NBER Account Setup

Help Pages

The NBER site has a basic help section, and you should probably start with the New Users Page.

You should receive an instructive email, which will warn you about the quota and backup proceedures. It claims to be here (but isn't): /home/lib/bulkwarning.txt

About the system

From /proc/version nber7 is running Redhat 4.4.4-10, linux kernel 2.6.33

Key software includes:

• PHP 5.3.3
• Perl 5.10.1

Initial Setup

You will want to do the following:

Create yourself a directory on a (local - i.e. scratch7 or scratch8 on nber7) scratch volume and link it:

mkdir /disk/scratch8/username
ln  -s /disk/scratch8/username/ scratch

Create your web directory (accessible at www.nber.org/~username):

mkdir public_html
chmod ugo+r public_html
chmod a+x public_html

Note that you need to set the entire directory to executable.

My webspace is at: http://www.nber.org/~edegan

Connecting Remotely

Connect directly to a node. Available nodes are nber4,nber7,nber8, and nber9 for Linux (ssh to nber7.nber.org for example). Two nodes run Solaris: nber5 and nber6.

Use PuTTY, or your favorite SSH client.

MYSQL

You can connect the MySQL server from inside the network. There is a client each of the nber4-9 nodes. From one of these nodes do:

mysql -h mysql.nber.org -u username -p

For the wiki there there is dedicated account with username wikipatent.

mysql-h mysql.nber.org -u wikipatent -p
use patentwiki;
show tables;

File Transfer

SFTP

Using sftp is straight forward:

1. Download the sftp client (OpenSSH) from the NBER directly (you only need to install the client)
2. Run sftp from your command line
3. Use it.

For example, open a cmd prompt, then type:

sftp username@nber7.nber.org
ls
put Test.txt
exit

There is a documentation on the 'sftp' command on about.com.

SAMBA

Using Samba is currently giving me problems - it appears that port forwarding is not currently supported.

However, there is a help guide, and if you are using windows 7 then search cmd.exe, right click, run as adminstrator, and then rype: hdwwiz.exe to run the hardware wizard. From this point on, in installation is as in the guide. The loopback adaptor is under 'Windows', when you browse for the adaptor.

WGet

The wget tool is installed on the NBER's linux boxes. This lets you retrieve files over HTTP.

Once you have SSH'd in, just:

wget url
e.g. wget http://www.edegan.com/images/EJE%20BlackOnWhite.jpg

SAS

The SAS node is on: sas1.nber.org. SSH on to it, then run an interactive SAS session using:

sas -nodms
...
endsas;

Getting Help

There is a online list for support contacts. The phone prefix is 617. I've mostly worked with Mohan Ramanajan, who is the primary Unix guru: mohan@nber.org or 617 588-0367