Responsibilities
Introduction
Use the man command while in UNIX. For example, to find out more
about the command rm, type at the prompt:
man rm
If you are not certain about the name of the command, use
apropos. Typing in apropos quota would give you the names
and a brief description of all commands involving quotas. Alternately,
for help with the man command itself, you can type man man. You can also read the man pages in Emacs in the `Help'
menu---select `Man...' and enter your desired entry. If you want a
hardcopy about the command rm, type man -t rm.
Also available on-line is documentation for various UNIX systems and
commands in the form of information files, or `info.' To access
these resources, simply type info at the prompt. If you are familiar with Emacs, you can access the same
information with its `info' mode, accessed via C-h i.
In addition to the conventional man pages, much of the documentation on Sun Solaris systems is accessible via the "answerbook" program. This includes reference manuals for Fortran 77, Fortran 90, C, etc.
Answerbook requires that your X display support PostScript. This means:
(1) You are sitting at the console of a Solaris machine. In this case, just run
answerbook
(you need to have /usr/openwin/bin in your PATH)
(2) On other X displays, you need to run a "Display PostScript Agent". Here's how:
execnx & answerbook
You only need to run execnx once per X session. And it's not necessary to run answerbook on the same machine that you run execnx.
In addition to the conventional man pages, much of the documentation on Sun Solaris systems is accessible via the "answerbook" program. This includes reference manuals for Fortran 77, Fortran 90, C, etc.
The lab currently supports 2 OSes, Solaris and Digital Unix (DUX). Linux (currently just tern.pppl.gov) may be on the way "in". SUNOS (currently just pobox.pppl.gov) is on the way "out".
As much as possible the same software should be available everywhere, exceptions include:
A good deal of the software (emacs, X11R6, TeX, other GNU utilities) are compiled and installed at the same time for Solaris and Dux, so they should both work identically. Much of the software comes as part of the base installation of Linux and so there may be minor differences in versions and configurations there.
VMS users on the VAX cluster computers can get help simply by typing help at the prompt and choosing among the menu items. VMS also has several consultants who can be contacted for any problems relating to the VAXes. They man a help desk in room B152 near the LOB lobby; their extension is 2275.
In addition to the on-line help available through man,
NERSC also has consultants available to help users with any problems
they might have. If you have an unanswered question and no one at PPPL
can help you, simply address your question through e-mail to
`consultants@nersc.gov' or call their toll free phone at 1-800-666-3772.
They usually reply within a day or two. There
is also a documentation of the NERSC systems available through the
document ezfile command while on the Crays.
Emacs provides an on-line tutorial when you type the command
CTL-h t. The tutorial, along with command apropros, is also
available under the `Help' menu.
X-Windows also provides xman, a manual browser for the X Window System available by typing xman at the UNIX prompt.
Responsibilities
Introduction