Items Covered in this Edition:
These programs can be run by any user on departmental SGI workstations. They can also be run by any user on research SGIs except the super- user. The programs can archive a single file, the contents of a directory, or an entire disk. Thus, each user has the opportunity to write important files to tape and remove these files from the SGI disk. A 'system backup' option exists for research SGI system administrators who are logged in as 'guest'.
If you have a local 1/4-inch or DAT tape drive on your research SGI, contact Marty about modifying these programs so that these programs access your local drives. The inorganic3 SGI has a DAT.inorganic3 program, which can be run by any user on inorganic3 using the inorganic3 DAT drive.
DAT tapes have a capacity of 2 GBytes and cost $20. 1/4-inch tapes have a capacity of 150 MBytes and cost $10. Both types of tapes are available from MSC. The chemvgx and floater1 tape drives may be used by SGI users at any time, except when the DAT drive is reserved between 2am and 6am on Sunday mornings for departmental backups. If you use a tape drive, please place the "WARNING!!! Drive in use!" sign (which sits in a box on the shelf above floater1) on top of the drive to inform other users.
As described in the March 1994 Scream-Saver newsletter, important files can be compressed, reducing the size of the file by abot 40%. PLEASE COMPRESS LARGE FILES WHEN ARCHIVING IS NOT APPROPRIATE. Also, save space on your tape or floppy by compressing your files or directories before archiving. Type compress filename to compress and rename your file filename.Z. Type uncompress filename.Z to uncompress this file. Directories can be compressed, and wildcard characters (* and ?) can be used. GNUzip does a better compression. Type gzip filename to compress and rename your file filename.gz; to uncompress, type gunzip filename.gz.
The new network stability and UID changes can also result in a consolidation of your files and directories by putting your home directory on one disk for all SGIs. You can then work with any SGI and log into the same directory. You won't need to 'ftp' between machines to share data files. You won't need copies of files on different machines. Several users have already taken advantage of this consolidation of home directories. If you would like your home directory consolidated, contact Marty.
The Indys have been upgraded to IRIX 5.2, which has improved their speed. All other SGIs will NOT be upgraded to IRIX 5.2 until SGI forces us to do so, due to possible incompatibilities with molecular modeling software. The current version of IRIX for the Indigos is IRIX 4.0.5F. Type uname -a to list your current version. Contact Marty if you want to upgrade to 4.0.5F. Other new and updated software include upgrades of the Cambridge Structure Database on the SGIs and the UCS vax system, Cerius2 version 1.0 (which replaces Cerius v3.2), and xmol (Instructional cluster only), a molecular visualization tool for Xwindows.
Lastly, this Scream-Saver marks a change in the purpose of this newsletter. In the past, the newsletter has described how to use the UNIX- based SGI network. Old newsletters are available near floater1 in the MSC. In the future, this newsletter will largely describe the status of the SGI network.