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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 284) - Reset a profile on Windows NT I am registered as a Windows NT administrator. What is the procedure to be followed to reset a profile (when it is corrupted)?
Answer -
The procedure is the following:
"NICE NT Domain
Administration" (which had been added in the Domain tools
list) in:
Start - System Management - NICE NT Domain Administration The tool only deletes the server copy of the profile and administrators still need to delete manually the local copy. The recommended way to delete the local copy is to log in as a local administrator and use the utility in Control Panel - System - User Profilesselect the user account, and press the delete button. This will delete all the registry entries associated to the profiles. N.B. Deleting the files in \profiles\ is not enough
and you run the risk of creating multiple profiles with the same
name and extensions like .000, .001 , etc.
Notes:
Question (QA 287) -
How can I
Answer -
The standard way is to use:
Start - More applications - Communications - ftp and choose the host you want. You may also use Exceed in order to ftp to a public unix service. This method is described in: Question (QA 290) - 'recover unaccessible files' on NICE I cannot access certain files/folders on NICE that I could previously. How can this be corrected?
Answer -
Try using the 'recover unaccessible files' option in:
Start - more Applications - system configuration - recover unaccessible filesNote that this is only possible under Windows 95. Question (QA 319) - Lock X session with Exceed How can I lock my X session when using Exceed from NICE?
Answer -
First you should note that locking your X session will only lock
the UNIX (e.g. PLUS service) part, but your PC will not be locked
(look at the end for more details).
Having said that, the first thing to do is to make sure you have
enabled on NICE Start / More Appl. / Exceed X Terminal v6... / Toolsand then select the tools "Xconfig" and
"Security" .
You may then lock the screen on the UNIX side (i.e. any PLUS or
WGS service) from the usual menu entry ( As said at the beginning this will only lock the UNIX side. In order to lock the PC screen completely, one must either:
Question (QA 330) - Windows 2000 account How do I get an account for Windows 2000 and get my machine registered to use the new system?
Answer -
For the account and registration for a machine please see URL:
http://cern.ch/winservices/docs/W2KSetup/setup.aspThis explains all you need to know about your account name and password. For more in depth information on the Win2000 project at CERN,
see Question (QA 347) - Netware to Windows 2000 Migration What is going on concerning the migration of Netware to Windows 2000 on the CERN servers?
Answer -
The current situation is explained at the following URL which also
gives detailed explanations, a few hints for users and a schedule
of what will go on in the future:
http://cern.ch/homepage/migration.htm
UNIX Support -(Nicole Crémel and Roger Woolnough IT/User Support)Question (QA 142) - LINUX server installation Is there some documentation about how to install a LINUX server with a CERN standard configuration ?
Answer -
All should be explained in the "Linux at CERN" Web
page, at URL:
http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/pdp/ose/linux/linux_CERN.html Question (QA 286) - Linking an application on ATLAS I have problems (errors) when linking an application on ATLAS
Answer -
First thing to check is that some environment variables used by the
loader (command
ld ) are not wrongly defined (e.g. in
your login script). Examples of variables to check are
LD_LIBRARY_PATH and LDOPTS
Question (QA 288) - Long queueing time for batch
I am experiencing an unusually long queueing time for submitted
batch jobs. Normally they begin to execute within minutes, instead
of remaining pending with messages like
Answer -
This can be an operational problem (especially if many users report
it) and the best approach is to alert Serco (via the
Helpdesk). To know more about it (and check if this is really an
operational problem):
Question (QA 291) - AFS "Cache partition is FULL - Decrease cachesize!!!"
With the *** Cache partition is FULL - Decrease cachesize!!! ***
Answer -
We have an old diagnostic from Transarc on this
namely:
"The problem is occurring because we copy the entire file into the local cache when one person on a machine has the file open and someone else on that same machine is deleting it. When you see this error message, you can confirm this by doing a "ls -la" in the directory where the file was deleted and look at the size of the .___afsXXXX files."It looks as it is a known "feature". When the application using the file stopped the problem should go away. Question (QA 293) - AFS or network problem ?
How to check if there is an AFS or network problem ? I am getting
many
Answer -
In order to help the AFS team (
AFS.Support@cern.ch )
for a proper diagnostic you can check and give them the following
information:
Question (QA 294) - LSF command
Is there a possibility with LSF to look into files which are opened
during the run (like it was possible with
Answer -
Yes, using the command
bpeek .
Question (QA 300) -
In a machine such as the
Answer -
To ensure a correct separation of files for appropriate
architectures, the AFS directories use links to architecture
specific
bin directories. This can be seen if you
change directory to the bin directory and issue the
following command:
[lxplus001] ~ % cd bin [lxplus001] ~/bin % /bin/pwd /afs/cern.ch/user/t/tjs/.@sys/binAs you see, there is an @sys in the path. This is
expanded up to a string related to the Operating System, which is
hp_ux102 on atlas09 (for HP-UX) and
i386_linux22 on atlas008 (for Linux). This is intentional,
since a binary file made on an HP will not run on a Linux box! If
you are dealing with scripts, not binaries, then you should use the
'scripts' sub-directory instead, as this is a real
directory (and the same across different Operating Systems).
Question (QA 302) - IT policy regarding Linux What is IT policy regarding Linux ?
Answer -
The Linux for the 2000s (L2K) Programme team wrote a "CERN/IT
Linux Activities Survey". This document should list all the
activities around Linux in the CERN IT division (as well as
official statements from the IT management).
You can find this document on the Web at URL: http://cern.ch/linux/l2k/docs/ilas.html
Question (QA 303) -
I cannot run the
Answer -
To fully use the
hsm command on a private LINUX
desktop you need to be using an AFS login, that has an associated
DCE service account, and have a copy of a small system file named
/etc/shift.conf .
Note: this has to be installed as
Question (QA 317) -
If I execute
Answer -
This is because there are NO Oracle tools available on Linux yet.
The problem will disappear if Oracle was to deliver a software long
overdue.
To use the "real" tools, you must run http://userinfo.cern.ch (resp. http://userreg.cern.ch). A request was made to remove the command from the ASIS product list on LINUX, until it works, and to avoid confusion.
Question (QA 320) - Command
I cannot kill some batch jobs with the command
Answer -
Please note that if you cannot kill your own jobs with
bkill then it means that nobody can kill the job either: the
process is waiting in kernel state and the only thing that can be
done about it is rebooting the system. Another explanation can be
that the communication between the submission cluster and the
execution cluster is interrupted, and the bkill
command cannot be sent to the execution node. Normally the command
lsclusters shows when there are such interruptions.
In any cases, the Helpdesk cannot kill the job for any user: the only think they can do is to pass the message (with as precise information as possible, and at least the execution node) to the system administrator, so that they are aware of the problem, and schedule eventually a reboot for this system. Question (QA 322) - Service interruption Is there a web page where users are notified of possible interruption of the tape service, and of its estimated duration ?
Answer -
You can find some information about the status of tape servers in
the TVScreen Web page, at URL:
http://tvscreen.cern.ch/ExpTvScreen.html , under
'The SHIFT and CORE services' .
Question (QA 329) - Responsible for tools in
Can I see who is responsible for the tools / scripts program which
are in
Answer -
You can see this with the command
ASISInfo --belong
<tool_name> .
E.g.: [rsplus08] ~ > ASISInfo --belong /usr/local/bin/cuserinfo ERROR:File /usr/local/bin/cuserinfo in ASIS - No such file or directory [rsplus08] ~ > ls -l /usr/local/bin/cuserinfo -rwsr-xr-x 1 regist c3 10331 Mar 25 1998 /usr/local/bin/cuserinfo [rsplus08] ~ > phone regist -F 23932; Ccdb DATABASE 72995 IT 31 3-008;Ccdb.Database@cern.chwhich means that this is managed by the Ccdb DATABASE service responsible. For [rsplus08] ~ > ASISInfo --belong /usr/local/bin/gs GNU.MISC/ghostscript-5.50which shows that it is a GNU product provided by the ASIS team.
Mail support -(Michel Franceschi and Miguel Marquina IT/User Support)Question (QA 292) - Mail on ALPHA machines I cannot open Netscape/mail on my AXCAD station. I try and the window keeps dissapearing. This is irritating, please do something about it!
Answer -
We have already seen "misbehaviours" with Netscape on
ALPHA machines. All is reduced to reset your own
Netscape configuration which is probably corrupted.
Try this: cd $HOME mv .netscape .netscape-badand then launch Netscape. If "cured", you would only need to copy back both your bookmarks and your addressbook: cp .netscape-bad/bookmarks.html .netscape cp .netscape-bad/abook.nab .netscape cp .netscape-bad/address-book.html .netscape Question (QA 298) - GEM and PEM
If we are encouraged to always use the Generic E-Mail address
(GEM), why do the unix
Answer -
This depends whether the user uses an account on the CERN mail
server or not:
Question (QA 331) - Mouse support with
Any chance to have the mouse support under
Answer -
pine4 has been already introduced in ASIS, but mouse
support was introduced already in version 3.95; it is not enabled
by default in the CERN configuration. The "pine" parameter to
enable via Setup/Config is:
enable-mouse-in-xterm
Web Publishing -(Maria Dimou IT/User Support)
Question (QA 296) - Network drive
I used to attach the This no more works. Why?
Answer -
The machine changed name from
'www' to
'web1' . Now the address is
\\web1\cernweb1%userid .
You can find full instructions in: http://cern.ch/WebServices/Communications/samba.html Question (QA 304) - CGI scripts on the Web Where should I put my CGI script, so it can be reached through the web?
Answer -
First you have to register your web site, if you don't have one
already. To do this you open the form: http://cern.ch/webregister Thus
you obtain the site:
http://cern.ch/SITE .
If your files are in afs this corresponds to the
directory
Please note: The scripts will only execute one day after the
creation of the If your CGI needs to read, write or delete a given file in your
afs directory, you should also enable the following permissions in
your afs ACL:
If your files are local to the server Question (QA 311) - "Issuer certificate is invalid" with EDH and Netscape
I got problems with EDH web since installing Netscape 4.7. I get
(one of) the following errors; after contacting 1. # Error: Issuer certificate is invalid (-8156) 2. # jarfile: Z\P32\NCOMM47\PROGRAM\java\classes\java40.jar 3. # path: Z\P32\NCOMM47\PROGRAM\java\classes\java40.jarI click on OK and ... 4. Java reported the following error on startup. Java.lang.SecurityException : system classes were not signed."
Answer -
This could mean that your certificates file is corrupted. Close all
Netscape windows and delete
c:\netscape\users\<your_login_name>\cert7.dbAn empty certificates file will be re-created at the next Netscape start. 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. |