PROJECT ATHENA NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 1, 1984 VOLUME 1, NO. 1 Table of Contents 1 The Project Athena Newsletter 1 2 Athena Registration 4 3 How to Get Help 5 4 Priorities in Use 7 5 Student Accounts for Spring 9 6 Fortran 77 Improvements 9 7 Athena emacs on the IBM PC/XT 11 7.1 Terminal Room PC/XT's 11 7.2 PC/XT Dial-Up Access 12 8 VT125, VT240, and VT241 Terminal Problems 13 9 No More lock 14 Copyright (C) 1984 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Will Doherty, Editor Project Athena 2 PROJECT ATHENA NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 1, 1984 VOLUME 1, NO. 1 1 The Project Athena Newsletter This is the first issue of the Project Athena Newsletter. The Project Athena Newsletter is the official publication of Project Athena, a five-year experiment in the use of computer technologies to improve the education of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If you would like introductory information about Project Athena, obtain a copy of An Introduction to Project Athena from the Athena staff offices at E40-443. The Newsletter prints articles of interest to members of the MIT community who participate, or who are interested, in the Project. These articles present the general purpose, philosophy, technical development, and direction of Project Athena, as well as specific news items about Project Athena system facilities and projects. Athena Newsletter Volume 1, No. 1 1 10/1/84 Project Athena Newsletter 10/1/84 Project Athena publishes the Newsletter on the first and third Monday of each month, although we may skip an issue when we don't have enough copy. You can get a hard copy of the Newsletter in the terminal rooms. Also, you may access an online copy of the newsletter in the usr/doc/newsletter directory. To see what newsletters are there, type: ls /usr/doc/newsletter To view a newsletter on your screen, for instance this newsletter (dated October 1, 1984), type: more /usr/doc/newsletter/84-10-01 To print out a copy of the newsletter, see Section 10 of Essential Unix, available in the Athena terminal rooms or in the Athena Newsletter Volume 1, No. 1 2 10/1/84 Project Athena Newsletter 10/1/84 Self-Service drawer at the IS Publications Office (11-209). We mail the Newsletter to people who may not frequent the terminal rooms, i.e. Principal Investigators, Account Administrators, faculty with Athena accounts, members of the Athena Committees, and assorted others. If you want us to mail the Newsletter to you, send a request to: Athena Newsletter Volume 1, No. 1 3 10/1/84 Project Athena Newsletter 10/1/84 Will Doherty Editor Project Athena Newsletter MIT E40-426 Cambridge, MA 02139 If you wish to reprint any portion of this newsletter, feel free to do so. We ask only that you identify the source--author and Athena affiliation--of the reprinted portion. We encourage article submissions from the community and publish appropriate contributions whenever possible. If you have an article idea, call Will Doherty, the Newsletter editor, at (25)3-1300. If you leave a message, he will return your call. 2 Athena Registration 599 students successfully registered for accounts with the Project Athena Registration program as of Thursday, September 20. This registration program provided preliminary processing-- username and password assignment and identity check--for 599 students out of about 1000 students participating in Athena-sponsored courses so far this term. The registration Athena Newsletter Volume 1, No. 1 4 10/1/84 Project Athena Newsletter 10/1/84 program runs on DEC VAXstation 100 (VS100) graphics displays in the Athena terminal rooms. The MIT Registrar provided Project Athena with a copy of their database that contains 9,914 students so that we could rapidly provide student accounts. 3 How to Get Help For information on how to get help from Project Athena, look at Essential Athena or at the Athena Reference Card, also available in the Self-Service drawer at IS Publications (11-209). The following chart describes some of the services available to you: Type of Help Phone Number Further Description ____________________ Getting Accounts (25)3-1548 For Account Administrators and faculty Hardware Hotline (25)3-1410 All hardware problems; first talk to consultant File Backup (25)3-1381 Only in exceptional cases Tape Mount Requests (25)3-1923 Talk to a consultant 1200 Baud Dial-Ups (25)8-7211 Don't call with dial-up Athena Newsletter Volume 1, No. 1 5 10/1/84 Project Athena Newsletter 10/1/84 terminal or modem problems IS Publications (25)3-6375 Self-Service drawer and other Athena documentation Newsletter Editor (25)3-1300 Leave message for Will Doherty If you discover a hardware problem, like a machine crash or a printer explosion, talk with an Athena consultant in one of the terminal rooms when possible. A machine crash will disable all of the terminals connected to the machine that has crashed, not just the terminal you are using. If you can't find a consultant, call the Athena Hardware Hotline, at (25)3-1410. Please talk with a consultant if possible before reporting hardware failures on (25)3-1410, because they may be aware of the problem and how to handle it. A member of the Athena staff answers the Hardware Hotline from 9-5 weekdays. At other times, you can leave a recorded message; within a couple of hours, someone will poll the recording and respond to the problem. Please understand that the Hardware Hotline is not a ``consulting'' phone number. Consultants will help you with Athena Newsletter Volume 1, No. 1 6 10/1/84 Project Athena Newsletter 10/1/84 software problems in person. For course work, contact your TA or professor, not the Athena consultants. If you can't find a consultant to handle an Athena software problem, type: man sendbug to find out how to send an online software bug report. For administrative questions and concerns, or as a last resort with other problems, call (25)3-1300. 4 Priorities in Use Project Athena currently faces a severe strain on our system capacity. Only people involved in courses and projects sponsored by Project Athena should use Athena resources. To address this issue and other concerns, Project Athena Director Steve Lerman, and other Athena administrators, are writing a comprehensive statement of Policies of Use of Project Athena Resources. Until they finish, they ask members of the Project Athena Newsletter Volume 1, No. 1 7 10/1/84 Project Athena Newsletter 10/1/84 Athena community to adhere to this interim policy statement, entitled Priorities in Use: As the Athena system grows and matures, we expect that demands of faculty, staff, and students for system resources will exceed the capacity of the system for a considerable period of time. The Project Athena community must establish reasonable priorities for effective use of system resources. As the system's capacity expands, Project Athena will provide greater flexibility in use of these resources. People using the system for assigned work in courses sponsored by Project Athena, and for the development of new educational software, have the highest priority. Other use, i.e. access of other computational resources, game playing, or other recreational uses, has second priority. Low Athena Newsletter Volume 1, No. 1 8 10/1/84 Project Athena Newsletter 10/1/84 priority users should work when the system is relatively idle, and should cede access to high priority users. 5 Student Accounts for Spring Students enrolled in Athena courses should be aware that their accounts will become unusable in the Spring. Project Athena will attempt to provide storage for files created during this term. You will remain registered in the Athena registration database even when your account becomes inactive. Eventually, Project Athena hopes to provide virtually unlimited computational access to MIT students. However, the Project Athena courses scheduled for this spring will not have adequate system resources for all of their student accounts without restricting access to some of the current course accounts. 6 Fortran 77 Improvements Project Athena installed a new version of Pass 1 of the f77 (Fortran) compiler on Thursday, September 13. It contains fixes for the following bugs in the previous version of the compiler: Athena Newsletter Volume 1, No. 1 9 10/1/84 Project Athena Newsletter 10/1/84 - DO loop variables used also as DO loop parameters (e.g., DO 10 K=K,5) gave the wrong results. This occurred only when compiling without the optimizer (that is, when you were not using the -O option on the f77 command). - Some expressions containing multiplication by a constant that evaluated to 0 (such as 2/3 * x) caused compilation to halt with an internal error. - The compiler now handles subroutine temporary arguments correctly. Before, it caused invalid results in other temporary values, such as DO loop limits. - With the optimizer on (that is, when using the -O option), the compiler considered all variables within the same COMMON block as the same value. - The optimizer had a tendency to generate two function calls when you squared a function call (e.g., f(x) ** 2). Athena Newsletter Volume 1, No. 1 10 10/1/84 Project Athena Newsletter 10/1/84 Report any problems with the new compiler to a consultant. 7 Athena emacs on the IBM PC/XT If you use one of the IBM PC/XT's connected to an Athena machine, you may have noticed that emacs sometimes misinterpreted the arrow keys for cursor movement on the screen, and sometimes switched the search (ctrl-S) and transpose characters (ctrl-T) commands, causing considerable confusion. The transpose characters command normally exchanges the character under the cursor with the character before it. 7.1 Terminal Room PC/XT's Project Athena staff have fixed the problem with PC/XT's connected directly to Athena machines, so terminal room PC/XT's now handle the arrow keys and the search and transpose characters commands properly in emacs. Athena Newsletter Volume 1, No. 1 11 10/1/84 Project Athena Newsletter 10/1/84 7.2 PC/XT Dial-Up Access Users who access Athena machines with an IBM PC/XT, the Athena H19 terminal emulator, and a dial-up connection should specify terminal type h19pc to the dial-in server to fix the arrow key and command exchange problems described above. When you dial-in with your PC/XT, you will see: (TERM=VT100) at one point. Type: h19pc to tell the host you access that you are using an IBM PC/XT, so that it will allow proper use of the arrow keys and search and transpose characters commands. Reminder: Log out before disconnecting from the dial-in server. If you do not log out before you disconnect, someone else may log Athena Newsletter Volume 1, No. 1 12 10/1/84 Project Athena Newsletter 10/1/84 in and take over your account. If you lose your connection before you have a chance to log out, and you don't know how to make sure that you are logged out, contact a consultant as soon as possible to make sure that your account is secured. For more information on ``disconnect without logout'' and other dial-in features, read the Dial-Up Access document available in Athena terminal rooms and in the Self-Service drawer at the IS Publications Office (11-209). 8 VT125, VT240, and VT241 Terminal Problems Graphics terminals, such as the DEC VT125, VT240, and VT241 terminals, handle the ctrl-S and ctrl-Q characters in a different way than other terminals. (This does not apply to DEC VS100's which are, for now, graphics displays, not graphics terminals.) If you type ctrl-S and your terminal freezes, type ctrl-Q to unlock it. ctrl-Q may also unlock your terminal when caught in other situations. Because this problem results from the design of these terminals, we are working on a long-term solution. We will present more Athena Newsletter Volume 1, No. 1 13 10/1/84 Project Athena Newsletter 10/1/84 details on the problem, and a proposed solution, in a subsequent newsletter. 9 No More lock Project Athena has removed the lock command that allowed users to ``lock'' a terminal for their use while they went elsewhere. The command disappeared because some people left terminals unusable for a long time. The deadline for submission of articles and article ideas for the 10/15/84 issue is 5pm on Thursday, October 4. The deadline for submission of articles and article ideas for the 11/5/84 issue is 5pm on Thursday, October 25. Athena Newsletter Volume 1, No. 1 14