Quick Introduction to ACCC Unix Services

This set of Web pages is a compilation of the ACCC's introductory Unix pages; the violet area above (which is included in all the pages) is a page-level table of contents. Click the Contents link for a complete overall table of contents.

• If you're faculty or staff, you must have a selected netid. For example, let's consider Ada Byron Lovelace, a staff member. Her netid is: adabyron.
• Students' netids are assigned to them automatically. Student netids have the form: first initial, first five letters of the last name, followed by an arbitrary number of up to two digits. For example, let's consider Joe Testing, student. Joe's netid might be: jtesti99
  
• Then you must have valid UIC status -- be in the online phonebook (ph).
• And you must Accounts - Activate Your Netid.

Then: Open your Account.

Do you have a question? See the Client Services Office, Room 2267 SEL, (312)413-0003.

No monetary charge is made for these ACCC accounts or services, except for printing above a generous per-semester allowance.

Your netid is part of your email address, so it's public knowledge. It's your password that keeps your ACCC account and privileges private to you. Don't ever give it to anyone else! These the following pages explain how to change and choose a safe password:

Changing Your ACCC Password
Choosing a Safe Password

1. A shell account on an ACCC Unix workstation:
   • icarus.cc.uic.edu, a Sun running Solaris, for UIC registered students
   • tigger.cc.uic.edu, an IBM running AIX, for UIC faculty or staff members
2. Space for a personal, non-commercial Web page; see Web Publishing at UIC: Overview.

Other resources you might want to use:

• In addition, your UIC netid and ACCC common password allow you to use the ACCC Center's public Apple Macintosh and MS Windows personal computers and to log into various ACCC, University of Illinois at Chicago, and University of Illinois online and Web services.
  
  
• For email, it's better to open an account on the ACCC's email-only server mailserv.
  • You can use pine on tigger or icarus to read your mailserv email; how to set pine up to read mailserv email is explained in How to set pine up to read your mailserv email. However...
  • The easiest was to read your ACCC email, especially if your email account is on mailserv, is to use the ACCC's Web-based email program, Webmail.
  • WebMail is just a URL, so you can use WebMail from anywhere you have an Internet connection and a Web browser, and you do not need an account on icarus or tigger to use it.
    
    
• For computing tasks, faculty and graduate students should not use their tigger or icarus accounts, but rather use the ACCC's Beowulf cluster argo.

The ACCC's email-only server, mailserv, does one thing only, email, and it does it better than the ACCC's general-purpose Unix servers. So if you primarily want an ACCC email account, use mailserv. Your best bet for reading email is the ACCC's Web-based email program, Webmail, so you don't need an icarus or tigger account for that either.

But you will want to open an icarus or tigger account if you want a free personal Web page, or if you need to work on a departmental or student organization Web page.

The ACCC also has a Beowulf cluster for research and number crunching, called argo-new.cc.uic.edu. Argo is only used for research; no general purpose usage (email, Web browsing, etc.) is permitted. To obtain an account on argo send email to systems@uic.edu with Argo Account Request on the Subject: line and your name, netid, office phone, and a description of how you would use argo. Professors: do not have your graduate students use your accounts, instead ask them to send email as above requesting their own account. They should mention your name.

argo home page

To begin with, what you shouldn't do in Unix:

You should not do casual word processing, short papers, letters and the like.

You are better off using a personal computer word processing package like WordPerfect or Word on the ACCC's public personal computers. For more information, see Word Processing at UIC.

You should not browse the Web.

Icarus and tigger both have a text-based World Wide Web browser, lynx, but its utility with today's graphics-based Web pages is limited. You should do your Web browsing on a personal computer.

You don't need to use icarus or tigger to read your email.

While pine is a good email program, personal computer email programs such as Eudora or Thunderbird are better in many ways, and the ACCC's Web-based email program WebMail is easier to use and easier to access -- it's just a URL that you enter into any Internet browser.

What you should use your ACCC Unix account for:

Please use mailserv for your email account; please don't keep your electronic mailbox on your ACCC tigger or icarus Unix account.

For email, please use an email-only account on the ACCC's mailserv system. You might normally want to read and send email using Eudora on your Windows personal computer or Mac, or WebMail from anywhere on the Web. You can use the pine email system on the icarus or tigger to read mailserv email also; how to set pine up to read mailserv email is explained in How to set pine up to read your mailserv email.

You should keep your personal public Web pages on your ACCC Unix account.

Your account Unix account comes with your public_html directory already set up to hold your personal Web pages. The URLs of these pages are the following:

On tigger:

http://www.uic.edu/~yournetid/filename.ext

On icarus:

http://www2.uic.edu/~yournetid/filename.ext

See Web Publishing for Beginners for an introduction to Web publishing at UIC.

You should use your ACCC Unix account to learn about using Unix.

This set of pages has the information you need to get started.

You should use the ACCC's Unix Beowulf cluster -- argo-new -- for compute-intensive research.

For the sake of the other people using the ACCC's general-purpose Unix workstations -- icarus and tigger -- we ask that you do all compute- or other resource-intensive research on argo. See And what about argo? above.

If you don't see what you need listed in softlist, contact the Client Services Office at (312)413-0003 or send an electronic note to electronic mail address consult@uic.edu; we might be able to get it.

The ACCC Unix system's network connections also allow you to use your ACCC Unix account from many locations, on campus, in the Chicago area, and, literally, around the world. In particular, you can connect to an ACCC Unix system using ssh (preferably) or telnet on any computer attached to the Internet, including the ACCC's public personal computers, the ACCC's dialin telephone lines, and any commercial Internet Service Provider.

The links under Network Services on the ACCC Services page provide more information on connecting to your ACCC Unix account from home, in your office, or on the road.

Once you have opened your ACCC account, what can you do to learn how to use it? The most important ingredient for you is to set aside time to experiment with Unix without being under a harassing deadline.

This Unix how-to gives the basic information you need to use Unix on the ACCC. There's lots more information on using Unix on the Web, from basic info to advanced topics. The Related Links page of this document gives selection.

The principle Unix help command is man.

Enter: man cmdname

to get information on the command cmdname.

Enter: man man

to get more information on the man command itself.
man uses more to display the help one screen at a time. Press the Spacebar to display the next screen, type b to return to the previous screen, or type q to quit.

Enter: apropos keyword(s) (or the equivalent man -k keywords)

to get a list of man pages related to the keyword(s) you specify.For example:
Enter: apropos mail for a list of commands relating to mail.

Enter: softlist

to find out what software and utilities are available on any ACCC Unix machine in addition to the Unix standards. It gives a list and brief description of the additional software, and includes links to relevant man pages. The softlist software lists are also available on the World Wide Web.

tigger:

http://www.uic.edu/softprod/tigger.html

icarus:

http://www.uic.edu/softprod/icarus.html

There are also general information sources on the ACCC Unix machines, principally the Internet. (Though we don't recommend your using them; you're much better off doing your Web browsing on a personal computer.)

Enter: lynx

to use the Lynx text-based Unix Web browser when using VT100 communications (such as ssh or telnet), or

Enter: mosaic &  or:  netscape &

to use XMosaic or Netscape when using X Windows.