FrequentlyAskedQuestions < Support < TWiki

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Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

Getting Help

How can I receive help and/or assistance?

You've made a good start by reading this web site. Look it over.

If you are having trouble with any of the lab machines, please send us a message. You do not even need an email account to do this. Simply click on the Help request form and fill it out. Be sure to include the building and room number. Your request will then be sent on to our lab managers and your request will be handled by the appropriate person.

You may also send email to service@eng.uah.edu , or you can simply slip a note under the door of the server room (EB216A) or the system administrator's office (EB237).

If you send a request that says something useless like "the printer needs paper" your request will likely be ignored. There are several lab managers in several different buildings with dozens of computer labs total. If you won't bother including the room number in the help request, there's a good chance we won't bother trying to help you.

Accounts

How do I get a Unix/Sun/Engineering email account?

You can acquire a computer lab account online. Simply click here and complete the form correctly. Your request will then be sent to the the system administrator. Your account request form may be forwarded on to your advisor for approval if you are not enrolled for the current semester. This amount of time this process takes is usually less than 5 minutes if you are enrolled, and may take several days or the request may be denied.

If you provide an email address at the bottom of the form you will receive email at that address when the account is created.

How can I change my Unix/Engineering email password?

There are a couple of ways to accomplish this.

You can change it by logging in to one of the Engineering Suns. Either go to one of the Sun labs (EB216 or EB246) or log in to eng.uah.edu using ssh. If you log in directly to a Sun in the lab, open a terminal window and get to a command prompt.

After you log in, type the command passwd and follow the prompts. Here's an example: 

sr4 $ passwd
Enter login(NIS) password: 
New password: 
Re-enter new password: 
NIS passwd/attributes changed on sr4 
sr4 $

Another way is to use the Engineering webmail server to change your password. To access this option:

use a web browser to connect to the Engineering webmail server at https://webmail.eng.uah.edu (note the "s" in https; this denotes a secure connection).

I forgot my password. How do I get it back?

Here's a question we get regularly: I forgot my password. Can you email it to me?

Answer: Absolutely not!

In order to have your password reset you must bring your UAH student ID (no other ID will be accepted) to the system administrator's office (EB237) and request that your password be reset in person.

Phone or email requests will not be honored.

We cannot tell you what your password is. Passwords are encrypted with a one-way algorithm, so there is no way to decrypt them. Your account will be reset and you will have to set a new password.

Passwords should never be emailed under any circumstances due to the inherent insecurity of email.

What is a "good" password?

Our primary concern for passwords is security. For a password to be secure, it should be

In order for a password to be hard to guess (a "strong" password), it should:

A good method for creating a password that has these characteristics and is something easy to remember is to make up a sentence and use the first letter of each word, as well as the punctuation. For example, the sentence "My dog has 4 fleas." would generate the password Mdh4f. (note the period on the end of the password). This password has all of the features we want for a hard to guess password, and it's pretty easy to remember our "passphrase" that we used to generate it.

Passwords should be changed at least every 60 to 90 days, and should be changed immediately if you think your password has been compromised.

Some other password security notes: passwords should never be written down, emailed, saved on your computer, or given to anyone else. I do not need your password for any system maintenance reasons; please don't email it to me when reporting a problem. Passwords that are saved by applications (such as Outlook, Outlook Express, or Netscape) may be stolen by adware, spyware, a worm,a virus, or some other attack.

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Computer Lab Information

When are the computer labs open?

See LabHours.

Labs usually begin operating regular hours no later than the second week of class any given semester. Precisely when depends largely on how soon I can get the lab assistants scheduled.

Labs close early on the last day of final exams and remain closed until class begins the following semester.

Labs typcially are closed during long breaks (spring and fall break) and between semesters. Labs are ususally but not always open during holidays.

Can I have application xyz loaded on a machine in EB228?

The lab machines are for the academic use of all the Engineering students. No one machine is reserved for the use of any individual. The systems in EB228 are configured identically as far as software goes, and that software list is based on the requirements of all departments in the College.

If you need a machine for a specific application check with your instructor or advisor.

Anyone caught loading software on any lab machine will be banned from the labs.

Can I have application xyz loaded on the Suns?

It depends. If it's a typical free software type application, we can probably install it (if it isn't there already). Determining factors are how much trouble it is to build, what sort of performance and security implications are involved, the sysadmin's workload, and the academic relevance of the software.

Please ask; I try to honor every reasonable request (and I find that most requests are reasonable).

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Email

What settings do I use to configure my email client?

The correct settings for an Engineering email client (a system in EB, TH, OB, or MSB) are as follows:

SMTP server (outgoing server): smtp.eng.uah.edu POP server: pop.eng.uah.edu IMAP server: imap.eng.uah.edu

An experimental SSL IMAP connection using port 993 is available. All others are normal non-SSL connections.

The outgoing SMTP server smtp.eng.uah.edu can only be used in the following buildings on campus: EB, OB, MSB, TH. If you wish to use IMAP or POP elsewhere (e.g. at home) you must use your service provider's outgoing email service.

Please note that names such as ebs330 and any name ending in eb.uah.edu are obsolete and ceased to function on January 30, 2007.

Can I have my Engineering email forwarded?

I get email both at email.uah.edu and eng.uah.edu. How can I get all my email at one place?

Both email.uah.edu and eng.uah.edu are Unix systems that honor the .forward method of forwarding email. If you have a file in your home directory named .forward all email delivered to you on that system will be forwarded to the address in the .forward file.

For example: I want to have all email that I receive at eng.uah.edu forwarded to email.uah.edu. My username on both machines is joeuser. On zeus create a .forward file that contains the address joeuser@email.uah.edu using any text editor. The following command will work also:

zeus$ echo joeuser@email.uah.edu >.forward

email.uah.edu users can manage an email forward using this tool: http://www.uah.edu/cgi-bin/chgfwd.cgi

Email forwarding via .forward can cause problems; see below.

I have my engineering email forwarded to my other mail account, but it disappears. What's wrong?

It could be your spam filter. Hotmail and many other email service providers have various anti-spam measures in place.

One standard spam technique is to forge the To: address so that the true recipient(s) of the message are hidden. The counter tactic is to reject any messages that arrive at a mailbox that are not specifically addressed to that mailbox.

The unfortunate side effect is that the header pattern for this forgery is the exact same pattern as the legitimate email that you send to an alias or an engineering user with a .forward file in place. The address in the To: header is the valid address enguser@eng.uah.edu, but it is not the address of joeuser@hotmail.com, the individual receiving it.

Another side effect is that the mail is actually being delivered, so there are no bounced messages. The message is delivered, but the user never sees or never reads the message based on the behavior of the spam filter.

The best solution is to read your Engineering email on the engineering server (i.e., don't forward it).

Two other solutions are:

I had my email forwarded, but it suddenly stopped. What's wrong?

The system administrator sometimes exercises the right to remove your email forwarding if your forward causes an excessive number of errors.

Any problems with mail delivery are reported to the postmaster of the email server attempting the delivery. Every time a message bounces, for any reason, the postmaster gets the same error that the sender of the message gets. Our email server currently has over one thousand users, and the amount of normal postmaster traffic can be large. If a bad .forward in your account causes too many messages the system administrator will remove your .forward. Feel free to reinstate the .forward once you have corrected the problem.

Why can't I receive email with a file attached?

Someone is trying to email a file to me, but it doesn't get through. What's wrong?

Either the file is too big, or it's a type that can be executed.

Email can be a very convenient way to send a file to someone else, but email is not designed to be a transport mechanism for files and very large files cause problems for many email servers. A file attached to an email message can be 133% or more of the original file size. It doesn't take very many large messages to clog up an email server. A single user sending several very large attachments has shut down email service for the College of Engineering for several hours.

Because of all this the Engineering email server is configured to reject messages larger than 6 million bytes. Note that because of the encoding, this means a file that is 5MB may not make it through.

Email attachments are also dangerous because they are a favorite tool of virus authors. Engineering email servers are configured to remove all attachments that appear to be executable programs or scripts.

If you are trying to send a file that is rejected by our server you really should be using some other means of getting the file to the recipient. Other methods include: ftp; network shares; CDROM or DVD; or USB storage devices (jump drives or thumb drives).

Try using the College of Engineering FTP server.

Executable files are a huge security risk - viruses, spyware, and other nasties are sent via email attachments. The engineering server strip them out. Executable files include (but are not limited to) those with the following extensions:

It doesn't matter if they are in a zip file - they'll be stripped out of the zip archive, too.

Can I prevent my name from showing up in the email online directory?

I don't want my Engineering email to show up in the UAH online directory search. How can I prevent this?

Create a file named .nouahdirectory in your home directory. The next time directory information is processed your name and address will be left out of the list.

Here is a command line that you can cut and paste:

sr4$ touch ~/.nouahdirectory

Note that the directory information is processed on 2 different systems on a weekly basis, so it may be as long as 10 days before your changes take effect.

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Remote Access

How can I access the Engineering Unix systems remotely?

The Engineering Unix systems are used for various courses (such as CPE112) as well as Engineering email.

Remote login can be accomplished securely with an SSH client. For Windows users we generally recommend PuTTY because it works well and it's free.

For secure file transfer via the SSH protocol use sftp. We recommend PuTTY's companion program PSFTP.

PuTTY and PSFTP can be downloaded (for free) from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html.

Unix users (MacOS? X, Solaris, Linux, etc) can use the ssh clients supplied with their OS.

For unsecure file transfer, you may use ftp to connect to ftp.eng.uah.edu; this is not recommended for security reasons.

In general, the system you should use for remote access is ray.eng.uah.edu. Note there is an "eng" in there (and there is not an "eb").

Can I use telnet to access Engineering Unix systems?

No. Telnet is inherently unsecure because it sends passwords accross the network in plain text.

Historically telnet access to Engineering Unix systems was allowed on a restricted basis, but no longer.

How do I set up a private subversion repository?

log in (to eng.uah.edu via ssh) and do:

zeus$ pwd

/home/student/joe

zeus$ svnadmin create --fs-type fsfs /home/student/joe/projectname

Then to access:

svn checkout svn+ssh://joe@eng.uah.edu/home/student/joe/projectname

Note you'll have to enter your password a few times for each access. A bit of work with google will probably yield instructions on how to set up some ssh keys to avoid this (this will be required for each client machine you use).

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Software

Do you have a copy of xyz software to load on my Windows PC?

Probably not.

A few products are licensed by the University on a site license program for use on University owned equipment. Computer and Network Services has a list of those products online.

There are no site licenses available for any Microsoft products. Departments can purchase licenses for Office, Visual Studio, Frontpage, etc. at a reduced rate through the Microsoft Open License Program for University owned equipment. Information Services administers this program, but we can usually load these products and help you expedite the paperwork.

Other products like Adobe Acrobat or Macromedia Dreamweaver can be purchased at an academic rate through the University Bookstore.

Web Server

How do I get a home page on www.eng.uah.edu?

The College of Engineering web server is available to all users (undergrads, grads, faculty, and staff) of the eng.uah.edu domain. If you have email at eng.uah.edu you have the account you need.

Just create a directory called public_html in your home directory and put your web files in it. That's it! Your URL is http://www.eng.uah.edu/~username (where username is your eng.uah.edu username).

You can just log in and run the command create_personal_web to have the directory created for you and all appropriate permissions set or repaired.

I keep getting "access denied" when I go to my home page. What's wrong?

If you try to access your home page and get "access denied" your home directory probably has permissions set so that no one can read it. If this is the case you should evaluate your home directory and see what needs to be private, set permissions on your subdirectories appropriately, then open your home directory permissions. (World execute permission on your home directory is sufficient - there is no need to add world read. public_html and its contents must be world readable.)

The easiest way to fix this is to run the command create_personal_web.

If you want to fix it manually, here are the commands that grant minimum permissions needed to give the web server access to everything in your public_html directory:

grant world execute on your home directory

sr4$ chmod o+x ~

grant world read and execute on everything in your public_html directory

sr4$ chmod -R go+rx ~/public_html

In addition, you can set the access control list (ACL) on the public_html directory so that files you place in your public_html directory are always world readable, no matter what your default permissions are.

sr4$ setfacl -m d:u::rwx,d:g::r-x,d:o:r-x,d:m:rwx ~/public_html

Can I get more disk space for my web pages?

Only if the web content is required for a course, and in that case the system administrator needs a message from your instructor stating who you are, the course, the amount of space needed, and the duration the space will be needed.

If you run out of disk space for your course work you will be required to clean up your web pages before any extra disk space is granted.

Can I put ads on my web page?

Any scheme to use University equipment for personal profit is a violation of the Computer Usage Policy and state law.

Can I put my business' web page on the web server?

Any scheme to use University equipment for personal profit is a violation of the Computer Usage Policy and state law.

How can I password protect my page?

1. Create a directory that you want to protect. You can name the directory anything you want.

2. Place the files that you want protected in that directory.

3. Create the following files: .htaccess, .htpasswd

4. In the .htaccess file you will need the following: 

# Start of the file. 
AuthType Basic
# Required. This is the file that allows you to have a password. 
AuthUserFile /path/to/your/directory/.htpasswd 
# This defines the name of the 'zone.' You can name it whatever you want. 
AuthName "Whatever you want to call it" 
# For users. The userName1 and such can be anything you want to call it. Only alphanumeric characters though. 
require user userName1 userName2

5. In order to create the .htpassword file, you will need to execute the following command to create the password file. You will need to be in the directory that contains the .htpasswd file. Otherwise, you will need the path to the file.

htpasswd -c .htpasswd userName1

6. Then you can add users by using the following command:

htpasswd .htpasswd userName2

All of these steps will allow you to password protect your directory.

This assumes you have created ACLS with your personal web page. If you followed the instructions above, or you used the script create_personal_web you are OK.

-- JasonW - 24 Apr 2006