Set up your UNIX Environment

• Practice sending email
• Get practice using a text editor
• Create shell aliases in your startup files
• Modify your EDITOR and PAGER settings in your startup files
• Read a manpage

Description

• The first part of the assignment is to get onto the scicomp course mailing list. To do this, use "Mail" to send an email message to "majordomo@majordomo.math.arizona.edu". The Subject of the message is not important and can be left empty. The body of the message should contain the line:

  	subscribe scicomp
  

  You should receive confirmation via email within a few minutes.

• The next two parts assume that you are using the default shell.u.arizona.edu setup: the tcsh shell with no startup files in your home directory. If this is not the case, use the chsh command to change your shell to /bin/tcsh.

• If you type "alias", you will see that only two shell aliases have been defined: "setup" and "remove". Execute the "setup" command for a brief help message. Figure out how to use "setup" to configure your environment for LaTeX. You'll need this command to complete the next step.

• Using a text editor such as emacs or vi, edit the file .cshrc in your home directory. Add commands to create "alias" that make "cp", "mv", and "rm" safer -- so that "rm" calls "rm -i", and so on. Add a command to set the EDITOR variable to your preferred text editor. Add a command to set PAGER to "less". As you make changes, you can suspend your editor with CTRL-Z and reload your .cshrc file with "source .cshrc". If no error messages are printed, bring your editor back into the foreground with "fg" and continue editing. If there are errors, get back to your editor with "fg" and fix the problem before adding anything else. Finally, add the command you found above to set up your environment for LaTeX to the .login file in your home directory.

  A good way to verify that your changes work is to open a second telnet session to your account -- if you can log in without unusual error messages, things are probably OK.

  NOTE: If there are errors in your startup files, odds are very good that you will not be able to log in any more. If this happens, call the CCIT help desk at 621-HELP and ask them to rename or remove your .cshrc and .login files.

  NOTE: Do not modify startup files on any account other than the u.arizona.edu account your are using for this course.

• Log out and log back in to your u.arizona.edu account. Determine the absolute path to the "latex" command by typing "which latex".

• Read the manpage for the "ls" command and answer the following question:
  what does "ls -ltRr" do?

Results

1. Answering: what does "ls -ltRr" do?
2. The absolute pathname of the "latex" program.
3. The contents of your .cshrc file.