CERN Accelerating science

Answer   -  

This is a known but not yet fully understood bug which has been seen on several computers. The easiest way out is to either reboot or simply use another PC in order to correctly produce such an installation floppy.

A few cases have been seen where the problem seemed to be related to the PATH environment variable on the machine in question. In this case, the user should execute:

   
   Control panel - Add/Remove Programs - Add New Programs

select the category 'Utilities' and look for

 
 CERN - Correct PATH Environment Variable

and click "Add".

If this facility is not visible in Add/Remove programs, the use must logout/login to get it presented.

Answer   -  

Here are the reply to your questions:

1. Yes, but the computer you want to access should have access rights for you. Your friends/colleagues will probably give you such rights.
2. CERN will not allow you access to its servers (e.g. cernhome01).
   Since you do not join the CERN domain, you may not have all the security packages installed, nor have all the anti-virus updates.
3. All information about the CERN printer wizard, including how to download it can be found at http://cern.ch/PrintPackage
4. This is not possible. If you join the CERN domain you automatically get all the security, virus killer, Office and other future updates.

Conclusion:

You may want to consider joining the NICE domain as this will be the answer to all above questions. However, by joining the CERN domain you automatically get all the security, virus killer, Office and other future updates.

Answer   -   It is only possible on Office 2000 (or higher), however, unfortunately not for any other W2000 application like NotePad, Exceed, Remedy or whatever else.

Open an Office2000 application. You will see a taskbar displayed, containing fields like "Paste all", "Items", etc., provided you have ticked View ? Toolbars ? Clipboard.

The Items collection contains the last few (up to 12) clipboard entries. Moving the mouse over any of them, displays its first 50 characters. Click to insert. The rest of these few symbols is self-explanatory.

Note that entering more than 12 clipboard items will get rid of the oldest one(s).

Answer   -   Bitmap files (extension ".bmp") are quite space consuming. I suggest you convert them into ".gif" or ".jpg" files with Paint.

The resulting files will be smaller, which means they will use less memory and disk, and load quicker.

- Call up Paint:
  Start - programs - accessories - Paint
- Open the .bmp file
- Select the file
- Save As: choose the .gif or .jpg file extension explicitly

Your file is now considerably smaller in size and can be read/edited by other appropriate software, for instance Microsoft Photo Editor.

Answer   -   Screen shots are in bitmap (.bmp) file format. One of the tools available on NICE2000 to edit them, is Microsoft Photo Editor:

 - Make your screen-shot the usual way (PrintScreen for a full shot, 
   or ALT+PrintScreen for the window only where the cursor sits).
 - Start - Programs - Microsoft Office Tools - Microsoft Photo Editor.
 - Select the Edit menu, click "Paste as New Image".
 - If you only want to select a portion of your screen shot 
   (the portion you want to copy to your Office document), 
   click "Select" on the Standard toolbar (the symbol that looks
   like a dashed square), then drag the cursor over the area 
   you want to select.
 - Select the Edit menu, click Copy. 
 - In the Office document you want to copy the selection into,
   do an Edit/Paste. 

Start - programs - accessories - system tools - disk cleanup

Answer   -   Disk Cleanup safely gets rid of all temporary, unnecessary, doubled, etc., locally stored files that you probably never need anymore. It is part of W2000 and acts a bit like earlier, similar 3rd party software (for instance "Norton CleanSweep" and the like).

It can only be used on local NTFS drives. These are analysed one at a time, after which a menu of cleanup options is presented to you. It lets you decide what to delete, like for instance temporary Internet files, off-line files etc.

A nice feature it also offers is the possibility of compressing old files:

You specify the age of the files as of when compressing should be done. This does not delete them, but just reduces them considerably in size. Make sure compressed files are marked as being displayed in an alternate colour afterwards, so tick this option in:

My computer - tools - folder options - view

Note that such disk cleaning operation takes quite some time and slows down the computer performance.

Answer   -  

- Right-click "My Computer"
- Choose "Manage"
- Open the "Shared Folders" tree
- Click on "Open Files"

The right/hand menu shows the user account and the file(s) that (s)he has open on your share(s).

This information will also be useful in case you want to reboot or run some local backup.

Answer   -   There are two possible solutions:

1. Create the shared folder with a name that ends with the "$" (dollar) sign. It will then be invisible, but to all network users, including the ones that have access granted. Therefore, these users will have to address the folder by its exact full path name (e.g. \\pcjoepublic\charm-quarks$).

   Note: renaming an already existing share loses all its access controls which you will have to recreate afterwards! A Windows prompt will remind you of this.

2. Just make the folder you want to hide a sub-folder within another one which carries some neutral name. Unauthorised users will then only see this 1st level name, but won't be able to access any further down its tree.

Answer   -   Someone (probably with administrator rights) has deleted the access control entries for CERN\Domain Admins and/or BUILTIN\Administrators.

Note: these ACLs should never be touched as they are vital for the trustee mechanism.

The Trustee Manager is running as a domain administrator. If the ACL of a folder does not contain the Administrators group, the Trustee Manager has no privileges to change anything. This happens when you manually remove such rights. You should also be aware that even the backup cannot work under these conditions!

Only way out is to forward this case to a Windows system responsible (via Nice.Support@cern.ch).

The folder already contains a file named 'file.ext'
 
Would you like to replace the existing file with this one?
 
YES  -  YES to ALL  -  NO

Answer   -   The function "No to All" is well hidden. To activate it, click "No" with the SHIFT key pressed at the same time.

Answer   -   Word offers a nice feature, letting you display and edit multiple pages within one layout. This is specially useful for pages with lots of graphics, but of course also for simple text, when one doesn't know or care which is the exact page number to edit.

Open the Word document and:

- view / print layout
- view / zoom
- tick "many pages"
  - go with the cursor into the little PC monitor symbol,
    left-click and drag. All possible multiple page combinations
    will be offered, between "1 times 2 pages" and "4 times 9 pages".
    Choose the one you want, then let loose the mouse button.
- After clicking OK, Word will now display a multi-page page.

Answer   -   Please note first that there are three major sources of disk space on Unix central servers:

1. local temporary space (e.g. /tmp) on your machine. This is probably the best for most types of access.
2. global space (at CERN it is /afs/cern.ch using AFS) which has a caching mechanism and a central server. This is ideal for moderately small amounts of data and source code. It is backed up nightly, and has the convenience and risk and extra cost associated with these features.
3. data mass storage (i.e. SHIFT/Castor at CERN).

AFS space is managed per account (with a maximum 500 MB) or project directory which may be personal or experiment wide.

If you think the solution for you is AFS space, it is possible to create a 500 MB maxidisk, e.g. /afs/cern.ch/atlas/maxidisk/d141. Such a request must be addressed to your experiment mailing list (e.g. atlas-support@cern.ch), or to a computer administrator for ATLAS (group ZP, look at: http://consult.cern.ch/xwho/people/form/admins).

Access to this space is governed by the usual AFS rules, and it is possible to configure it (e.g. give read or write access to several users) with the usual command "fs setacl" ("fs listacl" will display current access and ACLs setting).

Answer   -   Each batch node on which we run LSF jobs has a big /pool partition, to which LSF execute the cd command before your job starts. We are trying to make this partition as big as possible. Therefore you should use this space to store your big amounts of data.

Note that your AFS home directory is available during your job execution, for read and write, because LSF provides you with an AFS token. In addition, some experiments have AFS scratch space, which is normally of the order of GB, to store data. Check this with your AFS administrator of your group.

If you want to keep your data in /pool after the job has finished, you should use our CASTOR system to store it on tapes, because this is the system that can handle big amounts of data, much better than AFS or even NFS. We do not have scratch space on NFS. You have to do the copy within your batch job, e.g. as the last command, because you are not allowed to log in to the batch nodes after the job has finished, and, in case the next job that comes along after yours, wants to have a big /pool file system as well. On batch machines you should not use /tmp for big data storage.

To learn more about CASTOR, please refer to the WEB pages: http://cern.ch/it-div-ds/HSM/CASTOR/Welcome.html

Answer   -   Most probably this is because of the firewall which is active by default on Linux PCs at CERN.

We recommend to use mxconns in this case, which will provides some safeguards against active malicious X11 requests. It is explained at:

http://cern.ch/linux/redhat72/documentation/faq/index.shtml#mxconns

Note: system administrators can change the configuration of the firewall on their PC with the command setup / Firewall configuration.

Answer   -   This can only be done via a special request. So, please send an e-mail to User.Registration@cern.ch, specifying your name, physical e-mail address (PEM) and the additional GEM you would like to get. Obviously, you cannot get a GEM which already exists for another person.

Be prepared to wait at least one day until the new GEM works.

Please note: we strongly recommend to never change an existing GEM!

Answer   -   This is - apparently - a bug with Outlook 2000 on Windows 2000. We can only propose some "workaround" but only at the time of creation of the message that contains such a URL:

• always include "cern.ch" (or the domain) in the URL (e.g. http://documents.cern.ch/Convert).
• add a '/' at the end of the URL.
• instead of using plain text or rich text format, format your message as HTML.

N.B. This trouble is not present on Outlook 2002 (known as Outlook XP).

Answer   -   You can go to the web site http://cern.ch/mmm and open the link Where is my mailbox ? . Just type your mail login, and the information will be returned (this only works inside CERN).

Another solution is to use the command

nslookup xxx.mailbox

xxx being your mail loginid.

N.B. On a Windows PC, you can access this command by opening a cmd.exe window with:

Start - Run... - cmd

(Command is located in C:\WINNT\System32). and then execute nslookup xxx.mailbox

Answer   -   Internet Explorer can launch any executable programme, provided it finds its shortcut on the desktop. You need first to create a desktop shortcut of the program you would like to launch directly from IE. Its exact name must be used afterwards, so keep it as short and meaningful as possible.

For programs that you often use this method is quicker than having to shrink some Windows and double-clicking the desktop item, let alone looking for the programme in the 'Start - programs' list.

Answer   -   In both cases select in the menu Tools:

   Internet Options...

In the panel General, for Temporary Internet files:

• to clear the cache select Delete Files... and also Clear History (into History).
• to define the size of the cache select Settings...

Answer   -   You can get access the electronic version of the "Encyclopedia Britannica" from the CERN Home page following the links: "Library & Archives" (for "Events and Publications") and then "Britannica", or directly at URL: http://www.eb.co.uk:180/

It gives access to a list of "articles", an "index" or a "dictionary" (by selecting the appropriate square box).