ComputerInfo

Printers

Any Mac connected to the Internet should find the printers automatically.

The black/white printer shows up as: hp Laserjet 4250 (IP 192.168.37.80)

The color printer shows up as: hp color Laserjet 4650 (IP 192.168.37.104)

General Info about Our Network

We live behind two firewalls: PI (Psychiatric Institute) maintains one, and the med center maintains one. This makes life difficult but not impossible.

Only one machine inside the Center can be seen from outside the firewall: neurotheory.columbia.edu, which is 156.111.139.50 and which currently runs Linux. From neurotheory, in turn, you can get to any machine inside the Center. So if your machine is 192.168.37.101, you can get to it from outside by first doing ssh neurotheory.columbia.edu and then, once logged in to neurotheory, doing ssh 192.168.37.101

Similarly you can send files back and forth by using sftp. You can run ssh and sftp from a terminal on a mac or unix machine, or for a windows machine you can download either ` putty' (open source etc.) or else the non-commercial (free, but closed source) version from this site.

Receiving mail, setting up a web page

Once you have an account on neurotheory with username your_login, then you can send and receive mail as your_login@neurotheory.columbia.edu. CURRENTLY, AS OF 12 OCT 2005: in addition, Ken has to get Columbia to set up an alias for you. Once that's done, mail to you gets forwarded to your_UNI@columbia.edu, where your_UNI is your UNI, of course. From there you can read it with Cubmail or any pop or imap client or have it forwarded to some other mail address like gmail, here's details. IN THE NEAR FUTURE: mail will be delivered directly to neurotheory. You can have it forwarded to another address by putting a file called .forward in your home directory on neurotheory that contains a single line containing the address you want it sent to, e.g. your_UNI@columbia.edu or your_gmail@gmail.com. Alternatively, you can leave it on neurotheory and read it by logging into neurotheory and typing 'Mail' at the prompt, or by using any other linux-based mail client (e.g., kmail, thunderbird, vm or rmail under emacs). We *may* have a pop or imap server but I'm not certain at this point. [Note: If you're using an X11-based mail client (kmail, thunderbird) on neurotheory, you have to configure X11 appropriately, i.e. have an X11 client running on your machine (for mac users, see instructions on setting up Matlab below), then on a terminal on your machine you have to type 'xhost neurotheory.columbia.edu' while on a terminal logged into neurotheory you have to type 'export DISPLAY=your-machines-IP-address:0' (assuming you're running bash shell).]

To set up a web page, make a directory in your home directory on neurotheory called public_html. The link http://www.neurotheory.columbia.edu/~your_login will open the file index.html in that directory (it also works without the www). The link http://www.neurotheory.columbia.edu/~your_login/some_file.html will open the file named some_file.html in that directory.

Installing and Maintaining Matlab

We are using the Columbia site license for Matlab. We should have install CDs around. If we need more media (costs $25 per set I think) or have license problems, contact Julie Lai, 212-854-7707, julie@columbia.edu, she administers the site license program. The tech support person is George Garrett, 854-7898, shinobu@columbia.edu.

To install Matlab: (1) On a mac, be sure to first install apple's version of X11, which usually lives in the "extra install's" part of the install disc (you have to scroll down when you open the disc to find the extras).

(2) Get a license file from someone in the Center. Sometimes copy-and-paste of the license file from email seem to insert weird characters and fail, so make sure you get a pure text version. (For example in google, there is an option at the top of each email which says 'more options..'. Select that. And then from the more options select,'message text garbled?' Now cut copy paste the license file.)

(3) Install Matlab from the install CD. You have to be aware of two things: (a) When it comes to "license manager", go to "customize license manager installation" and either (1) don't install the license manager or, if you wish to install it (2) tell it not to automatically start at boot time. For some reason the license manager is not smart enough to realize that our license file says to use the columbia license manager, and it will try to do it itself and fail. (b) At least the current version (R14 SP3 for OSX 10.4) fails if you say NO to installing an icon on the desktop. So accept the defaults.

That should be it. Thanks to Jayant for figuring much of this out.

Using your computer from home

From: Meena S George Subject: remote desktop access Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 17:50:32 -0400 (EDT)

hey everyone, Below is info about how to connect remotely to your desktop to bypass the PI firewall (for those of you who just love to work but are too lazy to come in to the office on a cold/rainy/snowy day -- or in my case, are working in a sauna until the AC is fixed): 1) Under System Preferences, go to Sharing, check the Apple Remote Desktop and then hit Access Privileges. Check off a user and the permissions you want to give. Be sure to give VNC viewers a password so that you can control the screen. 2) Download a VNC viewer client on the machine you wish to use to connect to your office computer. I use Chicken of the VNC (which is for Macs), but there others for both PC and Mac including TightVNC and RealVNC. All are free. 3) Run the Terminal application on your laptop/home PC. You need to tunnel through neurotheory using the following command: ssh -L 5900:your-machines-IP-address:5900 username@neurotheory.columbia.edu Note the capital 'L'. 4) Open your VNC viewer. Set the VNC server/host to 127.0.0.1. Type in the password that you set on your office machine for VNC viewers. Ok, that should be it. Viola! Good luck! meena