This website is no longer maintained. Its content may be obsolete. Please visit http://home.cern/ for current CERN information.
|
ContentsEditorial If you need help Announcements
|
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:
Some HistoryThe "Questions and Answers from the Computing Helpdesk"
is a regular section in the CNL
that first appeared 6 years ago,
in CNL 219( January - March 1995). At that time the title was
still "Questions and Answers from the UCO".
It was renamed in CNL 233 (October - December 1998), when the
"Computing Helpdesk" was officially announced as
a one-desk, one-address, one-number for users, with its new and simple
telephone number (78888) and e-mail address ( The idea to introduce such a section in the CERN CNL originally came from browsing the DESY NewsLetter (their CNL equivalent). Also, with the increasing number and diversity of user queries coming to the Helpdesk, it seemed a good idea to print regularly some of the "frequently asked" questions, in the hope of anticipating some small (and known) problems that users may experience (and for which we can already provide a solution).
PC Support -(Hannes Schwarzbauer IT/User Support)Question (QA 367) - Inaccessible servers with W2000
Ever since the migration of some home servers to W2000 I encounter
a strange phenomenon on my NT computer:
I usually use the PC 'phonebook' to map someone else's home
directory, in order to access his public folder. However, sometimes
one W2000 home server is unreachable (i.e. asks me for a password)
whereas I can perfectly display others. Even stranger, some of my colleagues succeed in accessing home
servers, some don't.
Answer -
Since the migration certain access mechanisms have changed:
If one tries to access someone's home directory via the phonebook and then maps it, internally the account GUEST is used. This account is not valid anymore for W2000, so the user can't access this server and has to logout/re-login. Therefore the only valid method to access someone else's
directory is to go from the (Note that this problem will disappear with the introduction of NICE2000). Question (QA 374) - Access 2000 to Access 97 conversion I was sent an Access 2000 database which I cannot read under the NICE Access 97 version. Is there a possibility to convert?
Answer -
Because of the change in the file format, you cannot open an Access
2000 database in any previous version of Access. You must convert
it to Access 97 like this:
Tools - database utilities - convert database - to prior access database version.Type a new name for the database and save it. Please note:
Question (QA 385) - FTP to NICE from outside CERN How can I "ftp" to NICE from outside CERN?
Answer -
General access to files from outside CERN is not supported.
However, all new home servers (
CERNHOME01 -> 08 )
have an incoming access, so that users can use "ftp", like this
(example for CERNHOME01 ):
If you don't know your home directory server, consult the NICE
phonebook (type your name, then click on 'more info'), or, if you
cannot do it, contact the helpdesk: Question (QA 401) - Printing from a NON-CERN (visitors) W2000 portable Is there a way to print quickly without connecting to the CERN/NICE domain? (E.g. when using a Windows 2000 portable PC).
Answer -
The Printing Package does it all for you. You can just down-load
the client package in FTP mode from the following site:
http://cern.ch/printpackageGo to the User's Guide and down-load the FTP Mode self-extracting installer for Windows 2000, called SetupFTPW2K.exe
Running this program as Local Administrator will install the package and create an icon in the system tray. In this mode you do NOT need to be connected to the CERN domain. Question (QA 411) - SQL*Loader on NICE Is SQL* Loader available on NICE? If yes, how do I invoke it?
Answer -
There are two ways to access SQL* Loader on NICE:
Question (QA 427) - Office 2000 - where have my menus gone to? Office 2000 sometimes seems to lose some bits of the menus I was used to get on Office 97. For example, in Word 2000, my 'Format' menu only shows 2 entries - where are the others?
Answer -
The entries in this and other menus are not lost, they are only
hidden. If you move your cursor over the 'double-down' arrows, they
reappear.
Microsoft programmers thought this would make life easier for users, as most of them only use a small percentage of all possibilities the items contain. But indeed others get irritated by this behaviour and feel that a quick and efficient usage of Office 2000 is not possible. To overcome this, here is the recipe:
All menus are now back alive and shown. And not only for Word, this also 'reactivates' them for the rest of the Office 2000 package, like Excel, Powerpoint etc... Question (QA 468) - W2000 portable DHCP connection to CERN domain I have connected my portable PC (running Windows 2000) to a special CERN DHCP socket foreseen for portables, but I cannot access the CERN domain or see any of its applications.
Answer -
Computers need to be registered correctly in LANDB for Windows 2000
to work and deploy applications. In this case, the computer had not
been registered as portable from the network database.
You can check your computer configuration at The PC has to be registered correctly and you will have to wait for the active directory synchronisation to complete. Question (QA 472) - Restricted login on PCs Is there a possibility to restrict user logins to certain PC's, so that not everyone can login to a given PC?
Answer -
We cannot centrally restrict users to login on certain machines.
This was previously possible with Netware on W95, but it is not
anymore possible on WNT and W2000.
However, on NT, you can still do that locally, by selecting: Start - Programs - Administrative Tools - User ManagerThen select the menu: -> Policies -> User Rights...choose "Log on Locally" in the drop-down list for the
rights, remove "Everyone" from the list below, and add
the account(s) you want to be able to login to this PC.
UNIX Support -(Nicole Crémel and Roger Woolnough IT/User Support)Question (QA 349) - LSF requests on Solaris and Linux
Is it possible to select on which architecture some LSF request will be executed (e.g. in the CMS cluster)?
Answer -
In the LSF CMS (Solaris/Linux) cluster, all requests submitted from
cms.wgs are only going to Solaris nodes.
In the same way, all requests submitted from cmslx.wgs
are only going to Linux ones.
It is possible to force LSF requests to be executed in another
type of architecture, with the option N.B. All requests issued from
Question (QA 352) - Fortran and
Is the
Answer -
The port for this command was done in 1999 and it has been
available since at least February 2000. It provides easy portable
access to
g77 , the default CERN supported Fortran 77
compiler.
Please note that using this hepf77 -o psimple psimple.f `cernlib packlib`(Be careful with the back quotes, standard UNIX feature!) This will produce an executable file psimple .
Question (QA 362) - Access to Software repository (e.g. GNU tool) I would like to install locally on my UNIX workstation a tool which is available in ASIS. Where can I get this tool ?
Answer -
All CERN software which are "public domain" (like the GNU tools)
are available from the
asisftp server, at URL:
ftp://asisftp.cern.ch Notes: GNU and public domain software are stored under the
sub-directory Question (QA 368) - X11 resources file What is the default resources file for X11 (X-windows), as set by the HEPiX X11 scripts at CERN ?
Answer -
To see the current resources of your X server, just type:
xrdb -qIn order to see the resources that the HEPiX scripts used the last time you logged in, look at: ~/.hepix/generated_xresources.In order to change some X resources, edit the file: ~/.hepix/xresources. Question (QA 372) - Exceed - Cannot open default font When I try to start Exceed v6(new) I get the following error: Fatal Error: Cannot open default fontand then Exceed exits. What should I do ?
Answer -
There are several things to test:
Question (QA 375) - LSF job and AFS token Can you please explain why my LSF job failed with the following error: No AFS token @(#)CERN job starter 2.07 16/4/2000
Answer -
The current mechanism to retrieve and renew AFS token in batch jobs
has some weaknesses, in particular the fact that no retry is
performed in case there is a failure in connecting to the
authentication server. Any overload of the server, temporary
network problem or even AFS cache corruption is likely to be a
possible explanation.
The most frequent explanation is that too many jobs start at the
same time; then some of them may not get AFS tokens as the AFS
server may have problems to handle all the requests. This is a
*known* "feature" of the LSF/AFS combination. The work-around
is NOT to submit too many batch requests at the same time. In your
submission script, try to leave a 1 minute period between two
Some intervention to reduce the probability of failures has already been identified, and is in the action list of the AFS support team in IT, but its feasibility depends mainly on usual constraints as priorities and resource allocation.
Mail support -(Michel Franceschi and Miguel Marquina IT/User Support)Question (QA 353) - "pine" from a login different than the mail one
How to use "pine" from a login different than the mail one? Variant 1I am a PLUS/WGS user of "pine" and I have several mail accounts I'd like to manage from a "single location". The point is that in spite of defining additional INBOX entries for those accounts, I keep getting questioned "ad nauseam" to supply the password for anything (opening a folder, the inbox, etc) related to a login different to mine. "pine" is really unusable in this way! Help! Variant 2Unfortunately my PLUS/WGS loginid is different to my mail one because I just changed of experiment. I can accept that I am asked to supply my password when opening my mail with "pine". But only once! However "pine" keeps asking me for giving the login and password again and again, even to access my local folders. Can I hope that this improves?
Answer -
When opening a mail session with an IMAP-compliant client such as
"pine", two distinct dialogues get established: one to deal with
the INBOX, another to deal with the existing "folder-collections".
The point is that "pine" can be told to open an INBOX and/or
folders of an account different to the usual one (upon provision of
a valid password of course), but this is relatively tricky.
Technically speaking the pine configuration parameters would look something like: inbox-path={loginid.mailbox.cern.ch/user=loginid}inbox folder-collections="{loginid.mailbox.cern.ch/user=loginid}~/mail/[]" If you don't want to bother mangling with pine configurations, you might welcome "xpine", a modest CERN wrapping/extension to "pine" to make the above in some transparent manner. Simply execute: xpine -login loginid Question (QA 391) - What is UALA? I have heard of a web interface to view the archives of a mailing list, something called UALA. What is it?
Answer -
UALA stands for
There are several parameters controlling the behaviour of the web archives associated to a mailing list. All of them can be edited by the list owner(s) via the SIMBA interface. These are: UALA Status (Whether web archives are enabled or not) UALA Template (HTML Template to use for web archives) UALA Authentication (Type of authentication required to access web archives) UALA List Access (to grant access to the archives to people other than list members and authenticated users)
Web Publishing -(Maria Dimou IT/User Support)
Question (QA 371) -
My Web pages are under AFS and were not created using the new
automatic registration. I would like the
Answer -
You should delete and recreate the site using the Web registration
form, at URL:
https://web0.cern.ch/WebRegister/RegistrationStep1.asp Question (QA 379) - Netscape problems on X-terminal When I run Netscape on HPPLUS and using an X-terminal I am flooded by this kind of message: netscape: X Error of failed request: BadPixmap (invalid Pixmap parameter) Major opcode of failed request: 54 (X_FreePixmap) Resource id in failed request: 0x1c004df Serial number of failed request: 5742 Current serial number in output stream: 5817 Widget hierarchy of resource: unknownThis prevents me from using it in a reasonable way. I am using: /usr/local/bin/netscape version 4.7
Answer -
Most probably it is a problem with your X-terminal, and it might
simply be a lack of memory in order to run an X-window application
(quite consuming) like Netscape.
You should check whether you have the same problem using another device (e.g. X-terminal or PC with Exceed), and if this is happening on all PLUS services. If it works fine on another X-terminal with more memory, then you should contact the Helpdesk in order to have your X-terminal upgraded with more memory (if this is possible).
Text Processing -Question (QA 377) - CERN Conversion Service What is the "CERN Conversion Service"?
Answer -
The CERN Conversion Service exists to provide a facility for all
CERN members to easily convert a document from one given format to
another.
All you need to do is choose the format conversions you desire, leave your email address and upload your file, and the system will do the rest. Using the Web-based interface it is possible to upload single
files one at a time, or several files collectively as a See all details, and access at URLs: http://documents.cern.ch/Convert http://documents.cern.ch/Convert?uploadIf you have problems you can contact the people responsible at Convert.Support@cds.cern.ch .
Question (QA 384) - Acrobat 4 (and What are the plans to put Acrobat 4 in production on UNIX platforms ? It seems that on NICE
Answer -
Status in March 2001:
The Conversely to At CERN, on ASIS, a small wrapper script installed with Anyhow, if you want Question (QA 517) - p-bar (anti-proton) sign in M/S Office documents
I frequently need to use the
Answer -
A possible solution/workaround is the following: inside the
application, go into
Insert/Object/MS Equation Editor ,
and type the letter p . Then use the tool
symbol to insert the bar on top of the p.
Copy/paste it so that it stays in the clipboard for multiple
usage.
You can also use this method for other M/S applications, e.g. Excel. Unfortunately, it is not possible to create a macro containing this special character. 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. |