The operating system has been updated to SLES 10 SP3.
Mathematica has been upgraded to version 7.0.1. The previous version is still available as mathematica.603.
Matlab has been upgraded to version 7.9 (2009b). The previous versions are still available.
Starting tomorrow, IT will require that mail sent via smtp.mail.rice.edu to the outside world will require authentication using a Rice username and password.
If you are using spacibm to send your mail, and have tried to send a test message to authtest@rice.edu, you will probably have received a warning from Helpdesk saying that your mail will not work after tomorrow.
However, IT assures me that spacibm mail will not be affected by the changes. The authtest only checks personal account authentication, and fails for servers.
Having said that ... if you do have problems with mail, please call me at x2433.
Printing is now working from 10.109.X addresses.
There appears to be a firewall problem blocking printing from 10.109.X addresses. IT will continue to work on the network issues tomorrow.
The printers are now using their new IPs. See the September 17 entry for details.
If you having problems, please provide the IP that you are trying to print from, since there may be residual networking problems.
Printing from the Rice Visitors wireless network is not currently working.
Owing to further changes by IT in the campus networking structure, it is necessary to once again change the IPs of the Service Center printers in Herman Brown 335. The names of the printers will not be changing, just the associated IPs.
This is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, September 22 at 2 pm.
A minor benefit is that it should then be possible to print to the printers from the Rice Visitors wireless network (though the full Owls network is strongly recommended for Rice users).
All users of the printers will be affected in one of two ways:
(A) If you print to these printers using the name of the printer in your port configuration (e.g. spac-ps-2430.rice.edu) you will not have to make any changes to your configuration. However, there will be a period of time (possibly of the order of hours) when you will be unable to use the printers because the Rice nameservers have not updated to the new IP address. For some machines, it may be necessary to restart networking or reboot to force the acquisition of the correct network address.
(B) On the other hand, if you print to these printers using the IP number (e.g. 10.129.15.69 for spac-ps-2430) you will not have the nameserver problem above. Instead, you will have to manually change your port settings. For example, in Windows XP in Printers and Faxes, right mouse click on the printer name, select Properties, select the Ports tab, click on Configure Port for the checked Standard TCP/IP Port, enter the new IP in the Printer Name or IP Address box, click OK to save, and this should now be working.
After the switch, the printers will have the following IPs:
128.42.182.69 spac-ps-2430.rice.edu
128.42.182.70 spac-ps-3800.rice.edu
128.42.182.71 spac-ps-4050.rice.edu
128.42.182.72 spac-ps-600.rice.edu
If you are using the IP number rather than the name, I recommend that you take this opportunity to switch to using the name. Further changes to the networking structure are certainly possible.
HEAsoft has been upgraded to the 64-bit version 6.7.
OpenOffice has been upgraded to version 3.1.
IDL 7.1 has been installed. It is now the default version.
The printer spac-ps-2430 has been repaired.
spacibm is the departmental server for mail, web, xterminals, IDL etc. It also has up-to-date data analysis packages (Fortran, IDL, Matlab, Mathematica, HEAsoft, IRAF...), and office programs (OpenOffice, latex, GIMP...).
spacibm runs SuSE Enterprise Linux 10.3. This only has a few subtle differences from Red Hat.
You can search for the location of commands using which or locate. Make sure that e.g. the path and lpath environments in .cshrc and aliases point to the correct program.
There are extra print queues defined for double-sided printing: ps4050double, ps2430double, and ps3800double. e.g. lpr -Pps4050double
The upgrade to SLES 10 required switching back to the CUPS printing package in place of LPRng. Thus the "-Z" options for selecting the tray, duplexing, etc. no longer work. A complete description of the CUPS options can be found at: http://www.cups.org/documentation.php Some common examples:
Manual feed: lpr -Pps4050 -o media=Manual
Duplex on the short edge: lpr -Pps4050 -o sides=two-sided-short-edge
A4: lpr -o media=A4
Please do not use the color printer as a default for all your printing! Please remember to sign up your color printing usage.
For drivers and installation information about using your computer with ps3800, click here.
On 2009 September 22, the Service Center printers in Herman Brown 335 moved to the following IPs:
128.42.182.69 spac-ps-2430.rice.edu
128.42.182.70 spac-ps-3800.rice.edu
128.42.182.71 spac-ps-4050.rice.edu
128.42.182.72 spac-ps-600.rice.edu
setenv ENSCRIPT --media=letter
The mail command works similarly to spacsun, but has a number of subtle differences. Please man mail for details. For example, note that r and R are switched, so that r replies to everyone in the original mail whilst R replies to just the sender (you can reverse this by adding set Replyall to your .mailrc).
If you like to use vi to edit mail, you should include setenv EDITOR vim in your .cshrc.
pine is not included in the SuSE distribution. It has been built (with some difficulty) as an add-on (current version 4.64). It appears to work fine, although this is not a program that I use. pine and its related programs (pilot, pico, mailutil) are all located in /usr/local/pine
The mail program elm is not included in the SuSE distribution and is not being maintained by its authors; thus it has not been installed.
An alternative similar mail reader is mutt.
Thunderbird is located at /usr/local/thunderbird/thunderbird
Seamonkey is located at /usr/local/seamonkey/seamonkey
Plug-ins for Adobe Acroread, Macromedia Flash, and Java should now be working.
In theory, older programs that require ftp can be tunneled using ssh. However, we have not had success in doing this in practice, so it is best to upgrade to a secure version/program.
There is no longer a /home/ftp that you can use to allow people to download your files. Instead, make a simple web page in public_html that includes, for example, the line:
(Generated by <a href="paper.pdf">Download copy of paper.pdf</a>)
Users should therefore remember to tar directories before transferring them.
/usr/local/lf9562/bin/lf95 -Wa,--32
If you have problems with libraries not being seen, try:
source /usr/local/lf9562/csh_setup
GNU Fortran version 3.3 is also available at /opt/gcc33/bin/g77 (new location). If you get errors about loading shared libraries, add to your .cshrc
setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /opt/gcc33/lib64:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
You can check that all your library paths are being seen using echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH
There is also gcc (/usr/bin/gcc) and g++ (/usr/bin/g++).
Mathematica 6.0.3 - /usr/local/bin/mathematica.603
Mathematica 6.0.2.1 - /usr/local/bin/mathematica.602
Mathematica 6.0.1 - /usr/local/bin/mathematica.601
Mathematica 5.2 - /usr/local/bin/mathematica.52
Mathematica 5.1 - /usr/local/bin/mathematica.51
Wolfram Workbench 1.1.0 - /usr/local/bin/WolframWorkbench
If you have problems with displaying fonts, you will need to install them on your local machine. From your linux machine:
sftp yourusername@spacibm
cd /usr/local/src
get mathematica_fonts.tar.gz
login as root on your linux machine and:
cp mathematica_fonts.tar.gz /usr/share/fonts
cd /usr/share/fonts/
gunzip mathematica_fonts.tar.gz
tar xf mathematica_fonts.tar
xset fp+ /usr/share/fonts/Type1
xset fp+ /usr/share/fonts/BDF
xset fp rehash
Mathematica should now work correctly. You will need to do the three xset commands each time you log in to your linux box.
Earlier versions are available as e.g. /usr/local/rsi/idl_6.1/bin/idl or /usr/local/rsi/idl64/bin/idl
The default is to run the 64-bit version. Sometimes it may be necessary to use the 32-bit version; for this use idl -32
spacibm is the license server for IDL.
To be able to use IDL, you need to have the correct address set for spacibm.rice.edu in your LM_LICENSE_FILE environment variable. If this is not done, IDL will go into demo mode.
- In unix-type operating systems, this is set in your .cshrc or .kshrc or .bashrc *and* it may also be set in your .flexlmrc file. You need to check both places.
- In Windows the LM_LICENSE_FILE is set in Control Panel - System - Advanced - Environment Variables.
Version 7.8 (R2009a) is at: /usr/local/matlab_7.8/bin/matlab
Version 7.7 (R2008b) is at: /usr/local/matlab_7.7/bin/matlab
Version 7.6 (R2008a) is at: /usr/local/matlab_7.6/bin/matlab
Version 7.5 (R2007b) is at: /usr/local/matlab_7.5/bin/matlab
Version 7.4 (R2007a) is at: /usr/local/matlab_7.4/bin/matlab
Version 7.3 (R2006b) is at: /usr/local/matlab_7.3/bin/matlab
Earlier versions of matlab would not work with SLES 10 and have not been saved.
Be sure to have e.g. in your .cshrc:
set path = ($path /usr/local/supermongo/bin /usr/local/supermongo/lib )
setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/supermongo/lib
To get TeX to process Greek fonts correctly, you may need to have in your /home/username/.sm
TeX_strings 0
Please note the correct path for the HEADAS environment variable (the directory name often changes after an upgrade to a newer version):
For C Shell users (csh, tcsh), include in your .cshrc:
setenv HEADAS /usr/local/heasoft/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-libc2.3.4
source $HEADAS/headas-init.csh
For Bourne Shell users (sh, ash, ksh, bash), include in your .login:
HEADAS=/usr/local/heasoft/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu-libc2.3.4
export HEADAS
. $HEADAS/headas-init.sh
NOTE: these environment settings should come after other initializations that use LD_LIBRARY_PATH (such as supermongo).
NOTE: these replaced the previous LHEASOFT environment variables which should be deleted if they are in your .cshrc. Also make sure you are not setting any of the old environment variables FTOOLS or XANADU.
setenv CALDBCONFIG /usr/local/caldb/caldb.config
setenv CALDBALIAS /usr/local/caldb/alias_config.fits
setenv CALDB ftp://legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov/caldb
You will need to set 3 environment settings in your .cshrc:
set path = ($path /usr/local/root-5.10/root/bin )
setenv ROOTSYS /usr/local/root-5.10/root
setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH ${ROOTSYS}/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
ds9 v.5.6.3 - /usr/local/bin/ds9
ds9 v.5.5.1 - /usr/local/bin/ds9_5.5.1
ds9 v.5.2 - /usr/local/bin/ds9_5.2
ds9 v.5.0 - /usr/local/bin/ds9_5.0
ds9 v.4.13 - /usr/local/bin/ds9_4.13
x11iraf uses version 2.0BETA; ximtool is now working.
Please note that the latest version of Adobe Reader has problems and needs configuration. Adobe Reader is only a 32-bit program, but it currently selects the inappropriate 64-bit libraries. To avoid the complaints on start-up and to get the browser links working, it is necessary to click Edit then Preferences; select Internet from the Categories menu; in the Browser Executable box enter /usr/local/seamonkey/seamonkey ; in the libgtkembedmoz Folder box enter /usr/local/seamonkey ; click OK (twice if necessary); exit and restart acroread.
The default version of GIMP is now 2.2.13 at /usr/local/bin/gimp The first time it runs, it will create a .gimp-2.2 directory. You may want to copy over personalized items such as patterns and brushes from your .gimp-1.2 directory.
The previous version of GIMP (1.2.5) is still available at /usr/local/bin/gimp-1.2
xv no longer works with SLES 10 and the package has been removed.
Although not recommended, version 1.1.0 is still available at /usr/local/OpenOffice and then at /home/username/OpenOffice/soffice once you have gone through the setup procedure (do a Workstation Installation: DO NOT do a Local Installation.)
set path = ($path /usr/local/teTeX/bin/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu )
Unless you know what you are doing, you should comment out all the TEX... environment variables in e.g. your .cshrc. The exception is to create a directory such as /home/yourusername/texinputs where you keep your input tex, sty, cls ... macros. Then include e.g. in your .cshrc:
setenv TEXINPUTS .:/usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf/tex//:/home/yourusername/texinputs//:
Since the default in SuSE is to use A4 paper, when converting postscript to pdf, use ps2pdf -sPAPERSIZE=letter
Also use dvips -t letter