The UNIX workstations are PC's running LINUX, a public domain implementation of UNIX. As all computers working under UNIX, they should not be rebooted (so do not use the reset-button) and they should also not be switched off. If you have problems working on one of the workstations (windows that cannot be closed, strange colors, frozen screen, etc.) first try to log out. If this does not work try holding down the Ctrl and the Alt-keys and pressing the Backspace key, which should log you out (the hard way). If this does not work and it is impossible to reach one of the System Administrators then you can press Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot the workstation. If that still does not work please leave the workstation as it is and inform the system administration as soon as possible.

The workstations should always work under X-windows, the UNIX window system. In particular, the login prompt of any of these machines should always be a graphics screen. In case you come to a workstation and it shows a text-mode login prompt (like the one you get when logging in via telnet) then please try to switch to the graphics screen by holding down the Alt-key and pressing the F7-key. If you do not get a graphics screen with a login prompt, please inform the system administration.

All the information about users and also the user data are automatically exported from our main server to all computers in the system, so whatever workstation you work on, things should always look the same. Moreover, you can use the passwd command on all computers to change your password. Note that the password program has quite strong restrictions on what passwords to accept, so it may happen that you have to try several different passwords until one is accepted.
 

There are two ways of using floppy disk. If you use KDE, you can access the floppy via the Drives/Floppy item in the KDE menu. This will also convert any text files automagically from DOS to UNIX style (see converting text files). Note: If you have a DOS disc with a Macintosh style text file, the automatic conversion will remove all line breaks from your file.

From the command line you can use the mtools package. It offers commands which are similar to some of the basic MSDOS commands (but still more intelligent). In all commands you have to refer to the disk drive as a: (as in DOS). The most important commands are "mdir", "mcopy", "mdel", and "mmd". What you have to be aware of is that in contrast to the conventions under DOS, forward slashes (/) rather than backslashes (\) are used in pathnames. Some examples:

To find out about the other mtools just read the man-page of mtools. It is also possible to format floppy disks on the workstations if they are already low-level formatted.

For viewing dvi-files under X-windows you can use "xdvi". This viewer also can deal with included Postscript pictures, however the pictures are not always displayed correctly. If a picture looks wrong in that viewer, try to convert your dvi-file to a PostScript file (using "dvips", see below) and then view that file using ghostview ("gv"). For printing dvi-files, you can simply use the command "lpr paper.dvi" unless you have PostScript-pictures included or want to use special options (eg. print only selected pages or print two pages on one sheet of paper, etc.). If your file contains included PostScript pictures, you should first convert it to a PostScript file using the command "dvips paper.dvi". This generates a file called "paper.ps", which you can then print by calling "lpr paper.ps". Note that in contrast to many other systems dvips produces a file by default and does not send its output directly to the printer. For information on printing with special options, please read the section on printing below.
 

Printing selected pages only: There are two basic possibilities to print selected pages only: The first method is simpler but assumes that you have a PostScript file. If starting with a dvi-file, first convert it to PostScript using "dvips file.dvi", which produces a PostScript file called "file.ps". Then view your PostScript file with ghostview ("gv file.ps &"), which makes a window containing the viewer pop up. In the left part of that window, you have the list of pages in the document. You can select the pages you want to print using the right mouse button. If you have selected a wrong page, just click the right mouse button again on that page to unselect it. Clicking the left mouse button on a page causes that page to be displayed. After you have selected the pages you want to print, move the mouse to the field called "File" in the upper left corner of the window, press and hold the left mouse button to get a menu, move down to "Print marked pages" and release the mouse button to get your pages printed. To exit ghostview use the item "Quit" in the same menu.

The second possibility to print selected pages is different according to filetype: For dvi-files you can also use the program "dvips"has the option "-pp" which allows you to specify a page range. For example "dvips -pp17-28,42 paper.dvi" creates a PostScript file called "paper.ps" containing pages 17 to 28 and page 42 of the dvi-file "paper.dvi". You can then print that Postscript file by executing "lpr paper.ps". Finally, to select pages to print from a PostScript file, you can use the program "psselect". This allows you to select ranges of pages with the "-p" option. If in addition you specify the "-e" or the "-o" option, then only the even respectively odd pages from the selected ranges are printed. Examples: "psselect -p5,42-49 bla.ps blu.ps" saves pages 5 and 42 to 49 of the PostScript file "bla.ps" under the name "blu.ps". "psselect -e -p10-20 bla.ps | lpr" prints all even pages between page 10 and page 20 of the PostScript document "bla.ps".

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