Frequently Asked Questions

How do I forward e-mail from my class account to my student account?

Place the address of your student account into the ~/public/.forward file of your class account.

For example, if your student account is abcdef, enter the following line in your ~/public/.forward file.

abcdef@students.wisc.edu
Remember to end the line with a carriage return.

How can I use a CS machine from home?

You may remotely log into the CS lab machines.

From a Unix terminal

To access the machines remotely, use the form: ssh login@machineNameNN.cs.wisc.edu where the machine name is taken from the table below and NN is a 2 digit number as in the example: royal13.cs.wisc.edu. If you find your tasks are running slowly, you can use the UNIX command who to display a list of who is currently logged into a machine and top to see what processes are using the processor.

From a PC

You will first need to install the SSH program. The CSL has information on this, but my recommendation is to use a program called PuTTY, which can be found at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
At the bottom of the page you will find the download. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
I use the putty.exe

Once installed, this is a standard program; so go to the Start Menu-> PuTTY (or there might be a short-cut on your desktop) to run the program. When you open the program, you want to connect with one of the CS machines (e.g. emperor11@cs.wisc.edu) PuTTY should open a Dos prompt window and request your login; then password. Now you are in UNIX!

Now you can check your CS e-mail using "pine" or run matlab at the prompt by just typing "matlab". Note that I do not have an "&" after the command for "matlab", this is because running from a terminal window I cannot spawn multiple processes. Note that you can suspend any process by typing "CTRL c" and to restore the process, type "fg" at the prompt.

Additional information

See the Using SSH page for more information about remote access and Computer Systems Lab Instructional Facilities page for more information about the computer labs.

How do I write my homeworks in pdf format?

Creating PDF using Office (like) Applications and WYSIWYG word processors

Windows:

1. You can create PDF files using the Acrobat program from Adobe (free in the CS labs, exorbitantly priced otherwise) if you are using an office application, like MS Word. You can easily insert formulae, graphs etc for submission if you are familiar with Office. To convert your office document to pdf (in the department) you can choose File > Print> Print to pdf OR click on the pdf button that should be in one of the toolbars in MS Word.

UNIX/Linux:

1. Using Open Office in a single click, you can export files in pdf format, instead of having to use the printing function with a "pdfwriter".

2. You can try using MS Office on your Linux machine. Type msword at the command line. This tends to be slow and the formatting has tendency of never showing up correctly in my experience.

Online converters and downloadable converters:

1. You can also try Adobe's Online Conversion Service, which offers five free trials. They accept a variety of formats for conversion.

2. Try converting your document using Neevia.com. This is also an online conversion service. It takes your document and converts it to pdf in the browser. You can also choose to have it emailed to you.

3. Another alternative is pdf995. It is a downloadable converter, but it is adware, i.e. the free version will display a sponsor page in your web browser each time you run the software. If you would prefer not to see sponsor pages, you may upgrade by paying $9.95.

4. Almost every word processor is able to generate a Postscript file output. Starting from Postscript files, you may generate pdf files (free and for an unlimited number of times... ) at this ps2pdf page.

Creating PDF using TeX, LaTeX etc.

For creating high-quality technical and scientific documents, the TeX family of typesetting programs (e.g. LaTeX) is a highly recommended tool .

1. MiKTeX, a popular freeware implementation of TeX & LaTeX, can directly produce PDF output.

2. All TeX implementations can output another portable format, called DVI (for `device independent`). You can convert DVI files to PDF, using dvipdfm, freeware.

3. Try PDFLaTeX, type pdflatex at the terminal. A PDF version of your document will be generated. To include graphics in your LaTex file refer to this page.

4. More information about PDFLaTeX can be found at the PDFTeX website, http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/.

5. As your files get more complicated you will need more info about formatting them. Some more comprehensive information on creating good PDF files from Latex documents can be found here:

A sample LaTex file can be downloaded from here
On using your desired LaTex to PDF converter a pdf file will be generated. Example(On a Linux Machine) % pdflatex latexexample.latex
The corresponding pdf file can be found here

Obtaining information from a removable storage device

To obtain access to removable storage media (such as CD-ROMs, DVDs, floppys, flash drives) you can use the kdf visual device manager for mounting and unmounting removable storage devices.

To use kdf, at the prompt type kdf

However, the standard mount and umount commands can also be used to gain access to removable storage devices. (see CSL information)

You can mount any device (see a list of devices under /dev) and then view its contents under /mnt

Firefox troubles

If you have difficulty with firefox (the lab supported browser), note that the older browsers will come up (with warnings that the browsers are unsupported). At the prompt, type "netscape" or "mozilla"

Some fixes for firefox can be found at the CSL website.