2. Getting Started

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It is important to recognize the distinction between educational computing (computing for Stanford courses) and research computing (computing related to our research programs). Our departmental Unix servers are only available for research computing. Only PhD candidates in our department or visitors/students who are specifically working on research projects with department faculty can apply for accounts on our Unix servers. Masters students in our department programs merely get an account on our department Windows machines for course-related computing.

2.1 Your Account

To request an account, you first need to obtain a Stanford specific userid, called a SUNet ID. More details can be found at the SUNet ID website. Most likely, you need a department administrator to sponsor you, unless you are already affiliated with Stanford.

Once you have your SUNet ID, You can request a departmental account by filling out a form that is available from our student services administrator, Amy Duncan. Depending on what program you are in, you're either provided a basic Windows account or a more full-fledged departmental account that provides access to all servers.

Typically, accounts become active the next day.

Please note that the department does not provide email as a service. Just as telephone service is provided centrally to the Stanford community by the university, so too is email service. So for email service see the Email Stanford website. Instructions for setting up programs like Mozilla Thunderbird, Outlook, etc. are all provided at that site. You can even use Webmail.

2.3 When you first log into our Unix servers
When you first log into our system, you will find that some announcements are displayed. These announcements change often and you are expected to pay attention to them. Notifications regarding down-time for the servers, new software, etc. are usually posted. If your window is too small and the list of announcements is long, the text might scroll off the top of your window. Not to worry. You can page through the announcements anytime by issuing the following command:

The filename motd is an abbreviation for ``Message Of The Day.''

You will also be deposited in a directory that was created especially for you. If your userid is joe, the name of this directory is /home/joe and is commonly referred to as your home directory. To navigate your way through directories and files, you will need to know something about the Unix operating system. The ITSS Unix website gives you a crash introduction to the basic commands and points you to further local resources.

It is important to remember that we generally share documents and folders so that anyone can see them. If you wish to place sensitive material in a secure place, you should store them in the folder/directory named private. It is a bad idea to change permissions on your entire home directory to protect it as that affects the behaviour of web servers and other such programs.

You will also notice a shell prompt which will look something like

In this document, this sort of shell prompt is used extensively. This means that the system is awaiting commands from you. The prompt can be changed to suit your tastes. See the man page for tcsh for more information.

2.4 Your Web Space on the Unix servers
Every user on our system gets a default web space area. This is just a folder named public_html in your home directory. Anything you place in that folder automatically becomes visible to the world. Assuming your userid is joe, the Uniform Resource Locator (also known as URL) for your web page is http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~joe/. You are encouraged to update your web pages and keep them current. Initially, it is empty.

The actual file the above URL refers is called index.html and resides in a subdirectory of your home directory called public_html. The contents of this file are rendered in the browser whenever anyone accesses your URL. You have to either know HTML, which is a markup language, or use some editing tools, to change information in there. Google is your friend here.

2.5 Visitors, Please Note
Those visitors who receive a departmental account should do the following before leaving.

• Transfer the files to their own permanent machine before departing. All data pertaining to the account may be deleted without notice.
• Inform the department of their departure by sending email to our computing issues mailing list.

2.6 Laptop Connectivity

Laptops need to be registered on the Stanford network before they can use the network. If you are student/visitor residing on campus you need to talk to your Resident Local Network Admin in your residence rather than us for getting a connection.

If you have a SUNet ID, the recommended way to get a laptop registered on the Stanford network is to connect a cable to a network jack anywhere in our building; our lounge, for example. You'll need a network cable and an active jack. Then fire up a browser and try to access any site. You will be lead you through the steps of registering your laptop. Both your wired and wireless interfaces will be registered. Allow 30 minutes to an hour for the connection to become active.

Otherwise, email Stat Action Group with the following information:

• Your SUNET id. If you do not provide this, your request might be delayed because we'd have to verify details
• Your full name
• The date when you will arrive
• The date when you will leave
• The name of the faculty member you are working with if you are visitor
• Your laptop's MAC address. If you want to use our wireless network, you need to provide your Wireless MAC address as well and indicate which is wired and which is wireless.

To determine the MAC address of your machine, follow this link on a Mac and this link on Windows. On a linux machine, use ifconfig -a.

To print from your laptop, you can set up printers as specified in section 12.5 or section 12.6.

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