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2. Getting a CNBC User Account

 

When you join CNBC you are usually given a login ID and password that are your gateway to accessing computational resources here.  Please speak to a computational resources staff member to request a login ID/password. 

When you first log into your account through any of the cluster machines ([*] see section 2, Chapter 2), remember to change your assigned password to one of your own.  To do this you will have to type the following command at the command prompt:-

            bash $  passwd <press enter>

The program will prompt you for your old password.  Type in the password that was assigned to you.  Press enter.

The program will prompt you for a new password.  Type a combination of letters and numbers of more than 8 characters in length.  Make sure to remember this combination.  Press enter.

The program will re-prompt you for the new password again.  Type in the combination you entered above again and press enter.

You are done!  Next time you log into your account use your new password.  If at any time you forget your password or have trouble logging into your account, please mail a computational resources staff member.

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3. Getting a Carnegie Mellon University Account/User ID

 

An account is provided by Carnegie Mellon University’s computing services department referred to as the Andrew account.  It is given to people who have activities on the campus, such as needing to access university libraries online, or log into any of the university machines located all over campus.  It also provides an email service.

If you need such an account you may speak to any of the computational resources staff at CNBC who will guide you through the appropriate procedure.

Most graduate students who belong to the Psychology department at CMU will be automatically given an Andrew user account at the time of admission.  Graduate students at the University of Pittsburgh who want such an account need to speak to the staff at CNBC.

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4.  Getting a University of Pittsburgh Account/User ID

Graduate students at University of Pittsburgh will be automatically given a user account and ID at the time of admission. Other students/personnel who wish to gain a user account in order to access University of Pittsburgh libraries online or other services need to contact the CNBC staff.

 

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5. Getting Connected to the Network – Wired Local Area Network (LAN)

 

CNBC is a subnet that is connected to CMU.  A registered network card comes with all CNBC desktops.  By plugging in a Ethernet cable into your machine you can connect to the network.  We have a 100BaseT LAN network at CNBC and throughout most of the campus.  It has an internal connection speed of 100 Mbps.

If you think you are having trouble accessing a web page, first check if you have a network address. 

On Windows – go to Start – Run – type ‘cmd’ in the text box and click Run – a black console will appear – type ‘ipconfig /all’.  This command will give you all the network information available for your machine.

On Linux – you can open a Bash shell and type ‘ifconfig’ at the prompt.  Your network connection will usually have a name eth0 or eth1, i.e. Ethernet connection 0 or 1.  All information about a connection will appear under its name.

To renew/restart your network connection

On Windows – go to Start – Run- type ‘cmd’ in the text box and click Run – a black console will appear – type ‘ ipconfig  /renew’.  This command will renew all your network connections.

On Linux – your network connection will usually have a name eth0 or eth1, i.e. Ethernet connection 0 or 1.  You need to know this name to restart your connection.  You can open a Bash shell and type ‘ifconfig eth0 up’ or ‘if up eth0’.  You will need to do this as root.

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6. Getting Connected to the Network – Wireless Local Area Network (LAN)

 

Carnegie Mellon University has one of the nation’s best wireless LAN systems.   You must be a Carnegie Mellon University student, faculty or staff member with a valid Andrew UserID to use the wireless network.  Wireless receivers are placed all over campus and coverage extends into CNBC.  To use this LAN your terminal (desktop/laptop) must have a wireless Ethernet card.  Most new laptops have built-in wireless Ethernet cards.

Here is a link that helps you determine if you have a built-in wireless card.  http://www.cmu.edu/computing/wireless/wirelesscardcheck.html

If your laptop was provided to you by CNBC, the wireless Ethernet card will come configured and setup to run smoothly. 

If your laptop was not configured by staff at CNBC, you can bring it for help with registration.  If you want to do it yourself, here is a useful link provided by CMU’s computing services: http://www.cmu.edu/computing/documentation/connect_wire_wireless/wired_wireless.pdf

 

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7. Logging into CNBC Cluster Machines

 

From your remote computer you must use SSH to log into a CNBC machine.    SSH is the name of a secure method to log into a machine. 

If you are logging in from a Windows machine:

You will need to download an application that uses or lets you use such a method. 

Examples of such applications are

Nifty Telnet (only CMU/CNBC users will have access to download this software)

https://www.cmu.edu/myandrew-files/software/NiftyTelnet/

Telnet does not let you connect to any of the CNBC machines from outside of campus.  Only connections from CMU’s 128.2.*.* IP address block are accepted.  This means that if your internet service provider is CMU and you used a dial-up modem to get online then you will have a 128.2.*.* IP address, which would allow you to telnet to Condor from outside the campus. If your ISP provider is not CMU, however, you will need to use a SSH client such as PuTTY to connect to any of the CNBC cluster machines.

Putty.exe (anyone can download this from the net):

http://chefax.fe.up.pt/putty/download.html

Install one of these applications in your Windows machine.  Double click on the application to run it, and follow the instructions.  In the case of Nifty Telnet, the connection by default is secure.  In the case of PuTTY, please choose the ‘SSH’ radio button (located below the ‘hostname’ text box).

 

If you are logging in from a Linux machine:

Install the SSH package from http://rpmfind.rediris.es/rpm2html/openssh.html.  This link has RPMs available for several Linux distributions.  After you install the RPM package using command “rpm –i <package name>”, you can use the following command to connect to the remote machine:

At the prompt, ssh <machine name>

E.g. bash $ ssh condor.cnbc.cmu.edu

or ssh login@condor.cnbc.cmu.edu

Press enter, the machine will prompt you for the user name and password. 

Note: OpenSSH is built into RedHat 8, 9 and Debian

You can do the above procedures to log into any of the cluster machines:

·       condor.cnbc.cmu.edu

·       kiwi09 through kiwi13.cnbc.cmu.edu (i.e., if you wish to access kiwi09 : kiwi09.cnbc.cmu.edu is the machine name)

·       kiwi14 through kiwi17.cnbc.cmu.edu

·       kiwi03 and kiwi04.cnbc.cmu.edu

To read more about the machines themselves and the general cluster setup please look under Physical Resources.

Note: SSH works only for cluster machines you wish to log into because these machines are running Linux.  If you wish to access your own Windows machine at work from home you need to set your office machine with a remote user account.  Please read Remote Windows Desktop (or use VNC).

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8. Accessing Email

condor.cnbc.cmu.edu is our mail server.

Easy way: 

Visit https://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/squirrelmail

Alternate ways:

SSH into condor.cnbc.cmu.edu and type: pine

Pine is an email application that will display your mail in your console (this is the window that comes up after you log into a remote machine)

Set up your email account on Outlook, Netscape Communicator or other email applications.

·       All these applications will have a “new user account” in their Menu either under Tools or Edit “profile” etc.  You will need to look into the menu items for this.

·       Follow instructions for “new user account” menu, such as user name, user id, etc.

·       When it comes to Incoming server choose IMAP and type in condor.cnbc.cmu.edu

·       For sending mail or outgoing server choose SMTP and type in mail.cnbc.cmu.edu

·       The account ID will be your Condor user account.  Password will be the one you use to log into Condor.

·       Note: although you can check your mail remotely, you can send it out through Condor only if you are logged in from campus.  If you need to send mail remotely, you will need to set up an SSH tunnel to Condor from your machine.  Rob has written MailTunnel, a Windows utility that takes care of most of the process, which is distributed at http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/cnbc-docs/mailtunnel/mailtunnel.html. Setup instructions are provided on the web page. A Mac OS X solution is currently in development.

 

  Spam:

Spam filters have been set up on the CNBC mail server.  Suspicious mails are sent to a “spam” folder in your e-mail account.  These folders are set up for only those accounts that have a “Mail” folder in their Condor account.  Please contact a computational resources staff member if you require additional information.

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9.  Condor as Storage Space

There are other things one can do besides checking email through Condor.  Your accounts are generally quite large.  There is no explicit quota on Condor.  They can be used to store up your large data files leaving room for more commonly used files on your desktop’s hard drive. 

How to transfer data from a Windows machine to Condor?

Use WinSCP.  It is an application that sets up a secure connection with Condor and lets you transfer files from your desktop to a directory on Condor.  If you don’t have WinSCP, you may download and install it from here: http://winscp.sourceforge.net/eng/

How to transfer data from a Linux machine to Condor?

·       Use scp.  For this you need to log into your Condor account and then type the following command from the directory you wish to place the data in.

scp username@desktopMachineName:<data file> .

·       scp is the name of the command. 

·       Username should be your account name on the desktop machine through which you have access permissions to the data you wish to transfer.

·       DekstopMachineName is the name of your desktop machine.

·       Data file is the path of the file name you wish to transfer.

·       The period at the end indicates the location to which the file must be copied to, it implies current.  It can be replaced by a path to another directory too.

·       E.g. scp bob@water-rail.cnbc.cmu.edu:~/mridata/data01 .

·       You can also do the following:  scp bob@water-rail.cnbc.cmu.edu:~/mridata/data01 ~/storedata/

·       Here the file data01 will be copied to directory ‘storedata’ on Condor within your home directory.  It will be given the same name when copied ‘data01’.  To give it another name do the following:

scp bob@water-rail.cnbc.cmu.edu:~/mridata/data01 ~/storedata/finaldata01

·       Now data01 from your desktop machine will be stored as finaldata01.

·       If you wish to copy everything in a directory – all files and subfolders, then you must do the following.

scp –r username@desktopMachineName:<data directory> <final destination>

e.g. scp –r bob@water-rail.cnbc.cmu.edu:~/mridata .

The entire directory mridata will be copied over and stored in a directory with the same name.  Remember the fullstop at the end or write another destination path. 

 

Note: scp is just like the cp command in Unix.  To learn about other basic Unix commands read [*] chapter 2, section 13.

Note:  Please do not store large media files or other kinds of entertainment files on the server.

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10. Linux Applications in Windows

Most of us have a Windows desktop in our office.  However, not all applications run on Windows.  There are some computational activities that can be done only/also on Linux.   Condor is a Linux machine.  You can run Linux applications from your desktop through Condor or any of the other cluster machines mentioned in section 2, chapter 1.  A list of available applications on Condor that one is most likely to be used at CNBC is shown under [*] section 11, chapter 2.

There are two ways to run Linux applications from your Windows desktop machine:

Remote Access: X-Win 32 Linux Interface on Windows Machine

By remote access, we imply logging into Condor or other cluster machines and thereby running your applications remotely.  To do this you need to set up X-win32 on your Windows desktop.  Here are the steps:

·       You can download X-win 32 from CMU’s website.  This, however, prevents you from using X-win32 from your home machines where your IP address is not 128.2.*.*.   To get around this problem look at [*] section 14, chapter 2

·       Download the X-win3