Tip #1Tip #1: Should I reboot the machine?

ANSWER: No, you should never reboot a Unix machine. If you find that the machine has locked up and is no longer taking keyboard input, log into the machine remotely from another machine in the lab and kill the process that is hanging your machine. Also since Unix is a real operating system, someone else may be doing work on your machine remotely and if you reboot you will destroy all of their work, (this tends to make people not like you :-).



Tip #2Tip #2: I can't log in, what should I do?

ANSWER: If you find that you cannot log into a machine that you are sitting at you can try the failsafe login, to do this, instead of pressing enter after you type in your password press F1. This will give you an xterm so that you can access your account, once in your account there are some things you should check.

  • Are you over quota on disk space? quota -v
  • Have you been editing your login scripts (.xinitrc, .login , .cshrc, etc...)? Undo the changes
  • Do you have an account?
  • Was your password disabled? Did you get email about your password being cracked?



Tip #3Tip #3: Why can't I print?

ANSWER: If you are unable to print, check these things in this order.

  • Check to make sure you still have print quota by typing lpquota on one of the Sun machines.
  • Check your print command to make sure it is correct.
    If you are on a SUN machine (Ultras), it should be of the form:
    lpr -Pprinter_name "name of document"
    If you are on a SGI machine, it should be of the form:
    lp -dprinter_name "name of document"
    where printer name is:
    ps - for the laser printer in the Thompson lab,
    lp - for the line printer in the Thompson lab, or
    ceres - for the laser printer in LME 314.
  • Check to see that the printer has paper. :-)
  • Check for an error or paper jam on the printer, if the led display on the laser printer has Error displayed, press shift + reset on the printer.


Tip #4Tip #4: Why should I not log into the main servers?

ANSWER: The main servers have dedicated functions: file serving, email or web. For security reasons we limit access to these systems to minimize their chance of being hacked.



Tip #5Tip #5: How do I use this software?

ANSWER: If you cannot figure out how to use a certain program try typing man or info and the name of the program, this will give you instructions on how to use the program.

Last modified: Mon Sep 17 13:00:47 PDT 2007