University of California at Berkeley Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Instructional Systems Support Group /usr/pub/reports/manager/Spring_1995 Report on EECS Instructional Computing Facilities ------------------------------------------------- Spring Semester 1995 by: Kevin Mullally, Manager of EECS Instructional Systems For a desciption of the current status of Instructional UNIX labs and file servers, please read /usr/pub/EECS.facilities (also accessible via Mosaic and gopher). For decriptions of additions and changes to software availability, please read /usr/pub/Instructors.Guide, /usr/pub/software.help and other specific files in the /usr/pub directory (also accessible via Mosaic and gopher). January 1995: A number of changes were made between Fall and Spring semesters. EECS Instruction has received 2 large file servers for Soda Hall, called Franklin.CS and Cochise.CS. These were put into full service during the break. The major changes were: Snake cluster retired: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - The Snake file server was retired, and all the home directories were moved to Franklin. Users of the old "Snake cluster" can now access their Snake home directories from all of the EECS Instrcuctional labs and file servers. For these users, the home directory from Snake has become the one and only Instructional home directory. Many users with Snake accounts also had separate "Cory" home directories; these Cory directories have been moved into subdirectories called "CoryDir" in each user's home directory. Room 311 Soda available: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - The old "Snake cluster" workstations, located in 311 Soda, are being converted to general-access Instructional workstations. Room 311 Soda is always locked and requires that you type in a code at the keypad by the door. All EECS students and staff may obtain the current keypad code from the Instructional Group or CS Division Offices in 333 Soda or 390 Soda. This code is intended to prevent access by non-EECS people. For Spring 1995, the code is "#23987*". Other home directories moved: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - The home directories of users who are CS majors or associated primarily with CS courses have been moved from our Cory Hall file servers to the new Soda Hall file servers (Franklin or Cochise). These users are expected to work more often in Soda Hall, so network access will be better for them now that their home directories are also in Soda Hall. The new file systems on Franklin and Cochise can be identified by their double-letter names, such as /home/ff, /home/gg and /home/ii. These users might notice that the date stamps on their directories have changed. This occurs as a side-effect of the restore, tar and rdist commands used to move the home directories. Otherwise, there were no changes make to the contents of the accounts. Class account user and group ids changed: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - This change is for administrative purposes and should not be noticable by the users. However, if you have old files in your home directory that were once owned by an instructor account, the files may now be unowned. We have been searching for such files to update the owner- ship, but we may have missed some. Please notify "root@cory.eecs" if you have any such files that are problems for you. Torus cluster moved to 199 Cory: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - The 16 Iris 4Ds have been installed in 199 Cory and will be available for general access. CS184 students can run GL on them and will also be able to run GL on the new HPs in 347 & 349 Soda. New users: note that the X window manager in the Irises is different that on our DECs and HPs; please read /usr/pub/XWindows.help for info about how to run XDM there, etc. Torus file server retired: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - File systems from Torus.eecs have been copied to new disks on Parker, to simplify maintenance and improve performance for the Irises. The file systems have been renamed: torus:/home/torus/a is now parker:/home/t torus:/home/torus/b is now parker:/share/irix torus:/torus-usr is now parker:/irix This is an administrative change that should not affect users. Users are reminded that IRIX binaries will not run on Parker, which is an HP system. February 1995: Parker.eecs crashed at about 8pm on 2/9 and at about 9pm on 2/10. Parker is the file server for the HPs and Irises in 105 and 199 Cory. We are not sure of the cause, but we do know of a bug that is in the current operating system (HP-UX 9.01). We will upgrade soon to 9.05 if this problem continues; otherwise, we'd rather wait until the Spring Recess at the end of March. 1994-95 in Review: UNIX: About 110 new HP workstations were installed in the 6 new Instructional labs and the undergraduate consulting spaces in Soda Hall. Now, an Instructional user can typically login to his or her account in any of over 200 workstations in 10 labs in Soda and Cory Halls. The addition of Soda Hall has doubled the lab space and the number of workstations supported by Instruction. CS61B and CS61C started using the EECS workstations in Fall 1994 instead of the WEB workstations. Major software additions on the new HPs have included Iris GL (for CS184), Powerview (for CS152) and GAIN (for CS294-6). Instruction has its own copy of /usr/sww in Soda Hall, and heavily-used applications such as Allegro CL and gcc are also installed on local workstations to improve performance. 48 Instructional modems were upgraded to 14.4 KB and 28.8 KB. PCs: The PCs in 204b and 123 Cory, used primarily by EECS150, EECS104, EECS105, and EECS141, have been networked. The 204b PCs, used by EECS150, have been upgraded with Pentium 90 CPUs that Intel has donated. A department-wide instructional license for Matlab on PCs has been pur- chased. It includes Matlab, and the Simulink, Signal Processing, Image Processing, and Control Systems Toolboxes. These will primarily be used in the CCS and Embedded Processors instructional labs. (Matlab products for UNIX are available via a campus license. A college-wide HPVee license has been purchased and installed for use in EE120L, EE145LM, and EE100. (end of document)