Computer Resources at Pitt and Introduction to the the Pitt Main Frame Computer

Raise student awareness of computing resources

available at the University of Pittsburgh

Students will access their Unix account

Student will create a web page on their Unix

account that contains 2 links and one image file

Students will learn how to move files with FTP

Class Objectives

Falk Library

Benedum Hall

Cathedral of Learning

David Lawrence

Posvar Hall

Hillman Library

Sutherland Hall

Alumni Hall

Computer Labs at Pitt

More info at http://technology.pitt.edu/software_hardware.html

Adobe Acrobat Professional ($35) Microsoft Office ($0)

ArcView ($10) MiniTab ($5)

Clementine ($10) Norton Anti-Virus ($0)

EndNote ($5) Oracle ($5)

MathCad ($5) SAS ($10)

Mathematica ($10) S-Plus ($10)

MatLab ($10) SPSS ($10)

Software Licensing at Pitt

CSSD

Student

Toolkit

CD

Students, faculty and staff have access to the Pitt network, including:

an email account

and

a unix account

Computer Accounts

All Pitt faculty students and staff have access to the Pitt computer store. Go there first to buy Hardware and Software

Computer Store will help with configuration and installation

Computer Services

The Technology Help Desk is staffed 24 hours per day, 7 days per week (closed holidays) and serves as a single point of contact for all information technology services. University of Pittsburgh students, faculty and staff can contact the Help Desk regarding any computer issue including e-mail, hardware, software, networking, ResNet, University Computer Accounts, computing labs, and other services.

Help desk 624-4357

Technology Help Desk

Most Universities run mainframe (huge)

computers that use the unix operating system

If you’re a Pitt student you have a unix account

Pitt maintains this account for you, backs up the

data, keeps it running 24 hours a day, 7 days

week.

What’s a Unix Account?

Stable

Used by Main Frame Computers

Allows many users to have separate accounts on the same machine

Used world wide for web servers

UNIX Operating System

Maintained by University

Data backed up each night

Lots of free scientific software has been developed for Unix

Unix is the base for new OS’s for personal computers including Linux and Mac OSX

UNIX Operating System

Student and Faculty have Unix accounts by default

email address = username @ pitt.edu

mcs2 is my username

mcs2@pitt.edu is my email address

mcs2 is my UNIX username

Pitt Maintains Unix Mainframe Computers

Not as easy to use, therefore less popular

But more powerful too!

UNIX is a Command Line Environment

Maybe you shouldn’t.... but

Almost all bioinformatics processes are run in a Unix environment

Lots of FREE software for DNA/protein sequence analysis is available on Unix

Sharing data/images with colleagues and friends

Why Should I Bother to Learn Unix?

Log on via Telnet ( HSLS.. programs > Internet aps > Telnet shortcuts > unixs)

host = unixs.cis.pitt.edu

Enter username and password at prompt

ls command lists directories and files

How to Access your Unix Account

When you log on, you are in your home directory

You can always return to your home directory by typing cd (change

directory)

You can go down the directory tree by typing cd <dirname>

You can go up one level with cd ..

UNIX uses a Hierarchical File system

Your Home directory should have

directories called public and

private

File access is controlled at the directory level

Web pages must be in your public directory

Anyone can read the contents of your public directory

Directory Access

Basic commands are listed on a web page under Tutorial #1

Everybody should log in to their accounts

Basic UNIX Commands

Create directory needed to host web pages

Create your own web page

Address will be www.pitt.edu/~username

In-Class Exercise

The command for creating a new

directory is mkdir <dirname>

To remove a directory, the command is

rmdir <dirname>

A directory MUST be empty before it can be removed

How do you make and remove a directory?

Pitt allows web broswers to access web pages in your Unix account

Web pages must be inside a directory called ‘html’ that is located inside your ‘public’ directory

Create the ‘html’ Directory

log on to you Unix account

go inside public cd public

create new directory called html

mkdir html

go inside html cd html

Create the ‘html’ Directory

The path to a directory is the listing of all directories in the hierarchy.

The path to file3 is

dir1/dirB/file3

Separator for directories is a forward slash /

What’s a path?

The path to your html directory is public/html

The Unix OS keeps track of your ‘current working directory’

You can always get the complete path by typing pwd (print working directory)

The abbreviation for the current directory is ./

More on paths

Unix provides several text editors

The easiest to use is ‘pico’

To launch pico, type pico <file1>

If ‘file1’ already exists, you open it and can edit it. If file1 does not exist, pico creates it.

How do you create or edit a text file?

Pico is a simple text editor

Typing text will enter it into the file

Use the arrow keys to move your cursor

pico commands are listed at the bottom and are invoked with the Cntl key

(^X = Cntl X)

Using PICO

Screen Shot of pico

More Pico

To exit a file, type Cntl-X (^X)

If the file (buffer) was modified, you will be asked whether you want to save the changes. The answer is yes (y) or no (n)

You can save to a new name or OVERWRITE the existing name

Once a file is OVERWRITTEN on Unix, there is no UNDO ... caution

More Pico: ^X

More Pico: ^X

Web pages are text files that are meant to be ‘rendered’ or formatted by a browser

Browsers use HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol)

Browsers read html files (hypertext markup language)

What’s a Web Page?

HTML uses tags

tags are enclosed in <brackets>

(less than and greater than signs <>)

<b> = start bold text

</b> = stop bold text

HTML Basics

<b>BOLD</b>

<i> italics </i>

<u> underline </u>

Headings:

<H1> Biggest </H1>

<H2> Big </H2>

<H3> Not so Big</H3> .... etc <H6>

HTML Basics

A Very Basic Web Page

<HTML> This is my web page!</HTML>

Another Basic Web Page

<HTML> <head><title>Martin’s Page</title></head><H1>This is my web page!</H1></HTML>

Make sure you are inside your public/html directory

Edit your page text with pico

Save your page as welcome.html

View your page with a browser. The address will be www.pitt.edu/~username

Make your own page

<a href=”http://www.pitt.edu”>Pitt Home page</a>

complete address (URL) = http://www.pitt.edu

Link on your page will say “Pitt Home page”

Add a link to your page

<img> tag needs a source of the image, usually a .gif or .jpg file

here’s one from the Pitt web page

<img src = ”http://technology.pitt.edu/images/pittb_01.gif”>

Add an image to your page

View source !!

How do you borrow (steal) from other

sites?

View sample web pages on your browsers

View source

Sample Web Pages

You can create complex web pages using programs like Microsoft ‘FrontPage’

You can create web pages with Microsoft Word using the save as web page command

Complex Web Pages

Pitt allows you to host web pages in your unix account - free

Your home directory for web pages is inside your public/html directory

The web address for public/html is www.pitt.edu/~username

The name for this web page must be welcome.html

Make Your Own Web Page

Go to your home directory cd

Go to public/html cd public/html

Create welcome.html

pico welcome.html

Make Your Own Web Page

• Connect to your UNIX account using an FTP program

• Transfer the image file as “Raw Data”

• Add the image to your page with the

<img src=“image.jpg”> tag

Add an Image to Your Web Page