======================== SSCC News, January, 1997 ======================== Inside this issue... DOWNTIME: Unix Home Directories to be Moved VMS Down January 20 for System Upgrade SSCC Training Schedule for Spring Semester Training Offerings from LSS and DoIT Queues Added for Printing 2UP SAS Upgraded on EAGLE Changes to Mail Forwarding New Public Digital UNIX Machine Now Available ------------------------------------------- DOWNTIME: Unix Home Directories to be Moved ------------------------------------------- As part of our efforts to make Unix more reliable and to expand home directory space, SSCC staff will be moving users' home directories from current locations on various machines to new locations on GUY, our new Digital Unix machine. The home directory move will require considerable DOWN TIME. The move begins on Thursday, 1/16, and continues through Friday, 1/31. During this entire time, expect Unix to be down from 8am to 8:30am every morning. In addition, on the date that your home directory will be moved, you will not be able to use Unix for 24 hours, from 9am on the move date to 9am the next morning. Your home directory move date is determined by the disk on which your home directory now resides. The following disks will be moved on the following dates: Disk Move Home directories unavailable Date from 9am on: to 9am on: d1 1/16 Thursday 1/16 Friday 1/17 d1 1/21 Tuesday 1/21 Wednesday 1/22 d7 1/29 Wednesday 1/29 Thursday 1/30 d8 1/24 Friday 1/24 Saturday 1/25 d9 1/28 Tuesday 1/28 Friday 1/29 d10 1/22 and 1/23 Wednesday 1/22 Friday 1/24 d11 1/29 Wednesday 1/29 Thursday 1/30 d25 1/27 Monday 1/27 Tuesday 1/28 d26 1/24 Friday 1/24 Saturday 1/25 d32 1/27 Monday 1/27 Tuesday 1/28 d33 1/28 Tuesday 1/28 Friday 1/29 d34 1/29 Wednesday 1/29 Thursday 1/30 d36 1/28 Tuesday 1/28 Friday 1/29 d38 1/27 Monday 1/27 Tuesday 1/28 d42 1/24 Friday 1/24 Saturday 1/25 Note that users on d1 have TWO moving dates. Also note that the d10 move date will last for 48 HOURS instead of 24 hours. It is possible that, for various technical and non-technical reasons, the move dates may change from the schedule above. Please use the movedate command to confirm move dates, as the data file for this command will be updated as changes occur. When you type movedate at the UNIX prompt, the system will tell you your moving date. To determine someone else's moving date, execute: movedate loginname replacing "loginname" with the other person's login name. People with home directories on project disks will not have their home directories moved until we begin moving project disks. For these people, the movedate command will return the message "Move date not scheduled." In addition to moving home directories, we will also be moving project disks and some system disks, such as those holding software and other system data. However, only the home directory move is scheduled at this time. Owners and users of project disks will be informed when the project disk moving schedule is in place. Please contact CONSULTANT if there are problems with the moving schedule. For more information on this move and to see why we are doing it, please read the expanded article in BULLETIN. -------------------------------------- VMS Down January 20 for System Upgrade -------------------------------------- The VMS operating system will be upgraded from version 6.1 to 6.2 on January 20. All VMS computers will be unavailable during the upgrade which is scheduled to begin at 7:00 a.m. We hope to have the upgrade completed by 5:00 p.m. ------------------------------------------ SSCC Training Schedule for Spring Semester ------------------------------------------ Note: All SSCC training sessions require preregistration. If at least five people have not preregistered for a course one week prior to its start date, the class may be canceled. To preregister for a class, send mail to SSCCLASS indicating which class(es) you plan to attend. You will be reminded about your preregistration through e-mail a day or two before the class begins. Descriptions for each of the training sessions listed below may be found in SSCGOPHER. If no training session is offered for a topic you are interested in, please send mail to SSCCLASS requesting a session. We will schedule a session if a minimum of five people request training on a topic. Date Time Topic Room ---- ---- ----- ---- 1/27 1:20-3:15 VMS Basics: Commands, File System, EVE 7413 1/30 12:30-2:15 UNIX Basics: Commands, File System, EMACS 2470 1/31 9:55-10:45 Running Batch Jobs under VMS 7413 2/3 1:20-3:15 Intro to the PINE Mailer on VMS or UNIX 7413 2/4 2:30-3:45 Running Jobs under UNIX 4308 2/5,2/7 1:20-2:10 Intro to STATA 2470 2/6 2:30-3:45 Scanning Text and Graphics 4411 2/7 2:25-3:15 WiscWorld (inc. FTP) for Windows from Home 4452 2/10 12:05-1:00 Using PC Windows Applications from X-terms 2470 2/12,2/14 2:25-4:00 Intro to SPSS 4452 2/13 2:30-3:45 Configuring the UNIX Shell&File Permissions 4308 2/17 12:05-1:00 Windows 95 Basics 4452 2/20 12:30-2:15 Windows 95 Network Fundamentals 4452 2/21 12:05-1:00 Intro to the EUDORA Mailer for PC Users 3432 2/25 2:30-3:45 Filtering Data with UNIX Tools 4308 2/27-3/18 2:30-3:45 Introduction to SAS (meets T/U) 4308 3/5 12:05-1:30 Hands-on Intro to te Web using Netscape 2470 3/6 3:00-3:45 Managing Source Code under UNIX 4308 3/20,4/1 2:30-3:45 Producing Reports with SAS 4308 4/3,4/8 2:30-3:45 Analyzing Data with SAS 4308 4/15-4/22 2:30-3:45 SAS Programming Techniques&Efficiencies 4308 4/18 1:20-3:15 Extracting Data Interactively w/ BADGER 2470 4/24 2:30-3:45 Table Lookup Techniques in SAS 4308 4/29,5/1 2:30-3:45 Concatenating and Merging in SAS 4308 Note: Classes scheduled in Soc. Sci. 4308 meet concurrently with Sociology 365 on Tuesdays and/or Thursdays. Anyone is welcome to come but preregistration is still required so that we have enough handouts. ------------------------------------ Training Offerings from LSS and DoIT ------------------------------------ Learning Support Services (LSS) and DoIT also offer computer training. LSS offers hands-on free-of-charge workshops on PC and Internet topics. Visit their homepage for more information at http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/lss/micro/workshops.html. DoIT offers workshops on a variety of topics although most are not free. Visit their homepage at http://www.wisc.edu/pte/ ----------------------------- Queues Added for Printing 2UP ----------------------------- We have added two new queues on UNIX and VMS for printing two pages per one side of a sheet of paper. These queues print on both sides of the paper allowing you to save paper by printing four pages per sheet of paper. The queues are named double2up and double2up_ps and both print to the computer room. --------------------- SAS Upgraded on EAGLE --------------------- SAS has been upgraded on EAGLE to version 6.12. Consulting has a copy of the Changes and Enhancements you are welcome to browse. (There are too many to list here.) One new feature you should definitely be aware of though is you can read from and write to ASCII data files and SAS transport files on remote computers. For example, you could run your SAS program on EAGLE and read in data that you have stored on a UNIX computer or even a collegue's data he/she has placed in an anonymous FTP site for you. SAS uses FTP to connect to the remote computer and access the data. The data are read into your SAS session WITHOUT first storing them on your VMS disk. For details, refer to How-to #44. -------------------------- Changes to Mail Forwarding -------------------------- The method for doing mail forwarding on Unix has changed to fix a problem with forwarding mail to VMS. The VMS mail forwarding problem is that any time a disk with a mail forward is unavailable to the Unix mailer (DUNCAN), often due to selective Unix down times, system crashes, or for any of a number of other possible reasons, mail is queued on users' Unix mailbox instead of being forwarded to VMS. The new mail forwarding system will harvest .forward files in users' home directories and keep them in a system-wide alias file. If a home directory disk becomes unavailable for any reason, the mail can still be forwarded to VMS or to any other computer. This new procedure changes the current forwarding system. The following forwarding rules now apply: 1. If you are REMOVING A FORWARD FROM UNIX, it will take one hour for the removal of the forward to take effect. You should not start forwarding mail from VMS (or elsewhere) to Unix until one hour has passed. 2. If you are CHANGING YOUR FORWARD ON UNIX, it will take 1 hour for the change to take effect. 3. If you are SETTING A NEW FORWARD ON UNIX, it will take effect immediately. Although SSCC staff has made an effort to forward mail when it has queued on the Unix system, we have not always been aware of when the problem has occurred. Therefore, we suggest that VMS users log on to Unix to see if any of their mail has queued on Unix. Simply log onto Unix and use PINE or any other mailer to read your mail. You may dispose of the mail on Unix or contact CONSULTANT to have SSCC staff forward your mail to VMS. --------------------------------------------- New Public Digital UNIX Machine Now Available --------------------------------------------- (This article ran in last month's issue of SSCNEWS but we are repeating it because GUY appears to be the best kept secret at SSCC, i.e. very few people have used it!) A new Digital Alpha machine has been added to the UNIX network. This computer is called GUY and it is available to all members of the SSCC. Currently, GUY has more than twice the computing power of NORMAN, twice the amount of memory, and 50% more /tmp space (3 gb). It is also extendable, able to use several processors and to use several gigabytes of RAM. In coming years, we expect to expand GUY rather than purchase additional Unix computers. This computer was paid for by funds contributed by SSRI when they joined the Co-op last July. The following statistical software is available on GUY: Mathematica 2.2, MATLAB 4.2C, and SAS 6.11. GAUSS, Maple, and LIMDEP will be available soon. Note that Mathematica, MATLAB, GAUSS, and Maple are unsupported software so Consulting will not be able to help you with problems you encounter other than making sure the software is properly installed. SSCC members are invited to log into GUY and use it for large SAS jobs, Economics applications, or just to read mail and search the Web.