Welcome to Your New Vulcan Linux Workstations!
Just before Spring 2006 semester, new linux workstations were deployed into
the CIS Undergrad Lab. You can find these machines, named vulcan, in the UNIX
room of the lab. All undergrads are encouraged to try out these new machines
and get comfortable with the linux operating system. However, there are some
things you should know before you use the machines for the first time.
These machines are eventually going to replace the blazers, but for right now
they are just available for testing and general computing. They do not
contain all of the software that is available on the blazer systems.
Also, there are some important steps that everyone must take before using
them for the first time. Please read on for details.
Before Logging In The First Time
Before logging into the vulcan workstations for the first time, you must
initialize your UNIX account by moving aside any configuration files that
are leftover from older versions of linux. You may have these files even
if you don't realize it.
To accomplish this, run the following command in your UNIX home directory
before logging into the vulcan workstations. This can be run from the
blazers or from an ssh session into moat.
mkdir oldconfigfiles && mv .dmrc .eggcups .esd_auth .gconf \
.gnome .gnome2 .gnome2_private .gstreamer-0.8 .gtkrc \
.gtkrc-1.2-gnome2 .ICEauthority .metacity .nautilus \
.recently-used .Xauthority oldconfigfiles/
This will move all old config files into a directory called oldconfigfiles
for safekeeping. After running this command, you may want to verify that
none of these files are still left in your home directory by running:
ls -ad .*
and examining the output.
You are now ready to log into the vulcan workstations.
Logging In
Use your normal CIS UNIX credentials to log into these machines.
NOTE: You may change your password for these machines, but this will -not-
change your BlazerID password. Further, at any given time, your password
for these new machines might revert to the one that you use for the blazers.
This is all part of being experimental machines. :-)
After Login
You will see a menubar across the top of the screen. Under the applications
menu you will see many common software packages. Feel free to explore the
software that is available.
These machines are still experimental and you may experience unusual or broken
behavior while using them. Please report all feedback to helpdesk (at) cis.uab.edu. Thanks!
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