This document was created to answer the most Frequently Asked Questions, and hopefully cut down on some of the redundancy we see on the help mailing list.
1) Which systems can I log into?
There are two systems for which you can log into. You must connect using the SSH protocol on Port 22. You may get a program like PuTTy which is free for download.
The systems you may log into are:
You may also read your email by pointing your browser to our webmail host.
2) How do I get an ECST account?
Go to OCNL 249 between the hours of 3:30 - 5pm Mondays through Fridays. You may also contact Elbert at (530) 898-6481 during those hours.
For simplicities sake, create a file containing your forwarding email address called:
.forward
in your home directory.
Example:
$ echo "My_Other_Email_Account@somewhere.com" > .forward
4) How do I stop forwarding my mail?
Remove the .forward from your home directory.
5) What are the SMTP, IMAP, and POP server addresses?
They are:
SMTP: smtp.ecst.csuchico.edu
IMAP: imap.ecst.csuchico.edu
POP: pop.ecst.csuchico.edu
6) How do I create a web page?
To create a web page you will first need a web directory, to create one, run the command:
$ websetup -c
This program will give you several options on how to set up your web page if you just type websetup without the -c. For more information, see export.html.
7) How do I delete my web page?
To delete your web page you must delete all of the files in your web directory.
NOTE: Deleting the public_html link from your home directory will not remove your web page.
8) Where can I learn about UNIX file permissions?
Check out permsnote.html
9) Pine asked, "Who are you?" What does that mean?
The password file has no record of your login, which confuses pine and causes it to ask this question. This usually indicates that the password file has been truncated. This is a BAD thing. If you get this error send mail to help@ecst.csuchico.edu
10) How do I remove a file with a special character in its name?
There are five ways to do this. (Actually there are probably more than you can swing a mouse at, but I'm not going to explain them all.) There are actually only two characters that cannot be in a unix filename, the forward slash '/', and the nul character '\0'. This means that you can have any combination of control characters, special characters, or whitespace in a file name.
The quoting method:
This method is probably the most successful for files which have
whitespace (i.e. spaces, tabs or newline characters) in their names.
This method also works for embedded quotes and most special characters.
rm "file with spaces and tabs"
rm "file_with_'singlequote"
rm 'file_with_"doublequote'
The dash method:
The quoting method works for a lot of common situations, but every now and
then you may get a file that begins with a dash "-". In this case, rm
interprets the file name as a command line option. No amount of quoting
will fix this. The simplest and most portable way to fix this is to prepend
the characters "./" (without the quotes) to the file name. For example:
rm ./-dash
The wildcard method:
Sometimes the name of the file is unique enough to allow you to use
wildcards. A full explanation of all wildcards would take too much space,
so I will only talk about two. (To learn about the others, see "What is
a special character?" in this FAQ.) The ? wildcard tells the shell to try
any single character in its place. For example:
?earWould match:
hear
wear
sear
bear
The * wildcard will match ANY number of characters:
b*rWould match:
br
beer
big huge file name with "all' sorts of %%% stuff ending with r
The inode method (Thanks SGI dude!)
Use 'ls -li' and grab the inode number of the file.
$ ls -li 553979 -rw-r--r-- 1 asdf s 0 Apr 9 10:36 big file name with "all' sorts of %%% stuff
$ find . -inum 553979 -print -exec rm {} \;
The all hope is lost method:
If none of the other methods work you can always use rm in interactive
mode. This will cause rm to ask permission before it deletes the file.
NOTE: This method uses the * to match almost every file, if you don't
use the -i option, rm will delete EVERY file except those beginning with
a dot!
$ rm -i *
11) What is a special character?
In order to make life eaiser for the UNIX user, the shell, or login
enviorment, uses some characters to mean special things. Some of the more
common characters are: ' " ` * # [ ] ^ $ - + ? \ ~ | ; & < >
For specific information about which character means what for a
specific shell, their respective man pages.
ksh(1) man page, this is the default shell.
sh(1) man page.
ksh(1) man page.
ksh(1) man page.
12) How do I untar a .tar file?
Tar is the tape archive utility. It stores many files in one continuious file for easy transport between machines. To extract a tar file:
tar xvf filename.tar
The argument "xvf" can be broken down into three useful options to tar:
x eXtract an archive
v print Verbose messages
f read from a File
13) How do I find someone's email address?
To find the address of a person at CSU, Chico, use the finger command with the -M (matching option):
finger -M my_friend
Finding the address of a person across the Internet will be more difficult, but helpful hits can be found on this FAQ.
14) When trying to send email, what does it mean when I get the error:
sorry, that domain isn't in my list of allowed rcpthosts (#5.7.1)
This error is a result of our ongoing effort to combat spam. We no longer allow anyone outside of the csuchico.edu domain to relay email through our machines.
Consequently, when the conditions outlined below are met, you will be unable to send email to anyone with an address which does not end in @ecst.csuchico.edu. Those conditions are:
(Note: out of necessity, the following is a gross simplification of the process, but hopefully, is enough to convey the general idea.)
email relaying is defined as a CLIENT sending email from a SOURCE to a DESTINATION using one or more intermediate mail transfer agents (MTA). For our purposes, CLIENT is defined as the program that the sender is using to start the sending of email. SOURCE is defined as the combination of the sender's email address (referred to as FROM) and the domain of the sender's Internet provider (referred to as S-PROVIDER). Similarly, DESTINATION is defined as the recipient's email address (referred to as TO) and the domain of the recipient's Internet provider (referred to as R-PROVIDER).
It should be noted that typically the sender has complete control over the CLIENT, FROM, TO, and initial MTA (iMTA); has partial control over the S-PROVIDER; and has no control over the R-PROVIDER, except in that it is derived from the TO portion.
So when the sender initiates the sending of email, the CLIENT, using the S-PROVIDER, connects to the iMTA indicating that FROM wishes to send mail to TO. The iMTA can then either accept or reject the request, although on what basis it decides which to do varies among different providers. If the iMTA accepted, the CLIENT transmits the message and then typically indicates to the sender that the message is sent. The iMTA then passes the mail along to the R-PROVIDER indicating the the message is from FROM and to TO. If the iMTA rejected, the CLIENT typically indicates to the sender both that an error occurred and what the error was.
For the record, ECT's (simplified) message acceptance rules are:
16) I keep getting messages saying I've exceeded my quota. What does that mean and how do I fix it?
Your account has three separate storage spaces that you can use for permanent storage of your files: your home directory, your mail file/directory and your web directory.
Your mail file or directory can contain 1M of data (roughly one 3.5" diskette full), your home directory can contain 3M of data, and your web directory (if you choose to create one) can contain 3M of data.
Once this quantity is exceeded, you'll need to remove some files within a week to drop your account back down below your quota. If, after a week, you haven't deleted sufficient amounts to put you below quota, you will be restricted from writing to that place until you fix the discrepancy.
To check your current quota status, use the "quota -v" command:
% quota -v Disk quotas for alice: Filesystem used-K quota limit timeleft files quota limit mail server 1094 1024 10240 4 days 6 1000 1000 public_html 74 3072 10000 0 1000 1500 home directory 942 3072 10000 0 1000 1500
As you can see, alice is a little bit over her mail quota, and needs to delete a few of her mail messages or move them to her home dir.
Alternatively, you can use the "checkdisk" command:
$ checkdisk DISK USAGE REPORT FOR alice, Tue Mar 28 11:12:45 PST 2000 ================================================== Running "quota -v alice" comand: Disk quotas for alice: Filesystem used-K quota limit timeleft files quota limit timeleft mail server 2 1024 10240 4 1000 1000 public_html 0 3000 10000 0 1000 1500 home directory 708 3000 10000 122 5000 6000 ================================================== Checking Netscape cache There are 290.0K in your Netscape cache. In netscape, you can change the cache size via the following menus: Options, Network Preferences, Cache or simply "rm -r .netscape/cache" from time to time ================================================== Scanning home directory for large files/directories (>100K) .netscape 482.0K ================================================== Looking for large image files (>50K)
OTHER QUOTA HINTS:
17) What do I do if I accidently deleted some files?
If you have removed files that you still need, we can probably restore them for you. Email admin@ecst.csuchico.edu the name of the files that were deleted as well as when they were deleted.
Note: We only have backups for the previous three (3) weeks. Restores are done on an as needed basis.
If you can think of a question and answer that should be in this FAQ, then send a note to: help@ecst.csuchico.edu. Thanks!