14. Computing Guide - PC lab

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This section is devoted to the PC classroom (a.k.a. PC lab).

14.1 Hardware
Our PC lab was activated on 1st February 99. We have 21 WinNT 4.0 workstations hooked up to a WinNT Server, forming the STATISTICS domain. The workstations are called SEQPC-01 through SEQPC-21, and the server is called STAT-NT-SERVER.

There is an HP Scanjet scanner and an HP CD-Writer CD-RW drive attached to SEQPC-01.

NEW Mar 2000 At present, the CD-Writer software is not fully functional. To create a data CD, you have to choose the "CD Direct" option instead of "CD Record". The former uses CD-RW as its default medium, but also accepts CD-R. The CD has to be reorganized before ejecting in order to make it readable by ordinary CDROM drives.

If you have a particular recommendation on another CD writing software, please send e-mail to .

14.2 General Information and Policies
Each member or visitor of the department automatically get an account on the STATISTICS domain when he/she applies for a computer account. The PCs accept Leland usernames and passwords.

At present users who want to access their rgmiller home directories from the Network Neighborhood have to see Hsiu-Khuern, Tao or Naras to get a Samba account.

Please report problems to .

Some points to note are:

1. Save all your files in your home directory. If your username is joe, your home directory will be C:\winnt\profiles\joe. There will be one such home directory for each workstation that you log on to. Do not save files elsewhere because they may be deleted during system maintenance.
2. If you have a file in your home directory on SEQPC-xx, you may access it from any other PC in the domain by clicking on Network Neighborhood-->SEQPC-xx-->Profiles.
3. For security reasons, lock your machine if you are leaving it for a few (< 5) minutes and wish to come back to it later. To lock your machine, press ALT-CTRL-DEL simultaneously.
4. Machines that are locked for a long time will be unlocked by the administrator. This will cause unsaved work to be lost.
5. Do not install/remove software, delete files that are not yours, etc.
6. There is no backup for the PCs.

14.3 Software
Software installed on the PCs include the following. Actual version numbers may be higher than those stated here.

• Adobe Acrobat Reader 3.05
• Exceed X Server
• GhostScript 5.50 and Ghostview 2.7
• HP DeskScan II (on SEQPC-01)
• HP CD-Writer (on SEQPC-01)
• MS Internet Explorer 5.0
• MS Office97
• Netscape 4.50
• PC-Leland 1.3.1
• Samson for Windows 1.1
• SPlus 4.5 Professional Edition
• WinZip 7.0
• WS_FTP 4.50

14.4 Logging on to Leland/Rgmiller
If you have not used kinit or PC-Samson before, you probably do not have a .klogin file; please read the section on PC-Leland and PC-Samson

If you have used kinit or PC-Samson before, you need only click on Start-->Programs-->Samson for Windows-->Samson for Windows 1.1. Choose "Open a new telnet session" and type the name of the machine you wish to log on to, say saga or rgmiller.

At this point, if you do not already have a ticket, the PC-Leland program will pop up a dialog box asking for your Leland userid and password. When this is done properly, a doubly directed arrow displays on the toolbar at the bottom right of the screen.

You will then be logged onto the machine you specified, no further questions asked.

There are pre-defined scripts on the PCs to simplify the log-on process. Simply click on the icon labelled RGMiller to log on. To define your own scripts, see this section.

14.5 Displaying X Applications
As of March 2000, the Exceed X server is automatically started up upon login.

Please note the following important items.

1. Since we use an X emulator on the PC's, some X applications may not work as expected. This is because emulators may have bugs, no matter how good they are.
2. An X application that is displayed on any PC using the method below is inherently insecure. Only the initial Samson connection is encrypted, everything else can be sniffed by an intruder. Thus, you should never attempt to telnet or rlogin or even klogin from an xterm window to any machine. Use Samson to launch other logins.

Here are the steps to display an xterm window from a Leland machine to the PC at which you are seated.

1. If Exceed is not started, start it by clicking on Start-->Programs-->Exceed-->Exceed. You will see a nice picture of a hummingbird as it comes up. (There may be an icon named "Exceed.exe" on your desktop; clicking on it accomplishes the same thing.)
2. Log on to Leland as described in the previous section.
3. Note the name of your PC which is displayed on top right of the monitor; it is something like seqpc-xx. I shall use seqpc-10 in my example below. In the Samson window, invoke an xterm by typing:
   xterm -display seqpc-10.stanford.edu:0.0 &
   You may at your option now terminate the Samson session (not the xterm!).

As long as you have the xterm window, any X application you invoke from there will display on the PC.

Shortly, a more secure method will be available which will use port forwarding to encrypt all network traffic.

14.6 Scanning Documents
We have a HP ScanJet scanner hooked up to SEQPC-01. To use it, click on Start-->Programs-->HP DeskScan II-->HP Deskscan II. Remember to save scanned files in your home directory and not the /temp directory.

14.7 Frequently Asked Questions
How can I read PostScript documents on the PCs?
We have GhostScript and GhostView installed, which allows you to read PostScript documents. The first time you try to open a PS document, you will be asked to configure GhostScript/GhostView. Simply accept all the default settings.

If you are trying to read a PS document in Netscape Navigator for the first time, you have to let Navigator know the location of the GSView program, which is

Note: The documents are rendered in A4 format by default. To change that, click on Media-->Letter in the GSView window.

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