All faculty members and Ph.D students who are requested by faculty members, have access to PPP. Send CRF your desired hostname and type of computer you have including type of OS and we will send you information on getting access to PPP.

  Windows 9x, Me, 2000 PPP setup Instructions:
1. Assuming you have a modem installed and functional, go to Network/Dial-Up Connections, and double-click on "Add New Connection...". 2. Follow the instructions, entering "212-939-7187" as the number to be dialed.

Please set your mail server to be: panther.cs.columbia.edu or lion.cs.columbia.edu
If you have any problems, send email to crf.

Considering the large number of users we are supporting, please set your check-mail time interval to 5 minutes or above. Thank you.

Quick instructions:

• log in on cluster and run the vacation program (/usr/bin/vacation).
• check the contents of .vacation.msg in your home directory. Edit it if needed.
• if you use procmail,
• delete the .forward file in your home directory. (disregard if you know what you are doing)
• put the following two lines in your .procmailrc (make sure they precede any other 'recipe' in .procmailrc):
  

  :0c
  |/usr/bin/vacation YOUR_LOGIN_NAME

• To disable, delete your .forward. Or if you use procmail, remove the 2 lines above from your .procmailrc.

The vacation program creates and initializes files that track who has sent you mail. This means you must run the vacation program. Simply changing your .forward or .procmailrc is not enough.

The vacation program will create a .forward file for you if one does not exist. If you use procmail to filter your mail, it will create an incorrect one--deleting it should be sufficient.

procmail users need a recipe to send a copy of each mail to the vacation program.

Also, vacation may behave differently on solaris and linux. Since all our mail is now delivered on solaris, you must use cluster's vacation program to initialize the vacation system.

Put the following lines in your .procmailrc (make sure they precede any other 'recipe' in .procmailrc):

  :0 c
  * ^Subject:.*URGENT.*
  ! your_pager@your_pager_company.com

Instruct your correspondents to put the word URGENT in the subject line of their message if they want to reach you this way.

Put the following lines in your .procmailrc:

  :0 c
  * ^From:.*somebody@somewhere\.com
  /dev/null
  

where somebody@somewhere.com is the address you want to block.

Goto http://webmail.cs.columbia.edu/ to access your Computer Science email account via the web.

click here for detailed information.

On Solaris, type: passwd -r nis

On Linux, type: yppasswd

Cluster Machines are Solaris

Clic and Compute Machines are Linux

Don't use your username as your password.
Don't use your first name or your last name as your password.
Try to append numbers to your passowrd you have chosen.
First letters of a commonly used phrases mixed with numbers.

Please look at the software tools page.

There are a few things to check:

• Unlike cunix, we use `html', not `public_html' for personal Web pages.
• Everything in the path to your Web page must be at least traversable by anybody (that is, the 'other' users must have the 'x' permission for directories. We advise you to make your home directory traversable with the command "chmod o+x ~", and then to make the Web page directory accessible with the command "chmod a+rx ~/html". You should also run "chmod a+r file" on any file you want readable through a browser.

Writing CGI scripts is not for the faint of heart. Unlike the above instructions for regular Web pages, the instructions for CGI scripts will be intentionally less "automatic" to make sure you really understand what you are doing. Those scripts have full access to all of your files and you certainly wouldn't want them to do something nasty, would you?

Still with us? Good. Here are a few things to check:

• The scripts must have the extension .cgi. Really.
• The scripts must be owned by you and by your primary group.
• The scripts must be writable only by you.
• The directories in which the scripts are must be writable only by you.
• The scripts must be inside the ~/html hierarchy.
• Your cgi script has to output the following line to stdout before anything else:
  Content-type: text/html
  followed by two newlines.
• IMPORTANT: if you are using compiled CGIs (c,c++, etc) make sure you are compiling on the same architecture (Solaris) that our webserver is running. For maximum compatibility, compile on dynasty.cs.columbia.edu

Please do all your testing on the backup Web server, web.cs.columbia.edu, until you are sure your scripts will not do something silly to bog down the server. During this testing, you might find it useful to look at the CGI logs, in /import/http/LOGS.www or /import/http/LOGS.web respectively.

Create your files and put them in a directory under ~user/secure_html. Access to the web server is via https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~user

1) cd into the directory you want to password protect:

$ cd ~/html/protected

2) Then create a file called .htaccess which contains the following lines:

AuthUserFile /home/LOGIN_NAME/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName ByPassword
AuthType Basic
require valid-user

Note: you can use different .htaccess and .htpasswd files for different directories. Just copy the above .htaccess file into another directory and change AuthUserFile path from /home/LOGIN/.htpasswd to the directory where the new .htpasswd file will reside. You have to make this file (.htaccess) world readable. Also, the path to the password file has to be an absolute path, because relative paths will not work.

2) You need to create a file which contains the list of users and their respective passwords. To do this, login to cluster.cs and type:

$ htpasswd ~/.htpasswd USERNAME

You will be prompted for a password for this user. Repeat the above for each user, and when you are finished, make the file, .htpasswd, world readable.
(Note: It's advised to place this file outside of your /html directory for security reasons.)

Place the .htaccess file in the directory you want to protect, and that's it. Now, only users listed in your .htpasswd file will be able to access that directory.

More tricks and tips on htaccess

Send mail to crf@cs.columbia.edu with the following information:

• type of computer
• preferred hostname

Then you will receive an ip address and other various information.

Windows 2000 has added support for DHCP clients to update the DNS server with the computer's name. Unfortunately, Windows 2000 will send this update out even if the computer has a static ip address and the DNS server constantly refuses the updates. Since crf does not want these update requests going to our DNS server, Windows 2000 Dynamic DNS should be turned off as follows: To prevent the client from registering name-to-IP address mappings:

Double-click the Network icon in Control Panel.
Right-click the icon for the connection on which you want to disable registration of name-to-IP address mappings, and then click Properties.
Click Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), and then click Properties.
Click Advanced, and then click the DNS tab.
Clear the check box Register this connection's address in DNS.

Or download this registry file and double click: Registry File
Of course, you'll have to reboot. Please note: the Register this connection's address in DNS checkbox will remain checked, but the DNS updates will be disabled.

First, you need to think about a few questions.

1) Am I working for a professor? If not, then you will not get an account.

2) What do I need to do as root? If the answer to this question is not a never ending answer, then sudo is the option for you (with your professor's approval of course).

3) The above two questions and answers haven't helped me, what should I do now? First, email your advisor and crf listing the reasons you absolutely NEED a root account, and then we'll get back to you.