Pages marked with this Category are no longer current as of 2009.
OUT OF DATE as of 2008-11-01.
xfig, a figure drawing program, is now installed at /usr/share/astro . The executable is called xfig. The Imakefile I used to compile and install this program can be found a /etc/secret/Imakefile.xfig
If this ever needs to be compiled again, download the source and follow the directions to compile located in the README, using my Imakefile
As of this post date, arcturus is now a functioning workstation in the Astro network (no longer has any trace of being a server).
As of this post date 2007, the Astro network syncs thuban’s sudoers file to the other workstations, just as it does with user accounts. Please contact fullerj with any problems regarding sudo.
OUT OF DATE as of 2008-11-01.
For our systems, we want to use the network time protocol put in place by the college. Therefore, we do not set the time manually but rather, have it sync from the Carleton Network Time server. To do this follow these easy steps.
As root, under the Applications menu to the right of the little red hat, click on System Settings/Date and Time.
Click on the Network Time protocol tab. Under this tab you should see a place to add and delete network time servers. Delete any servers that are there.
Then type ntp.carleton.edu and click the add button. ntp.carleton.edu should then appear as a server on the list. Click OK and wait a few moments for the machine to sync with the server.
Double check the time to make sure it is accurate. Your system should now have the correct date and time.
This week we experienced some login failures with the astro network. The symptoms were as follows. The user could not log in as himself/herself under our linux boxes. However, root login continued to be successful. Errors in /var/log/messages indicated an error which suggested the ldap server could not be contacted.
To fix this problem, we first looked at /etc/ldap.conf which had a line like “host 127.0.0.1″ which was not the proper configuration for our network(the ldap server is ldap.carleton.edu”.
To fix this we reinstalled the carletonldapauth rpm located in /etc/secret/RPMS/.
However, this did not fix our error. The error we were now getting in /var/log/messages was an invalid credentials error when trying to bind with the ldap server. After calling ITS admins to see the logs on the server side of things we noted that our astro machines were trying to bind to the ldap server as root. This is incorrect. After discussing the matter further we determined that a newer version of carletonldapauth had been created which was not on the astro network.
This should have been installed automatically by our scripts that we run on the astro network. However, ITS had recently changed the cert on the server which broke our updates. After installing the new cert(located in /etc/secret/RPMS), installing some missing packages on some of the machines(openssl-perl) and installing the new carletonldapauth everything is back to normal.
OUT OF DATE as of 2008-11-01.
when thunderbird died, from the redhat applications internet menu, Josh showed Joel how to fix it.
As root on /usr/share/applications, fix mozilla-thunderbird.desktop
In this particular case, I had to change to
Exec=/usr/bin/thunderbird
Icon=thunderbird.png
OUT OF DATE as of 2008-11-01.
OUT OF DATE as of 2008-11-01.
Steps to configure an astronomy department linux client computer.
OUT OF DATE as of 2008-11-01.
bring up app>>sys settings>>printing and enter sys password
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for hp color in 304 astro lab:
Queue name: Olin304-CLJ4550
Queue type tab:
Queue type: Networked UNIX LPD
server: Olin304-CLJ4550.physics.carleton.edu
queue: Olin304-CLJ4550–(perhaps must be exactly this since it has been set up thus on another.)
Generic: Printer driver: Postscript printer
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for hp color in workroom 311
Queue name: AstroPrinterOlin311
Queue type tab:
Queue type: Networked Jetdirect
server: Olin311-x6350.physics.carleton.edu
port:9100
Generic: Printer driver: Postscript printer
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some useful queries of printer queues:
lpq [-P]
lpstat -v
lpstat -a
———————–
To print to a queue: lpr -P filename
To pretty-print an ascii file to a queue: a2ps -o filename
OUT OF DATE as of 2008-11-01.
JMW installed vnc client onto mirzam into /usr/bin.
Download it from http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/redhat/9/i386/vnc-3.3.3r2-47.i386.html
I did it as root and it placed a package on desktop. clicking it a few times installed it into /usr/bin
Drew added it to Deneb at a later time.
this directory is a place for astro software that needs to be shared across all hosts.
for example right now it has some scripts for compiling and linking fortran, c, pgplot, etc.
it also contains jpeg2ps, astrolib, sm, starlink, pgplot ; many of which have not yet actually been installed but only transferred to here. ie they may well have wrong paths. by the way, to add /usr/share/astro to your path (so that this directory is automatically searched for executables), either copy joel’s .cshrc to your home directory, or put into your .cshrc a line that says
set path = (. $path /usr/share/astro)
(this should replace or augment any current such statement in your .cshrc. note that there are three entries inside the parentheses: ‘.’ which means the current directory; ‘$path’ which means whatever the current value of the path is; and ‘/usr/share/astro’, which is what you want to add.)