Computing Service newsletter 181 (April 1995)
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Contents
Friday 7 April Reception, Sales and Help Desk close at 15.30
for staff training
Friday 14 April Service closed (no
Reception/HelpDesk/etc). All services running unattended.
Monday 17 April Service closed (no
Reception/HelpDesk/etc). All services running unattended.
Tuesday 18 April to Friday 21 April (provisional) Print Room
closed
Monday 1 May Central Systems User Group meeting
Any user may ask the CSUG to discuss a topic; for a list
of members see the Gopher Information Service (under
Cambridge University/Computing Service/Central Computing
Services).
Tuesday 2 May Information Technology Syndicate meeting
Monday 8 May Service closed (no Reception/HelpDesk/etc).
All services running unattended.
Monday 15 May User Representatives' Meeting (URM), at 14.15
in the Austin Lecture Theatre; all users are welcome
Monday 29 May Service closed (no
Reception/HelpDesk/etc). All services running unattended.
Tuesday 30 May Information Technology Syndicate meeting
Monday 28 August Service closed (no
Reception/HelpDesk/etc). All services running unattended.
Thursday 31 August Phoenix closes
Money has been allocated from the University's IT Fund for
some necessary upgrading of central services; see below.
The attention of all users is drawn to the facilities offered
by the Pelican Archive Store; see below.
See Mail News for information on @cam addresses, mail during
vacations and use of mailing lists.
Users who are still using Phoenix please see Phoenix
Migration News.
Managers of systems still using Coloured Book software please
see Network News.
Plans for the Cambridge University Information Service are
described in the News and Information Services section.
Computing Service Sales are now back to full staffing and
delivery times are much improved; see Sales News.
The remaining disbursements from the IT Fund for 1994/5,
worked out by the IT Syndicate Needs Committee, have now been
approved by the General Board. Allocations were made to the
various Schools for their IT development needs, and to the
Computing Service.
The Computing Service allocation is to be used for equipment
to improve the reliability of the mail switch, for
enhancements to the PWF central server equipment to enable
the transition to Netware 4, and for a second fileserver for
the Central Unix Service.
The Computing Service Print Room is now expected to move into
its new accommodation on Cockcroft 3 immediately after
Easter. This means that for the week starting on 17 April no
Print Room services will be available. The PRINTRM laser
printer in Reception is not affected.
The timetable will be confirmed nearer the time, and
announced in the message of the day on all Computing Service
systems.
As we go to press, it is evident that international network
links - to Europe and to the USA - are delivering very poor
performance to individual end-users. We very much regret the
problems, which are the subject of much discussion and
investigation within the JANET community. It is not yet
possible to identify the cause.
The Pelican service, and the archive service on Phoenix, are
likely to be disrupted for up to two days during the Easter
period for modifications to be made to the system. The exact
timetable will be published as soon as it is known.
The Pelican archiving store is a general facility for staff
and graduate computer users within the University, allowing
files from any CUDN-connected system to be stored for backup
or archive purposes, and later retrieved to the same or
another system. At present the Pelican service is still
somewhat under-used, and computer users are encouraged to
consider whether their backup and archiving facilities are
adequate and whether the use of Pelican would be advisable.
Pelican is available using FTP from any CUDN-connected system
including CUS, the PWF and Phoenix. Provided that they are
in a suitable form, files transferred to Pelican from one
system can be fetched onto another; this may be useful to
users wishing to archive work from Phoenix which may later
be wanted on other systems (note, however, that special
archiving procedures are needed; Phoenix files archived using
the old "toarchive" command will not be readable on other
systems).
Files on Pelican are moved from disc to tape shortly after
they arrive. Retrieving a file may take a minute or two, as a
tape mount is required. This makes the Pelican particularly
suitable for inactive data, and for data which is not
expected to be read (such as backups of personal machines).
Details of the facilities offered by Pelican and how to use
them are in Computing Service Leaflets G79 (general) and PM7
(for Phoenix users).
The Computing Service User Libraries are situated in various
locations throughout the University (listed below) and
provide reference documentation relating to the wide range of
hardware and software supported by the Computing Service. The
libraries vary in size and depth of coverage, depending on
the machines provided at the particular location and the
range of software available there.
Manuals are for reference only and may not be borrowed. The
manuals are arranged in classification order, an explanation
of which is to be found in all libraries. Full sets of
Computing Service leaflets are also available.
Each library is provided with a keyword index, which is an
alphabetical list created from all significant words and
figures in the title of a document. All relevant manuals and
their classification numbers are listed under each keyword.
Combined indexes also list the library locations of manuals.
The indexes are available in printed form and on-line on CUS
in the file /info/doc/keyword.index
* New Museums Site, Pembroke Street
Mond (PCs only) [Mond Room]
Macintosh Room (Macs only) [Balfour 2]
Help Desk [Cockcroft 2]
User Library [Cockcroft 3]
* Sidgwick Site
LLCC
Oriental Studies Basement Library
* Physics Department (PWF Room), Cavendish Laboratory
* Mill Lane Lecture Rooms (CATAM Room), Mill Lane
* Chemistry Department (PWF Room), Lensfield Road
Suggestions and comments about the libraries may be sent to
user-librarian@ucs.cam.ac.uk
On the whole Computing Service courses have been well
attended so far this year; 124 courses were held during the
Michaelmas and Lent terms, and were attended by 2173 people.
The most popular courses were the Worldwide Network Services
Overview, and introductions to UNIX, Macintosh, Windows,
Excel and Desktop Publishing. It is particularly pleasing
that the percentage turnout has improved (i.e. the number of
those registered for a course who fail to attend without
cancelling has diminished), as this has been a problem in the
past. Regrettably, several courses have had to be cancelled
because of insufficient demand. However, while this may be
disappointing for those keen to attend, we consider it
preferable to offer a full range which includes minority-
interest courses as well as the mainstream, accepting the
possibility that some may have to be cancelled. Suggestions
for new courses are always welcome, by email to course-
admin@ucs, telephone to ext. 34432, or via the "courses"
command on CUS.
The VMS Support group within the Computing Service (email:
vms-support@ucs) provides advice and assistance relating to
DEC VAX and Alpha systems running the VMS operating system,
primarily to their system managers.
In the past, VMS Support has also been able to assist people
needing help in converting files to or from the commonly used
VMS-specific media and file formats (primarily e.g. BACKUP
save-sets on TK50 or half-inch tape, but also RX50-format
diskettes). The group's aging MicroVAX II system (almost ten
years old) is soon to be pensioned off, at which point the
Computing Service will no longer have in-house facilities for
handling VMS-format TK50 and half-inch tapes, or RX50
diskettes.
VMS media conversion involving RZ23 (1.44MB, 3.5") diskettes
and VMS-formatted CD-ROMs will remain possible, and the Alpha
system replacing the MicroVAX will add the ability to handle
DAT tapes (via a TLZ07 DDS-2 capable DAT drive).
Various users have asked whether they may set up personal WWW
home pages on CUS and run their own http daemons. We regret
that we cannot allow users to run private http daemons on CUS
or on any of the public machines provided by the Computing
Service.
The following is a brief extract from the progress report
made by the Computing Service to the IT Syndicate in February
1995:
The Magpie high speed modem service is proving popular,
with over 270 registrations so far; it appears that there
is now significantly less congestion on the older dialup
service. Planning for the introduction of an ATM backbone
infrastructure continues. Advice has been given to a number
of organisations which want to connect to the CUDN but
require non-standard solutions because they are not within
reach of the GBN.
Work continues on installation of CUDN ethernet connections
and fibre-optic links, and on assistance with the planning
of institutional wiring.
A demonstration of video-on-demand using the Cambridge
SuperJANET connection was given to the Parliamentary IT
Committee.
The replacement Exabyte tape drive is now in service. The
Central file store on the PWF is rapidly filling, and extra
disc space will be needed before the end of the academic
year. Investigation of NetWare Version 4.1 is under way, in
the hope of installing it throughout the PWF in time for
next academic year.
Over 2,500 different people used Phoenix during January but
data movement to the NearNet automated cartridge store
(Pelican) is only happening very slowly.
Hermes is running very smoothly after the conversion to
Smail and the reduction in the maintenance workload is
staggering.
The Central Unix Service is heavily loaded. Delivery of
the new fileserver is imminent. The teaching system, Thor,
went into service smoothly just after the start of the Lent
Term, and appears to be coping well so far.
The volume of Usenet news material has once again overtaken
our capacity to hold it adequately and retention periods
are now necessarily at the minimum that is felt to be
generally acceptable. The usage of the "new" server is now
triple that of the system it replaced about one year ago.
There has been a large number of requests for filespace
increases. The introduction of two new services (Thor and
Magpie) in January has added to the administrative load.
Some Colleges are setting up their own mail domains, and
the group is involved in providing their system
administrators with identifiers for College members.
Mailing lists are being set up for undergraduates in the
Faculty of Mathematics. A programme of user education
about the use of mail lists is planned.
A series of disciplinary hearings was held in February and
three undergraduates were fined under the summary
procedure. One of the incidents involved Hermes and the
other two systems at Engineering. A serious hacking
incident early in January absorbed an enormous amount of
staff time.
The redesign of the Computing Service World Wide Web server
continues.
The Help Desk was very busy in January. User Support has
also been helping increasing numbers of people with the
setting up and utilisation of ethernet communications from
their desktop and laptop machines.
The Sales group is starting to catch up with its backlog of
work. Negotiations are proceeding well with Silicon
Graphics about setting up a software support scheme similar
to those already in place for Sun and DEC equipment.
The Printroom is now expected to move to its new
accommodation on Cockcroft 3 in April.
Institution Liaison staff assisted with the
Biological/Social Anthropology teaching quality assessment.
They also attended liaison or computer committee meetings
at a number of institutions, including some meetings at
which bids to the IT Fund were discussed.
Electronic mail users in Cambridge are recommended to use an
@cam address if possible, and to direct their @cam mail to be
delivered to the system on which they prefer to receive it.
This is to make mail addresses more predictable by
correspondents outside Cambridge, and also to avoid having to
notify changes of address when users change their mail
system, including changing from Phoenix. Details of the
@cam facility are given in Leaflet G91.
The usage of electronic mail in the University is increasing
very rapidly. Users may be interested to know that on
2 March 1995, CUS received 10,494 messages and made 13,050
deliveries. Hermes received 16,393 messages and made 23,320
deliveries.
A number of mailing lists have been set up for undergraduate
and graduate courses and for University Societies.
Unfortunately, there have been some instances of misuse of
the lists.
Undergraduate course mailing lists have been set up at the
request of a department, usually to contact their students
for course-related business. The lists are not meant as an
easy vehicle for those wishing to advertise social events to
reach a wide audience - a newsgroup would be a more suitable
medium. A message sent to a small number of mail lists can
easily result in a thousand or more messages arriving on
Hermes at the same time, causing delays to genuine and wanted
mail.
In the event of an unwanted message being sent to a large
number of users, recipients should ignore the message, as the
list manager will have received copies of the junk mail also.
Replying to the message and copying the reply to the
unfortunate recipients of the junk mail just adds to the
annoyance of subscribers to the list and the load on Hermes.
Users who will not be reading their mail for any length of
time during vacations are reminded to unsubscribe from, or
suspend, mailing lists. Leaflet G92 gives details of
vacation arrangements for mail.
A new leaflet, PM8, has been written for Phoenix users
wishing to transfer their mail handling to Hermes. It
describes the different ways Hermes may be used and how to
connect to it, and lists approximate equivalents in the pine
mailer of the common Phoenix mail commands. The leaflet is
available free of charge from Computing Service Reception.
If you have subscribed to any mailing lists from Phoenix, you
will need, on transferring from Phoenix, to unsubscribe from
the list and re-subscribe again from your new mail address.
This applies even if the mail from the mailing list is
currently being forwarded from Phoenix to the new system; it
is only possible actually to unsubscribe by using the system
from which you subscribed in the first place. This means
that users who have not used Phoenix for a long time may need
to log on again just to unsubscribe.
You should therefore unsubscribe from all mailing lists
before cancelling your Phoenix account. Subscriptions which
are still in place when Phoenix closes will probably cause
mail to be bounced and create unnecessary trouble for list
administrators.
Some users have wondered what happens to their CUDN
connections, often described as "Phoenix lines", when Phoenix
closes down. The answer is "nothing": no user terminals are
directly connected to Phoenix. They are connected to the
CUDN and will continue to work for calling other systems such
as Hermes and CUS.
The withdrawal of items of Phoenix software continues.
All users still active on Phoenix are asked to check the
software they use against the lists below. For advice on
alternatives to Phoenix for particular tasks, see the members
of the PDS MIGRATE.CONVERT.
The following items of software will be withdrawn from
Phoenix on the dates shown:
3 April 1995: CGMOUT, CLUSTAN, NAG GRAPHICS, RASCON,
UNIGRAPH, UNIEDIT, UNIMAP, UNICON, UNIRAS, WATFIV
3 July 1995: LISREL, MLP, MUSCAT, MUSCATEL, SPSS, SPSSX,
TIMEMAP, TSP
After the dates indicated any procedures for the above
software will no longer give access to the software but will
instead give a warning message that the software is no longer
available. Any associated documentation will be removed and
the corresponding HELP entries will be altered.
All software not already withdrawn and not listed above will
be available until Phoenix closes on August 31.
Anyone for whom the withdrawal of the above software as
scheduled would present serious difficulties should contact
Steve Kearsey (S.Kearsey@ucs), as soon as possible.
January and February turned out to be exceptionally busy
months for the Help Desk, with a total of 2902 calls received
(about 30% up on last year). Some of this additional load
resulted from enquiries about the security incident on the
Central Unix Service, as well as the bringing into operation
of the new Magpie dial-up service.
The Help Desk and other parts of the Computing Service
together completed a total of 2964 calls and consultancies
during January and February, with 86% of these being
completed on the same day that they were received.
The tips given below, with many others, can also be found on
the Cambridge University Gopher Information Service. (Use the
gopher command on CUS or the PWF PCs, or use TurboGopher on
the PWF Macintoshes, select Cambridge University, then
Computing Service, then Help Desk.)
The Trumpet newsreader on a PC does not automatically supply
you with a list of the various newsgroups you might like to
subscribe to. In order to see such a list, you need to do the
following:
Trumpet for DOS
* start Trumpet in the usual way (on the PWF by typing
'news' at the F:\> prompt)
* from the Group menu select Subscribe, which will bring up
a full list of 'Unsubscribed groups'
* to subscribe, double click on the chosen group
* click in the 'close box' in the left top corner of the
Unsubscribed groups list
You will now be able to work with your Subscribed Groups
list.
Trumpet for Windows
* start Trumpet for Windows in the usual way (on the PWF by
double clicking on the WinTrump icon from the Windows
Utilities program group)
* from the Group menu select Subscribe
* specify the area of interest ('Top Level Hierarchy'), e.g.
'ucam' for University of Cambridge-related newsgroups, which
will bring up a full list of Unsubscribed groups
* to subscribe click once on the chosen group
* click OK
You will now be able to work with your Subscribed Groups
list.
It is often convenient to be able to work on an Apple
Macintosh computer with floppy discs that were formatted on a
PC. If either
(a) you are using a PowerMac (e.g. those in the Balfour Room
in the Cockcroft Building), or
(b) you have a package called PC Exchange on your Macintosh,
then you can work with PC discs as if they were initialised
on another Macintosh.
PC Exchange comes with Macintosh System 7.5, and is
obtainable (from Apple dealers) to work with earlier
operating systems. If you have neither a Power Mac nor PC
Exchange, then you can use an application called Apple File
Exchange, which is supplied with all recent versions of the
operating system. A free handout on how to use this is
available from the Help Desk.
The next tip describes an easy and quick way to transfer
documents from a PC disc to a Macintosh disc, assuming you do
have either a Power Mac or PC Exchange.
* insert the PC disc (its icon will show it is a PC disc)
* click somewhere on the desktop to make sure the rest of
the steps work properly
* from the File menu select New Folder
* if wanted, give the folder a more appropriate name than
'untitled folder'
* click and drag the PC disc's icon over the newly created
folder
* eject the PC disc by dragging its icon over the
Wastebasket
* insert the Macintosh disc (if you insert a new, unused
floppy disc, you will be asked whether you want to
initialise it. Click on Initialise.)
* click and drag the newly created folder over the Macintosh
disc's icon
The same process can be used to transfer documents in the
other direction, i.e. from a Macintosh disc to a PC disc.
If you are using the Gopher Information Service on the
Central Unix Service and you have found a document that you
wish to print (for instance this particular tip) you need to
do the following:
Using gopher
* type a (capital) O, which will bring up an Options menu
* in the Print Command box type
lpr -P printername
e.g. lpr -P diylpr to print to one of the Xerox 4030
printers in the User Area in Cockcroft 3
* press the Enter key
* now, whilst reading the document you want to print, type p
The printer remains selected once you have done this, so to
print another document later you need only type p.
If the PRINTER environment variable has been set (for
example in your .bash_profile), then it is not necessary to
specify the printername, and you can simply use the p
command.
Using Xgopher
* from the Other Commands menu select the Options panel
* delete the entry in the Print command box and type
lpr -P printername
e.g. lpr -P diylpr to print to one of the Xerox 4030
printers in the User Area in Cockcroft 3
* click on Apply changes
* now, whilst reading the document you want to print, click
on Print
The printer remains selected for the duration of your Xgopher
session once you have done this, so to print another document
later in the same session you can simply click on Print.
Once you leave Xgopher, you need to set the printer again on
re-entry.
Although the majority of CUDN traffic is now IP over
ethernet, there are still machines using Coloured Books over
X.25 and over ethernet. The Computing Service's policy is
that such systems may continue to use Coloured Books for
their remaining useful life, but that new uses of Coloured
Books are not encouraged. However we have received news
which implies a date for the end of convenient use of
Coloured Books.
Coloured Books systems generally use the NRS (Name
Registration Scheme) for their tables of network addresses.
It has been proposed that the national production of NRS
tables will cease in the summer of 1996, and the Computing
Service will NOT be producing tables after the closure of the
national NRS service.
If you have a system which will still be in use in the summer
of 1996, and for which you will still need to use Coloured
Books, please contact Network-Support@ucs immediately. The
fate of the NRS is likely to be settled in the next few
months.
Owners and users of Camtec PADs need not be immediately
concerned. These PADs do not directly use the NRS and will
continue to be usable. It should be noted, however, that it
will become increasingly difficult to keep PAD address tables
up-to-date when the NRS service ceases, and the onus for this
will fall on the owners and users.
Managers of Rainbow gates should note that the production of
updated tables will be affected by the closure of the NRS.
The following items have been added to the file /info/new
since the last Newsletter:
New versions of zip and unzip
weblint V1.005 available
SAS Version 609
Printing from Xgopher
NAG Graphics Library Mark 4
SLATEC library on ursa
Uniras Version 6.4a (see below)
Version 6.4a of the Uniras graphics package is now available
on ursa. Uniras includes Unigraph, Unimap, Unedit, Uniras
Picture Manager (upm), Rascon, the Uniras Fortran and C
graphics libraries etc. Modules uniras and BWuniras and
manual pages are available.
Uniras version 6.4a will not be installed on the other CUS
machines (apus, bootes and grus), but version 6.3b will be
available until the end of the Easter term on 16 June 1995.
After that date Uniras will no longer be available on apus,
bootes and grus.
Note that the two versions have been prepared using different
compilers and that whilst some file types appear to be
transferable between them, this is not always the case and
should not be assumed.
Users are urged to switch to using version 6.4a as early as
possible; so that any problems encountered as a result of the
switch can be dealt with well before the older version is
removed. In the event of difficulties please contact the
Computing Service Help Desk (help-desk@ucs).
The following items have been added to the News file on the
PWF since the last Newsletter:
MacWeb (WWW browser) & JPEGView now available (see below)
MSKERMIT Keypad key bindings (PC Users)
Additional Text converters for Word for Windows (PC users)
Netscape: Web browser for Windows. (PC users) (see below)
Dr Solomon's anti-virus toolkit installed. (PC users) (see
below)
Version 3.5.2 of DropStuff for Macs installed.
Version 1.3.1 of ZipIt for Macs TeX on the PWF PCs (see
below)
Changes to Trumpet Newsreader setup on PWF PCs
Syscon withdrawn
Withdrawal of MLLR ImageWriter (PC & Mac Users)
ImageWriter LPT1 CAPTURE at LLCC (PC Users)
MacWeb, the World Wide Web browser, has been installed on the
PWF Macintoshes. There are two versions available, one for
the Power Macintoshes at the New Museums and Sidgwick Sites
and another (labelled "MacWeb for Mac SE/30 & IIcx") for
other Macintoshes.
The version of MacWeb provided on the PWF has been
customised not to play sounds so as not to annoy other users
in public areas; this is not a bug.
A JPEG picture viewer has also been installed. JPEGView can
display files which are coded in JPEG, PICT, GIF, TIFF, BMP,
MacPaint, and Startup Screen formats.
For more details about MacWeb, see the PWF News file.
The Netscape browser for the World Wide Web is now available
on the PWF PCs in the Utilities group. It has similar
facilities to Mosaic, and documentation is available via its
'Help' menu.
Dr Solomon's anti-virus toolkit has been installed on the PWF
network. A TOOLKIT.BAT has been set up to invoke the TOOLKIT
menu.
The main options available are:
scan the local drives for viruses
repair files and boot sector
access the Virus Encyclopaedia
TeX is now available on the PWF PCs, using the emTeX version
of TeX for MS-DOS. For more information see the file
H:\INFO\TEX.TXT.
The Small Systems Group is currently investigating the
recently released version 4.1 of Novell Netware with a view
to moving the PWF to Netware 4 this summer. Assuming that no
insuperable problems are found with running service using
Netware 4.1 on all the PWF servers, we plan to carry out the
migration in August. We expect to make a decision in
principle at the end of April and to confirm this decision in
early June after further checks. Further details will be
published in the next Newsletter.
Users of the University's USENET news server may well have
noticed that articles in the majority of newsgroups are
retained for noticeably shorter periods than a few months
ago. With a "news spool" capacity of about 1.7GB, this has
been an inevitable consequence of the increasing volume of
news articles; the February 1995 totals were 4.5GB of data
comprising nearly 2 million articles. The "rule-of-thumb"
over recent years has been that the volume of news roughly
doubles each year, and growth over the past year matches that
very closely.
To alleviate this problem, the Computing Service has ordered
additional discs for the news server. They will allow article
expiry intervals to be restored to the values of a year ago
(when the current news server entered service) while leaving
some spare capacity for future growth in the volume of news
articles.
The following new local newsgroups (excluding newsgroups for
specific Departments, Colleges or societies) have been
started on Usenet since the last Newsletter:
ucam.thor.suggest Suggestions about the Thor teaching system
ucam.mlist.ucam-women read-only copy of ucam-women mailing
list, itself receiving from a variety of sources
ucam.comp.www.admin discussion about setting up and running
WWW servers
ucam.comp.www.misc general discussion of WWW-related issues
This service is currently a text-only gopher-based service.
It is accessed using various gopher client programs, and can
also be reached on the World Wide Web. We are planning to
convert the Information Service to WWW over the coming
summer, though a few services may remain on gopher for the
time being. Most users of gopher clients should also have
access to Web clients (lynx, Mosaic, MacWeb, Netscape). You
are recommended to start using the Information Service via
WWW rather than gopher from now on, since already more
information is available by that route, and new or updated
material will increasingly be placed on the Web server rather
than the gopher server.
Web clients set up on Computing Service systems (Mosaic,
MacWeb, Netscape, lynx) will usually point to the Cambridge
University server as the default. Otherwise it can be
accessed using the URL http://www.cam.ac.uk.
Recent additions to the University WWW server include
booklets from the Press and Information Office entitled About
Cambridge: History and About Cambridge: Facts and Figures.
Other booklets will follow.
The gopher server gives access to the undergraduate
admissions prospectus, as well as an increasing volume of
local (non-University) information.
We hope to make the graduate admissions prospectus available
in the course of the summer.
The following announcement has been received from NISS:
British Telecom recently withdrew, at very short notice,
their free Electronic Yellow Pages service.
Aware of the popularity of the service within the
community, NISS initially undertook to bear the
additional costs of continuing to provide access to EYP,
whilst also investigating the implications of BT's move.
However, since the charge for EYP is approximately 150
pounds sterling per day, NISS is not currently in a
position to maintain the service for any substantial
period.
Thus it is with regret that we now have to announce that
access to EYP via the NISS Gateway (and the new NISS
Information Gateway) has been withdrawn. NISS will
naturally consult further with BT to see if a long-term
solution can be found.
The BUBL (Bulletin Board for Libraries) Information Service
is a JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) funded
service run on behalf of JUGL (the JANET Users Group for
Libraries) by staff at Strathclyde University Library. The
following is a summary of an announcement received from BUBL:
The BUBL Subject Tree provides users with subject-based
access to Internet services and resources. It covers
both Gopher and WWW-based resources.
Around 100 links are added each week to the subject
tree. Details of the new services and resources are sent
out in weekly updates bulletins to the Mailbase e-mail
discussion list lis-link. These updates can also be
viewed on the BUBL Gopher, and on WWW where hypertext
links allow you to jump directly from any given entry to
its relevant area on BUBL.
This type of subject-based approach has undoubtedly
improved Internet access via BUBL, making it
significantly more easy, and less time consuming, for
users to find items on the net.
You can reach the BUBL subject tree by using telnet:
telnet bubl.bath and then login as bubl. To access the
subject tree via the BUBL Gopher, choose option 5 from
the BUBL main menu, then option 1.
WWW access to the tree is available via the following
URL: http://www.bubl.bath.ac.uk/BUBL/Tree.html
By entering a lower case "l" for lynx at the first
welcome screen on BUBL, Telnet users can also access
BUBL's WWW server on a text-only basis.
The following information has been received from MIDAS:
A MIDAS (Manchester Information Datasets and Associated
Services) discussion list has now been set up, to
encourage the exchange of information between MIDAS
users themselves and between the users and MCC. All
MIDAS users and potential users are welcome to use the
list. The MIDAS service provides:
+ Flexible on-line access to a wide range of strategic
research and teaching datasets, such as the 1991 Census
of Population statistics, government and other
continuous surveys, national and international macro-
economic time series databanks, digital map datasets,
spatial georeferencing datasets, and scientific
datasets.
+ A range of high quality specialist support services,
including documentation, training courses, software
support and statistical advice relating to the datasets
available via MIDAS and associated access/analysis
software.
+ The provision of a range of computational facilities
for the storage, access, manipulation and
analysis/visualisation of large and complex datasets.
The service is used by academics from a wide range of
different disciplines. Many researchers requiring
access to large scale computing resources and/or access
to specialised analysis software packages in association
with datasets will use MIDAS as their primary data
analysis platfrom. Other users simply use MIDAS to
extract a small subset of variables which are then
downloaded to PCs or UNIX workstations for secondary
analysis.
MIDAS is funded by JISC, ESRC, and The University of
Manchester, and is freely available for academic use
throughout the UK. Details about the MIDAS service are
available via the World Wide Web (http://midas.ac.uk/)
or via gopher (gopher midas.ac.uk).
If you wish to join the MIDAS discussion list send an
email message containing the following command to
mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk:
join midas firstname lastname
The Information Service of the Wellcome Centre for Medical
Science, is now available online, using
telnet wisdom.wellcome.ac.uk
Login: wisdom
The Modern Humanities Research Association is making the
Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature
(ABELL) openly available for searching on-line until 30 April
1995 for evaluation purposes.
The database currently contains more than 20,000 records of
articles, doctoral dissertations, books and reviews in the
field of English studies from the report years 1991 and 1992,
and is searched by using Cambridge University Library's CATS
software.
To access the database, use Telnet to connect to
vaxf.lib.cam.ac.uk, enter GUEST at the username prompt, and
then follow the instructions which appear on screen.
Alternatively, visit ABELL's Home Page on the World Wide Web
at :
http://www.hull.ac.uk/Hull/FR_Web/abell.html
Editions 24-27 of NISS Adviser, the newsletter of NISS
(National Information on Software and Services), have been
issued since the last Newsletter and are available on the
NISS Bulletin Board. They are also directly accessible from
WWW with the URL:
gopher://gopher.niss.ac.uk:71/00/B/4/B/n.txt where n is the
edition number. Below are some points extracted from recent
editions.
All the services below can be found by using telnet niss (or
call niss from a CUDN prompt), or using a WWW browser and the
URL http://www.niss.ac.uk/.
Over the last 7 years of its operation, NISS (National
Information Services and Systems) has built up a number
of different information services - all serving the UK
Higher Education sector. These services are well used
in the Higher Education community with peaks of over
6,000 accesses per day.
On 9 February, NISS formally released the NISS
Information Gateway, which utilises World Wide Web (WWW)
technology to bring together the entire NISS information
base and make it available via an easy to use, graphical
interface.
The visual style of the NISS Information Gateway helps
to make the service easier to use, in addition to the
fact that it lets you browse a vast range of information
without needing to know where that information
physically resides or what its electronic address is.
You can search for particular items by name or by
entering search words, and a list of items which match
your search criteria are displayed on screen. Documents
can also be e-mailed or saved to your own computer,
usually in a choice of formats such as plain text or
postscript.
All members of the education community - students,
staff, researchers, administrators, librarians - should
find that the NISS Information Gateway provides access
to the sort of information which will be of use to them.
Information collections include: circulars from the
Higher Education Funding Councils; Research Council
reports; library catalogues; lists of world-wide gopher
services; news from education groups such as CTI, TLTP,
ITTI; services such as ECHO, ARCHIE, PORTICO, OCLC
FirstSearch, STN; academic job and research vacancies;
The Times newspaper; medical, social sciences and other
subject oriented information.
To use the graphical features of the new gateway you
will need to have access to a WWW browser such as Mosaic
or Netscape. The browser can then be pointed directly
at the NISS Information Gateway, which has an URL of:
http://www.niss.ac.uk/
You can use the new gateway in text mode by using call
niss or telnet niss to reach the original NISS Gateway.
From there, option I leads to the new NISS Information
Gateway with its much broader range of resources and
services.
The NISS Information Gateway provides access to hundreds
of information resources world-wide, and the collection
of resources made available via the Information Gateway
continues to grow, with new items added on a regular
basis.
The top level or "home page" of the NISS Information
Gateway shows how the collection of resources are
separated into 7 main categories :
Welcome to the NISS Information Gateway (provides access
to details about the Information Gateway itself as well
as news about the NISS User Group).
News and current affairs (electronic newspapers and
journals, job vacancies, details of forthcoming
conferences, etc.)
Subject and academic disciplines
Works of reference and bibiographic services (world maps
and dictionaries, on-line library catalogues, major
commercial data hosts , and directory services).
Higher education, administrative and professional
(material from the funding councils, details about
academic institutions and research councils, projects
and initiatives in education)
IT and computing (software, datasets, training and
hardware, CHEST agreements, HENSA, Mailbase and CTI)
NISS: services and developments
If you wish to find out whether a particular resource is
available here, but don't know its whereabouts on the
subject tree, you can use the NISS Information Gateway's
search tool to locate resources in the subject tree
whose descriptions match particular search criteria
(such as keywords or a UDC classification number).
There are a number of journals and other publications
which can be accessed via the NISS Information Gateway
which were not available via the "old" NISS Gateway.
Five of these new journals can be "browsed" although
search facilities are not yet available. They are :
1. The Times Higher Education Supplement (current issue only)
2. Academe This Week (USA)
3. Time Magazine
4. Daily Telegraph (selected items, Nov.1994 onward)
5. Der Spiegel (current issue only)
Thanks to full staffing levels and good progress with
training, we are currently able to supply most items within
one week. Longer delays are mostly attributable to suppliers.
Many thanks to users for their patience during our period of
less than perfect turnround. It may be of interest to note
that, even with our much reduced staffing levels, 21,684
items of software, licences, documentation and maintenance
were issued during 1994.
Last Autumn, Silicon Graphics extended the Varsity Programme
software licence (covering a number of software products for
its UNIX systems) to include a substantially larger range of
products. Expansion of the Varsity Programme software
maintenance contracts to include the extra products brings
with it a requirement for some centralised administration,
primarily for billing. Direct contact between Cambridge users
and Silicon Graphics over software queries will continue as
at present.
Following negotiation between the Computing Service and
Silicon Graphics, it has been proposed that the Computing
Service Sales group will handle this administration, and the
contacts for existing departmental Silicon Graphics software
maintenance contracts should receive details in the near
future.
Anyone in the University who has Silicon Graphics systems
that do not currently have Varsity Programme licences and/or
software maintenance is encouraged to contact John Glasson at
Silicon Graphics (email: johng@reading.sgi.com) for details.
Interleaf: The current site licence terminates in April 1996.
The Computing Service is committed to continuing the site
licence beyond this date. More news of costs will be
published when available.
MacHTTP: A new site licence is being obtained. Licences will
be made available at #20 per institution.
Microsoft Office for Windows: Microsoft's Office 4.2 and
Office Professional 4.3 are now also available on CD-ROM.
Despite repeated requests we are unable to obtain Office for
Macintosh on CD-ROM.
Novell documentation: Documentation sets for both LAN
Workplace and NetWare are available from Sales. Please ring
Sales (ext. 34695) for prices.
Salford Fortran 486: The new site licence for Salford Fortran
for 486 machines is now complete and copies of the software
are in stock. Cost is #200 per copy, #150 per additional
licence. We are currently awaiting delivery of documentation.
SAS for Windows: The SAS site licence has been extended to
add the Windows platform (versions 6.08 and 6.10). The cost
is #200 per annum. Copies are currently only available as
loan masters on CD-ROM.
Visual Basic Professional: Release 3.0 is available on
standalone CD-ROM only.
IDL: Several members of the University have expressed an
interest in the University obtaining a site licence for this
interactive analysis and visualisation package for
engineering and scientific data. IDL integrates a powerful
array-oriented language with numerous mathematical,
statistical, image processing, signal processing and
graphical display techniques. A site licence would be very
expensive and therefore we would need a significant amount of
commitment before the deal became viable. Please contact
Sales if you are interested.
IRIS Explorer: We have been asked to trawl for interest for
this visualisation and application builder software package
from NAg with a view to obtaining a good deal for the
University as a whole. Would any member of the University who
is interested in this software please contact Sales.
Microsoft Select Maintenance Agreement: Very low cost upgrade
offers for the following products are being sent out: Excel
5.0 for Macintosh, FoxPro 2.6 for DOS, Macintosh and Windows,
Office 4.2 for Macintosh and Word 6.0 for Macintosh. Please
contact Sales if you would like to upgrade and do not receive
notification of the offer during the next few weeks.
MacTCP 2.0.6: This new version is now ready for distribution.
Registered users will be contacted in the near future.
PC-NFS 5.1: Although the site licence for this product has
terminated and we are no longer able to provide additional
licences, we are able to upgrade any existing copies to the
latest version (5.1). Registered users will be offered the
low cost upgrade in the very near future. All copies of PC-
NFS obtained through the site licence may be used in
perpetuity, although no maintenance or support is now
available.
SPSS 6.1 for Windows: Apologies for the delay in sending out
upgrade offers for this product. We have been awaiting
delivery of installation documentation. This has now arrived
and the upgrade offers should be sent very soon. There are
many new features and an excellent tutorial which many
departments may wish to use for teaching.
0.25" cartridges: With the demise of our copying facilities
we have a large collection of both DC600 and DC6150 type
cartridge tapes (some are degaussed, others are unused). They
are available at a cost of #5 each.
Cricket Graph and Cricket Presents: These products have now
been unbundled and are available separately. The current
licence expires in March 1996 and there are currently no
plans to renew it.
dBase: CHEST have not renewed the dBase licence which expires
on 31 March 1995. All registered copies may be used until
31 March 2015. The upgrade offer for version 5.0 for both DOS
and Windows will be sent out in the very near future and a
stock of system discs and documentation has been ordered in
advance of the termination. It is hoped that the Computing
Service may be able to negotiate separately with Borland for
a continued site licence. More news will be published when
available.
Microsoft Select: It is regretted that Microsoft have
increased all prices under this agreement quite steeply. New
prices will apply from 1 April 1995.
Monotype Classic Fonts: Apologies for the delays in
distributing these. It is now possible for users to obtain
these fonts for Macintosh or IBM PC or compatible. Please
contact Sales for further details.
Quattro Pro for Windows: We have two copies only of Quattro
Pro 5 for Windows (discs and licence only) available at a
cost of #50 each, on a first come, first served basis.
The next Demonstration Day will be held on 16 May 1995 in the
Phoenix Seminar Room. Exhibitors invited so far include
AppleCentre Cambridge (with Power Macintosh and System 7.5),
CBS Educational Services (PowerPaqs and Microsoft's
Windows 95) and ERDAS (demonstrating Imagine). It is also
hoped that NAg (Numerical Algorithms Group) will attend.
Watch for posters nearer the date.
The following site licences have terminated and the products
have been withdrawn from the price lists: Emu-Tek, Freehand
for Macintosh and Windows, Ryan-McFarland Fortran and Salford
FTN77/386 Fortran (note that a new site licence for Salford
FTN77/486 Fortran has been recently signed).
Anyone interested in DEC(Digital) systems and services who
has access to the WWW may find the "Digital at CERN" web
pages of interest A range of information from new products
to technical articles and presentations is available. The URL
is:-
http://vscrna.cern.ch/digital-at-cern/
Computergram - an international daily newspaper for the
computer industry - is now available via NISS Newspapers and
Journals Services. The journal should be a useful source of
information for anyone who wishes to check on details of
suppliers they are dealing with (financial reports), look for
suppliers of new products or keep up with industry trends.
The University has now subscribed to this service and it is
available, via the NISS Gateway, to any user connecting from
a system in the cam.ac.uk domain.
The entry-level machine is now the Performa 475. We recommend
a minimum configuration of 8Mb of RAM. All machines come pre-
loaded with system 7.5, PC Exchange, At Ease 2 and
ClarisWorks 2.1
Users should be aware that all Performa models have the
68LC040 chip which does not allow for a maths coprocessor.
Users who require this option should purchase either a Quadra
630 or a PowerMac.
The SUPC Supplier is Getech Ltd. Sovereign Centre, Farthing
Road, Ipswich IP1 5AP. Contact education sales (tel. 0473
240470).
The new February 15 price list and Direct Guide are now
available from Reception. The University gets an additional
4% off this negotiated price list on all items except
maintenence, delivery and printers.
The Sales Group are often asked whether they know of
secondhand computers for sale; the answer is that we cannot
advise on secondhand purchases. If you wish to purchase a
secondhand computer we recommend that you refer to the
ucam.for.sale newsgroup on Usenet, or look in the classified
advertisements in the local paper and on the notice board
adjacent to the Cockcroft Lecture Theatre. Similarly, if you
have a system for sale, use one or all of these means of
advertising your computer. We cannot offer advice on what is
a reasonable price to pay or ask for.
Sales are also occasionally asked for information and for
suppliers of kits for building PCs. We have no recommended
source; the various PC magazines are probably the best source
of information about availability of components and kits.
Please note that the Computing Service cannot undertake to
give advice or guidance at any stage.
The Computer Laboratory has organised the following seminars,
to be held at 16.15 in the Babbage Lecture Theatre unless
otherwise stated:
Apr 26
Professor John Reynolds, Imperial College/Carnegie Mellon
University
to be decided
May 3 Professor Darrel Ince, The Open University
to be decided
*May 5 Keith Paton
Improving Code Inspection by Automatic Defect Detection
May 10
Dr Nico Plat Cap Volmac, The Netherlands
The Use of Formal Methods (VDM++) in commercial organisations
May 17
Dr Richard Connor, University of St Andrews
Persistence, HyperProgramming and Beyond
May 24
Tristan Richardson, Olivetti Research Ltd, Cambridge
Teleporting - Making Applications Mobile
May 31
Dr William Newman, Rank Xerox Research Centre
Computer Science in the Age of Interactive Systems
June 7
Dr Jorg Siekmann, German Research Center for Artificial
Intelligence
Automated Deduction
*To be held on Friday in TP4, Computer Laboratory Tower at
11am
The following handouts are available free of charge from
Reception:
H0 Course Descriptions
H1 About the University of Cambridge Computing Service
H2 Electronic Mail
H3 Course Timetable
H4 Using Worldwide Computer Networks
H5 Information Services
H6 USENET News (revised March 1995)
H7 Guidelines for Computer Maintenance
Recent new or revised leaflets are as follows:
G76 Getting Software from an Internet Archive Server (revised
March 95)
G93 Magpie: the CUDN Telnet dial-up Service
M578 Getting started with Pine
PM8 Converting from Phoenix Mail to Hermes and Pine (new
March 95)
U38 Mathematical Typesetting using TeX (revised March 95)
The set of Phoenix migration leaflets, which are free, now
consists of:
PM2: Application Software Migration from Phoenix/MVS
PM3: Guide to moving files from Phoenix
PM4: Transferring data from Phoenix to Magnetic Tape
PM5: Phoenix to CUS Conversion Clinic
PM6: Migrating Mail from Phoenix
PM7: Transferring files from Phoenix
PM8: Converting from Phoenix Mail to Hermes and Pine (new
March 1995)
The following manuals are available from Reception:
A Gentle Introduction to TeX #2.00
A not very short Introduction to LATEX2 #2.00
A Students Guide to Filemaker Pro2 #3.75
An Introduction to Oracle #2.00
GNU Emacs Manual #15.00
Internet Gopher User's Guide #2.70
Introduction to UNIX #2.50
Perl Reference Guide v3.0 30p
Specification of the E Text Editor (6th Edition) #3.00
Specification of the NE Text Editor #3.00
The Essential PageMaker5 (Macintosh and Windows) #6.00
Information about documentation produced by the Computing
Service can be found on the Gopher Information Server. Online
documentation is kept on various central systems as follows:
on the PWF, in directory H:\INFO (for PCs) and folder INFO
(for Macs), on CUS in the /info directory, and on Phoenix in
filespaces INFO and SPEC.
For the timetable of Computing Service courses, see
elsewhere on the Gopher server (select "Cambridge
University", then "Computing Service", then "Computing
Service courses").
The Computing Service has recently acquired some additional
self-service courses:
* introductory videos on Programming in C and Programming in
C++.
* a CD ROM tutorial teaching Microsoft Office v4.2 for
Macintosh, i.e. Excel, Word and PowerPoint. It also includes
an Introduction to the Macintosh system.
* Fingers for Windows, a Typing Tutor which needs to be run
from a PC, running Microsoft Windows (there is also another
Typing Tutor, TypeQuick, which runs under DOS).
These courses, along with the existing ones, may be borrowed
from Computing Service Reception (ring 34662 to check on
availability). A deposit of #50 is required.
A printed booklet containing all course descriptions is
available from Computing Service Reception. This information
can also be found on the Cambridge University Gopher
Information Service (use the gopher command on CUS or the PWF
PCs, or use TurboGopher on the PWF Macintoshes, select
"Cambridge University", then "Computing Service", then
"Computing Service courses").
Expansion of typesetting and text-processing services at
Cambridge has created one (or possibly two) immediate
vacancies in our Technical Applications Group. The job
involves mathematical typesetting using TeX and LaTeX for
academic journals and books. Some knowledge of TeX and/or
LaTeX is required and willingness to work in a busy
production environment is essential. Previous experience of
book or journal typesetting would be an advantage.
Extensive in-house training will be given in the methods and
systems we use.
Benefits include:
* 37.5 hour week, Monday to Friday
* 26 days annual holiday
* First class pension scheme
* Press Restaurant
* Sports and Social Centre
* Free car parking on-site
* Non-smoking environment.
Our retirement age is 60 for both men and women.
If you are interested in the above position please request an
application form by e-mail to rmulvey@cup.cam.ac.uk giving
your postal address, or telephone to Janet Mills, Personnel
Assistant, on (01223) 325036 (24 hour answering service.)
This version by the University of Cambridge Computing
Service, September 1995