These notes were taken from another document and form the basis of what we will cover in the second lecture in this course. 1. ABOUT THE WORKSTATION ENVIRONMENT OF CCAT You have logged into ccat.sas.upenn.edu, an IBM RISC 6000 workstation. The CCAT (Center for Computer Analysis of Texts) workstation is a multi-user and multi-tasking computer. Such machines with CCAT's present configuration can serve 30 users at a time and their applications with what appears to be the full power of the machine. Almost all desktop machines are single user and single tasking devices. They lack the raw processing speed to support numerous users who are utilizing different application programs simultaneously. CCAT along with other workstations on campus replaced the SAS mainframe, IBM 3090. A movement away from centralized mainframes to distributed workstations, in which computer power is moving closer to the end-user, is an international trend that perhaps accounts for some of the misfortunes of IBM Corporation, Digital Corporation and other formerly prestigious but now somewhat less profitable computer companies. Workstations cost less to run than the older mainframe. Workstations can deliver somewhat better services to specialized groups, because they can be tailored to particular needs of small groups. More often than not available software tends to be more robust on workstations than the older versions on most mainframes. Workstations are not meant to replace desktop machines. They add value to desktop machines (1) by providing access to shared resources that may be too costly to buy for each computer; (2) by adding additional computer processing power needed for certain applications; and (3) by reducing redundancy of software and data on each desktop. Eventually, we might expect that future desktop machines will become more like today's workstations as their CPU (=Central Processing Unit) processing power increases and new operating systems such as Taligent and Windows NT are introduced. The increased power of desktop machines within the next few years, however, will not mean that workstations will become obsolete; in fact, we expect an increase in such workstations as departmental servers and specialized stations for specific applications in Art History or Music. Although we expect a growth in department servers in the next few years, the total number of individual workstations will be far fewer than in the natural sciences, for example. The reasons for this are that the most humanities faculty requirements for raw calculations may not exceed the growing capacity of desktop machines, and that the some humanities faculty will opt for portable computers over fixed location machines, desktops or workstations. Although CCAT workstation has been in operation just six months, we have already seen substantial benefits. Some 175 faculty and students have accounts on CCAT, although at any one time there are usually no more than fifteen users. The most common use of CCAT is for electronic mail and network connections. Since CCAT's accounts are backed up daily, some users load their personal data files from their desktop machine onto CCAT and allow us to provide added security against loss of information. Last fall, three courses in Religious Studies used CCAT's electronic services for communications and general organization. CCAT's gopher, about which more will be said in subsequent bulletins, proves a good means for disseminating information about humanities computing. CCAT has been used for transferring large image files across the internet; most of that activity in image processing is currently running on the Macintosh platform, to which we have attached specialized slide and color scanners and have installed imaging software. In the future CCAT will become a central repository for Penn's large text archive. Thanks to efforts of Bob Kraft and others, who have served from time to time on advising CCAT staff, this university has built one of the largest electronic text libraries. We plan to make parts of that corpus available to CCAT user's with appropriate software by summer, 1993. CCAT Components RISC 6000 (Model 340) with 32 megabytes RAM 1 gigabyte hard drive 2 SCSI gigabyte drives 2 CD ROM players 1 2.3 gigabyte tape drive 1 Universal Power Supply Your particular account on CCAT is a slice of the three gigabyte on-line storage, and at the moment there are no major restrictions on the size of anyone's account. The operating system, AIX 3.2, is a mixed blend of different flavors of UNIX much to the chagrin of UNIX purists. UNIX as an operating system proves no more difficult to learn than DOS. Despite what salespersons at Apple in a marketing strategy told us, it really isn't that tough to memorize the ten or so essential commands of DOS or UNIX. All command-driven operating systems such as DOS or UNIX could be said to be syntactically similar: imperatives-- or are they invectives-- followed by direct and indirect objects that you send to the computer once you strike the carriage return, or enter key. Here is a lexical list of the UNIX and DOS equivalents. Most commonly used DOS commands DOS commands Unix equivalent -------------------------------------------------------- cd (chdir) cd cls clear copy copy, cp date date del (erase) rm dir ls [ -l] [ -a] [ -t] [ -d] md (mkdir) mkdir { print lp, qprt rm (rmdir) rmdir ren (rename) mv type cat Less commonly used DOS commands DOS commands Unix equivalent -------------------------------------------------------- append ln [ -s] attrib chmod backup tar, cpio, dd break C-style meaning in shell scripts chcp (country) locale chkdsk fsck (for sysadmin use primarily) command sh (ksh, csh, tcsh...) comp diff, cmp ctty stty debug adb (xde, fsdb, etc.) doskey sh_history file and command. man ls man cp Compare these two DOS commands and to their UNIX equivalents, and you will see that there are more options (that is, parameters) in UNIX than in DOS. UNIX commands seem to us to be robust programs with shades of nuances not available in the imperative, rigid structure of DOS. One of the fine things about UNIX is its flexibility. Suppose you do not want to learn the 10 or so UNIX commands. The solution is simple: you just write a few lines of instructions and use the DOS commands. A file called .profile in each person's account customizes that account. You can modify that file and tell the operating system that when you type (DOS for directory listing), you mean (UNIX for directory listing). Take a look at my profile and at the bottom of the profile you will see the alias command I have used to make the system respond to the more common DOS commands. If you want, copy what I have done here and add it to your .profile. Use one of the standard editors, jov or emacs or pico, that work on CCAT to make this modification. Now to make it all work you need to log out of CCAT and then log back in since the .profile descriptor file is read by the system just after you log in. if [ -s "$MAIL" ] # This is at Shell startup. then echo "$MAILMSG" # operation, the Shell checks fi # periodically. #Command for backspace key implementation stty erase ^? #Command for DOS commands #implemented under UNIX alias erase='rm -i' #Prompt user before erasing files alias del='rm -i' alias dir='ls -alt|more' #Show full directory alias type=more #Display file and pause #each screen alias ren=mv #rename file alias print='psprint -Pps -s9' #print file on ccat's postscript printer alias cls=clear #clear screen #Command to link to Michael Nenashev's menus ccat Another modification to your system that you might want to make is to have your mail forwarded either to or off of CCAT. Today it has become common to have more than one electronic address. Colleagues sometimes find this cumbersome with regard to electronic mail. To some it just doesn't make sense to receive you mail on n-number of machines. One, however, can have mail forwarded to one machine by creating a .forward file on the machine you want e- mail forwarded from. The file contains just one line, your userid and the machine to which the mail should be forwarded. Here is the contents of my .forward mail file on CCAT: jacka@charity.sas.upenn.edu Some care should be taken if you decide to have your mail forwarded from one machine to another. Make sure you give the correct address on the other machine. Unless you have told us otherwise, we customized your account with a front-end menu. Experience has shown that first-time users find such menus an easier way to navigate through a new computer system. If you want to remove the front-end eventually from your account, just delete that line, ccat, from your .profile descriptor file. The front-end menu provides you with easy access to most of the resources on CCAT. Here is a summary of what is available through the menu: CCAT Menu /u/staff/jacka --------------- DATE: 12/29/92 TIME: 21:42:20 You have 2 mail messages 1. - Elm (Electronic Mail) 2. - Telnet (Connect to Internet Sites) 3. - Gopher (Internet through a Menu) 4. - Editor (Text Editing) 5. - Kermit (Transfer Files to your Home Computer) 6. - FTP (Transfer files from Internet Sites) 7. - News (Read Usenet News) 8. - Help (Unix Commands Description) ----------------------------------- 9. - Penn services 10. - Network services 11. - Safe Passwords Generator x - Exit --------------------------------- Enter Selection Jacka _ 1 - Electronic mail services through standard mail platform elm. 2 - Standard network terminal emulation program for connecting to other computers on the internet. 3 - Access to ccat.sas.upenn.edu internet menu organizer. 4 - Choice of three text editors on ccat: jov, pico, emacs. 5 - File Transfer over modem for moving information from and to your desktop machine. 6 - File Transfer over internet for moving information from and to different internet sites. 7 - General network news known as UseNet. 8 - Unix documentation through manual pages. 9 - Access to PennNet DIAL prompt for penninfo, library and other computers on local network. 10 - Other services 11 - Program generates less likely to be cracked passwords. x= Exits to standard UNIX prompt line 2. SOME PRELIMINARY COMMANDS All successful pilgrims not only require luck on their voyages, but make provisions and preparations for their trek. For our future journey here, you will need to learn more essential computer commands related to using communications facilities in as efficient a way as possible. We will start slowly on this and over the next months increase your awareness of more and more commands. Let's start with just three that you may not know: finger, talk and write. What follows are short summaries and discussions on how we use these commands daily. Fuller documentation is available by using pages, on-line UNIX documentation: man finger man write man talk 2.A FINGER COMMAND: The command provides all users with a way to discover who is logged into a computer at that time, and to find out who has an account on a particular machine: finger @ccat.sas.upenn.edu finger Abercrombie@ccat.sas.upenn.edu This information includes the userid, the full name of the user, and other information concerning when they logged in, etc. Such information is useful to know. For example, suppose you are curious whether a colleague is logged in. Entering this command would provide you with that information so that if you chose to contact him or her with a command like you could do that. One is not limited to ing just this machine. You can other computers as long as that machine's System Administrator has not restricted its use. Some people view this command as an invasion of privacy, or as a security breach. Try discovering who is logged into some other machines: finger @ccat.sas.upenn.edu result [ccat.sas.upenn.edu] Login Name TTY Idle When root Superuser *h0 2:03 Thu 10:37 tmalik Tasneem Malik p0 Thu 11:44 michael Michael Nenashev p1 13 Thu 10:39 root Superuser *p2 15 Thu 10:37 root Superuser *p3 1:16 Thu 10:43 asilverm Alan Silverman p4 Thu 12:17 jacka Jack Abercrombie p5 Thu 12:23 tmalik Tasneem Malik p6 Thu 12:28 drech David A. Rech p7 Thu 12:33 jtreat jtreat p8 Thu 12:40 finger @mec.sas.upenn.edu result [mec.sas.upenn.edu] Login Name TTY Idle When darlene Darlene A. Jackson a02 6 Thu 09:54 MEC Admini marym Mary A. Martin a03 21 Thu `12:04 MEC Assist finger @mail.sas.upenn.edu result [mail.sas.upenn.edu] Login Name TTY Idle When Where nlerman Nina Lerman p0 Thu 12:34 TS1.UPENN.EDU jbuhler James Buhler p0 Thu 12:36 amber.ucs.indian washmoreWendy Ashmore p0 Thu 12:36 ASHMORE.SAS.UPENN mark Mark Thomas p3 Thu 11:52 SASNET.SAS.UPENN tlee Ted Lee p5 Thu 12:25 DRL4N1609.SAS.UP wkbodle Wayne Bodle pa Thu 10:21 TS49.DCCS.UPENN. aadinar Ali Ali-Dinar pc Thu 12:15 MC5CLI2.LIBRARY. tkraft Todd Kraft pd Thu 10:55 STUPID.SAS.UPENN lila Lila E. Shapiro q1 Thu 11:57 WAL6000B.UDC.UPE can also report who has an account on a particular machine. finger Abercrombie@mec.sas.upenn.edu finger michael@mec.sas.upenn.edu finger kraft@mail.sas.upenn.edu Note the results. reports whether a user has an account on a particular machine and usually gives the userid and full name. IMPORTANT: the userid (e.g. jacka for Jack Abercrombie) is important for sending mail. You do not have to give someone's full name. In some cases, though, you do receive more information than you requested. For instance, you discover that there are more than one Michael and more than one Kraft on those systems. command can report other details about a user if he or she was considerate enough to provide more information. If, for example, you did Abercrombie@ccat.sas.upenn.edu, you would find out more details about me than if you finger mkatz@ccat.sas.upenn.edu, at least until Michael Katz changes his .plan file. The reason for this is that the finger command also searches my directory for files called .plan or .project. These files contain additional information that I prepared using Pico editor. I felt it would be useful for others who might use this command to discover some more details about me that may be advantageous for them to know (e.g. my phone number). may not be the best way to located someone's electronic address. A better way still may be analog, that is, by telephone. If however you still want to do this electronically, first try the address lists in whois.upenn.edu. Dial up PennŐs address list and log in as whois. Now enter personŐs name or department to locate a colleague at Penn: telnet whois.upenn.edu login:whois Note that the whois data base is generally accurate to addresses as they were known in August of last year, so you may have to resort to after all. For non-Penn address, why don't you try CCAT's gopher. Select the folder Special Services and Other Info and then select the folder "Phone Directories worldwide." Move to the appropriate folders and files to search for your colleague. NOTE: gopher ccat.sas.upenn.edu puts you into CCAT's gopher. Gopher, by itself, sends you to U. of Minn. gopher. ASSIGNMENT: 1. Using pico or emacs or jov, create a .plan file that includes your full address, phone numbers and area of interests. Model your .plan file after that in jacka. /u/staff/jacka/ more .plan Assistant Dean Computing for the Humanities Director of the Center for Computer Analysis of Texts Director of MultiMedia & Educational Technology Services Director of the Technology Learning Center WORK: (215) 898-4917 HOME: (215) 520-0474 Don't call after 9:00 pm, please. ACADEMIC INTERESTS : Biblical Studies Near Eastern Archaeology Academic Computing 2.C TALK COMMAND Now that you know someone is logged in, you want to send them mail. Right?... Well, maybe not. You have other options for communications besides e-mail. For example, you can carry on direct communications via the command. If, for example, you find me logged in, type and a message will be sent to me that you want to communicate using . I would type, if so inclined, . My screen and your screen would be divided in half, and whatever I type on my screen would appear on yours and what you type would be on mine. In this way, we could converse. My experience is that such conversations tend to be short (under one minute) after the initial novelty of the command has worn off. Nevertheless, the command is appropriate at certain times especially when dialog is needed over a problem or issue. Some guidelines on that might be in order here. Note again you are not restricted to one machine, but you can talk across the networks. When you do finally complete your conversation you can break the link by holding down the control key and pressing <^c> (that is, ^c). ASSIGNMENT 2 1. At some point try the talk command with another user. 2.D WRITE COMMAND Well, perhaps a chat is not what you are after when you find a colleague logged in. Perhaps you just want to send a quick dictum and be done with it. E-mail is an option, though again you can use another command, . The command is as follows: write userid message ^d write jacka Hello Jack. I need your help. Call me now. ^d Circumstances are rare where I have used the write command and probably equivalent in urgency to that Alexander Graham Bell felt when Watson was in the other room. Also, be aware that when you use the write command, the display of the person to whom you are writing will freeze until you enter control+d. 2.E Controlling Notifications with command command prevents others from contacting you with the or commands. The syntax is simple: mesg n Prevent you from receiving messages and requests. mesg y Enable you to receive messages and requests. For convenience of all users for the moment and to encourage discussion, we ask that you allow colleagues to contact you with and . At some future date if you want to prevent others from reaching you with those commands, you can insert into your .profile descriptor file. 3. SUMMARY OF MOST IMPORTANT THINGS Often people find it difficult to remember every command or every nuance of discussion about computing. Why is this? Perhaps one reason is that it is often difficult for most to know what is important and crucial, and what is not. For this reason, if you remember anything, memorize these three points: 1. The command can report who is logged into any computer and if a colleague has an account on that machine. finger @mec.sas.upenn.edu reports who is logged in. finger Nenashev@mec.sas.upenn.edu reports if Michael has an account. 2. The command, you will find occasions to use. You first need to find out if someone is logged in and then issue the command to talk to that userid. Note that you can prevent others from talking or writing to you with the command. 3. You can modify and customize your UNIX account to mimic another command-driven operating system. If you use the alias command and add the changes in my .profile to yours, you may find it easier to work in this UNIX environment, especially if you have used DOS. If you need our help to do this, just ask. ***************************