Information Technology

General Answers

There are three options available to students who need to fax:

1) If the fax is less than two pages, you can use an free online service like this: http://faxzero.com/

2) If the fax is more than two pages, but is going to a local or toll free number, please go to the College of Engineering Media Center in 2071 Black.

3) If the fax material is over two pages and requires a long distance number, please see your respective departmental office.

There are two types of backups for students, tape and checkpoint.  

Checkpoint backups are preformed every two hours on your U drive.  If you delete or modify a file you should be able to easily recover the file from any two hour interval.  To do this in windows, right click on file/folder that was or contained the deleted file and go to properties.   There you will see a tab called 'Previous Versions' that lists all the times the file was check pointed.  You are able to view, copy, or restore the folder/file back to any one of those times.  Simply double click on the file/folder and it will show you what the checkpoint captured.  

Backups are performed nightly after hours to tape.  If you are unable to find the previous version of the file you want to recover, submit a Support Request Form detailing the full path to the file that you deleted, and the time that you deleted it so we can recover the appropriate version.

Files will be saved on the server until you leave the College of Engineering or you account is disabled by the University.

To create a WWW page, login to a UNIX machine and open up a console. At the prompt type

    mkdir ~/WWW
    chmod o+x ~
    chmod go+rx ~/WWW

Then place your index.html file in the WWW folder. The url for the page is home.eng.iastate.edu/~username.

Everyone has a 1 GB disk quota.  If you need more quota, please fill out a Support Request Form indicating why you need more quota.  Be aware that 'needing more room to run simulations' is not a valid reason for more disk quota.  Every user can read/write in the /local or /tmp folder on each workstation.  For performance reasons, you should run your simulation locally and then copy your results back to your home directory.

If you are familiar with UNIX, you can fix this yourself.  Otherwise you will need to submit a Support Request Form. Please include the full error message you get at login.


    How can I fix this myself?

Because the UNIX and Windows file space is unified, you can access your windows profile from your UNIX home directory. It is located in ~/.isuprofile.  When you login to windows, the windows client will try to download everything in ~/.isuprofile.  If there is a corrupt file in there, you will receive an error logging in. The easiest way to resolve this is to simply rename your ~/.isuprofile to something like 'old-profile'. Next time you login, you will receive a fresh windows login.  All of your old files in your old profile, will now be in a folder in your U: drive called 'old-profile' which you can copy back if you like.  In short, login to UNIX, and type "mv ~/.isuprofile old-profile" and that's it.

We have some excellent instructions for you to follow here.

• Open "My Computer".
• Click on "Tools" in the menu bar.
• Select "Map Network Drive...". A dialog box will show up.
• Select which drive letter you want to use in the "Drive:" drop down box.
• Type the full path of the share you want to map in the "Folder:" box. This should look similar to "\\storage.eng.iastate.edu\scratch".
• If you want the drive mapping to stay connected each time you log in, make sure that "Reconnect at logon" is checked.
• If you are not connecting from an IASTATE domain computer, click the "Connect using a different user name" link.
• Fill in "IASTATE\username" where "username" is your ISU NetID.
• Fill in your ISU NetID password in the "Password:" box.
• Click OK.
• Click the "Finish" button.
• All done!
  

There are several methods one can use to access their AFS file space from home or in the Engineering labs.  The following list is by no means intended to be exhaustive.

One method is to visit the Windows lab in 2260 Hoover.  These machines all have an AFS client installed on them to allow AFS directories to be mounted by lab users.

Alternatively, you can connect to afs.engineering.iastate.edu by using either WinSCP or FUGU (depending on whether you use a Mac or Windows).  This system can be accessed from off campus as well.  If you would like more information on how to use WinSCP or FUGU please look here.

If you are a linux user there are scp and sftp programs available on most distributions and you can connect to afs.engineering.iastate.edu also.

The easiest way to change your password is to login to a windows machine, hit Control+Alt+Delete, and then select 'change password'. Remember this will change both your UNIX and Windows passwords. Sometimes it can take a couple minutes for the changes to take effect.

You can also change your password from Linux machines by using the 'kpasswd' command. On Sun machines, type 'kinit' followed by 'kpasswd'.