HOWTO...

General Use the CIS IT Helpdesk Use my CIS UNIX account Use my CIS Windows account Change my UNIX password Change my Windows password Access the CIS network remotely Access the CIS wireless network Email Check my CIS email account Activate Spam Control on my CIS account Forward my CIS email to my BlazerID account Fix a problem with my BlazerID or BlazerID email I have a problem/complaint about CIS email announcements Web Publish to my CIS web site area Password-protect a directory on my web site Database I've been issued an account on the PostgreSQL database. How do I use it? Subversion I'd like to use my Subversion repository. How do I use it?

HOWTO Make a request to the CIS IT Helpdesk

The CIS IT staff operates a helpdesk in order to efficiently serve the department's IT requests. To use the helpdesk, you simply send an email to helpdesk@cis.uab.edu with a description of your request. If you are reporting an IT problem, please provide as much detail as possible in order to assist us in diagnosing and repairing your problem quickly.

When you send an email to the CIS Helpdesk, you will receive an email receipt to let you know that the Helpdesk has received your request and has created a ticket for you. You will notice that this receipt will have a tag in the Subject: line that looks like "[UAB CIS Department #203]". This tag contains your tracking number. If you would like to add additional information to your helpdesk ticket, reply to this receipt - please DO NOT simply send a new message to helpdesk@cis.uab.edu unless it is unrelated to the other request.

As your ticket is worked on, you will receive additional updates in your email as the status of your ticket changes. You may also check the status of your tickets as well as create new tickets via the web interface. Instructions on how to do this are in the RT SelfService QuickStart Guide [PDF].

HOWTO Use my CIS Unix Account

Your CIS UNIX account may be used on various UNIX machines around the department, including the Solaris (Blazer) machines in the graduate (CH135) and undergraduate (CH154) open labs. In addition, you may access your CIS Unix account remotely via SSH. Please see HOWTO Access the CIS network remotely. Your CIS account includes CIS email. Information on checking or forwarding your email can be found elsewhere in this document.

HOWTO Use my CIS Windows Account

Your CIS Windows account may be used to log onto various Windows machines around the department, including those in the graduate (CH135) and undergraduate (CH154) open labs. Please note that when you log off of an open lab Windows machine, your data on the local drive is erased. You must either 1. save it to your network home directory on Z:, 2. save the data to a floppy disk or memory key or 3. email the data to yourself. Your files cannot be recovered from the machine after you've logged out.

HOWTO Change my UNIX password

Password changes need to be made on one of the vulcan machines. To do this, log into one of the vulcan machines either by directly using one of them in the undergraduate lab CH154 (the vulcan machines are the Linux machines with the LCD monitors) or accessing one remotely via SSH (see HOWTO Access the CIS network remotely). Once logged into the machine, run the 'passwd' command. A sample session looks like:

vulcan3.cis.uab.edu[testuser](202)% passwd
Changing password for user testuser.
Enter login(LDAP) password:     <-- ENTER CURRENT PASSWORD HERE
New UNIX password:              <-- ENTER NEW PASSWORD HERE
Retype new UNIX password:       <-- ENTER NEW PASSWORD AGAIN HERE
LDAP password information changed for testuser
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
vulcan3.cis.uab.edu[testuser](203)%

HOWTO Change my Windows password

Log onto the CISWINNET domain from an available Windows machine (the undergrad and grad labs both have Windows machines). Once logged in, hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and click on the Change Password... button. Complete the form.

HOWTO Access the CIS network remotely

You may access your CIS Unix account by using ssh to connect to moat.cis.uab.edu. From moat, please connect to another Unix machine (such as the vulcan machines). moat is solely provided as an ssh gateway. UAB Network Services distributes SSH Secure Shell Client software for free and you may download it from their website.

At this time, there is no remote access to your Windows account.

HOWTO Access the CIS wireless network

The wireless network currently installed in the department is not open to general usage at this time. As of 2/21/2004, we will not be adding users to the wireless network unless a specific need is identified by your faculty advisor.

The reason for this is that we do not have the resources available to maintain a wireless network exclusively for our students. However, UAB has now wired both the atrium of Campbell Hall and our department for wireless access. This network is free for students. You may visit http://www.uab.edu/wireless/ for information on how to connect to it. Technical problems should be reported to the AskIT Helpdesk in the library or to askit@uab.edu. CIS IT cannot help debug connection problems with UAB wifi.

HOWTO Check my CIS email account

Everyone with an individual CIS account also has a CIS email account. Your address is @cis.uab.edu. Note that as of 1/6/05, all new CIS accounts are defaulted to forward CIS email to your BlazerID email automatically. If you have changed this forwarding, or if you have an account that pre-dates this new policy, use the following information to check your CIS account. You may check this account in several ways:

• Using pine on the blazer machines - You may ssh into the department and then connect to a blazer machine. Once there, you may run the program pine (type 'pine' at the command line) to check your email.
• POP - The POP server name is moat.cis.uab.edu. Note: The SMTP (outgoing) server must be set to the SMTP server for your ISP or location from which you are checking mail. You cannot use moat as the SMTP server - UAB will block all outgoing mail that does not originate from campus. Your username and password are the same as the ones for accessing your CIS Unix account. You will have to configure a new account with these POP settings within your email reader (Outlook, Eudora, Netscape/Mozilla Mail, Evolution, etc...). You cannot use web services like Hotmail or Yahoo mail to check this POP account, but you can use a web service such as mail2web.com to POP your mail and read it from the web.
• IMAP - Instructions coming soon.

You may also be interested in simply forwarding your CIS email to your BlazerID email instead.

HOWTO Activate Spam Control on my CIS Account

The CIS email server evaluates each incoming email and assigns a score based on how likely it is that the email is spam. While no spam filtering system is 100% accurate, filtering based on this score can be a very effective way to remove a large majority of the incoming spam.

In our particular scoring system, email with scores > 5 are very likely to be spam, so this is a good starting point for the filtering. There are many different ways to filter based on the score, but the most flexible and portable method is to filter it at the server. Below are instructions on how to do this.

There are four steps to setting this up.
1. Create an IMAP folder on your email account called Spam as a subfolder of your INBOX.
2. Log into your UNIX home directory and create a file in your unix home directory called .procmailrc and give it the following exact contents:

   DEFAULT=$HOME/Maildir/
   MAILDIR=$HOME/Maildir
   
   :0
   * ^X-Spam-Level.*\*\*\*\*\*
   "$MAILDIR/.Spam/"
   

   It is important that you use this exact text, especially remembering the . in front of the name of the Spam folder, and matching the capitalization.
3. Create or edit your ~username/.forward file to contain only:

   "|exec /usr/bin/procmail"
   

   IMPORTANT: Now send yourself some mail to make sure you are still receiving mail. If your .procmailrc and .forward are incorrect, you could halt all mail delivery to your account!

4. You can test the spam filter by sending this exact string in an email to yourself from an external (non-CIS) email account:

   XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-UBE-TEST-EMAIL*C.34X
   

   It must be all on one line with no line breaks or whitespace. That message will qualify as spam and should be filtered to your Spam folder if your filtering is working.

HOWTO Forward my CIS email to my BlazerID account

Note: All accounts created since 1/6/05 are already defaulted to forward your CIS email to your BlazerID email. If you have changed this fowarding or have an account that pre-dates this policy, you may use the following instructions to forward your CIS email to your BlazerID account.

It is required that all CIS students with Unix/Linux machine accounts check their CIS email. If you would prefer to receive your CIS email at your BlazerID account, you may set up email forwarding. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Log into one of the vulcan machines (vulcan1 - vulcan8) in the undergraduate lab, or ssh remotely to moat.cis.uab.edu and then connect to a vulcan machine.
2. Run the following command:   echo "<myblazerid>@uab.edu" > .forward replacing <myblazerid> with your BlazerID.

This creates a "dot-forward" file in your account - all email sent to your CIS email will now be forwarded to your BlazerID account. To remove the forwarding, run the command rm .forward in your home directory.

HOWTO Fix a problem with your BlazerID or BlazerID email

The CIS department does not maintain the BlazerID system. BlazerIDs are maintained by UAB Network Services, and you may manage your BlazerID account by visiting their BlazerID Central web site.

HOWTO CIS email announcements work

CIS does not maintain mailing lists for our students. Instead, we use automated tools provided by UAB Data Post Office. These tools depend on your BlazerID email, -not- your CIS email. In order for you to receive these announcements, you must ensure that your BlazerID is properly configured to either receive your email or forward your email to your CIS account. Instructions to setup both of these options can be found at http://www.uab.edu/blazerid/. Please do not contact CIS with questions regarding your BlazerID setup, as we cannot help you with these issues.

What you should know about the UAB Data Post Office tools is that they are NOT mailing lists. Your email cannot be added to or taken off any list because there are no such lists. The system dynamically generates a list of recipients based on certain criteria. For announcements targeted to all grads or all undergrads, you have to be in the UAB student information databases and marked as pursuing a CIS degree of the appropriate level (ugrad or grad) and be currently registered for a course in our department. This means that PhD students who are done taking classes no longer receive email sent to the graduate students. This is obviously an inadequate solution for us. This criteria is not by our design and we have requested that it be changed. However, it is difficult for the UAB IT folks to make this change. We will attempt to implement our own system in the Fall of 2005.

Back to the current system, students who have declared Pre-CS are included. For mail targeting a specific class, you have to be in the UAB registration database as registered for that class. If, after reading this, you still feel you are getting announcements you should not be or missing announcements that you should be receiving, please consider whether you have declared for your degree or registered for the particular class.

You cannot opt out of receiving mail sent to you via these tools. Part of your membership in the CIS department is that you agree to receive department announcements.

HOWTO Publish to my CIS web site area

If you are a graduate student, you may publish content on our web site. At this time you must send a note to the CIS Helpdesk to setup your web area for your use. We plan to offer this same service to undergraduates in the near future.

HOWTO Password-protect a directory on my web site

The following instructions show how to achieve this with Apache's htpasswd functionality.

1. Create a password file to hold the valid usernames and passwords with Apache's htpasswd program (it might be in your path, but is located at /usr/bin/htpasswd or /usr/apache/bin/htpasswd, depending on the system you are logged into). Use the command like this:
   

    # cd /directory/to/protect                               
    # htpasswd -c .htpasswd user1    <--- create a new .htpasswd file
      Password:                      <--- desired password for user1
      Re-enter Password: 
    # 
    

   Note that you might need to specify the full path to the htpasswd program as noted above.

   This creates a new .htpasswd file and adds a user to it called user1, along with their password. The -c flag is to create a new file, and should only be used once, after that, remove the -c from the above command, and you will update the existing password file.

   It is important for this file to be named .htpasswd. The web server specifically prevents this file from being served up through the web browser. Any other name and you are exposing your password file to the world!

2. Create more users like this:
   

    # cd /directory/to/protect
    # htpasswd .htpasswd user2     
      Password:
      Re-enter Password:
    #
    

3. When you are done creating users, create a new file /directory/to/protect/.htaccess with the contents:
   

    AuthUserFile /path/to/passwordfile
    AuthName "Please Enter Username and Password Here"
    AuthType Basic
    require valid-user
    

   
   Be sure to put the fully qualified path to the password file you created earlier. AuthName is whatever informational prompt you want to present to the user along with the username/password dialog.
4. Ensure that both new files are world-readable (644 permissions):

    # chmod 644 .htaccess .htpasswd
    

5. That's it. Your directory is now protected. To test, open a web browser and try to view a file in that directory. You should be prompted for a user name and password. You can add new users at any time with the htpasswd command, and to delete users, just erase their line from your password file.
   
   

   HOWTO Use your PostgreSQL account

   Please see the CIS PostgreSQL Quickstart Guide for this information.
   
   

   HOWTO Use your Subversion repository

   Please see the CIS Subversion Quickstart Guide for this information.