Department of Computer Science
College of Arts and Sciences
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

COMP 290-042: Advanced Networking -- Internet Architecture & Performance

Notes and Tips

Disk usage and BACKUPS

You should keep any important files in your home directory. None of the file systems in our private network are backed up. You are strongly encouraged to make regular backups of your work by using tar and ftp to keep a copy of your work in the departmental home directory. Because disk space on many of the machines is limited we may remove extraneous files (those not in someone's home directory) at any time.

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Compute-server, File-server, and recommended model of work

The machines for this class are on a private network (so that you don't disrupt the departmental networks with your experiments). The only machine you can access from the department will be bennett. This machine is your compute-server and file-server. You are encouraged to do all of your development and data post-processing on bennett. When you need to actually run an experiment, come to the lab and use the appropriate machines. But first, check that no one else is currently running an experiment. The network is a shared resource which you will need to share with your classmates. More on this when assignments are distributed. All of the class machines will mount bennett:/usr as /usr2. Symbolic links will allow you to have a common home directory on all machines (/usr/home/userid).

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Machine names

The machines for this class are named for alumni of the DiRT research group. They are: stone, nee, talley, bennett, chen, borg, bollella, becker, otis, gomer, earnestt. Depending on which network they are connected to they will also have a suffix: P137, P138, or P134. bennett can always be reached from the department as "bennett" but from the lab machines as bennettP137 (it has two network interfaces.)

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Passwords

Use the "password" command to change your password the first time you log in. Passwords are *not* networked so you will have to change it on each machine separately. Sorry.

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DO NOT POWER CYCLE Machines

Do NOT power cycle a machine. You should use "shutdown" to reboot. If the machine appears hung, ask the TA or one of the DiRT RAs for assistance.