UP ONE LEVEL: ENEL 339 Home Page

ENEL 339 Fall 2000
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
about using the Linux labs

This page is maintained by Steve Norman
Last modified: Sun Sep 24 20:25:06 MDT 2000

Contents

Introduction

This page has been set up to deal with some common questions I get regarding the use of the ENEL Linux labs for ENEL 339 labn assignments.

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Who takes care of problems with computer accounts?

Day-to-day maintenance of computer systems in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is the responsibility of our system administrators, Steven Leikeim and Randy Millis.

Steven's office is within room EN A 16; Randy's office is EN A 18.

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How can I learn about Unix commands?

[This section isn't ready yet.]

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How can I learn about Emacs commands?

[This section isn't ready yet.]

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What is the deal with laser printer pages?

You were given 200 free pages for ENEL 339. If you use up all 200 pages before the end of the course, you will have to pay 10 cents a page for extra pages; you should pay the money to one of the system administrators.

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Which laser printers can I use?

The following laser printers are available from your Linux account: 
ROOM              NAME OF PRINTER
A 02              green-lw
A 06              control-lw
A 121             blue-lw

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Can I make a telnet connection to an ENEL Linux system?

Yes. There is a server specially set up for this. It's called 
  remote-a.enel.ucalgary.ca

By the way, if you're using Microsoft Windows at home, you should consider using a better telnet client than the one that comes with Windows. One such telnet client is CRT, which you can find out about at www.vandyke.com. (There are lots of good telnet clients out there; CRT is one that I know works well.)

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Why can't I run emacs when I telnet into remote-a?

If you're running Linux at home and you telnet into remote-a, you may have problems running emacs on remote-a.

If an environment variable called DISPLAY is set, emacs will try to start in X Window mode. If your machine has not granted permission to remote-a to access its display, you'll get an error message something like this: 

      Xlib: connection to "foo-42.bar.some-isp.ca:0.0" refused by server
      Xlib: Client is not authorized to connect to Server
      emacs: Cannot connect to X server foo-42.bar.some-isp.ca:0.0.
      Check the DISPLAY environment variable or use `-d'.
      Also use the `xhost' program to verify that it is set to permit
      connections from your machine.

Here are two ways to make emacs start in text mode:

  1. After you log in to remote-a, type the command 
          unset DISPLAY
    If the DISPLAY environment variable is not set, emacs will start the terminal version.
  2. Start emacs with the command 
          emacs -nw
    (-nw stands for `no windows').
If you have a reasonably fast internet connection you may prefer to use the X Window version of emacs. To allow this use the command 
      xhost remote-a.enel.ucalgary.ca
before starting emacs (or whatever other X Window application you want to run). After you're finished, use 
      xhost -remote-a.enel.ucalgary.ca
to turn off permission.

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Can I make an FTP connection to an ENEL Linux system?

Yes. Connect to 
  remote-a.enel.ucalgary.ca

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Can I use a Web browser to download files for labs?

Yes. Go to the course home page and find the appropriate link.