rup'' command to see which machines have small load averages, and run your programs there. Avoid machines having load averages above 3; an additional job on such a machine will be quite inefficient and slow. At almost any time, at least a few of our faster machines (unrnet, rumble, rattle, jolt, and crunch) will have load averages near zero.

There is additional information available on CPU speed benchmark tests run on several different platforms available in the Lab and in the Mackay School of Mines.

A further consideration is the amount of memory your job will require. If a program seems extremely slow, you may be asking it to address more memory than physically exists on the machine you are running it at. Currently the machines unrnet, rumble, and crunch have the largest physical memory at 128 megabytes or more (allowing fast operations on, for instance, a single 5000-by-5000-element matrix of REAL*4 values). Machines with 64 or more megabytes include jolt, quake, and rattle (OK for up to a 2500-by-2500 REAL*4 matrix).

As our Sun system is a cooperative venture, there is no minute-by-minute accounting of your use of the computing resources. Certain users make very heavy use of disk, processor, network, and printer resources, and they each pay thousands of dollars per year to support the operation. Major users have mutually agreed to pay a share of maintenance and supply costs proportional to their share of the use of all the workstations. Compared to these users, your requirements may be quite minor.

However, if you do end up using many hours of CPU time, more than a few gigabytes of disk space, or print more than a few hundred pages a year, your consumption of resources will be noticed. The system administrator may contact you periodically to negotiate for some type of system support from you (or from your advisor if you are a student). Seismology staff members (or their supervisors) each contribute $50/month toward system operation and maintenance. Other small users contribute to the system by buying printer supply items. Such assistance is welcome.

The system administrator arranges for the regular backup to tape of all home directories. However, scratch directories are not guaranteed to ever be backed up. You should therefore backup your own scratch directories, and you may wish to make your own more frequent backups of your home directory.

To make your own backups, read in the tutorials about the ``bar'' and ``tar'' commands, and also in the on-line manual. You can back up directories to the 3 1/2-inch floppy drive located on several of the Sun workstations (even if someone else is using the workstation). You can use high-density or double-density diskettes, so your backup media will cost $0.75 to $2.00 per megabyte. See the ``man mtools'' page.

For larger backups you should consider using the 4 mm DAT tape drives. Obtain only data-quality 8 mm video cassettes or 90 m data-grade 4 mm cartridges from a stereo/video or variety store. They cost about $13.00 and hold 2 gigabytes each. Logged into the machine quiver, the DAT tape device will be /dev/rst1. When you have finished backing up or restoring files with a data tape drive, use the ``mt -f device rewoffl'' command to eject your tape.

If you back up more than 1.4 megabytes at a time to diskettes you will have to use the ``bar'' command. Unfortunately, the ``bar'' archive format is not compatible with the ``tar'' format, and many other places you might want to read your archive can only read the ``tar'' format. So we recommend using data tapes and ``tar''. See the on-line manual page for ``tar'' with the ``man tar'' command.

You can send and receive mail to other users on systems throughout the world. Your e-mail address on the Internet is ``name at seismo.unr.edu''. The address ``name at unr.edu'' will not work unless you obtain a separate account on UNR campus servers. To send mail to someone on our local system, you need to find out what their log-in name is. To get a list of users with ``John'' somewhere in their name, you could run the command ``finger John''. Or consult the faculty/staff directories on http://www.unr.edu.

Our system implements what are known as ``mail aliases'' to speed the delivery of e-mail to large numbers of people. For example, from the Seismo Sun system you can simply address an e-mail message to ``seismo'' and it will appear in every Seismology user's mail box. Similar aliases are ``students'', ``core'', ``sma1'', ``refl'', ``neotec'', and ``yucca''. Sending a message to ``msm at mines.unr.edu'' will blast it out to all known e-mail users in the Mackay School of Mines. Make sure any such messages are of general interest; you will be identified to all recipients as the sender.

To discover who will receive a message sent to seismo mail alias, you can execute a command that will return a list of recipients (some of which may be aliases themselves). For example, a ``ypmatch seismo aliases'' command will give you a list of all the email addresses that would receive a message directed simply to ``seismo''.

Please be sure you delete any unneeded mail, especially if you receive large quantities. I recommend to new users that they use Netscape Communicator to read their mail; but only after setting it up to use the IMAP service provided by the server ``quake.seismo.unr.edu''. This setup will leave email on the server rather than downloading it all to your home directory, or whatever PC you happen to be using. In Netscape select Edit->Preferences from the menu bar. Click on the ``Mail and Newsgroups'' category at the left, then on ``Mail Servers'', then on the ``default'' in the list of servers to the right, then on the Edit button. In the popup enter ``Server Name'' quake.seismo.unr.edu and select ``Server Type'' IMAP, and your user name. Then press the OK button on the popup. In the preferences window also enter quake.seismo.unr.edu as the outgoing SMTP server (if you are doing this from a non-UNR Internet connection, you will have to use your ISP's outgoing email server).

Several PostScript printers are connected to the system. To discover what printers you may access, invoke the ``Print Tool'' from the background menu. To do so, right-click on the Sun Workstation desktop to bring up the ``Workspace Menu.'' From the menu, select Tools->Print Manager. When the Print Manager tool appears, there may not be any printers visible. If so, choose View->Select Printers to Show, and then select the printers to be made visible on the tool.

In LME 320, ``bedrock'' is a black-and-white laser printer, and ``topaz'' is a color laser printer. Use color printers only for print jobs that require the use of color. This helps to save toner cartridges and also prolongs the life of the color printer. If neither printer is working, you can consult the Print Manager tool to find alternate sites for printing important documents. It is also good practice, when printing, to check the printer to make sure that it has enough paper and that your documents are printing correctly.

If the printer is spewing dozens of pages of code instead of your formatted document, just pull out the paper cassette to save supplies. Then find an experienced user or the System Administrator.

You can use the command ``lpstat -p printer'' to see who has jobs queued up for the printer named printer. To remove your own job from the queue, try the following:

	lpstat -p printer # This will tell you a job-id
	cancel job-id

To print from Netscape, select File->Print, and then click the ``Properties'' button. In the ``Printer Properties'' window, type ``lp -d printer'' in the ``Print Command'' field and click OK. Then go ahead and print.

Be aware that our printers are set up to accept straight PostScript files. Plain ASCII text files such as program listings may not wrap lines properly, and so the text may be cut off. To print these files properly, use the following command:

	cat file | wordwrap | lp -d printer

Or select and drag the text into a Print Tool.