Revision as of 02:22, 14 February 2008

FAQs about UGCS 4.0

Email

How can I create a Mailman mailing list?

Log into the cluster and run create_mailinglist. The first argument is the name of the list you want to create. The optional second argument is the email address of the list owner (defaults to your UGCS account). We will send you an email with your list password and admin link within a minute (may take longer to deliver depending on the series of tubes)

For example, to create the mailing list funclub@ugcs.caltech.edu you would type: create_mailinglist funclub

Can I forward my email elsewhere?

Yes. Log in to the cluster and run mail_forward. It will ask you questions, and use your answers to update your ldap delivery settings.

What settings should I use for POP?

See POP Server Settings

What settings should I use for SMTP?

See SMTP Server Settings

What settings should I use for IMAP?

See IMAP Server Settings

How do I access Webmail?

SquirrelMail (simple, fast, light interface): https://hermes.ugcs.caltech.edu/squirrelmail/src/login.php

Roundcube (more complex, drag-and-drop, desktop style interface): https://hermes.ugcs.caltech.edu/roundcube/

How can I make Pine/Alpine work?

See Pine setup

How can I make Mutt work?

Mutt should work out of the box. If not, make sure you mail directory is set to ~/Maildir. At the moment, you cannot send mail from Mutt. We know what the problem is, but it's surprisingly complex. We're working on a fix, but this is lower priority than many critical services. Rest assured that Mutt will be supported.

How do I process my mail using procmail?

Because of the fact that the mail daemon has unlimited read/write privileges on users' mail directories but does not have access to user home directories, automatic invocation of procmail upon delivery of each piece of mail is both a security risk as well as being inefficient. However, you may add something like the following to your .bashrc or similar script run on login to rearrange your mail using your own AFS tokens and permissions.

Note: use this script at your own risk.

#!/bin/sh

# ensure that .procmailrc targets are of the format ~/Maildir/<directory>/
# rather than ~/Maildir/<file> in order to ensure delivery in Maildir format
# which will result in availability via IMAP.

cat ~/Maildir/new/* | formail -s procmail

Webhosting

Where's my website?

/afs/ugcs/user/<username>/public/html, or at http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~username

My website uses data files that only that site should be able to access. How do I set this up?

It's actually pretty simple. Each user has an additional principal associated with them of the form username_cgi. All cgi scripts you run actually run as this principal. If you give that principal the requisite access to your files, your webapp should work. In general, you probably want to give the principal read, write, but not admin, so you would issue:

fs setacl data_folder username_cgi write

See AFS ACL's for more information

I'm sure the permissions are right, but my site still doesn't work.

The most common error we've seen after the permissions is that people used absolute paths from old ugcs which don't carry over. Specifically, where in old ugcs an absolute path to your home directory was /home/username, it is now /afs/ugcs/user/username. Please change your absolute paths accordingly.

If your website still fails to work, and did before, contact sysadmins@ugcs.caltech.edu, as usual.

My CGI doesn't work

You probably have your perl interpreter set to /usr/ug/bin/perl. We no longer have /usr/ug, so perl is where it should be in /usr/bin/perl. Please update your scripts accordingly. See webhost scripting for more information.

What about SQL Databases?

Every UGCS account comes standard with a Postgresql 8.2 database. The host name is poseidon, and the database name is the same as your username. You can use it with your CGI scripts without using a password; you can use Kerberos authentication to connect to your Postgres database from the cluster or elsewhere. More information is available here

We have a MySQL server running on poseidon. As we do not have an automated MySQL database creation system, you must ask us for a MySQL database.

Other

Where is UGCS?

UGCS is in the basement of Winnett, room 3. It has a South Master lock on it.

Am I allowed to do <something> on UGCS?

Depends what <something> is. Use of UGCS is subject to our Acceptable Use Policy. If you have any questions about it, please ask a sysadmin about your use before you try it.

I get "Permission denied" when trying to access files I should (and used to earlier) have permissions on

Your Kerberos auth expired. Log out and back in again, or run 'kinit && aklog'. To keep your tokens from expiring, run kinit -R && aklog BEFORE they expire.

I forgot my password

See our Password Reset page

How can I get an account?

See New Account

I don't own my files

Your home directory is on an AFS volume. The ownership does not matter - you have full read/write/administer AFS ACL's on your public directory.

In AFS, with a few limited exceptions, file ownership does not matter; the ACL on the directory governs file access.

If you're getting permission denied errors, make sure that you've either logged on recently, or that you've refreshed your AFS tickets using kinit and then aklog.