Rev 2.0

New User Computing Guide

This document was created to assist Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) employees and collaborators in familiarizing themselves with computing resources.

To modify this document, please contact Charles Cline.

Table of Contents

New User Computing Guide

Table of Contents

Introduction to SCCS

Getting Computing Help

Password Policy

How to Change Your Password

Network Storage and Drives

Overview

Clean Up and Proper Use of Network Storage

Backups

Restores

OpenAFS

Windows Authentication

Email

Address Books

Outlook 2003 Mailbox Cleanup

Recovering Deleted Items

Printing

Adding a Printer

What do I do when I suspect the print server is down?

Wireless Networking and the Visitor Network

Document Management

Remote Access

Citrix

Introduction to SCCS

The Scientific Computing and Computing Services Group (SCCS) is dedicated to providing leadership and support in computing and communications to the laboratory as a whole. SCCS is located in building 50. Some of the different areas within SCCS are:

Computing Security -

Database Team -

Email -

Telecommunications -

UNIX -

Getting Computing Help

Local administrators who are responsible for IT support can be found at For fastest resolution, the recommended way for requesting computing assistance is via email. Most groups/departments have an email address that will generate a ticket from the contents of the email and route it the appropriate team. Two examples of these email addresses are ithelp-lcls (for the LCLS project) and ithelp-ppa (for the PPA Directorate). If you are unsure of your group, you may send an email to ithelp and it will be routed appropriately.

Password Policy

The current password policies as of this writing are:

  • Maximum age of 180 days or 6 months
  • Minimum of 8 characters
  • Cannot be dictionary words, your name, your account name, or common strings
  • Use 3 of 4 character sets (upper, lower, number, special)
  • Memory of 5 previous passwords
  • Lockout of account after 5 bad passwords in a 5 minute interval for a period of 30 minutes.

The most recent password policy can be found at

You may also find suggestions for selecting good passwords at

How to Change Your Password

If you have a UNIX and Windows accounts, it is recommended that you change your UNIX password first, then your Windows password. The most recent instructions on how to change your passwords can be found at

To change your password in UNIX:

  1. Log into your UNIX shell on a Solaris or Linux system.
  2. Type: password
  3. Follow the prompt to change your password using the criteria above.
  4. If you use the /bin/passwd program, it will not change your login password in most cases -- rather it will claim the old password is incorrect.
  5. The change to the password takes place immediately.

To change the password for an alternate account in UNIX:

  1. Log into your UNIX shell on a Solaris or Linux system.
  2. Type: password <alternate-account>
  3. Follow the prompt to change your password using the criteria above.
  4. If you use the /bin/passwd program, it will not change your login password in most cases -- rather it will claim the old password is incorrect.
  5. The change to the password takes place immediately.

To change your password in Windows:

Note: Do not log in from a MAC or from Win95/98 to change your Windows password. (the change may appear to be successful but could leave you with an old or null Windows password). Be sure you are not logged onto a Windows machine in any other location (and do not have scheduled processes running) or after you change your password there will be a conflict causing your account to be locked. In case something should go wrong and you need help, it is strongly suggested you do NOT change your password just prior to leaving SLAC for the day or weekend. Change your password just before a break or lunch so someone will be available to help if there is a problem.

  1. Log into your account as usual, from a Windows machine.
  2. Once logged in, press the CTRL-ALT-DEL keys all at once.
  3. Click the "Change Password" button in the dialog box that comes up.
  4. Follow the prompt to change your password using the criteria above, using TAB or mouse to change fields.
  5. Windows password changes should go into affect within an hour.

Windows users can also change their Windows password using this web page:

To change your MCC or "SCP" password:

  1. Start a terminal session on mcc.slac.stanford.edu (use ssh rather than telnet)
  2. Type set password and follow the prompts

To change your Oracle password on the SLAC_TCP instance (which has most of the Oracle user accounts):

You can change a password on the SLAC_TCP system by going to the following URL. You will be prompted for your Oracle account and its current password and offered the opportunity to enter a new password.

Note: If you have multiple accounts to change on SLAC_TCP, you will need to completely exit all browsers and re-enter, using the above URL, for each subsequent accounts.

For accounts on other instances of Oracle at SLAC:

You will need to log onto each instance using SQL Plus and issue the "Password" command.

Network Storage and Drives

Overview

Your computer will begin its logon process which will create a standard SLAC environment. This environment includes connections to multiple networks locations.

SLAC staff and users are encouraged to keep their files in network folders where possible. Files in these network folders will be backed up and available for restoration if deleted or otherwise lost. These folders will appear on any SLAC domain computer when you use your SLAC account. Hence, your network files will be available to you from different machines. Furthermore, since these standard mappings are visible to all users, files can be shared with other people. It is suggested that you store your data on network storage rather than your local computer drive for the backup and sharing abilities listed above.

Each user will see a U, V, and Z drive. They are connected to the following network locations:

Drive Letter Location

U: \\slac\my storage\users

V: \\slac\my storage\groups

Z: \\slac\my storage\users\user initial\username

Clean Up and Proper Use of Network Storage

Please do not use the Z drive and other network drives for storing:

  • Program Files
    There is no need for multiple copies of Microsoft Office executables, etc. to be on the network drive which is on RAID storage and adds to the backup load.
  • Personal multi-media files (mp3, avi, mov, mpg, etc.)

Please clean up periodically so that network storage does not carry a lot of temporary and junk files and add to maintenance and backup load. When cleaning up your Z drive, please do not work off the U drive except to copy files from another user. The U drive is just a reflection of ALL USER home directories (their Z drives). Therefore, if you delete a file on the U drive, you will be deleting the same file on the Z drive.

If you maintain files used by your department, it is better to keep them on the V drive group space. Having files in a user home directory makes it harder to clean up home directories and delete user accounts when people leave. Ask your department Windows Administrator regarding your department group space on the V drive.

In order for administration duties to be performed, the permissions for files and directories on all network drives must include:

  • System: Full Control
  • Administrators: Full Control

Backups

Full backups are done once a month, usually on the last weekend of the month. A full backup set from the month before is kept off-site (vaulting).
Incremental backups are done during weekends between Full backups, and Daily Differentials are done during the weekdays.

Each Monthly Full Backup is retained for one year. The Daily Differential and Mid-Month Incremental backups are retained for one month.

Backups are performed on a daily basis and should be viewed primarily as a disaster recovery mechanism, not as an archival system. This means that the backups are not retained forever. See below for the backup retention times.

How long does a file have to exist before it is sure to be on a backup?
A file has to be on the server overnight for it to be picked up by nightly backup.

How long after a file has been backed up do I have to request it be restored?
Since only Full backup is kept for one year, a file has to have existed across the monthly Full backup cycle for it to be available for restore for up to one year. If a file (or a particular version of a file) existed shorter than this monthly cycle, then it will only be available for restore for one month.

Restores

Copies of changed files on network storage are created daily at 5:00AM, 12:00PM and 5:00PM, so copies of changed files and folders are created 3 times a day, 7 days a week. Users can restore files on their own by following these instructions:

Step 1: Identify a file or folder to restore

Identify the file or folder to restore (Note: if a file was deleted it will not show up unless you use the "View" button on a folder in step 3). To restore a file or folder, right click on a file or folder – you will see a window similar to the one figure 1.1. Click “Properties”.

Figure 1.1

Step 2: Viewing Previous Versions

After opening the “Properties” window, click on the “Previous Versions” tab as seen in figure 1.2

Figure 1.2

Step 3: Viewing File or Folder

Preview the file or folder to make sure it is the informationthat you want, highlight the version of file or folder you wish to view and click on the view button. This window shows up to 64 copies of the file or folder (Copies are only created if the file has changed). You may see this window in figure 1.3.

Figure 1.3

STEP 4: Restoring File or Folder

Once you have determined which file or folder to restore, highlight the file or folder you wish to restore, click on either the Copy or Restore buttons. Details and ramifications of each action are listed below:

(Note: you cannot restore a file or folder that you do not have write access to).

View: This is to open the file or folder to view it. This is a handy action if your not sure which file or folder you wish to restore or to view the contents before restoring or copying the file. It is recommended that you use the view function to find the version of the file or folder you are looking for before copying or restoring it.

Copy: This option allows you to copy the file or folder to some other location that is not the original location. This is handy when you need to get information without over writing the current copy.

Restore: This action restores the selected file or folder to the original location, over writing the current file or folder in that location. Unless there is another backup of the file or folder, all currently in the file or folder is lost and is reverted back to the state of the Snapshot. Use the restore action with EXTREME care!

NOTE: Both the Copy and Restore Actions DELETE that copy of the data. So once you have decided to Copy the information to another location or you have decided to restore the information to the original location, that Shadow Copy is removed from the list and CANNOT be restored or copied again.

Recommendations

Do steps 1, 2, and 3 once you discover that you need a file or an entire folder recovered. Before doing step 4, use the view button to view the contents of the file or folder to make sure that it is the information you need recovered. Use the copy action to copy the information to a new location for use. At that point you can rename the file or folder to ensure that no other information is accidentally deleted. Use the Restore action ONLY if the file or folder was deleted. If you use the restore action and the file or folder exists, then the entire content is reversed to that copy. It is therefore recommended you restore information to a new location. Also, when you restore from a previous version, once you have restored the file or folder, it is removed from the previous versions tab.

Restore Request

If the above instructions do not contain the needed file, users may request the restoration of their files or directories through the WindowsFiles Restore Request by going to The SCCS system administrator has to carry out the restore for you (since higher privilege accounts are needed for this operation), as there is no user-initiated restore available. We will try to restore your files within a day, depending on other backup/restore jobs that we are running. Sometime due to incomplete information, we may need to ask more questions in order to restore the correct version of the file.

OpenAFS

OpenAFS for Windows gives the capabilities ofthe AFS distributed filesystemto Microsoft Windows operating systems, allowing you to map drives to AFS paths. The OpenAFS software is located on and installation instructions can be found at

Windows Authentication

When a Windows computer connects to a server or other remote machine, you might be prompted to enter your credentials. Normally Windows passes your credentials to the remote machine without you having to enter them – this is called Pass-Through Authentication. In instances where you are asked to enter your credentials you will see a window similar to the one in figure 1.4. For Username enter slac\usernameand Password is your Windows password.

Figure 1.4: Authentication Window

Email

Address Books

There are three kinds of address books in Outlook:

  • Global Address List (GAL) - This is the primary address list for our organization's Exchange e-mail system. All SLAC e-mail addresses are put here automatically, whether they have Exchange accounts or not.
  • Outlook Address Book - This is actually what you see as your Contacts folder.
  • Personal Address Book - For those e-mail addresses you want to keep private and store on your own computer. We do not recommend the use of Personal Address Book, most of the time it only adds an extra layer of confusion.

Adding Contacts to Outlook

You can add Contacts as another address book to be searched when you are composing e-mail. On the menu bar:

  • Select Tools;
  • E-mail Accounts;
  • Click on Add a new directory or address book;
  • Click the Next button;
  • Click on Additional Address Books;
  • Press the Next button;
  • On the next window select Outlook Address Book;
  • Press Next;
  • Click OK;
  • Restart Outlook.

After Outlook is restarted you will need to:

  • Right click on Contacts;
  • Select Properties;
  • Click the Outlook Address Book tab and make sure the "Show this folder as an e-mail address book" is checked.

Changing the way Names Appear in Contacts

To change the sort order of an Address Book:

  • From the menu bar select Tools;
  • E-mail Accounts;
  • Select the View or Change Existing Directories or Address Books option;
  • Click Next;
  • Click the Change button;
  • You can change the "Show names by" setting here if you want;
  • Then press Close.

Setting Order of Address Books

If people use the Global Address List, they'll want it at the top of the search order. Others prefer to have Contacts at the top of the search order; it's really a matter of preference and can be changed any time. To change the order of the Outlook Address Book:

  • Select Tools;
  • Address Book;
  • In the Address Book dialog box:
  • Select Tools;
  • Select Options;
  • In the "Show this address list first" drop-down list select the address book you want automatically displayed each time the Address Book or a Select Names dialog box opens;
  • To change the order in which the address books appear click the up or down arrow on the right side.

Outlook 2003 Mailbox Cleanup

Do you know how big your mailbox is? What is the default size limit of an Outlook/Exchange mailbox? How much e-mail are you storing? What happens when you're near the limit? It is important to understand the answers to these questions so you aren't prevented from sending and/or receiving e-mail.

The default mailbox size limit is 300MB. The limit is set up by SLAC's E-mail Administrators and can be increased upon request, by sending an email to .

As you reach your limit, you'll get a message about the possibility of being unable to send or receive messages (when approaching ~250MB). Don't panic, with these first warnings you are still fully able to send and receive email messages. However, if you don't do some cleanup you'll eventually receive some more warnings about not being able to send messages (when approaching ~300MB). Finally, if you still don't clean up your mailbox, you'll eventually be unable to receive messages at all (once limit is reached @350MB).

What can you do?

In Outlook 2003 there is a tool called Mailbox Cleanup used to manage the size of your mailbox. You can use this tool to view the size of your mailbox and individual folders. It can alsolocate any items that are older than a certain date or itemslarger than a certain size. You can also View or Empty items in your Deleted Items folder. From the top menu in Outlook 2003 select Tools, then Mailbox Cleanup and you'll see a window like theone in figure 1.5.