Getting started on the HEP group computers

Web

• Mozilla Firefox (firefox)is the recommended browser
• Set your homepage to www.hep.ucl.ac.uk/homepage.shtml (the group's internal page)
• Personal pages (http://www.hep.ucl.ac.uk/~xyz) held in /unix/www/users/xyz/public_html

Mail

• thunderbird is the recomended mail client
• pine is also supported
• Further instructions at https://www.hep.ucl.ac.uk/twiki/bin/view/Computing/MailClientSetup

Ssh

• It's a way of life!
• Secure login from one machine to another
• Public key authentication allows login without password

Using keys

• Generate keys with 'ssh-keygen -t dsa'
  • Use a passphrase.
  • Don't copy id_dsa, only copy id_dsa.pub
• Use ssh-agent to save repeatedly entering passphrase.
• Append your public key to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on machines that you want to log in to.

More information on the computing twiki

Directory Structure

/               The root
 bin            Binaries (applications that you can run)
 usr
    bin        More binaries
    lib        Static and shared libraries (DLLs)
    include
    local      packages that don't come with the system
       bin
       lib
       include
    share
       doc  Documentation for installed packages
       info 
       man
 home           Automount point for user's home directories
 unix           Automount point for data/other directories
 tmp            Temporary files automatically cleaned
 misc           Automount point for local peripherals
     cd         local cdrom/dvd drive
     floppy     local floppy drive

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