UNIX Frequently Asked Questions

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This page will help you through many of the common problems users face in the Open Lab experience. Many of these answers may direct you to use certain UNIX commands. If you need assistance with these commands, you can refer to the UNIX on-line guide. If there is not an FAQ related to your problem, see a lab assistant. You can also get the help of a lab assistant if you are not comfortable with performing some of these operations, or if you do not understand the instructions. If you have a question that you think should be on this FAQ, please e-mail geogweb@geog.umd.edu.

There is also a seperate FAQ for the PC workstations on the Geography Department Intranet.

FAQ Topics

Common Problems
Account Questions
General Open Lab Questions
Internet and E-mail Questions
Printing Questions
Account Security Questions
File Transfer Questions
ArcView Questions
ArcInfo Questions
PCI Questions

Common Problems:

1. A program has locked up and my machine is frozen, what do I do?
2. How do I decompress a .zip or .tar.gz file?
3. How do I cut and paste in the UNIX environment?

Account Questions:

1. I'm having trouble logging in. What should I do?
2. I've forgotten my password. What should I do?
3. How much space do I have in my home space? What do I do if I exceed my quota?
4. How do I make a link to a directory so that I don't have to type in the long path name every time?
5. How do I access the floppy drive? How do I copy files to and from the floppy drive?
6. Are there other GIS facilities on campus?
7. Do I need to back up my data?
8. How do I find out if another user is logged on to UNIX right now?
9. What are "dot files?"
10. How do I customize my UNIX account?
11. How do I get backups of one day old homespace files?
12. How do I change my finger information?
13. Introduction to Your Glue Account

General Open Lab Questions:

1. What spatial data sets are available on-line through the Geography Department?

Internet and E-mail Questions:

1. How do I use Pine to check my e-mail?
2. Can I access the internet and my Glue e-mail from home?
3. Someone sent me a MSWord attacment. How can I read it?
4. How do I read PDF files with Netscape?
5. How can I make my own website?
6. How do I forward the e-mail from my glue account to the e-mail account I use most?
7. How do I delete a Netscape lock file?
8. I forgot to set my Netscape cache to zero and now my homespace is full, how do I delete cache files?
9. What does the ^ mean in Pine?
10. When downloading .gz files using Netscape the file gets dumped to my screen in ASCII format.

Printing Questions:

1. How do I print?
2. How can I see if my print job is in the printer queue?
3. Why won't my postscript file print?
4. Why can't I print a file whose filename contains spaces?
5. When I use the print command from a program like ArcView, nothing happens.
6. How can I print multiple files with one qpr command?

Account Security Questions:

1. How do I change permissions on my files?
2. How do I change my password?
3. I'm worried about others accessing my files. How can I protect them?

File Transfer Questions:

1. How do I ftp?(OIT and WAM System)
2. How do I ftp?(Geography Server)

ArcView Questions:

1. How do I start ArcView?
2. I saved some new work half an hour ago and I can't find it!

    ArcView Views Questions:

1. My theme is checked, isn't it selected?
2. How can I select multiple themes?
3. When adding a theme, why can't I add themes that are from a "Grid Data Source"?
4. I get "Segmentation Violation" when trying to display a coverage.
5. My maps seem to have disappeard in the view window.
6. How can I change the color schemes on my maps?

    ArcView Tables Questions

1. Why can't I change the data in my table?
2. How do I open a theme's attribute table?

    ArcView Layouts Questions:

1. Why does my scale bar show a blank gray box?
2. How do I change text on my layout?

ArcInfo Questions:

1. How do I start ArcInfo?
2. How do I delete an entire coverage?
3. How do I list the coverages in a directory?

PCI Questions:

1. How do I start PCI Works?
2. How do I start Xpace in PCI Works?

• OIT Help Desk Presents Top 10 Good Computing Tips

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