Q I noticed that my home phone number is listed under "finger" command, which is unexpected. Could you please remove my home phone number asap from my profile. A Use the "chfn" command to "change your finger info". Q. DO YOU HAVE THE Xwindows keymap handy that switches the caps lock and ctrl keys on these ncd terminals? It's going to drive me crazy! A. Paste the following into a file, eg. ~/.Xmodmap === begin === ! Swap Caps_Lock and Control_L ! remove Lock = Caps_Lock remove Control = Control_L keysym Control_L = Caps_Lock keysym Caps_Lock = Control_L add Lock = Caps_Lock add Control = Control_L === end === Run the command "xmodmap $HOME/.Xmodmap" to test the change. If you're satisfied with the results, put the command into your ~/.X11rc file. You may want to wrap it in a conditional of some kind if you often find yourself using different machines and don't want to do the swap in all cases. Q. I have never used a SUN workstation before, and I was wondering if there is a way to change the interface or window manager (or both) to something that I'm more used to. I'm really not enjoying the tabbed window manager. A. Our default setup uses the "twm" window manager. You can certainly change that to whatever you want. We also have mwm, fvwm, fvwm2, ctwm, and tvtwm installed on our system. I haven't tried them all but my favourite is fvwm2. You'll want to start by looking at your ~/.X11rc and basically change the invocation of twm to whatever your preference is. Needless to say, all these window managers are highly customizable. Even if you stick with twm, there are a lot of things you can change to make the environment nicer. Whatever window manager you choose, you'll probably not be perfectly happy with the defaults. You should check the man page to figure out how and what to customize -- typically by modifying a config file. Q. How do I customize XWindows? By default, all users' home directories have a: .X11rc file This is a stub file that runs /local/share/x11/.X11rc In order to customize this file, do the following: cd mv .Xllrc .X11rc.dist cp /local/share/x11/.X11rc . vi .X11rc and make the necessary changes. If the file becomes unusable, simply rename .X11rc.dist to .X11rc If you wish to invoke fvwm use fvwm2 instead: # Start the twm window manager. # To customize twm, copy the default .twmrc (named below) # to your home directory. #if [ -f $HOME/.twmrc ]; then #twm & #else #twm -f /local/share/x11/.twmrc & #fi fvwm2 & Q. I need more help customizing XWindows To customize xterms that your window manager will start up with, edit your .X11rc file and add/remove/change the lines that launch xterms according to the following options: xterm -geometry 80x56+0+130 -bd 'black' -bg 'white' -fg 'black' -hc 'orange' & -geometry is [width]x[height](+/-)[horizontal offset](+/-)[vertical offset] offset is + from left and top or - from right and bottom -bd is the scrollbar color, may not be of importance to you -bg is background color for the window -fg is foreground color for the window -hc is highlight color for the window Doing 'man colors' should give you a list of possible colors to try. You can add the -iconic flag to have them start as icons, so if you did: netscape -geometry [whatever you want here] -iconic & It should start an iconic netscape for you when you log in. To make general customizations to the window manager, including the menus and such, edit the .fvwm2rc file in your home directory - you didn't have a custom one, so I copied the default into your directory so that you can change it if you like. I made a couple of color changes for you (purple to orange for example). The section you want to change is at the top, and is basically these lines: HilightColor black orange DeskTopSize 2x2 MenuStyle orange grey60 grey40 -adobe-times-bold-r-*-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-*-* fvwm This sets color for hightlighting (overwritten in xterms by the -hc flag when launching the xterm I believe), the number of virtual desktops you have, and how your menus look. Simply change the colors as you like. If you get more creative, you can edit the options on your menus and such further down in the file. Armed with this knowledge, you should be able to set up fvwm2 as you like - and the changes to your .X11rc (like xterm colors) should also work in your twm if you choose to stick with that Q. I would like to lock my screen sometimes for convenience instead of logging out. I am using a NCD. When I type: xlock I get this error message: xlock: can't lock ncd13.ai's display Is there a simple way to solve this, or do I always need to log out? A. You need to type: xlock -r -mode blank Q. At the print dialog this is the switch I use: lpr - Plw3204 However when I try this I get the following error message: Printing via 'lpr - Plw3204' A. There should be no space between the '-' and the 'P'. lpr -Plw3204 Q. Is there a way to get /usr/ucb/mail to automagically Bcc me on every message I send out? I know about "set record=...", but I want it to actually be *sent* to me by bcc, that way it gets processed through procmail. I guess that really means my question is: is there a way to get every message I send out processed through procmail? :-) A. You can set askbcc in your .mailrc, or you can use the -b command line option. See mailx man page. Q. I cannot run acroread : [abc@cortex ~]$ acroread /local/X11/bin/acroread: /pkgs/acroread-3.0/Reader/intellinux/bin/acroread: No such file or directory /local/X11/bin/acroread: /pkgs/acroread-3.0/Reader/intellinux/bin/acroread: No such file or directory [abc@cortex ~]$ /pkgs/acroread-3.0/Reader/intellinux/bin/acroread bash: /pkgs/acroread-3.0/Reader/intellinux/bin/acroread: No such file or directory [abc@cortex ~]$ /pkgs/acroread-4.05/Reader/intellinux/bin/acroread /pkgs/acroread-4.05/Reader/intellinux/bin/acroread: error while loading shared libraries: libreadcore.so: cannot load shared object file: No such file or directory Neither 3.0 nor 4.05 seems to work. A. Please use instead: /local/bin/acroread4 Q. On Solaris, when I hit backspace I get a ^H on my screen. How do I change this? A. Run the command: ssty erase ^H Current terminal settings can be seen via: stty -a Q. Hi, I'm not sure who organises this but just in case: could you add me to the dcsgrads and xxyyzz mailing lists? A. Most mailing lists are maintained by their owners. You can see who owns which list by looking at /cs/lists. THe owner of the file is the owner of the list. Ask your colleagues which lists they think are relevant to your interests. Q. I need to print out a couple of colour pages for my thesis. Is there a colour printer that I can use? A, The only 'global' colour printer is in Bahen: clw-ba4242. You write your name on the sheet and your supervisor is charged 25 cents per page. If you go between 9-5 you should be able to get in without card (key). Q. I am trying to create a file in /tmp and I am told that there is insufficient space. However, when I run df it is reported that there is lots of space of left. A. You might be running out of inodes. Try the command: df -i If you are short on inodes delete some files. Q. I want to use the old version of MATLAB; the new version does not work properly. A. /local/bin/matlab , matlab6, both point to the newest version matlab65 (the bad font broken in kde version) /local/bin/matlab61 points to the older, more stable version. Q. Is there some way to get the U of T letterhead on a latex document (an virtual/non-paper document)? A. Yes, we have a style file called ut-letter which may be used. For example: \documentclass{letter} \usepackage{ut-letter} \signature{Samir Girdhar\\(System Administrator)} \begin{document} \begin{letter}[DCSLogo,pushfrom,long] {Mr.~S. Claus,\\ North Pole.} \opening{Dear Santa:} Letter goes here. \closing{Sincerely,} \end{letter} \end{document} Also I made a change to allow a colour logo instead of a black and white one. Just change "DCSLogo" to "DCSColourLogo". If you're using a completely different document class and letter won't work for you, you can just use the postscript images of the logo directly. They are called "utcrest.eps" and "utcrest.eps.colour" and are in a central location so they can be found automatically by the TeX system. Q. Can you please let me know what is the procedure for creating a mailing list? A. It's on our website: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/cslab/index.shtml Specifically, you want this page: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/cslab/local/mailing-lists.html Q. Hi, I want to install a copy of Office for my laptop. Do you guys have a version that I can use? A. CSLAB does not have licenses for MS Office. However, the Information Commons sells Academically priced software for UofT staff and students. For more information visit their web-site: http://www.utoronto.ca/welcome.html/softdist/ Q. One of my collaborators is writing code in java. How can I get a run time environment and compiler set up on my machine xxxx.cs, as well as a plugin to run apps in a browser? I am running mozilla121 from /pkgs but it doesn't seem to know about java, and xxxx.cs doesn't seem to have java or javac in my default paths anywhere. A. We've got several different versions of java/jdk installed under /pkgs. There is no default because the changes between versions are often enough and significant enough to cause problems for anyone relying on, for example, /local/bin/javac to something in particular. You will need to choose the version you want (we always recommend the latest except when an older version is explicitly needed) and then set some environment variables. You will need the architecture-specific bin directory added to you PATH and a small number of java-specific environment variables to indicate where the java class libraries, etc., are stored. Unfortunately, even the specific java variables to set have varied with different versions so we don't maintain a canonical list. I would check the documentation in /pkgs/jdk1.4.0/docs or other online resources for which specific variables are needed -- there should only be one or three of them. mozilla121 should automatically load the java plugin for jdk v1.4.0. You'll need javascript enabled in order to check that it's loaded by going to Help->"About Plugins". You'll need java enabled to use it, Edit->Preferences, then click on "Advanced". Note, you must actually click *on* "Advanced", not just expand the sub-list. Q. Does CS Lab keep logs of the http activity associated with users sites? If so, are these files world-readable and can you tell me where they are? For example, I would like to determine when the last time a file under http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~username/ was last accessed. A. We keep a week's worth of logs; they are on the web server (www.cs.toronto.edu) under the directory /var/log/. The current day's log file is /var/log/httpd-xfer, and the error log is /var/log/httpd-errors. The previous seven days' logs are compressed in gzip format (see the man pages for the zcat, zmore and zgrep commands for help with uncompressing them) and kept in files named /var/log/Log/httpd-xfer.N.gz and /var/log/Log/httpd-error.N.gz, where N ranges from 0 (most recent, i.e., yesterday) to 6 (a week ago). For instance, the following commands run on the web server will report all log entries containing your username in the last week, in chronological order: cd /var/log zgrep username Log/httpd-xfer.{6,5,4,3,2,1,0}.gz httpd-xfer