Basic info about Sun machines

• You may use the Sun lab pretty much whenever the building is open. This is an unusual privilege that exists only because our community is respectful and cooperative.
• You may eat or drink in the lab. Don't spill anything on the machines.
• When logging in remotely use SSH. Use Secure File Transfer to transfer files.
• Machines are multi-user; what you do has an effect on others, and vice-versa
• Never unplug the machines or remove the internet connection. If there's a problem, contact the system administrator Ivan Fetch (x13299, JGH 106).
• You may lock the workstations for up to 5-10 minutes. To lock a workstation, right click on the desktop, and select lock.
• If you find someone logged in to an unattended machine, just move to another machine, if possible.
• Keep your files in an organized directory structure. Get rid of files that you don't need (disk space is a shared resource)
• If you're running a computationally intensive program, run it on a machine that is not being heavily used, and run it with nice
• This page has a list of the names of the Sun lab machines: Sunlab hardware.

Unix commands - Accounts and users

• Use up-arrow to save yourself from re-typing your previous commands
  
• users - lists usernames of those currently logged in
  
• finger - lists names and usernames of those logged in
  
• who - similar to finger, different format
  
• groups - lists the groups you belong to
  
• whoami - gives username of person logged in in this shell
  
• passwd - change your passwword
  
• logout - logs you out
  
• exit - terminates a shell that is not a login shell
  
• .plan - create a file called .plan in your home directory to give information about yourself to other users

Managing jobs and processes

• Ctrl-c - terminates whatever program is running
• Ctrl-z - suspends whatever program is running
• bg - restarts last suspended job, runs it in the background
• anycommand & - runs the program anyprogram in the background
• jobs - lists all jobs that you have running in this shell
  
• fg %n - brings job number n into the foreground
• kill %n - terminates job number n
• uptime - tells how long machine has been running, and how loaded the CPU is
• top - shows all processes on machine in order of CPU usage
• ps - lists all processes associated with this shell
• ps -u yourusername - lists all processes you are running on this machine
• kill n - terminates process with process id (PID) number n
• nice anycommand - runs anycommand with a lowered priority
• renice n pid-no - changes with PID number pid-no to a priority level of n
• nohup anycommand - runs anycommand with no associated terminal
• batch - run a command without an associated shell

Managing files

• ls [-al] [filename] - if no arguments, lists the files in the working directory, if filename is a directory, it lists the files in that directory. -a shows all files including hidden files, -l gives a long listing
• mkdir dirname - creates a directory
• cd [directoryname] - changes present working directory to directoryname. If directoryname is omitted, it changes to home directory
• pwd - display the present working directory
• mv source destination - moves file "source" to "destination". If destination is an existing directory, it moves source to that directory, else it renames source
• cp source destination - copies file "source" to "destination". If destination is an existing directory, it copies the file to that directory, keeping the same file name. Otherwise, it copies the file to the current directory and gives it the name "destination"
• rm filename - deletes the file "filename"
• A couple of useful hidden files: Each directory has two special hidden files called "." and ".." The . directory refers to the current directory, and .. refers to the directory one level above this one. For example, if my present directory is ~ftl/mystuff, then: cp ../foo . copies the file ~ftl/foo to ~ftl/mystuff/foo

Finding out about unfamiliar commands

• man name - displays the manual page for the command "name"
• apropos keyword - displays a synopsis of commands relating to "keyword"

Reading email

• Use the UNIX program "pine". (Just type "pine" at the prompt) It has a good visual interface, follow the menus.
• Messages can be saved and organized in folders - please do this rather than leaving messages in your inbox, which is stored in a shared location with limited space.
• You can forward your mail from another UNIX system to this one. (or from this system to another machine). Create a file called ".forward" in your home directory. In this file, put the email address you want to forward to.
• You can use DU Webmail - Go to http://webmail.du.edu and select "imap.cs.du.edu" as the mail server, and enter your Math&CS Unix username and password. While logged in to Webmail, do not access your inbox via other mail software - you could corrupt your inbox.
• For more options on reading email, consult http://www.cs.du.edu/support/email/