USING HARVARD’S NETWORK WITH YOUR WINDOWS PC
Copyright © 1999 The President and Fellows of Harvard College All Rights Reserved TABLE OF CONTENTS
COMPUTING AT HARVARD ...... 1 Connecting Your PC to the Harvard Network ...... 1 Where to Go for Help ...... 1
INSTALLING SOFTWARE ON YOUR PC ...... 2
PRINTING ...... 3 Printing Files from Lab Computers ...... 3 Printing Files from your Dorm Room ...... 3
CONNECTING TO YOUR FAS UNIX ACCOUNT FROM YOUR PC ...... 4 Changing your FAS Password ...... 4
MORE ON YOUR PRINTING BUDGET ...... 5 Checking Your FAS Laser Printing Budget...... 5 Adding Funds to Your FAS Laser Printing Budget ...... 5 A Final Note on Printing ...... 5
USING EMAIL...... 6 Email with Pine ...... 6 Email with Eudora ...... 10
TRANSFERRING FILES VIA FTP ...... 13 Starting an FTP session ...... 13 Transferring a file ...... 13 Managing files and directories ...... 13 Quieting WS_FTP ...... 14
THE WORLD WIDE WEB ...... 14 Creating Web Pages on FAS ...... 14 Useful Web Pages from FAS Computer Services ...... 14 Other Useful Web Sites at Harvard and Beyond ...... 16
IN CONCLUSION ...... 16 Using Harvard’s Network with your Windows PC The Harvard Computer Society
COMPUTING AT HARVARD 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 from your own computer or from any one of the public computers located across campus. You can use the network to access the Internet, run software from Harvard’s servers, to print to any of the many public printers, and to transfer files between computers, among other things. Whether it is to do research on the Web for an award winning paper, to send photos home to parents, or to check for email from their friends, nearly every Harvard student is in constant touch with the online world.
Connecting Your PC to the Harvard Network
The FAS Computer Services Guide To Network Connections (The Pink Book)is 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-14 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. Newer machines may contain a built- in Ethernet port; look on the back of your computer for something which looks like an oversized phone jack. If you think you might have a built-in Ethernet card but are not sure, contact a User Assistant as described below. • 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 http://www.fas.harvard.edu/network/netconnect/ 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 rules and regulations. • 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 can be much faster at times. • Once you receive this email, you may install your Ethernet card into your computer and plug it into the wall jack. Do not plug your computer into the jack before receiving this email. • Finally, run the FAS Network Installer Disk to set up the necessary software. This disk is available from the Help Desk in the Science Center if you did not receive a copy when you arrived on campus. This will set up your computer to access the network and will install several basic software packages, including Netscape Navigator, SecureCRT, Eudora, and others.
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Where to Go for Help For help at any point in this process, contact FAS Computer Services by visiting the Help Desk in Science Center B-14, by emailing [email protected], or calling 495-9000. The Help Desk is located in the Terminal Room of the Science Center. This is room B-14, which is at the bottom of the staircase down to the basement. The Help Desk is on the right wall, and is staffed during most of the day to answer all your computing questions. User Assistants are also available to come to your room and help you connect your computer to the network, or resolve any other problems. User Assistants, more commonly known as UAs, are a small army of undergrads who live in the Houses and Freshman dorms and are employed to help you resolve computing troubles. Each House and Yard area has its own email address for the local UAs—the freshman addresses are elm-help@fas, crimson- help@fas, and ivy-help@fas, one for each of the three freshman Yards—and they can also be reached by simply emailing help@fas, or going to the Help Desk and asking to set up an in-room appointment.
INSTALLING SOFTWARE ON YOUR PC Harvard provides a selection of software installation tools that you may use to install programs on your own PC. These programs have been licensed by Harvard so that you may legally install them without violating rules against copying software. These programs can be installed from a special server called Get_Connected. The FAS Computer Services Network Installer Disk will launch the Get_Connected installer when you run it, and it will also add an item to your start menu that will enable you to launch the installer again should you so desire. If you cannot find this shortcut, you can open the Get_Connected server directly: Open the Network Neighborhood by double-clicking on the icon on your desktop. If Get_Connected appears in the list of computers there, double click on it to open it. If it does not, use the Start Menu’s Find Computer feature to locate it, and then double click to open it. If prompted for a username and password, enter guest as the username and leave passwork blank. In the Get_Connected computer, double-click on the folder called softpc to open it. (softpc stands for “Software for PCs”) Inside this folder you will find an icon for the FAS Software Installer. Double-click this icon to start the installation procedure. The Get_Connected software installer will present you with a menu from which you can choose different applications to install. The software is divided into two categories, Internet Software and general Windows Software. Programs in Internet Software are installed on your computer by default when you run the FAS Network Installer Disk, but you can click on the Internet Software button to reinstall them or install additional applications. Click on Windows Software to see a menu of many different applications you can choose to install on your computer. Click the button next to the program(s) you desire, and follow the on-screen prompts to install the software. A few of the most often used programs available from Get_Connected in the Windows Software group include: Corel WordPerfect 8.0 and Quattro Pro 8.0, Adobe Photoshop 5.0, Dr. Solomon’s Anti-virus, the file viewers Adobe Acrobat Reader, Ghostscript and Ghostview, the mathematics programs Maple V and Stata. The Internet Software group contains SecureCRT Telnet, Netscape, Eudora, QWS3270, and WS_FTP. Unfortunately, due to recent changes in licensing policy by Microsoft, Harvard is no longer able to offer Microsoft applications on the Get_Connected server. A more extensive set of programs can be found in the various computer labs across campus. These programs include Adobe PageMaker and Acrobat Distiller, CorelDraw, Macromedia Director, Mathematica, Quicken, Microsoft Office 97, and many others.
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PRINTING Harvard maintains a selection of networked laser printers for student use. Each FAS account has a printer budget associated with it that is charged whenever printing occurs; you must have a positive balance on your printer budget before you can use a networked printer. Printing is charged at the following rates:
8.5" × 11" Black and White $0.05 per page 11" × 17" Black and White $0.10 per page Color Copy Paper $0.30 per page Color High Brightness Paper $0.50 per page Color Transparency $1.00 per page Printing Files from Lab Computers
In the computer labs, you are automatically logged into the printing system when you use your username and password to log in to the lab computer. In the application from which you are printing, select the File Menu and choose Print (or however else you would normally print in that application). A printer dialog box will appear, showing various options for printing that may depend on which application you are using. In the Printer Name field, you may select the printer you wish to use from a drop-down list. Each printer is named accordingly with where it is physically located, and in addition each printer’s name is written on a label attached to that printer. Note that in most cases, the default printer will be the printer that is physically closest to the computer you are using, but you can always override this and choose any printer on campus.
Printing Files from your Dorm Room
The following instructions are intended for Windows 95/98 users. The documentation rack in room B-14 of the Science Center contains additional information on printing from your PC. Instructions for Windows NT users are somewhat different; refer to the HASCS printing documentation or see your User Assistant. After you have run the FAS Network Software Installer disk, there are a few additional steps necessary to set your computer up for networked printing. Open the Control Panel, and select the Network applet there. Click on the Client for Microsoft Networks in the list of installed network components, and click the Properties button. You will be presented with a dialog box displaying various options for Microsoft Networking. Select the Login to Domain option, and fill in FAS_DOMAIN in the Domain Name field. Select OK to exit this dialog box. You will then be asked if you want to reboot your computer at this time. Select Yes and wait while your computer reboots. When your computer has rebooted, you will be presented with a login dialog box. Use your FAS username and password here, and your computer will log you in to the printing system. Before you can print from your dorm room, you need to configure the appropriate drivers for the printer(s) you wish to use. To do this, open the Network Neighborhood icon on your desktop. You should see the computer FAS_NT1; if you do not, use the Start Menu’s Find Computer feature to locate it. Double-click on FAS_NT1 to open it. You will see a list of all available printers. Choose the printer you wish to install by right-clicking on it and selecting Install. The drivers will automatically be downloaded from the FAS_NT1 server and the printer will be set up. From this point on, the printer will appear in your printers folder just as if it were a local printer. You will not need to repeat any of the above steps; they are part of initial set-up only. You may print to the networked printer from any application by selecting File, Print, and making sure that printer’s name appears in the Name field of the printer dialog box.
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CONNECTING TO YOUR FAS UNIX ACCOUNT FROM YOUR PC Harvard gives each of its students an account on its main Unix server, fas.harvard.edu. fas, as it is commonly known, is a collection of powerful computers running Compaq Tru64 (formerly Digital) Unix. Unix is an operating system designed around different assumptions than the Macintosh or Windows platforms. While Macs are designed to be used by one user at a time, Unix was designed to share resources among many users at once, leading to a number of differences between Unix and other operating systems such as the MacOS or Windows. First, Unix is designed around a remote use philosophy: most people use fas by connecting to it from another computer over the network; only system administrators ever sit directly at the keyboard and monitor of fas, so to speak. Networking is therefore second nature to Unix machines. Furthermore, Unix is extraordinarily stable, capable of running literally for months or years between system crashes. It also incorporates strong security features, allowing users to maintain control over their own data and prevent other users of the same computer from seeing their private data, such as email. fas provides a number of important services to the Harvard community. It serves as the campus’s central email system, handling mail delivery for over 20,000 users, provides web server capabilities to both students and staff, acts as a central relay for online talk sessions between users, among many other functions. We will discuss now some of the features of FAS which relate to the use of your Macintosh, including printing budgets, email, and file transfer. For more information on using Unix, see our Using your FAS Unix Account seminar. You connect to fas from your PC using a telnet or ssh program client. Telnet is a standard protocol for allowing a user sitting at one computer to connect to and execute programs on another computer. SSH is an improved version of telnet incorporating security and encryption measures. Harvard has site-liscenced the SecureCRT ssh program and installed it on all public computers and made it available for students to use. When using SecureCRT, make sure you are using it in ssh mode rather than telnet mode, or you will lose the security benefits of ssh. When you start SecureCRT, you will see a list of various computer hostnames available for login. Select fas.harvard.edu and press return. In computer labs, you may be prompted at this point about a “host key”; the correct answer to this question is “Accept and Save”. (This has to do with how SecureCRT stores some of its data; the way it does so is incompatible with the disk management software used by HASCS, and thus the host key data is not preserved between different login sessions. You will be prompted for your FAS username and password. Enter these, and you will be logged into FAS. After a “message of the day” containing various system notes, which is usually worth reading, you will see a command prompt like this: fas% You can type commands at this prompt, and press Enter to execute them. At this point you are in effect no longer really using your PC. You have a telnet window in front of you which may be thought of as a monitor connected to the Unix environment, to which your keyboard may send commands, and which will display the output of those commands in turn. Thus the files on your FAS window are not immediately accessible to your Mac programs, and you cannot print e-mail to your personal printer right away from the FAS screen. There are ways of doing all of these things, however, that will be described later. You will notice that telnet and ssh are both text-only protocols; you cannot see graphics or use a mouse in a telnet window. However, there is a graphical interface to Unix, called X Windows, which is available on the ws* workstations in room B-14 of the Science Center.
Changing your FAS Password To change your FAS password, type passwd at the fas% prompt and follow the on-screen instructions. If you ever forget your password, you must bring your Harvard ID to the Help Desk in room B-14 of the Science Center and speak with one of the User Assistants to get a new one. It is generally a good idea to change your password at least twice a year, even if you don’t think anyone knows it, just to be on the safe side. If you have concerns about the security of your FAS account, do not hesitate to contact the FAS Computer Services Security Team at security@fas.
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MORE ON YOUR PRINTING BUDGET There are several software utilities available on fas for managing your printer budget. Checking Your FAS Laser Printing Budget
Type usage at the fas% prompt, and you will see output resembling the following: Username: jharvard Owner: John Harvard Site: u Flags: None —————— Laser Budget —————— — Laser Usage — — Balance — Free Paid Overdraft Total Used Available Due 0.25 25.00 0.00 25.25 16.40 8.85 0.00
The Free field above refers to credits that John may have received from FAS Computer Services as a result of failed print jobs. The Paid field refers to the funds that John has contributed to his budget. The Used field details the amount of money that John has spent, in total, on laser printing. The Available field refers to John’s remaining funds. The Balance Due field refers to funds that John must deposit into his budget before he can print again to a networked laser printer. Adding Funds to Your FAS Laser Printing Budget
You can deposit funds into you budget in three ways. First, you can insert bills into the cash acceptors in room B-14 of the Science Center. The cash acceptors accept $1, $5, $10, and $20 bills. Secondly, you can type termbill at the fas% prompt to have added funds termbilled to your account. Finally, you can make a check for $10 or more out to “Harvard University” and present it to the User Assistants at the Help Desk in room B-13 of the Science Center. All additions to your budget take effect within 15 minutes. Please note that there are no refunds for unused balances.
A Final Note on Printing
Harvard’s printing architecture is exceedingly complex. The difficulties of tying together Mac, PC, and Unix printing, and of maintaining several dozen printers spread across campus, means that everything does not always work perfectly smoothly. Sometimes printers will be out of toner or may bleed ink, and very occaisionally printing budgets are charged incorrectly. If you experience any problems with printing, please see a User Assistant, either in your House or Dorm or at the Science Center Help Desk. User Assistants can credit your printer budget for any failed print jobs if necessary.
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USING EMAIL
There’s no question about it, email is hands-down the most popular use of computers at Harvard today, far surpassing writing papers or doing computer science homework assignments in terms of the amount of student time spent. All students in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences have email addresses of the form [email protected]. There are two different ways of accessing your FAS email account. First, you can connect directly to FAS and check email from there, using a Unix email client such as pine, elm or mutt. Secondly, you can run a graphical email program directly on your Macintosh, such as Eudora, Netscape Mail., or Outlook Express.
We will discuss the two most popular of these programs here, Pine and Eudora. Most students actually run both of these programs, for they have different strengths. Pine allows you to check your email from any networked computer on campus, or indeed nearly anywhere in the world, but it offers a limited text-based interface. Eudora provides a more powerful graphical user interface and built-in filtering abilities, but can only be used when you are at your own computer. Thus many students have found it is a good compromise to use Eudora when they are in their own rooms and for long-term storage of mail, and Pine when checking mail quickly from elsewhere. However, there are also students who just pick one or the other and stick with it. We highly recommend learning both Pine and Eudora and then choosing whatever combination or lack thereof best fits your own needs and desires.
Email with Pine
Pine stands for Program for Internet News and Email. Pine offers a text-based, menu-driven interface and online help, and uses the text editor Pico as the means by which you can compose, forward, and reply to emails. All of Pine’s commands are one- or two-character sequences. In the program’s main menu, all of the commands are one-character sequences; in all other menus, commands are two-character sequences explained at the bottom of the screen. To start pine, simply type pine at the fas% prompt, and press Enter. For a list of basic Pico editing commands, see Appendix: Basic Pico and Pine Editing Commands. Running Pine and accessing its main menu The first thing you will see once Pine launches is the Main Menu. This Menu lists a number of commands you can use to access your email and address book, and configure Pine to fit your needs. Each menu choice corresponds to a single keypress; just press that key to make that menu selection. Alternatively, use the arrow keys to navigate to that selection and press Enter. Canceling an action If, at any point while using Pine, you wish to cancel an action that you are in the middle of performing (e.g., composing a message, saving an email to a folder, etc.), type Control-C. When prompted to cancel the action, type Y. Accessing your Inbox You can go to your Inbox by typing i or selecting FOLDER INDEX from the mail menu. In your Inbox, you will see all your new mail, plus any recent mail which you have not yet saved elsewhere or deleted You can scroll up and down the listing using the arrow keys, and view a message by pressing Enter. Once you’ve read the message, you can return to the listing by pressing i again, or simply press n and Pine will display the next unread message. The folder index shows the dates on which each email was sent, its sender(s), size in bytes, and its subject. The default sort order is by date, with the most recently arrived emails displayed at the bottom of the list, but you can press $ to change the sort order. To scroll more quickly through your INBOX folder’s emails, you can use the hyphen key (–) and space bar to page up and down, respectively.
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Sending an email with Pine To send a new message, press c, or select COMPOSE MESSAGE from the Main Menu. Pine will then launch Pico, a simple text editor common on Unix machines. In the mail editor window that appears, the cursor will be positioned in the To: field, and you can simply type in the recipients of your message. You can also enter text into the Cc: (Carbon Copy), Attachment:, and Subject: fields. If one or more recipients of your message have FAS email addresses, you need not include @fas.harvard.edu after their usernames in the To: or Cc: field. Pine will assume that those usernames refer to @fas.harvard.edu addresses. You can edit even more headers by pressing Control-R., for “rich” headers. These include the very important Bcc: field, meaning Blind Carbon Copy. The cc: field on the standard set of headers is for people to whom you wish to send the email in addition to those in the To: field, but the Bcc: is important because addresses listed there will not appear in the message as sent. That is, if you send the message to four people, two in the To: field and two in the Bcc: field, none of the four recipients will be able to see the people listed in the Bcc: header. Thus, if you want to email something to a group of people but don’t want them to have to scroll through a list of email addresses before they read the message itself, put all the addresses in the Bcc: field. Important Note: Despite the existence of the Bcc field, think very carefully before sending out any mass emails. Unsolicited bulk email, or “spam”, in addition to being rude, is against Harvard’s network regulations. Abuse of email privileges will result in disciplinary action. Once you have entered the recipients of your email, under Message Text simply type in the text of your email. When you are done, press Control-X. When prompted to confirm the sending of your message, type Y. Your message then will be sent. Once sent, however, your message cannot be canceled or removed from a recipient’s INBOX. Replying to an email To reply to an email, highlight or view it, and type R. You will be asked whether or not to include the original message in your reply; type Y or N accordingly. If the email you are replying to was sent to multiple people, you will be asked if youw ant to reply to all recipients or not. Again, type Y or N accordingly. After you have answered these questions, you will be placed in the standard Pico email editor screen in which you can compose and send your message just as above. Forwarding an email Forwarding an email is very similar to replying to it. Highlight or view the email that you want to forward, and type F. You will be placed into a Pico editor window where you can specify the email address(es) to forward the message to and edit the message as desired. Send the message by pressing Control-X, as above. Deleting an email Just press D to delete the currently selected email. Pine will mark the selected message for deletion, and a D will appear next to it in the folder index; the message will not be deleted physically until you choose to expunge it, just before quitting Pine. Just before you quit Pine, you will be prompted to expunge all messages which you have marked for deletion, at which point you can type Y to erase all messages marked with a D. You can press U to undelete a message which has been marked deleted but has not yet been expunged. Working with Folders in Pine Pine allows you to organize your mail into multiple folders. To see a list of your folders, press L or select Folder List from the Main Menu. By default, You will see three folders listed: INBOX, saved-messages, and sent-mail. These are your three standard mail folders. When mail is sent to you it is by default placed in your INBOX. When you send mail, by default a copy of the outgoing mail is placed in sent-mail. saved-messages is the default location for saving messages when you move them out of your INBOX. All of these folders are
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actually files in the mail directory in your home directory, with the exception of the special INBOX folder, which is the file called .inbox in your home directory. You can create new folders by typing A (for Add Folder) and entering the desired folder name. To view emails in any of these folders, simply move the cursor to that folder’s name and press Enter to select the folder. That folder’s contents will be displayed in Folder Index form, and you can move about and view messages just like in your inbox. This allows you to, for instance, view all mail you have sent by opening the sent-mail folder and examining its contents. To move a message from one folder to another, view or highlight that message in your INBOX or other folder and press S, for Save Message. Pine will ask you which folder you would like to save that message to. Type the name of a folder, and press return. If you were to type the name of a folder that does not exist, Pine will ask you whether or not you would like to create a folder of that name. This lets you go through and create new mail folders “on the fly” as you read messages, without having to plan ahead of time. After saving an email elsewhere, Pine will automatically mark that email for deletion from its previous location. Selecting a printer Before you can print an email with Pine, you must select the printer to which you want to print. Because Pine is running on the fas.harvard.edu computer, rather than on your own computer, this is a different process from setting up a printer for your own computer. Choose the SETUP option from Pine’s main menu. When prompted to choose a setup task, type P. If you want to print to a personal printer that is connected to your computer, highlight the attached-to-ansi option. If you want to print to one of the networked laser printers described above, at a charge of $0.05 per page, select the Personally selected print command option, and then type A. When prompted for the printer’s name, enter its name and hit Enter. (A printer’s name can be found on a sticker attached to the printer itself.) When prompted for the printer’s command, type lpr –P
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Creating nicknames for individuals’ email addresses Select the ADDRESS BOOK option from Pine’s main menu. In the screen which appears, you will see a list of any nicknames which you have created for individuals’ email addresses. To create a new nickname, type A. In the ADDRESS BOOK (edit) screen which appears, a Nickname field will be highlighted. Type the nickname that you would like to create into this field. Then, highlight the Fullname: field and type a full name for the email address(es) for which you are creating a nickname. Finally, highlight the Addresses: field and type the email addresses to which this nickname should refer, separating multiple addresses with commas. To save this nickname in your address book, type Control–X. When prompted to exit and save changes, hit Y. Re-justifying sentences or paragraphs Pine automatically inserts line breaks whenever a sentence nears the edge of the screen (usually when you try to put more than 76 characters on one line). While this feature maintains your email’s margins, it can cause problems when you want to delete part of a sentence or paragraph later, as the smaller text may remain broken up across two or more lines. To re-justify a sentence or paragraph while editing an email, move the cursor to some location within the sentence or paragraph. Then, type Control–J. The sentence or paragraph will be re-wrapped to the screen’s width. Adding a Signature You can also set Pine to automatically include a signature at the end of every outgoing message. From the Main Menu, then press S for Setup. The Setup menu allows you to change many aspects of pine’s behavior, of which we will only discuss a few now. For more information on these options, use Pine’s built-in Help function. To edit your signature, press S again while in the Setup menu. Pico will launch once more and you can edit your signature file however you like—many students list their name, address, and some quote of passable profundity. Be wary of putting too much information in your signature -- sending your phone number in your signature to people you don’t want calling you is a bad idea. Press Control-X to exit Pico, save changes, and whatever you just typed will be appended to the end of every outgoing message you send. Changing your Outgoing Name Also, while in the setup menu, you can type C for Configure. You will see a large number of fields, the first of which will be personal-name, which by default will be whatever legal name your FAS account is registered to. If you like, you change this to a nickname instead. Again, be aware when you change this field of what you’re doing—setting your outgoing name field to something offensive as a joke and then emailing Mom to say hello is generally less than advisable. Fixing a garbled screen If someone happens to send a Ytalk request or a Write message to your screen and Pine's screen becomes garbled, type Control–L. Pine's screen will be re-drawn.
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Email with Eudora As an alternative to using Pine on Unix, you can instead choose to use Eudora to read and send email. Eudora is a program that runs directly on your PC, which downloads your mail from FAS to your own hard drive. As you are using your PC to read email, it is therefore much more familiar and intuitive in addition to being more integrated into your system The disadvantage is that in order to read your mail, Eudora must use POP, the Post Office Protocol, to move your mail from your FAS account to your own computer. Thus any mail you read in Eudora will no longer be available the next time you log into FAS and run Pine, which can be a disadvantage. It is possible to set Eudora to leave mail on the server, which partly removes this problem, but at the cost of your having to keep track of two copies of all your mail. The first time your run Eudora, it may be necessary to configure some of its settings. A configuration dialog may appear automatically, or else you can launch Eudora and open up Tools: Settings. In the window that appears, check that your correct FAS username and password are entered. For your mail host, type in pop.fas.harvard.edu. Read through all the configuration menus and set any other options as you wish. Checking Your email From the File menu, choose Check Mail. Alternatively, you can press the button on the toolbar, which depicts a message being placed in an inbox. Eudora will then ask you for your password unless the Save Password option is set, and will then download your mail. You can configure Eudora to automatically check your mail every few minutes. Many people are tempted to have Eudora look for new mail very often, up to every minute or so. However, such frequent checking puts a tremendous load on the POP servers and will earn you a message from the FAS system administrators telling you to cut back. FAS requires a minimum of 15 minutes between automatic Eudora checks, and encourages longer, such as a half hour or an hour. Sending an email From the Message menu, choose New Message, or click the fourth button on the toolbar, which depicts a letter and a pen. Eudora will open up a new window for you to compose the message in. Type the various aspects of your message (recipient, subject, and body) in the fields provided. When you are done composing the message, press Control-E or click the “Send” button in the upper corner of the message window to send it. Eudora will connect to the FAS mail server over the network and upload your message, sending it on its way. If you wish to cancel a message while you are in the process of composing it, simply close the message window without pressing the Send button. Eudora will ask if you would like to save changes to the message; select No to cancel it. Replying to an email To reply to a message, select or open that message. From the Message menu, choose Reply, or press the Reply button on the toolbar, which depicts a message with a single arrow pointing backwards. The Reply feature by default replies only to the author of the message, rather than to all recipients. To have your reply sent to everyone who received the message to which you are replying, select Reply to All from the Message menu, or press the button on the toolbar which depicts a letter with multiple arrows pointing backwards. Forwarding an email To forward a message, select or open that message, and choose Forward from the Message menu, or press the Forward button on the toolbar, which depicts a message with a green arrow pointing forwards. The Forward feature enables you to send a message to someone else, using your own name as the message sender. To forward a message while preserving the original sender’s name in the From: field, select Redirect from the Message menu, or press the button on the toolbar which depicts a letter with a green arrow changing directions. -10- Using Harvard’s Network with your Windows PC The Harvard Computer Society
Saving an email to another mailbox Eudora enables you to save your email to multiple different folders, called “mailboxes”. This can be a useful way to organize your email, such as by having different mailboxes for each of your classes and so on. By default, Eudora stores your incoming messages in a special mailbox called the In Box, but it’s easy to move messages elsewhere. Highlight or view the email in your In Box that you want to save elsewhere. Then, click on the Transfer Menu. You will see a list of all available mailboxes, including In, Out, Trash, and any other folders you may have defined. Simply click on a folder name to transfer the message to that mailbox. Alternatively, you can click on New… to create a new mailbox. You can also create Folders, which can contain mailboxes or other folders, enabling you to create as complicated a hierarchical structure as you desire for storing your mail. To create a Folder, click on the New… selection on the Mailbox menu, place a check in the Make it a Folder box, and enter the name of the folder to create. You will then be prompted to create at least one mailbox within that folder. Viewing an email in another mailbox To view a message that you have saved in another mailbox, click on the Mailbox menu. Select the name of the other mailbox from the menu. That mailbox will then be displayed and you can select a message to view just as with the In Box. Attaching a file To attach a file to a message that you are in the process of composing, either select Attach File from the Message menu, or press the button on the toolbar that depicts a message with a file paper-clipped to it. Eudora will open up the standard “File Open” dialog box; browse your hard drive and select the file you wish to attach, then press the Open button to attach the file to your message. If you receive a message with an attachment, when you view that message it will contain an icon for that file. Double-clicking this icon will open the attachment in the appropriate application. If you wish to move or delete the attachment file, it can be found in the attach subfolder of your Eudora folder. Using the Address Book Eudora, like Pine, has an Address Book function that enables you to define easy-to-remember shortcuts, called “nicknames,” for your friends’ email addresses. To create a nickname, select Address Book from the Tools menu, or press the toolbar button with an address book icon. Press the New button to create a new Nickname, and you will be prompted with a dialog box asking what you want to call the nickname. Enter the nickname here (for example “john” for John Harvard). Press enter, and you will return to the main address book window, where you can enter the email address(es) for this nickname (in this example, [email protected]) You can enter any number of addresses in one nickname, which simplifies sending mail to multiple people. Note that Eudora’s Address Book also has the ability to store notes about a person as well as their phone number and postal address. The Recipient List feature allows you to quickly select nicknames from a menu. To add a nickname to the Recipient List, right-click on it in the Address Book and select Add to Recipient List. On the Message menu, you may select New Message To, Forward To, or Redirect To, and you will be presented with a menu of all nicknames on your Recipient List. Simply click on one of the nicknames, and Eudora will instantly open up an appropriate message window already addressed to that person. Filtering messages Filters enable you to process your incoming mail. You can sort, delete, tag, or automatically forward messages, among other things. Filters are incredibly powerful and are arguably one of the best features of Eudora. A
-11- Using Harvard’s Network with your Windows PC The Harvard Computer Society detailed reference on filters is beyond the scope of this packet; a good place to start would be Eudora’s online help file. However, here’s a quick example to get you started. To create a filter, select Make Filter from the Settings menu. The filter dialog box will appear and ask you which criteria from the current message you want to filter on. Each filter has two parts: The Match part, which determines which messages the filter applies to, and the Action part, which determines what the filter does. In the Match section of the Filter window, you can select which Header field to use to sort your mail. Most commonly, you will use the From field to sort mail based on who sent it, but sometimes it’s more convenient to sort based on who the mail is sent to, such as for any mailing lists you may be subscribed to. Some mailing lists will always include a identifying set of characters in the subject field, so you can sort based on that as well. Now, in the Action portion of the Filters window, you can select the actions you want performed on the set of messages that are matched by this filter. Most commonly, this action will be to transfer the mail to a specific folder, although many other actions are possible. Many other things are possible with filters; see the online help or the web site listed in the next section for a more complete reference. Directory Services Eudora also has the ability to access the ph and finger directories on FAS. Under Directory Services in Settings, you will notices settings for “Phone Book” and “Finger”. These should already be filled in, but if they aren’t, put ph.fas.harvard.edu in for the Phone Book, and finger.fas.harvard.edu in for Finger. Use these two commands to find out information about other people by launching the Window: Directory Services command, or typing Control-Y. The ph server will tell you another person’s room number, mailing address and phone number, if you type in their full name. Ph lists faculty and staff office locations and phone numbers as well as student residence information. Finger is a utility that allows you to check whether someone is logged into FAS or another Unix computer, and from where and for how long. Typing someone’s FAS username and clicking enter when you’re in the Finger dialog will allow you to see information about their use of the server. You can also see their .plan files, which is another despository of profound little sayings. Finger is covered more extensively in the Unix seminars, along with a discussion of security and privacy issues related to public Unix computer usage. A Note on Formatted Email Eudora also allows another feature that Unix does not—formatted text. You can make your Eudora messages have bold text, italics, colors, and larger fonts. While this is a useful feature, problems can arise when the person a message is sent to is using Pine to read mail, and thus the formatting does not come out correctly. At best, a message may be confusingly displayed onscreen; at worst it will be unreadable. Thus if you’re going to use these features, which you really don’t need to (hint hint), be sure the person you’re sending the message to is going to be able to read it. Also, in the Settings: Formatting menu, be sure that outgoing mail is being sent in Text:Enriched format, and not HTML. HTML is the format webpage code is written in, and is generally a good universal standard of conveying formatting—on the web. In email, some graphical readers like Eudora can be set to handle HTML, but many cannot not. Furthermore, many users become annoyed at receiving HTML email with formatting codes and tags interspersed throughout the text, rendering it hard to read. In general, HTML mail is a bad idea. Additional help with Eudora If you need help with Eudora and cannot find the answer in this packet, don’t despair! There is still help on the way! First, you can try Eudora’s online help, available by selecting the Help menu from within Eudora. If you still cannot find the answer you need there, you can turn to a comprehensive Eudora help web site, written by volunteers across the Internet. This site, http://wso.williams.edu/~eudora/, contains answers to practically any question you might have about Eudora, as well as tips and tricks for improving the way you use the program. Be sure to check it out if you have any questions.
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TRANSFERRING FILES VIA FTP Frequently, you may wish to transfer files between your FAS Unix account and your own PC. This is particularly important if you use Pine for email and receive file attachments. You can use an Internet protocol called FTP, the File Transmission Protocol, to transfer files between your Unix account and any PC. fas runs a program known as a FTP server; this program waits, ‘listening’ for FTP connections from other computers, and then servicing the file transfer requests that are made.
WS_FTP WS_FTP is the FTP client that FAS Computer Services supports and distributes via its FAS Network Installer Disk. This program allows you to transfer files between your PC and your FAS Unix account. Starting an FTP session The FAS Network Installer Disk installs a FTP client program called WS_FTP. When you open WS_FTP, you will be presented with a connection dialog box, entitled “Session Profile”. To connect to fas, in the Host Name field, enter fas.harvard.edu. Make sure the “Anonymous Login” box is not checked, and enter your own username and password in the appropriate fields. Click on OK to begin the FTP session, and WS_FTP will connect to fas. Transferring a file After you have connected to the FTP server, you will see two windows side by side containing file lists: the left window represents files on your local hard drive, while the right window represents files on the remote system (usually fas, but potentially any computer running ftp server software). At the top of each file list window is a field displaying the name of the current directory on that computer. You can change directories on either side by double-clicking a directory name to change to that directory, or by double-clicking the up arrow to move up one directory. To transfer a file from fas to your PC, browse the right window to the directory on fas containing the file you wish to transfer, and browse the left window to the directory on your PC that you wish to transfer the file to. In the Remote System window, click on the file you wish to transfer. (Hold Control and click to select multiple files.) Then click on the left-pointing arrow button in the center of the WS_FTP screen. This will transfer the selected file(s) to the directory displayed in the left window. To transfer a file from your PC to fas, proceed as above, except switching the roles of the left and right windows: Browse to the file you wish to transfer in the Local System window on the left, and to the directory you wish to transfer the file to on the Remote System window on the right. Select the file(s) you wish to transfer, and click on the right-pointing arrow button to move them. Managing files and directories File transfers using FTP are like copying a file: the original file remains and is not deleted when the transfer is finished. However, if you wish, you can use WS_FTP to delete the original file by selecting that file and pressing the appropriate Delete button (There are two delete buttons, one for the Local System and one for the Remote System. These buttons will only be enabled when a file is selected on the appropriate computer, so you don’t have to worry about accidentally pressing the wrong button.) WS_FTP also supports renaming files, creating and removing directories, and viewing files. These features all work analogously to the Delete button, with buttons for each command appearing on both the Local System and Remote System sides of the display. For additional help on using these features, please see WS_FTP’s online help.
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Quieting WS_FTP One “feature” of WS_FTP is that it makes a variety of sounds while it operates, to inform the user of various actions taking place. Many users find these sounds annoying and prefer for WS_FTP to operate silently. To make WS_FTP be quiet, click the Options button at the bottom of the window. Select the Session Options button. In the Sounds area, you may then select None to disable all sounds, or Beep to replace the default train and squeaky voice sounds with more pleasant beeps. Press the Save button to save these settings and then press Exit to leave the Options menu.
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THE WORLD WIDE WEB The World Wide Web is a collection of interconnected documents that spans the entire Internet, providing a rich and graphical environment that has become pervasive throughout the entire world in recent years. The FAS Network provides all computers connected to it with a very fast connection to the World Wide Web. Most students come to Harvard already familiar with browsing the Web with Netscape Navigator and/or Microsoft Internet Explorer, so we will not cover the use of these programs here. If you do have questions about using a web browser, or if you have not used the web before, do not hesitate to speak with one of our seminar assistants who would be more than happy to assist you. Both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator are supported browsers at Harvard. Many users swear by each; we recommend trying both and seeing which one you like more. IE 5 does have some advanced features not yet found in the most recent version of Netscape, however, but the ongoing development of Netscape may change that with a release in the near future. Either browser will handle the needs of most users perfectly well, so try them both and see which you like more.
Creating Web Pages on FAS FAS Computer Services allows users with accounts on fas.harvard.edu to publish web pages from their accounts. The Harvard Computer Society provides hands-on assistance to students wishing to publish web pages; for more information attend one of our Publishing to the World Wide Web seminars or visit http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~seminar/.
Useful Web Pages from FAS Computer Services Owing to the great popularity of the web, FAS Computer Services has ported a number of its account management tools to have Web interfaces. The home page for FAS Computer Services is http://www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/, which has links to many resources and reference materials and is a good starting point if you have any questions about computing at Harvard. Furthermore, the page http://www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/utilities/ has links to a number of very useful tools for managing your FAS account. There is a web form which allows you to change your password at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/computing/utilities/password/. Changes go into effect about an hour or two after using the form. A set of three forms allows you to control various email options. The forwardmail script allows you to forward mail from your fas address to up to three other addresses, optionally leaving a copy on fas as well. vacation enables an automatic message which is sent to anyone who emails you. This is useful if you are going to be away from computers for an extended period and wish to inform anyone who might happen to email you that you won’t be able to read their message for some time. Thirdly, the blockmail program allows you to specify up to five subjects and email addresses to block email from. This is useful if you receive large amounts of junk email, often called “spam.” Be careful with blockmail; it is easy to specify overly broad addresses and block desired mail as well as junk. If you tell it to block “aol.com”, it will block messages from your little sister’s AOL account just as much as it blocks unwanted advertisements from AOL. Next, the forwardweb form allows you to specify a web address which your fas web address (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~yourusername/) should forward to. Lastly, the NetConnect page at http://www.fas.harvard.edu/network/netconnect/ allows you to register your computer for use on your data jack, and allows you to make change requests for your connection or monitor the status of a request in progress.
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Other Useful Web Sites at Harvard and Beyond http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/ The Harvard Computer Society’s web site. From this page you can access information about the HCS and all of its projects, such as the Seminar Series itself, Account Services, and many others. http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~computing/ The Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services (HASCS) home page. Links to many computing resources, copious documentation, and the all-important contact information for your UAs can be found here. http://www.college.harvard.edu/ Harvard College Online, a treasure trove of information about what’s going on at Harvard. Contains the Online Calendar of Events as well as links to information and other web sites across the college. http://www.fas.harvard.edu/ The Faculty of Arts and Sciences home page. Similar to the College page in some ways, the FAS page has information on a broader reach of topics useful to the FAS community at large. http://www.courses.harvard.edu/ This web page, run by the Instructional Computing Group, has home pages for many of the classes offered each term. http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/ The Registrar Online site has the Courses of Instruction class list, exams schedules, online course and grade reports, and various other bits of useful official information. http://www.cash.harvard.edu/ The Crimson Cash web site allows you to add money to your Crimson Cash account by charging it against your credit card. The ability to charge your laundry money to your credit card via the Internet has to be one of the wonders of modern technology. http://www.dining.harvard.edu/ Online menus for the dining halls, info on campus restaurants, and contact info for catering & goodie orders. http://hplus.harvard.edu/ Hollis Plus, the online library catalog for all of Harvard’s Libraries.Hollis Plus is a truly incredible resource, with links to dozens of major online collections, including the extensive Lexis-Nexis research service, many Congressional and other governmental records collections, over 600 online journals or magazines, the entire Oxford English Dictionary, and far too many other resources to list here. Hollis Plus really and truly is worth looking at; you’ll be amazed at what’s available there. http://hplus.harvard.edu/subject/index.html has an listing of many of the major resources organized by subject; it’s a good starting point for your explorations. http://www.eb.com/ This is the Encyclopedia Britannica Online site. Harvard pays for a site liscence, so all computers in the harvard.edu domain can access the entire contents of the Encyclopedia online simply by accessing this page and clicking on the “College or University Subscribers” link. While it won’t get you out of doing the research for your term paper, it’s a great resource for looking up those facts you just can’t remember from high school. IN CONCLUSION We hope you have found this seminar informative and useful. If you have any questions relating to any of the material covered here, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected]. For more general computing concerns, speak with the User Assistants at the Science Center Help Desk or via email to help@fas,. Thank you, and happy computing.
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SEMINAR EVALUATION FORM We would appreciate very much your evaluation of this seminar. When you have completed this form, please give it to one of the seminar’s staff members or leave it by the door as you leave. Thank you for your time. Please write the date and time of this seminar: ______Please rate this seminar by circling one answer for each category.
Overall experience: Poor Good Great Instructor: Poor Good Great Assistants: Poor Good Great Pace: Too slow Just right Too fast Level: Too basic Just right Too advanced Detail: Too little Just right Too much Do you feel comfortable using Harvard’s network with your PC now? If not, why not?
What can the instructor and assistants improve upon?
What, if anything, should we add to or omit from this seminar?
What additional seminars would you like us to offer? Would you attend?
Do you have any other comments or suggestions?
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