Using the CDS Linux Workstations
The email address for the CDS system administrators is help@cds.caltech.edu. Let us know if you have any problems or questions. Also please tell us if you think that there is any other information which it would be useful to put on this page.
General Usage Guidelines
The General-use CDS Linux workstations are located in Steele room 133. All the systems are P4 3.4 MHz with 4 Gb of memory. The hostnames are:
draoi.cds.caltech.edu
eithne.cds.caltech.edu
fedelm.cds.caltech.edu
cashel.cds.caltech.edu
lughaid.cds.caltech.edu
tirnanog.cds.caltech.edu
SSH access to "cds.caltech.edu" is also available.
The CDS Linux cluster operates as a tightly integrated network of computers. For this reason, it is extremely important not to turn off or reboot a Linux machine or to disconnect it from the network. If your computer appears to have crashed, you can log into it from another machine and kill the jobs (typically netscape) which have frozen the console. If this doesn't work, please email help@cds.caltech.edu for help.
If you need to do a lot of computation, you can run compute jobs (such as matlab or mathematica) on several machines at once. The Linux Chooser on the main menu allows you to easily find and log on to an unloaded system. When running jobs on other people's computers,
however, it is very important to use
nice +19 COMMAND
to ensure that you do not slow down the machine while someone is using it (see here
for more information). Once a job is running you can use
renice 19 -p PID
to do the same thing. If your computer is unusually slow because someone is running a background job on it, please email help@cds.caltech.edu to have the job killed.
Periodically the system is upgraded, new programs are installed and the configurations are changed. Many of these changes are only activated if you log out of your computer and leave it logged out overnight. Doing this at least once a week will ensure that you can always use the latest updates.
Image scanningto scan an image or document on a Linux system that has a scanner attached:
- Place the image or document face down on the scanner
- Run gimp by either:
- Selecting Run command... from the start menu and typing gimp.
- Press the gimp button on the taskbar.
- Select gimp from the Graphics sub-menu on the Start menu.
- From the File menu, under the Acquire sub-menu, select XSane: hp:/dev/usb/scanner0.
Using the Compact Flash reader
If you have a digital device that uses Compact Flash cards, like a digital camera or an MP3 player, you can use a Compact Flash reader to access the files.
To access pictures on a Compact Flash card taken with a digital camera:
- Place the disk into the drive.
- Select /mnt/flash from the list in RedHat Menu -> System Tools -> Disk Management. This will open the Compact Flash disk in the file manager.
- Select your home directory from the file manager menu, and open or create the directory that you want to use to hold the pictures.
- Drag the files from the Compact Flash window to the window of the destination directory.
- In the destination folder, select all of the new picture files and choose Convert to file from the File menu.
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sysadm@cds.caltech.edu
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