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Unix Labs FAQs

What editors are available in the Unix lab?
The editors available are vi and emacs.

What other resources are available in the Unix lab?
Check out our Unix tutorial for common commands.

How do I access the 3.5 disk?
There are a set of files available in the public domain and installed on our system that allow you to act (with respect to the disk drive) as if you were on a dos machine. The commands look familiar enough i.e. mcd to change directory, mdir, mdel, mformat, mcopy, etc. These display files on disk, delete files on disk, formats a disk, and copy files between unix and disk, respectively.

There is another option on our system. The list of commands are as follows doscp, dosdf, dosmkdir, dosrm, and dosls. These should copy files between Unix and the floppy, display disk free space, create a directory, erase a file, and display files on disk, respectively. The command is followed by the name of the device followed by a colon.

For more information about these or other commands view the associated man pages. (The manual page can be recalled by typing man command at the prompt.)

Why would I want to use a windowed Unix environment?
The preference that many students have for using the windowed unix environment in the lab is primarily that there are numerous programs which do not have Windows versions that are available to students. Another benefit is that they offer direct access to the student's ECE accounts which are different from the GT account that all students have.

How do I access acme?
Please see OIT's FAQs for accessing acme using SSH or WinSCP.

Does my OIT account work in the Unix labs in Klaus?
No. They are entirely different accounts. See the Accounts section of our Academic Labs Overview page.

I get a "can't open display: refused by server" error.
You must configure the display environment to the terminal you are currently logged in to. This must be done each time that you log in to a Unix machine and use any of the graphics intensive applications such as: FrameMaker, Xview, or Mentor Graphics. To resolve the problem, type:

    setenv DISPLAY machine_name:0

Where machine_name is the machine you are sitting at, then run the application. The name of your computer can be found in the upper left corner of your monitor. See our web page on Academic Labs Unix Machine Names.

All of a sudden I can't save files, what happened?
Chances are you are over your disk quota on your account. You can find how you stand by typing in

    quota -v your_username

That will show you how much disk space you are allocated and how much you have remaining.

How do I change my login shell?
The easiest way is to add the following line to the end of your .profile:

    exec /bin/csh

You might have to look around with the which command to find where the desired shell resides on the system. As with any changes in the .profile, you must source .profile before those changes take affect, or log off and log back into the system. If that doesn't work, send mail to help@ece and we'll modify it in your passwd entry on our end.

I can login, but can't get a shell.
You may have logged into one of our machines that are not accessible to the students. Most of these are boxes that used to be open to the public at large, but we have restricted them because they are now servers. If it happens on more than two machines, send mail to help@ece because it's likely that there is a problem in our passwd files for your account.

Last revised on January 5, 2007.