Caution: The material on this web page is out of date. Some of it is still correct, but some of it is not. I hope to have time to update it soon. -- ES 8/25/2000

GETTING STARTED:
accounts, connecting, logins, who's online

BROWSING BEFORE YOU GET AN ACCOUNT

Most uses of our computers will require a departmental account. However, there are a few basic things you can do without an account, including browse the web -- e.g., to read this and other on-line documentation.

Terminals for web-browsing (i.e., Netscape) are available to members of the Vanderbilt community, in various places. I won't try listing all the locations, because they change from year to year, but in recent years the libraries have had some. Terminals for web-browsing are also available to the general public at any Nashville Public Library, though many of those terminals are for text only (they use Lynx, which is like Netscape without the pictures).

Members of the Mathematics Department also have access to rooms 1227 and 1427 in the Math building. The equipment in those rooms varies from one year to another. In some years, the equipment includes some computers that can be accessed without a departmental account.

If you're not familiar with Netscape --

the librarians are always ready to give you a tour;
if you find someone in room 1227 or 1427, they're usually willing to give you a brief tour;
Dr. Schechter is also available to tutor faculty members by appointment.

But you'll find that it's very simple and mostly self-explanatory; just a minute or two of instruction will probably suffice.

GETTING AN ACCOUNT

Superusers

The "computer liaison" for our department is Eric Schechter; nearly all questions / requests / complaints should be directed to him. Other authoritative people include Mark Ellingham, Steve Tschantz, and Sergei Rousakov. These people are superusers, which means that they have extra passwords enabling them to deal with computer problems beyond the reach of mere mortals. Those and other departmental passwords are distributed on a need-to-know basis.

Math Department Accounts

To use our Unix machines, you must have a departmental account. Everybody in the Mathematics Department (faculty, staff, grad students) is entitled to one. The same username (i.e., account name) and password will work on all general departmental Unix machines. Contact Dr. Schechter and an account will be set up for you. Sorry, but a Unix userid can be at most 8 characters long.

VUNet Accounts, ACIS, and modems

In addition to the Math Department's computer system, you may also find it useful to have VUNet account on the university's computer system, which is administered by ACIS (Academic and Computing Information Services). It is not part of the Math Department, so you have to sign up for it separately. If you're already registered as a student, faculty, or staff member of Vanderbilt, you can set up your VUnet account by browsing to http://www.vanderbilt.edu/vunet/.

Here are some reasons for getting a VUNet account:

In principle, VUNet runs some modems, so you can connect to Vanderbilt from your home computer. (In practice, those modems give busy signals a lot of the time, so you may need to find some other internet service provider.)
The Vanderbilt library has subscriptions to some proprietary online databases, such as (for instance) MathSciNet. This means that Vanderbilt pays, and people at Vanderbilt can access those databases through the internet. You don't need a VUNet password for this when Vanderbilt is your internet service provider -- e.g., if you log in from a Math Department computer or from a library computer, etc. But if you log in through some other internet service provider (e.g., from your home), you'll need to make a proxy connection to access those databases; that requires a VUNet ID.
We are considering moving all our email service to the VUMail system, which requires a VUNet ID. But we haven't decided about that yet. Watch this space for more information.

SETTING UP YOUR COMMUNICATIONS SOFTWARE

If you're setting up communications software at home (for modem use) or in your office (faculty only), you may need to tell your software some of the following things:

The Math Department computer's hostname is atlas.math.vanderbilt.edu
Your software may ask whether you have an IMAP mail server or a POP3 mail server. At present (2/18/99), the "atlas" computer has both. I don't know which will work better with your software; you might try both (one at a time) and see. In the long run, I personally think most of us are better off with software that uses IMAP, and I recommend it over POP. If you're interested, here is a comparison of the two protocols.
Before your personal copy of Netscape will let you send any email, it will ask for a few things, such as your email address. Among the things it will ask for are your incoming (POP3) and outgoing (SMTP) mail servers. You could make those both math.vanderbilt.edu. However, some variants are possible: (i) If your email comes through some special system (e.g., a Macintosh system) instead of the department system, then you may want to use something else for both incoming and outgoing. (ii) If you never use your home software as a mail program -- e.g., if you only read mail on Pine, through a Telnet connection -- then the "incoming" specification doesn't really matter. (iii) For the "outgoing" specification, you can use any mail server that will accept your mail.

HOW TO GET CONNECTED

To use the departmental machines you will need a terminal connected to them, directly or via a network. There are several routes:

On a terminal

This is the simplest type of connection. There are several terminals in SC 1427 for use by our department's faculty, staff, and graduate students. Also, there are terminals available for use by the whole university community, in the round Computer Building next to the Mathematics Building.

Each graphics terminal displays some sort of login screen the terminal is not already in use. If the display offers a choice of different computer systems, click twice on "atlas" to connect to atlas.
Each text terminal displays a prompt such as "Local >" or "LAT >" or "LAN >" when it is not in use. Type "c atlas" to get connected to atlas. That might not work if you're at a terminal elsewhere than room 1427; in that case try telnet atlas.math.vanderbilt.edu instead.

When you connect to atlas, it will prompt you for your username and then your password.

In a faculty office

Faculty offices have wiring in the walls for connecting to the network. Some additional work is necessary to connect this wiring to a terminal in your office (at one end) and the department's hub (at the other). To have this wiring done, talk to Carmen Adkisson, who can arrange this with Academic and Computing Information Services (ACIS) for you. (Most graduate student offices do not have wiring for a network connection.) ... After such a connection is in place, using it depends on your particular choice of hardware and software, so detailed instructions will not be given in this document.

By the way, faculty computers (Windows or Mac) that are connected to the network gain some nice capabilities if they have their software set up right. For instance, it is possible to copy a file directly from the personal computer over to the departmental laserprinter (lpr) without first copying the file onto the hard disk of the departmental computer (Atlas, Artemis, etc.); this saves a tedious step.

Over the phone line

ACIS provides telephone connections to terminal server lines, SLIP/PPP lines (for TCP/IP), and ARA lines (for Appletalk from Macintosh computers). All of these may be used to connect to our systems. Thus, if you have a personal computer at home equipped with a modem, you can use it as a terminal to connect to atlas. Basic information can be found at the VUaccess web page. The phone numbers are 343-9490 for students, and 343-9491 for students, faculty, and staff. Maximum connect time for all modems is two hours for connections made from 6 a.m. until midnight, and four hours for connections made from midnight until 6 a.m. (This service is for use in support of Vanderbilt research and instructional programs only. By University policy, other use is discouraged. Please use an Internet service provider (ISP) for personal or family member Internet access.)

To use Vanderbilt's modem pool, you will need a VUNet ID. You will also need to have your computer configured to connect to VUacess. The easiest way to configure your computer is to go to the ACIS Help Desk, in 1114 Stevenson Center (Mon-Thur 9AM-6PM, Fri 9AM-5PM), and ask for your

free copy of the VUaccess Software CD-ROM !

It includes a program for automatically configuring your computer. It also includes browsers (Netscape, etc.) email programs (Simeon, etc.), and other related programs (Acrobat Reader, Shockwave, Vscan, etc.)

By remote login

You can log into your atlas account from some other account on some other computer. This is occasionally useful -- for instance, if you're travelling and visiting some other university, and their math department has given you the temporary use of a guest account on their computer. Log in to that guest account, and then when you get their prompt, type

rlogin atlas.math.vanderbilt.edu

This probably won't work right the first time, because atlas doesn't know what is the username. Thus, you'll get an error message. But after the error message, atlas will prompt you for your username and password in the usual fashion, and you can log on just as usual. ... The connection will probably be adequate for most purposes, but it may not be quite as good as you're used to, because it has to go through at least one more computer with its own idiosyncrasies. For instance, control characters (^S, ^Z, etc.) might not transmit in their usual fashion.

SPECIFYING YOUR TERMINAL TYPE

If you log in via telnet, Atlas has no way of knowing what sort of terminal you're on. Consequently, Atlas just sets your terminal type to "network", which essentially means "unknown". So your connection it won't work right with some programs, such as Lynx and Pine. However, you're probably using a VT100 terminal emulation program, so you just have to tell that to Atlas. If you have difficulty with such programs, just give Atlas a command like this:

atlas 1 % set term=vt100

Alternatively, you could add this command to your .login or .cshrc file.

PROMPTS

When you log in the computer will print the message of the day and notify you if you have mail waiting (see documentation on reading mail). It will then display a prompt such as

atlas 1 %

This is called the "shell prompt" and is printed by a program called the C Shell, which reads your commands to the computer and turns them into actions. Whenever you see a number followed by %, the C Shell is waiting for you to type a command. The numbers go up by 1 for each command, and can be useful for repeating commands. (For more advanced users: other prompts are possible on Atlas, if you change your ".login" file. See the remarks in our web page about file manipulation.)

CHANGING YOUR PASSWORD

To change your password, use the passwd program, as follows:

atlas 1 % passwd

The password program will ask you to type your old password, then a new password, then it will ask you to verify the new password. The password does not appear on the screen, for security reasons. For further instructions about passwords, type

atlas 1 % man passwd

to read the manual pages.

WHO'S WHO

Our machines have facilities for finding out usernames for people, and for checking who is doing what at any given time. The f command lists the people who are currently logged on:

atlas 32 % f

The who command is similar but gives slightly different information:

atlas 33 % who

The f command also can be used to list the usernames of, and some other information about, all people with a given name. For example,

atlas 34 % f peter

would list everybody with name Peter (first or last). This is useful if you want to send mail to someone but you don't know their username.

LOGGING OUT AND DISCONNECTING

To log out from a character-based terminal, type

atlas 99 % logout

If you are connected via a terminal server, you will get a Local> or LAT> prompt and you type

Local> logout

to log out from the terminal server. Now turn your terminal off, or exit from your terminal emulation program if you are on a personal computer.

If you are using an X terminal, log out of the "xterm" window labelled "Main Session" in the way described above. All your other windows will automatically be killed.

Sometimes -- due to a program crash or a phone line interruption -- you may get disconnected from the departmental computer without properly terminating all of your jobs. To kill the idle sessions, see the additional instructions on another page.

A VU Math web page, updated 21 Jan 2000 by webmaster@math.vanderbilt.edu.

GETTING STARTED: accounts, connecting, logins, who's online