Civil and Environmental Engineering Computer Support Group Electronic Newsletter Overview This year has seen some marked changes in the structure of computing in both More and Wilcox halls. With the hiring of Serhad Atakturk, the group has devoted much more time and effort in upgrading and enhancing the existing facilities in addition to the ongoing basic maintenance and support. Large sections of the old coax network cabling (10base2) in More and Wilcox were retired and replaced by modern Category 5 twisted pair (100baseT) connections capable of 100mbit transmission rates far exceeding what you may have been accustomed to. Along with high performance, reliability is a major issue. To minimize network outages for the department as a whole, switches were installed throughout to help manage efficient data traffic flow. In addition, our connections to the campus network backbone are now by fiber-optics, which are relatively insensitive to electrical noise and other disturbances. Administrative staff have received new IBM computers to replace the aging Gateway machines. This upgrade addresses impending Y2K compliance issues, modern administrative software compatibility, raw performance, and reliability concerns. Last year, the More 109 student lab was switched from older PowerPC machines to newer Pentium II 266 workstations. This conversion opened the doors to more software, such as AutoCAD, Matlab, SAP2000, Stella, WolfPack, and much more. This year, the Wilcox computer lab received some much needed attention. All of the broken 486-based machines were replaced with P2 350 workstations with 17" Trinitron monitors which are much better suited to any serious CAD work. Of course, all the software available in the More student lab is available in Wilcox as well. We hope this will relieve some of the strain of heavy usage in More. The door combinations have been recently changed - please make a note of the "new numbers" - 4 1 3 2 5. To help preserve our precious computing resources for student members of the CEE department, the combination will be changed quarterly. Those of you on departmental mailing lists (the overwhelming majority) will be notified of any changes in the combination by email. Printer paper usage versus supply (or lack thereof) has been an increasingly important issue since the overhaul of More 109. We have thoroughly reviewed the policies of other engineering departments and found that our paper consumption has been ten times the average of other, sometimes much larger, labs. We feel this is due in no small part to printer usage by non-CEE students. Starting in Fall Qtr. '99 a password will now be required to print in the More and Wilcox labs. All other programs and software will remain unaffected by this requirement. An account has been created for each student currently enrolled in the department. Students with existing Uniform Access Accounts will be notified via e-mail and receive their unique username (their lastname) and a generic password. Others will be notified by bulletins in the computer labs. Students will be able to change their passwords anytime. Print server keeps a log which provides accounting of all printing by every individual. The More Rm 1 UNIX lab has received some welcome additions in both hardware and software. The general access Sun workstations have been upgraded to the 64-bit Solaris 7 (5.7) operating system. Four Ultra 5 workstations replace the slowest computers in the lab, and are ideally suited to single- cpu number crunching. They are roughly three times faster than the existing Ultra 1 machines and six times faster than the computers they replace. Other than the new software server, prometheus, their names are phocus, pandora, and titan. The software packages available includes [please add short command list/software version list here] cc, c++, f77 and F90 Sun Workshop 5.0 gcc, g++, gdb GNU Mathematica 3.0 S-PLUS Version 3.2 mosaic abaqus latex Matlab 5.2 math ArcView, ArcInfo Additionally, we have a quad-cluster of Beowulf Linux machines running LAM (Local Area Multicomputer) 6.2 software. Each node consists of an Intel P2 450 MHz with 128 MB RAM. The LAM libraries can currently link with C, C++, and FORTRAN 77 programs. If you have a departmental UNIX account you can access these machines as beowulf[x], where [x]=1,2,3,4. 1. Electronic Mail Access E-mail service for faculty, staff and students is provided by Computing & Communications (C&C). By pointing your browser to http://www.washington.edu/computing/email, you can find detailed information on how to set up your Uniform Access Account and start using Pine, the e-mail program supported by C&C. Mailbox and address book of a Pine user reside on C&C UNIX computers (homer for faculty and staff and, dante for students). To copy a message or an attached document to your desktop computer, it must be first saved using Pine and then copied to your local disk using FTP. Since C&C does not support an encrypted FTP, this method is not advised (see, Security Issues). C&C suggests two alternative e-mail programs for desktop computers; Outlook Express (OE) that comes with Microsoft Internet Explorer and, Netscape Messenger (NM) which is included with Netscape Communicator. Detailed instructions on how to configure these clients on Windows 95/98/NT or Macintosh computers can be found at http://www.washington.edu/computing/email/oe.html, and http://www.washington.edu/computing/web/browsers/nm.profile.html, respectively. We recommend to read these documents carefully. However, if you are an experienced user and want to skip this recommendation, keep the following tips in mind; Outgoing SMTP mail server ---> mailhost.u.washington.edu Incoming IMAP mail server ---> yourUWNetID.deskmail.washington.edu It is VERY important to select IMAP over POP for two reasons; (a) C&C supports encrypted login via IMAP only. To benefit from this feature, you must select the option OE: Tools > Accounts > Mail > Properties > Advanced > "This server requires a secure connection (SSL)" NM: Edit > Preferences > Mail&Newsgroups > Mail Servers > Edit > IMAP > "Use Secure Connection (SSL)" (b) If you run OE/NM configured to use a POP mail server, by default, it will MOVE all your messages to the computer on which you are running OE/NM, deleting them from the server. If you must use POP, you can avoid this by selecting the option OE: Tools > Accounts > Mail > Properties > Advanced > "Leave a copy of messages on server" NM: Edit > Preferences > Mail&Newsgroups > Mail Servers > Edit > POP > "Leave messages on server" 2. Converting Addressbook from Pine to Outlook Express or Netscape The following instructions can be used to import your addressbook from C&C mail server to your desktop computer. (a) Log in to homer/dante using secure telnet (b) Press S: To enter Unix commands Enter: cp .addressbook abook.txt Enter: exit Press L: End Session (c) Copy this file, abook.txt, to your desktop computer. If you are already using OE/NM, you can accomplish this by mailing this file to yourself. Otherwise, you need to use FTP! (d) Edit the file, abook.txt, so that the fields on each line are separated by a comma (,). For a blank field, use two commas (,,). When finished, save it as a text file, abook.txt. (e) OE: File > Import > Other Address Book > Text File (Comma Separated Values) > Import > Browse > Files of Type (*.txt) > (Find abook.txt and Click OPEN) > Next > NM: Communicator > Address Book > File > Import 3. Security Issues: OVERVIEW 1. How To Network Your Computer 2. Security Issues 3. Electronic Mail Access 4. Converting Addressbook from Pine to Netscape or Outlook Express 5. Tape Backup System and File Recovery 1. Mail access setup using OE 2. Mail access setup using Netscape 3. DHCP configuration for MS/Intel PCs maybe Mac? 4. Tape backup file recovery 5. Turn off sendmail on linux boxes 6. Secure copy HOWTO 7. StarOffice 5.1 basic setup steps