UC Santa Cruz - Economics - About the Department - Facilities - Computing

Economics Department

Engineering 2, 401
Santa Cruz, CA 95064

Phone: (831) 459-2743
Email: econ_web@ucsc.edu

Computing

OVERVIEW

Computing facilities for Economics faculty, visitors, lecturers, staff and graduate students are available both within the department and in public access areas on the campus. Faculty, visitors, lecturers, staff and graduate student offices are all equipped with PCs or Macs. Each grad student office has 3 PCs, other offices have one PC or Mac. The department does not have its own computing lab. The LEEPS center has a computing lab, but is not open for department or public use.

Economics has 2 servers. Barter, the department server, is a SUN Sunblade 150, running the Solaris operating system. All economics grad students, faculty, visitors and staff are given accounts on this machine. Barter serves files and applications to Macs and PCs, has several UNIX based programs, serves webpages (Apache) and can be used for backups and group projects. Barter is not a mail server. Our other server, cash, is the server for the LEEPS Center, and is a Mac X serve, running OS X server.

thernet (100 mb) is available in all offices (4 active ports in each of the grad offices) and in the large conference room (499) (see a list of active ports by room). At some point the E2 building will have wireless (Cruznet) connectivity. When wireless is enabled, wireless should also be available in all areas of the department.

Network printing for faculty, visitors and lecturers is available in the faculty mail room (401F), where we have 2 HP Laserjet 2300dtn printers (both are duplex enabled). This room also has a fax and 2 copiers, one of which will scan documents to PDF (instructions). A color Laserjet 4650n is available in room 401.

Grad students may print to a Lanier LD122 multifunction printer, copier, scanner in room 410. Students must purchase a printing card from Campus Printing and Copying Services. Printing or copying costs $ .08 per page (locations where printing cards may be purchased). The Lanier will also scan documents to PDFs. Once scanned, documents are saved on a barter webpage at http://barter.ucsc.edu/econ/pdfs/. Grads can go to this webpage and download the scans. Scanning is free. All of these rooms are locked and only available to department members with a key.

There are also a number of public computing labs on campus including Social Sciences 1 135, Ming Ong at Merrill, Kresge 317, Baskin Engineering 109 and others (see IC Labs for information on campus wide student computing resources). These labs are all run by UCSC Information Technology Services (ITS). See their webpage or the student consultant in the lab for questions concerning any of these resources. Space in these labs may be reserved for classroom use.

See the Economics department software for a listing of software packages available for the department. Also see the databases for data listings. Standard operating system and application software is also detailed.

Three types of computers are used in the Economics department, Windows PCs, Macs, and UNIX.

Most of the PCs in the Economics department run Windows XP Pro (we have a few machines running 2000). All Econ Windows computers run a standardized configuration. Most Econ PCs are Dells, either Optiplex desktops or Laitude laptops. We also have a small number of older Gateway E series PCs.

All of the Department staff as well as several professors and lecturers use Macs. No Macs are available for public use by econ grad students or faculty/visitors. The LEEPS lab is equipped with 16 Macs (but is not open to the public).

All econ grad students, faculty, visitors and staff are given accounts on the department's SUN Unix (Solaris) server, barter. You should have received a sheet with your login name, password and some instructions. See Dave (Room 427, davec@ucsc.edu) if you need help accessing barter.

UCSC ITS runs several computers for use by members of the UCSC campus. "unix.ic.ucsc.edu" is available for faculty, lecturers, visitors, staff and students. This is a webserver and fileserver. Home pages have URLs like http://people.ucsc.edu/~youraccountname (substitute correct accountname). The accountname is the same as the UCSC email account name. All of the UCSC ITS computers run a flavor of UNIX called "Athena." You will need an ITS Athena account for access. See their web page for info on getting an ITS account.

Use your ITS account for email. If you prefer using a web based email account, UCSC's email program (Cruzmail) has a web-based component (WebMail). Cruzmail can be used with POP or IMAP, although Eudora is a poor IMAP client. Check the configuration settings for various email clients. If you prefer using an external web based email account (hotmail,yahoo, etc.), you may setup automatic forwarding of any email sent to your UCSC account to another account (see this ITS web form). It's very important that you check your ITS email; the Economics department sends a lot of important information to your ITS email.

CONNECTIN TO BARTER

There are several ways to connect to barter while using Windows. In each case, you will be asked to supply your barter login name and password. See Dave (Room 427, davec@ucsc.edu) if you have forgotten your barter password. The simplest method is to choose the barter icon on the Windows desktop, or open "Network Neighborhood" or "My Network Places", and choose "home on barter". This opens a connection between your personal barter folder (barter has other types of folders, see below) and your PC. All personal folders are reachable at \\barter.ucsc.edu\home (using 'My Network Places' or mapping a network drive), or barter.ucsc.edu (using secure telnet or ftp). You can then drag files into and out of, or work directly in your Barter folder.

'My Network Places' or 'map a network drive' types of connections are available from anywhere on the UCSC campus, except for RESNET, the student housing network. These 2 types of connections are not available off campus, as they are blocked at the campus entrance router for security purposes. SSH (client or FTP) types of connections to barter or unix.ic.ucsc.edu are available from anywhere on the internet.

To run some of the programs which are actually stored in Barter's \winapps folder, such as EViews, WinRATS or Stata, you will need to connect from 'My Network Places' or map to \\barter.ucsc.edu\winapps. But for some things you may need to "map a network drive" on Barter. In addition to making the connection, "mapping a network drive" also associates a drive letter on the PC with a Barter folder. This is necessary whenever you are making a reference on the Windows machine to some file named g:\somesasfile.sas. You may have a TSP or SAS program that references a data file stored in your personal barter folder. Anything that uses g:\ or h:\ or j:\ in the filename will need \\barter\home mapped to G: on the Windows machine (or H: to \\barter\winapps, J: to \\barter\projects). If you are not sure whether you've just opened the connection to Barter or "mapped a network drive", run the Windows Explorer Check to see if the pane on the left of the Explorer window lists G or H or J. If not, you have not mapped a drive on Barter.

When you are finished working with Barter files, you should close the connection. There are several ways to disconnect, but the easiest is to click the Start Button, choose Shut Down, and then choose, logon as a different user. This does not turn the machine off and restart it, it justs closes the network connection. Be sure to do this, or your files on Barter will be accessible to the next user. Restarting also closes out any barter connection.

FILE SYSTEMS ON BARTER

\\barter\home-- 'Home' is a personal folder on the server. Only the account owner has access to the home folder. All faculty, lecturers/visitors, grads and staff with barter accounts have this folder. Like all the server drives it can be accessed from Windows, Macintosh, or UNIX computers. but only after you login or sign in. Here's how a user named SMITH would access their files:

From a Macintosh: Go to the Finder/Go/Connect to Server. Type barter into the server address box, then choose connect and login (use your barter login and password). Choose home for your personal folder (or any of the other folders). Your barter folder will then appear as an icon on your desktop.

From Windows: use My Network Places, Network Neighborhood or Map a network drive. \\barter.ucsc.edu\home reaches user's personal folders.

From UNIX: Secure telnet (SSH) to Barter and login. Your home directory will be named /export/faculty/smith. You may also run secure telnet or ftp sessions from the Mac (run Terminal and type ssh barter or run the Fugu program) or Windows (use SSH).

Note that all three of these give you access to the same files. "F:\" from Windows, "Faculty" from Macs, or "/f" from UNIX are the same.

Your home folder is probably the best place to keep your files. Barter's user folders are stored on a RAID array, are backed up every night on a separate disk, and also backed up to tapes. We make a permanent tape at the end of the school and calendar year. Your files will be accessible to you from anywhere with an internet connection.

\\barter\winapps -- contains application programs. You cannot put your files there since the filesystem is read only. Run Eviews, Stata or WinRATS from \\barter\winapps.

\\barter\projects -- is reserved for very large data sets and shared projects. A group of barter users will be able to create and modify files in a common folder. Other users will have no access to these shared folders. See Dave davec@ucsc.edu) about making a directory on J: for these types of uses.

\\barter\cave -- is reserved for large data sets used by one or a group of barter users. The difference in cave and projects is that cave is not backed up. The assumption is that data have been read onto barter from a CD/DVD and there is no need to back the data up (as the user has the CD/DVD for backup).

\\barter\webpages -- contains web files. Barter is a web server (it runs Apache) and all users have a web directory on barter. If your barter account name is smith, your barter web folder is \\barter\webpages\grads\smith (if a student) or webpages\faculty\smith (if staff or faculty). If you are using UNIX, these web folders would be /export/webpages/faculty/smith or /export/webpages/grads/smith. If you created a webpage named index.html and put it in your web folder, your URL would be http://econ.ucsc.edu/faculty/smith or http://econ.ucsc.edu/grads/smith.

File quotas are normally 250Mb for student accounts on barter. See Dave (davec@ucsc.edu) if you have a reasonable need for more space.

MAKE BACKUPS

Finally realize that computers are complex and not 100% reliable. Disks do fail and when they do, the files saved on them will be gone. It is not unusual to see a student who has lost some work due to a diskette failure. Floppy diskettes are the least reliable, USB keys, zip drives, writeable CDs and hard disks are safer but not certain. To protect your work keep at least two copies of your important files. Put one copy on barter. We make frequent tape backups of the F, G, J and W disks, so there is some protection for files saved there. SAVE OFTEN! Computers can and often do crash or freeze up. When that happens, you'll lose all of your work up to the point when you last did a save. So to protect your hard work, do the "save" command often. Every 10 minutes is reasonable.

STORE PERSONAL FILES

Barter users are urged to put their files in their barter home folder, and work directly off barter or use the home folder on barter for backups.

Grad office PCs have a folder on the PC (c:\public) which is also available for storing files, although it is less desirable because it is not backed up. You may want to make a folder inside public with your name (c:\public\smith).

CD/DVD DRIVE

Most of our PCs will read and write CDs and read DVDs. Windows XP has CD writing software built in, just load a writeable CD and drag files into the CD window, then give the File/Write command. Windows 2000 machines with a CD burner will have the Roxio Easy CD creator installed. This program provides a graphical user interface where you can drag files onto the CD and then record.

HOW TO USE SECURE FTP (FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL)

To transfer files between one computer and another over the network, you should use a "secure ftp" program. SSH, Secure File Transfer Client, is the standard Windows program used here, and is available on all PCs. Macs running OS X have the 'Fugu' program. Both will open 2 windows, one on the local machine and another on the remote host computer. Drag and drop files, or select files and use the upload/download command.

HOW TO CHANGE PASSWORDS

Use a secure shell client (SSH) to log into barter, then type the command '/opt/sbin/chpwd youraccountname' (substitute your own barter account name). Then enter your new password. You will need to enter it twice (for verification).

The barter password is used to access files on \\barter\home, \\barter\winapps etc.. The passwords for UCSC machines, (unix.ic), email, and Melvyl are different. Passwords must be at least 6 characters long and must contain at least two letters and one number or special character.

o change your UCSC password (email, unix.ic), visit https://www2.ucsc.edu/its/cgi-bin/password