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 Linux 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.

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 and the teaching labs throughout the department.

HOWTO Change my Linux 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 in the far left room) 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 Linux account by using ssh to connect to moat.cis.uab.edu. From moat, please connect to another Linux machine (such as the vulcan1 - vulcan8 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. We anticipate this will change by Spring 2008.

HOWTO Access the CIS wireless network

The wireless network currently installed in the department is not open to general usage at this time.

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 an older account which still receives mail at CIS directly, please contact the CIS Helpdesk if help is needed.

HOWTO Activate Spam Control on my CIS Account

[This topic only applies to users who receive mail directly at CIS. Most CIS users' email is forward to Blazer email, which has its own spam controls that are not managed by the CIS department.]

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:

Create an IMAP folder on your email account called Spam as a subfolder of your INBOX.
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.
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!
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.

The filtering relies on the X-Spam-Level mail header that is inserted onto email messages by the server (in most mail readers, you have to enable "View all headers" to see it). That line has one * for each whole number of the spam score. If you want to be more aggressive with your filtering, you can adjust the number of stars on the filter line in .procmailrc.

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.

To do this, follow these steps:

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.
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 undergraduate 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 undergrads, you have to be in the UAB student information databases and marked as pursuing a CIS degree of the appropriate level (ugrad) and be currently registered for a course in our department.

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 have 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.

For graduate students, we do maintain a static list of email addresses. Janet Tatum keeps the list up to date, please let her know if you need to be added to the list and have not been added yet.

HOWTO Publish to my CIS web site area

At this time not all students are automatically granted web space. We expect this to change by Spring 2008.

If you do have web space, you can access your web files area via your Linux account. In your home directory you will find a link called webfiles, which will take you to your web files area. You may use Linux file editing tools here, or edit on Windows and then sftp the files to this area of your Linux home directory.

If you need web space, please contact the Helpdesk.

HOWTO Password-protect a directory on my web site

To create a password-protected directory under your webfiles area, you need two files in the directory: one called .htaccess and another called .htpasswd. To create both files, perform the following steps:

Log into your Linux account on one of the vulcan1-vulcan8 machines.
cd ~youracct/webfiles
mkdir secretdir
cd secretdir

Use your favorite text editor to create a file called .htaccess
This file should have the following four lines:

AuthUserFile /nethome/webfiles/path/to/this/directory/.htpasswd

AuthName "Authorization Required"

AuthType Basic

require valid-user

So, if the directory you are trying to protect is

/nethome/webfiles/students/joeuser/secret/

then the first line should read:

AuthUserFile /nethome/webfiles/students/joeuser/secret/.htpasswd

Save the file and exit the text editor.
htpasswd -c .htpasswd secretuser
Password: <enter secret password>

Note: the web server is configured to prevent anyone from retrieving your .htpasswd file. Be sure you only use that specific file name for your password file.

Now you have password-protected secretdir with the secretuser/secretpass combination. To add additional username/passwords, you can do this:

cd ~youracct/webfiles/secretdir
htpasswd .htpasswd secretuser2
Password: <enter secret password 2>

And to delete a secretuser:

htpasswd -D .htpasswd secretuser

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.