Using Your Macintosh

on the Harvard Network

Using Your Macintosh on the Harvard Network

The Harvard Computer Society

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Overview of Harvard's Resources1

Connecting Your Macintosh to the Harvard Network1

Macintosh Networking Protocols2

AppleTalk: What is it?2

TCP/IP: What is it?2

AppleTalk Basics3

Zones: How is the AppleTalk network organized?3

The Chooser: How do I get started with the AppleTalk network?3

Using AppleShare3

Logging onto Other Computers: How do I use files and programs on other Macs on campus?3

Site-Licensed Software: What is it?4

Harvard's Site-Licensed Software: How do I use it?4

Printing5

Desktop Printers: What is a desktop printer?5

Creating a Desktop Printer: How do I do it?5

Selecting a Desktop Printer: How do I do it?5

Sharing a Desktop Printer: How do I share a desktop printer with other Macs?5

Using Your FAS Unix Account7

Unix: What is it?7

Your FAS Unix Account: What is it and how do I connect to it from my Mac?7

Your FAS Unix Account's Password: How do I change it?8

Printing Budgets8

Your FAS Laser Printing Budget: How do I check it?8

Your FAS Laser Printing Budget: How do I add funds to it?8

Email with Pine9

Pine: How do I use email on fas?9

Running Pine and accessing its main menu9

Canceling an action9

Sending an email9

Receiving and reading an email10

Replying to an email10

Forwarding an email10

Deleting an email10

Viewing an email that I have sent10

Saving an email to another folder11

Accessing emails that I have saved11

Selecting a printer11

Printing an email11

Creating nicknames for individuals' email addresses12

Re-justifying sentences or paragraphs12

Fixing a garbled screen12

Email with Eudora13

Eudora: What is it?13

Checking your email13

Sending an email13

Replying to an email13

Forwarding an email13

Saving an email to another mailbox14

Viewing an email in another mailbox14

Attaching a file13

Using the Address Book14

Filtering messages15

Additional help with Eudora15

Transferring Files via FTP16

Fetch: What is it?16

Starting an FTP session16

Transferring a file16

Managing files and directories16

The World Wide Web17

Uniform Resource Locators: What do web addresses mean?17

Creating Web Pages: Can I create my own web page?17

Useful Web Pages: What are some useful places on the web?17

Netscape: What is Netscape?18

Netscape: How do I navigate in Netscape?18

Appendix A: Setting Up an AppleShare Server

Appendix B: Basic Pico and Pine Editing Commands

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Using Your Macintosh on the Harvard Network

The Harvard Computer Society

Page 1

Overview of Harvard's Resources

Harvard provides a wide range of computing resources to all students. A state-of-the-art high speed network connects computer labs, dorm rooms, and central computing resources, allowing you to access Harvard's facilities from many points across campus. Every student receives an account on Harvard's Unix login cluster, fas.harvard.edu (fas).You can connect to fas directly from your own computer or from any one of the public computers located across campus. In addition, you can make use of the network for accessing the Internet, running software from Harvard's servers, and printing, among other things.

Harvard's campus network is also connected to the Internet, the global computer network that has earned floods of media attention in the last few years. Once you have plugged your computer into the network jack in your dorm, your computer will not only be able to communicate with any computer on campus, it will also be able to communicate with any computer connected to the Internet.

Connecting Your Macintosh to the Harvard Network

The Pink Book: FAS Computer Services Guide To Accounts and Network Connections For Studentsis a comprehensive guide to setting up your computer, your network connection, and your Unix account. Copies of the Pink Book are distributed during new student registration, in addition to being available at the Help Desk in Science Center B-13 at all times. For detailed information on connecting your computer to the network, the Pink Book is the authoritative reference. In brief, however, the steps of networking your computer are as follows:

Obtain an Ethernet adapter card for your computer. Ethernet cards may be purchased during the Freshman Computer Fair or at the TPC Showroom at 1751 Cambridge Street.
Fill out the FAS Network Connection Worksheet in the Pink Book. This involves gathering several key pieces of information you will need in the next step. In particular you will need to obtain the data jack number that is written on the Ethernet wall jack you intend to plug your computer into, and the Ethernet address of your Ethernet card. An Ethernet address is a series of 12 characters that should look something like 01-23-45-AB-CD-EF; in most cases it will be physically written on the card itself.
Run the NetConnect program. This can be done from any computers which are already networked, such as those in the Science Center. Using Netscape, visit and follow the on-screen instructions, filling in the information from your FAS Network Connection Worksheet.
Activate your FAS Email Account. This is done by telnetting to fas and logging in with the username and password you received when you arrived at campus. The first time you log in, you will have to answer a short quiz on computer use policies.
Once you have both run NetConnect and activated your FAS Email Account, you should expect an email informing you that your network connection request has been processed. It may take up to three to five business days for this to occur, although it is often faster.
Once you receive this email, you may install your Ethernet card into your computer and plug it into the wall jack.
Finally, run the FAS Network Installer Disk to set up the necessary software.

If at any point in this process you need assistance, you may obtain help from FAS Computer Services.

The Help Desk, located in room B-13 in the basement of the Science Center is the source for all your computing assistance needs. You may visit the Help Desk in person, or contact it by email at , or phone at 495-9000. Trained User Assistants are available for appointments at your room to help you network your computer.

Macintosh Networking Protocols

AppleTalk

What is it?

AppleTalk is a network protocol—a language of sorts that allows computers on a network to share information. AppleTalk was designed by Apple Computer to allow Macintosh computers to communicate with each other. For instance, you could use the AppleTalk network to copy a document (say, a paper you're writing) from your computer to a friend's computer so that you can finish your work while away from your dorm. You can also run programs over the network. If you need to use a spreadsheet program to create a lab report for your chemistry class, you can run one of the programs that Harvard has licensed for use over the network without paying extra money. You can even use the AppleTalk network to print to a friend's printer or to one of the printers located in Harvard's computer labs.

TCP/IP

What is it?

TCP/IP is the pair of network protocols used on the Internet—that is, it's the language that computers connected to the Internet use to talk to one another. Using TCP/IP, your Macintosh will be able to access your computer account at Harvard (or anywhere else in the world) using a TELNET program. You'll be able you use the World Wide Web to find information about your favorite band or to buy movie tickets for tomorrow's show.

Note that while AppleTalk is usually used for connecting Macs with Macs, TCP/IP is used to connect two computers of any type—Mac, PC, or any other kind of computer.

AppleTalk Basics

Zones

How is the AppleTalk network organized?

AppleTalk networks are organized into zones, which are simply groups of computers within the network. At Harvard, student computers are zoned by dorm or upperclass house, so if you live in Grays dorm, your computer will be located in the AppleTalk network called Student Net (Grays). Other important zones are the HUSC-UNIX and FAS Computer Services zones, which contain file servers and printers that you can use from your dorm. (If you're curious, "HUSC" stands for "Harvard University Science Center," and Unix is an operating system, analgous to Mac OS or Windows 98.)

The Chooser

How do I get started with the AppleTalk network?

To use the AppleTalk network to print or view files on other computers, you'll need to use a program called the Chooser. To start the Chooser, open the Apple Menu (at the upper-left corner of your Mac's screen) and select the Chooser menu item. You should see a dialog with three boxes. If, however, you only see two boxes (as if the boxes on the left were merged into one), your computer is not correctly connected to the AppleTalk network; to fix this problem, you should contact your User Assistant.

The box in the upper-left corner contains several icons, each of which represents a different method of accessing the network. Most often, you'll see an icon called AppleShare in addition to several types of printer icons. The box in the lower left corner shows all of the AppleTalk network's zones.

If you click on an AppleTalk service in the first box and a zone in the second box, the third box (on the right) will show all of the services of the selected type in the selected zone. For instance, if you click on AppleShare and then click on Student Net (Leverett), you'll see all of the Macintosh file servers in Leverett House.

Using AppleShare

Logging onto Other Computers

How do I use files and programs on other Macs on campus?

AppleShare uses AppleTalk to allow your Macintosh to access files and programs on other Macintosh computers on Harvard's network. To use AppleShare, you'll need to use the Chooser (see the section called The Chooser for more information). Open the chooser and select AppleShare from the box in the top-left corner. Select a zone in the bottom-left corner, and then double-click a file server in the box on the right. You should see a login dialog appear. This dialog allows you to select how you would like to log on to the server. The easiest way to log on is to select Guest, which allows you to log on anonymously. If the server will not allow guest connections, the Guest option will be grayed. In this case, you can log in as a registered user by filling out a username and password for this server. Note that this username/password is not the username and password for your FAS account—it is assigned by whoever runs the server you are accessing! If you don't know what to put in this box, you probably aren't a registered user and shouldn't waste your time trying to log in this way.

Once you've logged in, you'll see a list of available volumes. A volume is simply a disk to which you are allowed to connect.

Select the volume to which you'd like to connect by clicking on its name (not the checkbox to its right), and then you should click OK. If you were successful, you should see an icon with the name of the volume appear on your desktop. Congratulations—you're connected! You can now use files and programs on the file server just as you would use your own computer. Of course, you're subject to the permissions the owner of the volume has assigned. For instance, if the owner of the volume doesn't want you saving files on the volume you're using, you won't be allowed to do so.

If you're curious about the little boxes to the right of the volume names in the dialog pictured above, those checkboxes allow you to designate volumes to which you'd like to be connected whenever you start your computer. If you check one of those boxes, your computer will automatically prompt you for a password (if necessary) and log you on to the volume every time you start up your computer.

Site-Licensed Software

What is it?

Maybe you're wondering, "Do I really have to buy a copy of Photoshop or Quicken even though I don't plan on using them often?" Well, you're in luck. Harvard has bought site licenses of many commercially available software packages—much of the software you'll need to use is available in this form.

You probably know that software sold by companies can be easily copied from one computer to another. What you're paying for when you buy software is not the software itself but a license to use the software. The software you're using is someone else's intellectual property, and they're selling you the rights to use it. In fact, most software companies don't care whether you actually have multiple copies of the software—what matters is that you only use one copy per license at a time. It would be silly to buy a copy of each software package for each student, so Harvard buys just a few hundred licenses for each software package, and they make sure that there is a license for every copy of the software in use at any given time.

Harvard keeps track of who is using its software by using a program called KeyServer. Harvard's site-licensed software is modified so that when you start a program, it asks the KeyServer for an electronic key. The program only launches if it is successful in getting a key from the KeyServer. When the program exits, the key is returned. Since the KeyServer only has one key per license, this ensures that all copies of each software package that are in use are being used legally.

What's the catch? Well, since Harvard doesn't buy a license for each student, it is possible (though unlikely) that you won't be allowed to use the software you need whenever you want. If too many people are using Photoshop when you need to design a graphic—well, you're out of luck.

Harvard's Site-Licensed Software

How do I use it?

So, without further ado, we'll show you how to find Harvard's site-licensed software. Before you start, though, you should make sure that you have all the necessary KeyServer software installed—if you haven't run the FAS Network Installer disk yet, now would be a good time to do so.

The first thing you'll need to do is to connect to the General Software AppleShare file server in the FAS Computer Services zone (see the previous section, AppleShare, if you don't know how to do this). Note that there's a shortcut to the usual method of connecting to a file server—just select the General Software item in the Apple Menu instead of selecting Chooser. This shortcut should have been installed by the FAS Network Installer disk. If it's not there, no big deal—just use the Chooser.

Once you can see the General Software icon on your desktop, double-click it to open it. Voilà! Just find the program you need and double-click it to launch it! You can even copy the program to your own hard drive by dragging the folder to your hard drive icon; this will make the program run faster, though you still need to have the KeyServer available to run the program.

Printing

Desktop Printers

What is a desktop printer?

Your Macintosh keeps track of printers it knows about by placing an icon on your desktop. Each icon represents a printer on the network or a printer to which your Macintosh is directly connected. You'll notice that exactly one of these icons will have a thick black outline around it. This outline indicates that the printer this icon represents is the active printer—the printer to which all printed documents should go. When you select Print… from an application, this printer is the one that will actually print your document.

Note that if you double-click the printer, you can see the documents that are printing or waiting to print on that printer.

Creating a Desktop Printer

How do I do it?

In order to create a desktop printer, you use the Chooser. (If you're unfamiliar with the Chooser, see the section above called The Chooser.) You'll need to know the type of printer you wish to use, the zone in which it lives, and its name.

Open up the Chooser and look through the icons in the upper left corner to find an icon whose name corresponds to your printer's model. There are two special cases. First, if you have an Apple laser printer, you should just use the Laser 8 printer; there won't be an icon specifically for your model of laser printer. Second, if you plan on using one of the printers in the Science Center, choose Laser 8 ($/¢). These dollar and cent signs indicate that you'll have to pay from your personal printer budget when using these printers.

Select the proper zone in the bottom left box, and then find the printer's name in the list on your right. Depending on the printer you have chosen, you will either see a button labelled Create or a Setup… button and two radio buttons for setting the background printing status. In the former case, simply click on the printer's name in the list and then click the Create button. In the latter case, simply click on the printer's name (you'll probably want to turn on background printing as well). Exit the Chooser.