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ContentsEditorial If you need help Announcements Physics Computing Desktop Computing
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Questions and Answers from the Computing HelpdeskCollected by the IT/User Support Team Nicole Crémel (Editor) , IT/User Support Abstract
This is a collection of Questions & Answers that have been treated by the Computing Helpdesk managed by the User Support group. N.B. The number in parentheses refers to
its relative numbering in the User Support "Question-Answer"
database, at URL:
PC support -(Hannes Schwarzbauer IT/User Support)Question (QA 230) - RealPlayer
RealPlayer availability on NICE
Answer -
Since January 2000, the new version of RealPlayer,
"RealPlayer v7 Basic" is available on
NICE. You have to reboot to enable the new configuration.
RealPlayer v7 Basic replaces the old version, RealPlayer G2, which had some installation problems.
The new version can be called from the
Question (QA 231) - When I start my PC, at the very beginning (before the system is really ready to be used) I get this error message: "The log file 'c:\nicecopy.log' cannot be opened. Is it read protected? Is the Windows directory writable?"When I click on "OK" the startup continues and the system seems to behave normally. What is this message for?
Answer -
This file is just an internal log, it can be deleted at
any time. The reason why it puts itself into "read only"
status (although it doesn't show this under "properties")
is yet unknown and seems to be a bug.
Question (QA 258) - Schedule regular execution of a task on Windows How, on a PC/Windows, can I run a certain programme on a daily (weekly, monthly...) recurrent basis (like a 'cron' job in Unix)?
Answer -
Question (QA 270) - Excel file read only? Excel keeps asking me: "File name" should be opened as read only unless you need to save changes to it. Open as read only?Why and how can I avoid it?
Answer -
You might have by mistake your R/O box ticked. This is an Excel
security mechanism, controllable by the user. The philosophy is
that the file can be modified, but only saved under
"Save as..." ,
thus maintaining the original file and file name.
Can you please check this:
Question (QA 273) - Access control with Exceed I cannot run an X-Window application (like PAW) on my PC with Exceed.
Answer -
The first thing to check is that you have enabled host access
for the host where you are running your application:
i.e. from the Exceed 6 option in Windows:
Question (QA 279) - Excel chart wizard
I was given a task to create some charts within an Excel file.
I am used to do this via the
Answer -
Your file is used as a shared workbook. In this mode,
there are some restrictions, like the creation of charts.
Therefore, Excel does not display the
chart wizard in the taskbar.
To work around this, go into
Question (QA 280) - Print multiple sheets on one page from PC Is it possible to print multiple sheets on one single physical page from a PC?
Answer -
It depends on the printer type, i.e. whether the printer
is capable of translating the appropriate software or not.
At the moment, there is only a few printers that can do this when addressed from a PC. Some new generation high range printers are capable of doing it, e.g. the HP laser jet 8000 series ones. As an example, one such printer would be 513-hpbis.
Recipe: once the printer is addressed from the pull-down menu, go into
UNIX Support -(Roger Woolnough and Nicole Crémel IT/User Support)Question (QA 236) - Access to fonts with ASIS software from outside CERN
It looks that there is a problem in the HEPiX X11 login scripts, file
Answer -
The file
/usr/local/lib/hepix/X11/site/xprofile belongs to
the ASIS package HEPiX/scripts-X11-cern which contains the
CERN customisation of the HEPiX X11 scripts (package HEPiX/scripts-X11).
It is meant to be used only at CERN.
If you want to use ASIS from outside CERN, you should not take this package and supply your own "site level" HEPiX configuration where you can choose to use the CERN font servers, or your own font servers (or nothing). Question (QA 238) - AFS problems on LINUX (reported by the Cron Daemon/usr/sue/adm/daily.log)
On my Linux machine I have been having problems with AFS
which have been reported by the Cron Daemon -
Specifically, I cannot use the command /usr/local/bin/gnu/df: : command not foundand later on in the report: /usr/local/bin/gnu/df: syntax error near unexpected token
Answer -
Most probably you have an AFS cache problem, which is a known problem
under Linux 5.1. Please follow the steps described in the URL bellow
to solve your problem.
http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/pdp/ose/linux/tips/afs_cache.html
Question (QA 245) - Issuing the identical command find . -name template -printgives me dramatically different results when issued on RSPLUS and Linux. The result in Linux gives much less files than on RSPLUS, even if issued by the same AFS user.
Answer -
Under Linux, you should use the
"-follow" option, because symlinks are not
deferred by default. It's not a bug, it's a feature!
Question (QA 269) - Disk quota on AXCAD cluster
How can I check the disk quota on
Answer -
This depends whether user wants to check quota for the AFS (or NFS)
file system, or for the local disks:
check_quota cd the_directory df -k .N.B. The standard AFS command on central UNIX machine to check AFS quota is "fs listquota" .
User requests for more AFS quota can be handled by the Helpdesk,
but request for NFS quota must be sent to
Mail Support -(Michel Franceschi and Miguel Marquina IT/User Support)Question (QA 249) - Unreadable Word attachments I have received an attachment via email, apparently a Word document, which Word itself does not understand. It says something like: im-123456 is a mail merge main document. Word cannot find its data source, perso.MERHas the mail system corrupted it?
Answer -
No, the attachment is very probably all right. The message you get is due
to the way in which the document has been prepared and sent to you, using
the Word mail-merge feature.
When you get the "error", you are offered two buttons. Select
Question (QA 278) - Information about e-mail addresses Is it possible to check (or interrogate) which e-mail address will be used by the CERN "fuzzy-matching" program that translates e-mail addresses ?
Answer -
Yes. Send an e-mail to CERNDIR@mail.cern.ch and put the
e-mail address in the subject line.
This can be very useful to know more about a service login.
For instance, if you want to
interrogate To: cerndir@mail.cern.ch Subject: Nice.SupportAnd you will receive back the following answer: ****** CERN DIRectory Lookup Mail Service (Version 2.1, May 1994) ****** The following records match exactly your requested query : Nice.Support 1. First name(s): NICE ***** Last name(s): SUPPORT Cern phone number:78888 ***** Beep number: Division:IT ***** Office: Physical E-mail address: helpdesk@mail.cern.ch Generic E-mail address: [NOT FOUND] 2. First name(s): SL NICE ***** Last name(s): SUPPORT Cern phone number:75275 ***** Beep number:13+208 Division:SL ***** Office:864/2-B06 Physical E-mail address: sl-nice-support@listbox.cern.ch Generic E-mail address: Sl-Nice.Support@cern.ch Scanning for search patterns stopped at first blank line in message body. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please take the time to read this ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...It shows that the e-mail Nice.Support@cern.ch
is going to the Computing Helpdesk
(helpdesk@mail.cern.ch ), and that there is also
a local service
for SL division, at e-mail Sl-Nice.Support@cern.ch .
Web Publishing -(Maria Dimou IT/User Support)Question (QA 233) - Web site registration problems I have problems with the permissions for the access to the Web site I setup with Frontpage browse permissions only from
Answer -
When a user has access problems to his Web site (either for access rights and/or IP address restrictions) he can sort this out himself using the form available at: http://cern.ch/webredirect/view_database.htm#Edit and then select, at the bottom of the form result:
-----
In this case, open
and select
If that site was restricted to an empty list of IP addresses, you can adjust permissions by going to: Question (QA 261) - JavaScript syntax Where can I learn more about javaScript syntax?
Answer -
Here are some pointers:
http://webservices.web.cern.ch/WebServices/AuthoringDoc/Scripting/Scripting.htm http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/index.html?content=javascript.html http://www.infohiway.com/javascript/indexf.htm Question (QA 242) - Sub-search within my Web site I want to make a search prompt that retrieves pages only from within my site (current directory downwards).
Answer -
From the parent document "Documentation for Web Authors":
http://cern.ch/Web/AuthoringDoc/Authoring.htm#AdvancedServicesthe user should click on: "Adding sub-searching to your Web" Question (QA 248) - Moving bookmarks between Unix file systems I want to transfer my Netscape bookmarks and preferences from one UNIX machine to another, in order to keep the same environment between these 2 different machines (not AFS based). What are all the files I should transfer ?
Answer -
Make a tar of the contents of your
$HOME/.netscape directory :
and transfer (e.g. with ftp) the tar file
/tmp/netscape
to the other host. Then untar it:
Note that if in the destination host you already have
a .netscape directory,
it will be overwritten by the untar. If you
want to save it, make a copy using the command:
Question (QA 255) - Viewing Postscript files in Netscape
While using Netscape , when I click on a link to a PS file,
Could not load program /usr/local.bin.X11/gv Member shr.o not found or file not an archive Could not load library libXmu.a[shr.o] Error was: No such file or directory
Answer -
In the Netscape Navigator window:
Edit|Preferences|Applications choose application/postscript then Edit and set "Handled by" to /usr/local/bin/X11/gv %s Question (QA 276) - French characters in NICE95 Netscape
Problem with EDH and Netscape: entering the character NETSCAPE caused an invalid page fault in module MFC42.DLL at 0137:5f401ced.
Answer -
It is a known problem of Netscape on NICE/95, and
the solutions are:
Miscellaneous -(Nicole Crémel IT/User Support)
Question (QA 237) - CERNlib 2000 on Linux (
I have the following problem when trying to link a FORTRAN 77 code with
CERNlib on Linux Redhat 5.1:
Answer -
This is a known "feature" (since last release of CERNLIB).
Following is a news which had been posted in cern.computing,
on 30 Nov 1999, just after the CERNLIB release for Y2K.
The solution is either to use the standard
-------------------- Subject: Unsatisfied yp... on Linux ( in `ypgetacctent' ) Date: 30 Nov 1999 15:39:19 +0100 From: IT News Organization: CERN - European Laboratory for Particle Physics Newsgroups: cern.computing On the Linux systems there is the following incompatibility in CERNLIB 2000. The new shift (rfio) software used in this release needs the nsl library. Application developers using the latest cernlib command are OK but those with their own link procedures should add -lnsl. The probable symptoms are unsatisfied externals yp...... Ian McLaren / Cern Program Library Question (QA 277) - Multiply defined symbols coming from libcxxstd.a on dxplus05
It seems I get wrongly some errors (multiply defined symbols
coming from
Answer -
This is explained by the following CXX 6.2 compiler release notes:
Compaq_C++_Version_6.2________________________ Release Notes for Compaq Tru64 UNIX [...] 4.3 Restrictions in Version 6.2 [...] o Linker might produce multiply defined symbols from Standard Library The linker might produce multiply defined symbols from the Standard Library when linking against your own shared library. If you find multiply defined symbols like the following coming from libcxxstd.a, you might be creating a shared library and then using that shared library to create an executable. ld: /usr/lib/libcxxstd.a(typeinfo.o): std::__vtbl_3std9type_info: multiply defined /usr/lib/libcxxstd.a(vec_newdel.o): __vec_new_eh: multiply defined The problem is that libcxxstd.a is an archive library. When you create a shared object that references this library, the symbols are pulled into that shared object. When you then use the shared library, it finds the symbol both in your shared object and in the libcxxstd.a library archive. To work around this problem, use a command like the following when you create your shared library objects: cxx -hidden /usr/lib/cmplrs/cxx/libcxxstd.a -non_hidden -shared foo.cxx To prevent the generation of multiply defined symbols, a future release will include a shared object version of libcxxstd.a. About the author(s): Nicole Crémel is working in the User Support group and, with Roger Woolnough, is responsible for the supervision of operations of the Computing Helpdesk. Editing and revising the "Question and Answers" database is a daily task of most members of the group. |