You can use SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) to connect to hyper.phas.ubc.ca and transfer files. Regular FTP access has been blocked because it sends your password across the net without encryption and could be sniffed by a hacker. For more information on how to login and transfer files securely, see our Secure Login.

Another way to transfer files is to send them as email attachments.

You need to reconnect the drive over the network. See the connecting to H: drive instructions. If you find that you are connecting to someone else's H: drive, talk to the clab TA or the sysadmin. There could be a problem on that computer.

This problem occurs with certain versions of MS-Office. The Office program inserts lines at the beginning of the file which aren't Postscript and must be deleted. Once you have transferred the file from the PC to your unix account, delete the first line(s) of the file with an editor. The first line must begin with the characters:

you can use any number of simple text editors. One of the easiest is "pico" which has the same user interface as the mail program "pine". For example type:

Now print the new postscript file. 

Problem: I'm having some funny problems when I ssh to physics. If I leave the ssh window idle for a while (not sure exactly how long, maybe 1/2 an hour), it will disconnect. My computer isn't shutting off or going into sleep mode or anything like that. The screen saver does go on after about 10 minutes, but I don't think that has anything to do with it because it doesn't shut off just when the screen saver comes on.

Solution: Put the following line in your .cshrc file:

This means you will get logged out after 60 minites of inactivity. 

You need to use g++ instead of gcc to compile your program.

Using graphical applications from Unix server requires that the client machine be able to display X programs; i.e. the client machine must be running a piece of software called an X server.

For Windows users we recommend using MobaXterm, which is very easy to use.

Or if you prefer, you can also use either Cygwin/X or Xming. Both are free, and appear to work quite well.

Instructions on how to customize install Cygwin/X

Instructions on how to use Cygwin/X

For Xmaple and MATLAB you must use ssh -Y (i.e. ssh -Y physics.ubc.ca). The -Y enables X11's trusted forwarding features. The difference is the level of permissions the client application has on the X-server running on the client machine. Untrusted (-X) X11 Forwarding is more secure, but unfortunately most applications do not support running with less privileges as of yet.


From the OpenSSH FAQ:

This enhancement has been incorporated in Release 14 Service Pack 2 (R14SP2). 
To run MATLAB in the background, you need to do the following: 

1. Redirect the standard input.
2. Redirect the standard output.
3. Eliminate the graphical output.
4. Call MATLAB as a background process.

You may also want to change the process's priority to decrease its effect on total CPU usage.

Here is a simple script written for the UNIX C shell, which demonstrates one way of running MATLAB in the background:

#! /bin/csh -f
# Clear the DISPLAY.
unsetenv DISPLAY  # unset DISPLAY for some shells
# Call MATLAB with the appropriate input and output,
# make it immune to hangups and quits using ''nohup'',
# and run it in the background.
nohup matlab -nodisplay -nodesktop -nojvm -nosplash -r $1 > $2 2 > erroroutput &

Save this script in a file called matbg and change its permissions to make it executable. The syntax for calling it is: 

matbg <"infile"> <"outfile"> 

... where is the MATLAB file to be executed, and is the file to which the output will be sent. Errors, if any, will be redirected to the file "erroroutput". If takes input arguments, enclose the function call in double quotes: 

matbg "foo(10);quit" <"outfile"> 

If you are not interested in saving the output, you can specify /dev/null as the second argument. 

If you want to change the process's priority, you can use the UNIX command nice in the line which invokes MATLAB. For example, if you wish to change MATLAB's priority to 19, change the appropriate line to the following: 

nohup nice -10 matlab -nodisplay -nodesktop -nojvm -nosplash -r $1 > $2 2 > erroroutput &

All long-running or CPU intensive jobs running on departmental servers (warp, hyper, etc.) must be run at the lowest priority via the "nice" command, ie: "/usr/bin/nice -19" on some computers you may need to use "/bin/nice").

Another way to re-nice a job is to use the "top" command. In this case you would first start your job normally, then run the "top" commnad and use the "r" command to re-nice  your job to level 19.

The command to use here is called mac-pc and just typing in the command without any arguments will give you its usage. A typical usage to convert a mac file to a PC file is:

For example, we want to convert the MAC BINHEX formatted file "S6_1.xls" to a format which a PC can read. So at the prompt, we type:

This will produce the following output on your screen, telling you how the computer is processing your file:

Now, the file named "S6_wt_spreadsheet_Plodin.xls.data" is one that can be read into a PC (in this case into MSExcel).