Grendel to Turing Server Migration FAQ

Summary

On July 12'th a change was made to the CS unix servers when grendel was replaced by another server named turing. Grendel is still available for telnet sessions but no longer performs server type services, such as Web, Mail serving, Anonymous ftp, and nfs home directories. Turing will now do all these things. You will find that you can't log into turing. This is by design, since turing is a true server, an appliance so to speak. Most things you are used to doing on grendel and the other SGI's will be exactly the same, but there are a few changes that are worth noting and they are listed following on this page.

I lost some mail in the switch, can I get it back?
Why does Netscape give me an error when it starts up?
Where is the mail spool dir and can I edit it?
Where are the web site files now?
Where are the FTP servers files now?
How do I changes the mail aliases?
How do I change my password now?
How do I POP my mail? I use Netscape/Eudora/Explorer to read mail

I lost some mail in the switch, can I get it back?

I'm sorry, I forgot to move the mail inboxes when I switched servers. Somehow it got missed in the myriad of things I had to change. However, nothing is lost, but you'll have to get your inbox yourself using these instructions below. The file you copy will be the contents of your inbox as of July 12'th. Here's how you get it when your logged into any SGI:

1. If you use PINE, then do the following:
The following assumes your user name is smitthy
cd mail, then: cp /usr/local/share/mail/smitthy lost_mail
Now start pine and you will have a folder named lost_mail with your former inbox stuff in it

2. If you use ELM, mail, or some other, see Eric, or get creative and read the man page for your mailer and figure out what you want to do!

Why does Netscape give me an error when it starts up?

This is because your home directory moved to a new place. If you were on /home2, /home3, or /home4 before. You now have a new directory. Students are all in /home. Professors are all in /home1. Netscape stores your actual path in lots of places, so now the path is invalid and netscape is confused.

To fix it do the following:
first: cd .netscape, then: cp bookmarks.html ..
next: cd home and rm -r .netscape
next: Start netscape, it will setup a new .netscape directory for you.
next: Exit netscape
last: cp bookmarks.html .netscape/.

Where is the mail spool dir and can I edit it?

The mail inbox directory is now /var/mail. It's mounted from turing. Some people like to edit their mail spool directly, a practice that is ill advised. You can copy your mail file if you like from here, but do not try to edit it.

Where are the web site files now?

 The new location of the web servers files is: /usr/local/WWW/htdocs
The new location of the CGI scripts is: /usr/local/WWW/cgi-bin

These files are only acccesible through the SGI computers.

Where are the FTP servers files now?

 The new location of the FTP servers files is: /var/ftp/pub on turing

How do I update these files?

You can't! Contact the administrator for uploads to the ftp site

How do I changes the mail aliases?

 Mail aliases are now set on turing in /etc/aliases. But all the actual mail lists are located in /usr/local/share/mail_lists

These files are only acccesible through the SGI computers.

How do I change my password now?

 You can change your password on any SGI by typing yppasswd
To change your name in the password file use ypchpass -f " name info"
To change your login shell use ypchpass -s /sbin/bsh for example.
You will no longer be able to change your password or other paramters on grendel. There is an incompatibility between IRIX and SunOS regarding doing these operations.

How do I POP my mail? I use Netscape/Eudora/Explorer to read mail

 If you use Netscape or Explorer to read your mail you need to define either a POP or IMAP server to get your mail from. You can use cs.smith.edu for both of these.
IMAP is supported by newer versions of Netscape and Explorer and allows you to read your mail but keep it on the server, unlike POP which copies it to your local PC. The choice is yours.

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