The interactive response of several departmental systems has been killed by a large number of small, compute-bound background jobs which were started incorrectly. The correct way to start a long-running background job is with a

   % nice my_program

The "nice" will alter the scheduling priority of the program so that it will interfere with interactive computing less than it normally would.

In any event, background computing is better done on systems dedicated for that, the bg's.

In order to correctly print pdf files from acroread, the "Download Fonts Once" option found under File | Print must be disabled. Font problems occur after the first printed page when this option is enabled.

The easiest way to produce good PDF output for LaTeX is to follow the following steps:

• latex myfile
• dvips -Ppdf -o myfile.ps myfile
• ps2pdf myfile.ps myfile.pdf

The more you use conventional fonts, the more likely the above process is to produce good PDF.

We've updated k3b to resolve an issue in burner speed detection. This should increase the reliability of CD-burning, and allows users to configure burning speed by hand. Note that while the drive may support higher speeds, the faster the speed you select, the higher your change of underrunning buffers and burning a coaster. We've tested various machines in the department. Here's our recommnended burning speeds:

MACHINE TYPE          ON-THE-FLY     MASTERED
Silver Gateways       8x             16x
Precision 340n        12x            32x
Precision 360n 3.0GHz 8x             16x
Precision 360n 3.4GHz 16x            32x

LAM-MPI is now available. To use it, you will need to add /opt/lam/bin to your path.

Version 2.2.0 of valgrind (the excellent memory debugger/profiler), capable of dealing with Linux kernel 2.4 and 2.6 and glibc 2.2.* and 2.3.* has been installed beneath /usr/remote on departmental Linux desktops. Documentation (html) may be found in /usr/remote/share/doc/valgrind.

There will be no techie support from 5pm on Tuesday, Novembver 23 until 9am on Monday, November 29. Systems and servers will be running unattended over that period. Please plan accordingly.

Through Dec 16: regular techie coverage
Dec 17 - Dec 22: 1 techie
Dec 23 - Jan 4 : no techies; systems run unattended
Jan 5 - Jan 11: 1 techie
Starting Jan 12: regular techie coverage

Maple 9.5 is now installed on all Department machines. It is at /usr/local/bin/{maple,xmaple} on linux systems and in the Applications folder on OS X systems.

Firefox and Thunderbird are now available department-wide. If you have installed your own local copy of these applications, you can save quite a bit of disk quota by removing it and using the departmental copy.

The memory debugging tool valgrind, version 2.4.0, has been installed in /usr/remote/bin. Documentation is in /usr/remote/share/doc/valgrind.

The Epiphany web browser (labeled "Web Browser" in the Gnome and KDE menus) has difficulty printing to department printers with its default settings. To print from Epiphany, in the Print menu, make sure that the following settings are active: 1) Under the General tab, the button next to Printer should be selected, and "lpr" (without quotation marks) should be entered in the text box. 2) Under the Paper tab, Letter must be selected. If both of these settings are correct, Epiphany should correctly print to department printers.

No techie coverage on July 4.

This summer's batch of replacement systems, destined for rooms 108, 111 and 139, and to replace bg4 and bg5, are Intel Pentium4 EM64T machines. These are 64-bit systems. This change means you need to know a couple of things in order to do software development on Linux boxes in the department. The 64-bit systems will run 32-bit binaries. Where necessary, there are 32-bit AND 64-bit versions of libraries. However, 32-bit systems will not run 64-bit binaries. If you are working on a 64-bit system and want to compile a binary that will run on all departmental Linux systems: gcc -m32 yadda-yadda. Otherwise, a binary compiled on a 64-bit system will be a strict 64-bit program. To figure out what kind of system you're on, do a "uname -i". A 64-bit system will output "x86_64"; a 32-bit system, "i386".

Given the department's move to a single laboratory, 121 will be unavailable for students and faculty while 141 labs are in session. This summer (until early August), the lab will be in use from 10:15am until 12:05pm all weekdays.

Remote access is always allowed.

From departmental Linux systems, see:

• file:///usr/remote/javadocs/docs_1.4.2/index.html
• file:///usr/remote/javadocs/docs_1.5.0/index.html

For remote access to the documentation, use:

• http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/index.html
• http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/index.html

New test announcement.

A new Linux kernel that fixes several security holes has been released by SuSE. I will be installing it over the weekend (September 2, 3, 4) on all departmental Linux systems. As part of the installation, a reboot is required. I will do a "wall" 5 minutes before I reboot a system to warn people