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Choosing the Right Tool |
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| Choosing the Right Tool | ||||||||||||||||
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Modern personal computers and personal computer software are much easier to use than CMS. Not surprisingly, personal computers excel at personal stuff, so they are the best choice for word processing, Web surfing, and maybe email. (And for the initial work for publishing on the World Wide Web; see Web Publishing Without UNIX from The ADN Connection of January/February 1996.) Plain UNIX is not easier to use than CMS. (Except for email with Pine, that is.) But what UNIX lacks in ease of use it more than overcomes with the vast array of software written for it and in its amazingly low cost per task or use, so UNIX is the right choice for programming and number crunching. Because the ADN Web servers are on tigger and icarus (www.uic.edu and www2.uic.edu, respectively), the files for your personal and departmental home pages will also live on UNIX. It's the right choice for email, too, either as the POP mail server for Eudora or if you decide to use Pine. All this talk about how much better personal computers and UNIX are
doesn't help you actually make the change. But these tools and tricks will.
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| Making UNIX Easier: Symbolic Links | ||||||||||||||||
I can't deal with UNIX's long pathnames, so I have symbolic links in my
home directory that point directly to the subdirectories I use all the
time. For example, in my home directory, I entered:
ln -s /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/depts/adn adnwwwjust once, and now I can use: cd adnwww(on UNIX or with FTP) to go straight to the Computer Center's WWW directory, which otherwise goes by the somewhat incomprehensible "/usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs/depts/adn". |
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| Making UNIX Easier: Shell Profile and Environment Files: | ||||||||||||||||
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For Korn shell on UNIX, an executable file in your home directory named .profile
has the same role as the PROFILE EXEC has on CMS -- the commands in it
are automatically executed each time you log on. The figure below shows the .env
file that the Profile file on my account on tigger executes; it might give
you some ideas on how to make UNIX easier for you to use. The .env file
is displayed in THE, the XEDIT clone for UNIX introduced in the following article.
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| Making the Email Switch Easier | ||||||||||||||||
| Eudora (for Mac and Windows) and Pine (for UNIX or PC-Pine for Windows) are better, faster, and easier than mail or note on CMS. Period. So why haven't you switched yet? | ||||||||||||||||
| To convert your CMS names file: | ||||||||||||||||
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[It's easier to do now than as it's described below -- see the ACCC Email Addressbook Conversion Utility. -- Editor.] If your CMS names file is holding you up, here's the answer -- nam2nick on CMS. It reads your Unnnnn NAMES file and prepares an equivalent address file for Eudora or Pine.
Put it in the same directory as Eudora. In all cases, nam2nick tries to convert BITNET addresses to Internet ones and adds CMS's node name to userids without it. Neither Eudora nor Pine uses all the additional tags that CMS names files support; in each case only the tags used by the target system are kept in the converted address file. (Notebook tags are kept for Pine, but you have make a change in Pine's Setup Config to use them for incoming mail: select one of the "by-fcc" options under "Saved-msg-name-rule".) |
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| To forward mail sent to your CMS account: | ||||||||||||||||
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[If you're still doing email on UICVM, the ACCC will take care of this too, when we create your replacement mailserv.uic.edu account for you. -- Editor] We would like everyone to use their ADN UNIX accounts as their electronic mail inboxes, regardless of whether they use Pine or Eudora to actually read it. (It's to your advantage in the long run and for many reasons, not the least of which is CMS will be going away sometime in the next few years.)It's no trouble to have all your mail delivered to your ADN UNIX account, even if most or all of it now comes to your CMS account. Just logon to CMS and enter: tell mailer set forward yournetid@uic.edu Replace yournetid with your netid (the login id for your ADN UNIX account). Thereafter, all mail addressed to your CMS account will be sent instead to the email address you've selected for your netid at "uic.edu".
To continue to receive mail on CMS for a while, in CMS enter: tell mailer set forward +Unnnnnwhere Unnnnn is your userid. But if you do, please remember to take care of your mail on CMS too! When you're ready to quit receiving mail on CMS, in CMS enter: tell mailer set forward -Unnnnn Comments are welcome; send them to |
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| The ADN Connection, Oct/Nov/Dec 1998 | Previous: The ADN Post | Next: Wanted: FILELIST for UNIX |
| 1999-9-2 connect@uic.edu |
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Choosing the right tool
for a job can make the difference between struggling (and perhaps even failing)
and easy success. At one time CMS was the right tool for all of our computer-related
tasks. It was an easy choice, because it was the only choice. But there aren't
many reasons left now to choose CMS over a personal computer and your personal
account on an ADN UNIX workstation. 
