People: ------- barney 363-0284 fhinto 282-8690 jacob 843-7217 markk 781-8474 (cell) navindra (home) 845-9851 (cell) 816-9172 (work) 281-8585 ncc 844-9060 (work) ext 6697 snad 382-8929 stever 931-0361 (work?) room 205, 398-5930 rach 281-6944 vlee 733-7192 wombat ? zibalatz (home) 488-8161 (work) 499-2067 Summary: -------- - FIRST DRAFT DEADLINES -> Monday, August 10 - EDITING COMPLETE, FINAL TEXT SETTLED -> Monday, August 24 - PAMPHLETS COMPLETE -> Friday, August 28 - WEBPAGE COMPLETE -> The weekend of Saturday, August 29 - PAMPHLETS PRINTED -> Monday, August 31 - CLASSES START -> Tuesday, September 1 Contact: -------- - Vincent Stephen-Ong zibalatz@cs.mcgill.ca (home) 488-8161 (work) 499-2067 You are more likely to reach me at work. - Victor Lee vlee@cs.mcgill.ca (home) 733-7192 - Mark Karam markk@cs.mcgill.ca Distribution: ------------- - Will set something up in conjunction with ACM & CSUS to distribute pamphlets - Maybe some simple posters? - Nick will be speaking during orientation week on Aug 24th and will be mentioning this handbook. It would be good to be able to have the pamphlets ready by then, if possible. (We'll see- we'll need to include a note on these pamphlets to indicate by what day the webpage will be available in "final form") - Possibility of modifying the xdm login screens to advertise the handbook. - Possibility of adding a motd to advertise the handbook. Titles: NOTE: the handbook consists of more than just Unix tips, hence ------- using Unix in the title may be misleading "Unix for Virgins" "The wonderful world of Unix" "Alice and Unixland" "SOCS Guide 1998" "Learning to live with SOCS" "Everything you wanted to know about SOCS but were afraid to ask." "The SOCS Sophistry Solution" "How to Make SOCS Suck Less" "The SOCS Systems HOWTO" "SOCS inside-out" Revised outline: ---------------- Note: Names in square brackets [] indicate the person or persons reponsible for the specified section or subsection. The person's login name (and hence email address) is specified following the name. Main sections are: 0. Indices table of contents, tree index, topic index, glossary of terms, search. 1. Pamphlet The on-paper pamphlet will appear identically on the webpage (this is due to some of the relevant material that it covers- see its section breakdown for details). This is the only section for which overlap is possible and expected (for example, a subset of "2. Getting More Help" is to be included here). 2. Getting More Help 3. General Computing Tips This section will most likely consist of links to other sites and a customized version of UNIXhelp (http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk) in addition to our own material. It will now include tips that are SOCS-specific. 4. Editors, Debuggers, and Compilers 5. Courses and Professors 6. SOCS Culture 7. Contributors and History of Changes 8. Feedback Section Editor: [ unassigned ] 0. Indices - This section will be completed after all other sections are done, for obvious reasons. - table of contents, tree index, topic index, glossary of terms, search Section Editor: [ unassigned ] 1. Pamphlet [ Nick (ncc), Jacob (jacob), Steve (stever) ] - estimated length: between 5 and 10 pages (with 2up printing this will be a reasonable size) a) The network [ Nick (ncc), Steve (stever) ] i) Getting an account [ Nick (ncc) ] - via newuser, via 318, other methods? - Is there a way to get an account if you're not in CS? If so, this should be mentioned briefly somewhere. ii) Connecting to the network [ Nick (ncc), Steve (stever) ] A) from the labs (for different machines) [ Nick (ncc) ] B) from home (DAS or other ISP) [ Steve (stever) ] - from DOS, Windows, Mac (a reference to the CC's docs) - from Linux iii) Email [ Nick (ncc) ] - This section does not cover specifics of mailer usage. These details are to be covered in "3. Computing Tips". - mail servers - how to pop mail (*simple* generic instructions) - attachments, spam, filtering, mail folders, mime types - important email addresses (help@cs) iv) WWW [ Nick (ncc) ] - netscape, lynx, ?emacs w3? - Netscape on different platforms, plugins (availability, ...) - surfing the web while people have work to do - Note: The NeXTs don't have Netscape, and neither do the SunOS machines (well they won't by the end of summer). v) Newsgroups [ Nick (ncc) ] - news.mcgill.ca - socs.courses.*, socs.misc, socs.system, others b) Your account [ Nick (ncc) ] i) Your home directory - quota, balance, keycard, lab-codes - other? ii) Changing your password - passwd iii) Rules - What you can't do with your account (hacking, running a mailing list out of your .forward file, account shareing, running bots, etc) c) McConnell geography [ Jacob (jacob), Nick (ncc) ] - Describe all first floor labs/rooms contents and purpose - 209 (help desk) and 318 - for room 209 -> mention the mailto, URL, and phone # - official lab rules (no food or drink, etc) - floor plan to be provided by systems staff [ Nick (ncc) ] d) Lab equipment [ Nick (ncc), Jacob (jacob) ] - Section should concentrate on hardware, OS generalities, and adminstrative and other issues. It should NOT cover the details (these will be covered in "3. Computing Tips") - Sections may be re-ordered as necessary i) Computers (Linux Pentiums, NT Pentiums, SGIs, NeXTs, Macs, 3151s) - what software is available - what kind of hardware - who has access to which machine(s)? - other issues ii) Printers - What costs money to print, what doesn't - What gets printed where (i.e.: printing from NT labs goes to which printer, etc) - How not to be a printer hog (if you job doesn't come out immediately, don't rush back and resend it five times) - How to get more paper and alternative sources of paper. iii) Scanners - Which machines have these - How to use (this is not covered in Computing tips, so some details are necessary) - Where to store images iv) Zip Drives - Which machines have these - Cost of disks - (Mounting drives is NOT covered here, but this section should contain a pointer to 3. Computing Tips) v) Floppy Drives - Which machines have these (problems with NeXTs) vi) CD-ROM - Available only on Macs. - Getting stuff burnt to CD by SOCS. ? should this be mentioned ? vii) Blackboards [ possibly Jacob (jacob) ] - I still don't know what is supposed to be covered here. - How to use chalk, how to write, how to erase blackboards?!?!? c) Getting Help [ Victor (vlee) ] - This will be a subset of the following section. It must, of course, contain a reference to the handbook's location. Section Editor: [ unassigned ] 2. Getting More Help [ Victor (vlee) ] - There may be some useful references at http://www-cnoc.cs.mcgill.ca/~maclean a) Man pages (extensive documentation in UNIXhelp- make sure to reduce overlap) - how to read them! - man -k, sections, searching through a man page (covered in UNIXhelp) - which, whatis, whereis - MANPATH (refer to shells section maybe) - reading them "manually" a la: sh -c "for i in $MANPAGES; do if man -l -Pcat $i|grep -q '$STRING'; \ then man -l $i; fi; done" b) Info pages - how to read them - viewers (emacs, info, or "manually") - using grep in an info dir c) Other docs - /usr/local/pkgs/PKGNAME, or /usr/doc d) NT online help - ack! e) web links - other UNIX faqs (unixhelp.ed.ac.uk, ... ), the SOCS faq - altavista, dejanews, ... - advantages, disadvantages f) newsgroups g) lab consultants - where their responsibilities begin and end (i.e.: they're not TAs) - varying degrees of competency h) help@cs.mcgill.ca i) the help desk j) useful books/publishers - ORA, ... - other SOCS resources (UNIX tutorials, other on-paper sources, etc) Section Editor: [ unassigned ] 3. Computing Tips [ Steve (stever), Fred (fhinto), Vincent (zibalatz), Navin (navindra), Sandra (snad) ] a) UNIX Basics [ Steve (stever) ] - This section will consist of a customized local copy of UNIXhelp. i) Managing Files and Directories A) files: creating, removing (rm), copying (cp), moving/renaming (mv) B) directories: listing files (ls), basics (pwd . .. /), basic concepts of directory trees, changing/entering (cd), creating (mkdir), removing (rmdir), moving/renaming (mv) - Important dirs (/bin, /usr, /tmp, /include) - be careful of different OSes and OS versions/distributions! C) viewing (less, cat, more, pg) D) searching (grep, find, xargs) E) Copying directories (tar, cp -R) F) Removing a directory tree (rm -rf) G) Permissions and ownership - chmod, chgrp - hex versus g+x style notation - special note re: permissions on your home dir H) Symbolic links (ln) ii) Shells A) Introduction - What is a shell? (maybe explained in terms of COMMAND.COM) B) Environment variables - How to set environment vars in different shells. - important vars (PATH, MANPATH, LD_LIBRARY, TERM, ...) C) csh, tcsh, mcsh, zsh - .cshrc, .login - global defaults (Cshrc, etc) D) sh, bash, ksh - .bashrc, .profile E) Job control - jobs, fg, bg, C-c, C-z, & iii) Printing - lpr, lpq, lprm, ... iv) Floppy and Zip disks - mount, umount - Win/DOS/Mac/Linux - mtools - dos2unix/unix2dos, fromdos, todos, and general carriage return/line-feed stuff b) Internet & Communication [ Fred (fhinto) and Sandra (snad) ] i) email [ Fred (fhinto) ] - pine, mush, mutt, mail (covered in UNIXhelp), emacs (one or two in detail, the others mentioned in passing) - Basic commands, dealing with attachments. - NOTE: Ensure that this section should coordinate with Nick (ncc) to avoid overlap with "1. c) iii) Email" and Steve (stever) to avoid overlap with the UNIXhelp stuff. - references to above sections - biff (covered in UNIXhelp), xbiff, newmail - .forward : mention this but it won't work at SOCS this coming semester ii) talk, ntalk, ytalk, write, mesg [ Fred (fhinto) ] - Concentrate on ytalk (since it has the most features) iii) finger (covered in UNIXhelp), .plan, .project, masterplan (and others). [ Fred (fhinto) ] iv) who, w, ps, top [ Fred (fhinto) ] v) irc [ Fred (fhinto) ] - no bots allowed at SOCS vi) news [ Fred (fhinto) ] - tin, trn, vn, rn, pine - refer to "1. a) v)" vii) WWW [ Fred (fhinto), Sandra (snad) ] - .mime.types - reference to "1. a) iv)" A) Setting up a homepage [ Sandra (snad) ] - Rules and regulations (the mcgill logo thing, and any other related rules) - howto (set up directory, permissions) - links to HTML tutorials - cgi scripts, how to use them at socs (special directories or file names?) - cgi scripts, and what is already available at SOCS (counter, and what else?) - SOCS web server (what kind of oddities are available or unavailable, e.g.: server-side includes, unsupported mime types, any special additions, etc) viii) ftp [ Fred (fhinto) ] c) X Windows [ Vincent (zibalatz) ] - window managers (fvwm, twm/tvtwm/vtwm, mwm, olwm/olvwm) and basic concepts - .xinitrc, .fvmwrc, etc plus global/default config files plus howto config (general X, not just wm specific) - DISPLAY, xhost, rsh, ssh, magic-cookie - xrdb, .Xresources, xmodmap, .Xmodmap, xset, xautolock, xlock - xterm basics (reverse video, scrollbar, font size, etc) - MI/X under NT and the Macs d) Editor Basics [ Navin (navindra) ] - pico, jove, asWedit, xedit, emacs, vi - this section is VERY simple, brief and contains only the absolute basics (i.e.: how to load, how to save, how to edit) - vi and micro-emacs are covered in UNIXhelp. Perhaps the vi section can refer to UNIXhelp? (all other sections must be written from scratch) e) SOCS oddities [ Vincent (zibalatz) ] - reference to general section for important directories - reference to general section::shells for locations of Cshrc, Profile, ... - reference to general section::floppy and zip disks - reference to internet and communication::email for .forward - reference to www:setting up a homepage for cgi scripts - reference to X Windows section for global defaults and MI/X - reference to editors section for global defaults. - quota, balance, keycard, lab-codes (reference to pamphlet?) - missing prototypes on SunOS4 machines (protos.h) - cancelling -Plp2 jobs - broken software - TCP/wrappers (?) - X auto-logout - tin @@ bug 4. Editors, Debuggers, Compilers, and Other Tools a) Editors [ Navin (navindra) ] - reference to editors section in 3. - pico, jove, asWedit, xedit - emacs and vi (I think that we should concentrate on these two since the others take little or no instruction to understand, with the exception of jove) - different flavours of vi, different versions of emacs - This section goes into much greater depth on the usage of these editors. - locations of global defaults b) Compilers and Interpreters [ Navin (navindra) ] - gcc, javac, perl, g77, g++, tcl/TK, ... maybe something on Borland ? - versions available + their locations - flags (-Wall, -lm, -pedantic, ...) - perhaps a subsection re: running lisp interactively within emacs? c) Debuggers [ Nick (ncc) ] - gdb, xxgdb, gdb with emacs, ddd, perl-d - setting breakpoints, watches - up, down, tab completion, ... d) Other [ Navin (navindra) ] - make, sed, awk, perl, ?, ... - references to 3. a) for grep and find. 5. Courses and Professors [ Mark (markk) ] - If it exists, this section will include stuff from the CSUS student feedback initiative a) Information about courses i) Opinions and advice ii) Where to find old exams/midterms/tests/assignments b) Professor-specific comments 6. SOCS Culture a) Editors' notes [ Vincent (zibalatz), Victor (vlee), Mark (markk) ] b) the role of SOCS [ Jacob (jacob) ] - programming, industry vs theory, academia c) Student body [ Jacob (jacob) ] - international students - gender ratio d) Windows vs Unix [ Jacob (jacob) ] e) the CSUS and the lounge [ Barak (diablo) ] f) ACM [ Rachel (rpotvi@po-box.mcgill.ca) ] g) avoiding RSI [ possibly Jacob (jacob) ] h) socs.flame [ possibly Jacob (jacob) ] i) the 3151 is your friend [ possibly Jacob (jacob) ] j) the completely useless Mac Plus in 105N [ possibly Jacob (jacob) ] - this might be gone by next semester k) Internships [ Christina (wombat) ] l) Finding food [ Vincent (zibalatz) ] ... 7. Contributors and History of Changes - Editors, writers, HTML authors/layout people, distribution people, special thanks, maintainer notes, History of changes - Any stories or anecdotes related to the development of this webpage should be in here. - Ideally, I'd like to have a short blurb for everyone who contributed to this project. It should be written in the third-person and cover your contributions, but, aside from this, can contain any nonsense you like. 8. Feedback - Has a link to the maintainer's email, plus the feedback form, plus maybe a guestbook of sorts (for example, if someone asks for a feature, and it is added, the originally request for the feature will be in the guestbook) Other sections not yet categorized: - Programming Style [ possibly Jacob (jacob) ] - Intro to C (left for possible future inclusion) - Intro to Java (left for possible future inclusion)