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Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Note: We use the environment variable COMPUTINGWEB

 > COMPUTINGWEB="/afs/cern.ch/atlas/www/GROUPS/COMPUTING"
				or
				 > setenv COMPUTINGWEB /afs/cern.ch/atlas/www/GROUPS/COMPUTING
 

Table of contents

  1. General
  2. Hypernews
  3. Disk space assigned per user
  4. E-mail at CERN
  5. Printing
  6. HTML validation
  7. Browser quirks
  8. Reporting problems

Each item listed below has an identifier, which is shown when moving the mouse over the title; it can be used when refering to the item.

General

What are the logins and groups at CERN for user <userName>
This information is no longer shown with the utility xwho. Use instead the command phone: 
						> phone <userName> -A
The ATLAS group code is ZP and id 1307.
User <userName> is member of which AFS groups
To know all groups of user <userName> type 
  > pts membership -name <userName>
To have write access to the atlas-computing web the user has to be member of group zp:software.

HyperNews (HN)

Note: This information has been moved to the TWiki please update it there, not here.

Forgot password
Your userId is the same as on lxplus. Go to page New Member. At the bottom of the page are instructions how to reset your password.
No login for CERN lxplus
Consider to get the login, it will be useful for other reasons than HN. If you, however, insist to be without this privilege, contact the HN administrators specifying your affiliation and your choice of
  1. login Id xyz
to be used for HyperNews. Your registered login Id will be xyz.notatlas.
Changing experiment
If you change your experiment, e.g. leave ATLAS and become CMS member, contact your HN administrators to remove your old HN account. You can then register with the HN of your new experiment.
I receive no message from HN
We assume that you registered with HN, following the instructions for registration. Did you submit a posting to the test forum and you received e-mail? Several reasons may prevent that you receive the HN e-mail messages: the e-mail address, which you provided at registration is wrong; your e-mail server is down; your spam filter rejects mail coming from hn-atlas-*@cern.ch. If none of these is the case contact the HN administrators.
Message sent twice to author
Occasionally messages are received twice. This happens because you are subscribed to a forum and you sent the original message with an email address
(a) someone@mail.cern.ch, while you are subscribed to HN with
(b) Some.One@cern.ch.
For HyperNews these are two different addresses, hence it sends one copy of replies to you as (a) because you are the author of the posting, and one copy as (b) because you are subscribed to the forum. This will only happen for follow-ups in that thread.

In general it is best to pick one address and make sure all of your mailers are set to use that address. For example, set them all to the CERN "Generic Mail Address", Some.One@cern.ch, and never use someone@mail.cern.ch.

Restricted Forums
HN is open to all members of ATLAS. It is against the work model of HN to restrict a forum to a sub-group of ATLAS. The implementation, though possible, would mean a major rework of the scripts of HN.
Rerouting mail from one HN forum to a different forum
You cannot simply "move" a posting from one forum to another one. Forwarding a message received from a certain forum with email address hn-atlas-xxx to another forum hn-atlas-yyy works (since Jan 2007), but is not recommended. The recommended way to route a posting from one forum to another one is to add a posting to the latter and point in its body to the original posting.
Move a forum from one category to another one, or remove a forum
In the rare case where a forum should be moved to a different category or be removed completely, contact the HN administrators. You may ask for moving a forum to the category "Obsolete Forums", if it should no longer be used; the forum will continue to be active. Removing a forum is irreversible (the email gateway has also to be removed).
Remove or move a posting
Do not ask the HN administrator to remove a posting. It is technically possible, but not worth the time it takes to do it right. For moving a posting see Rerouting mail … .
Copy/paste from word document
When you copy/paste from a Word document, special characters like single quotes and double quotes are not shown correctly in the email. To display them correctly you have to retype them in the HN text before posting. Note that the preview and the text posted on web show the characters correctly.

Disk space assigned per user

At registration each user is given memory space under 
$HOME = /afs/cern.ch/user/<first_letter>/<userId>/
where the directory $HOME/scratch0/ is shortly called the "scratch space", the rest is called "project" space. Check with the command fs lq how much space is allocated to your account.
This space allows users of CERN machines some development and the storage of small test files: 400MB of project space (backed up) and 500MB of scratch space (not backed up) is the maximum that will generally be provided. Requests for space above this threshold will be treated as exceptional and will require additional justification. Requests from e.g. detector groups or physics working groups will be managed on a case by case basis.
Please note that you have also access to CASTOR at CERN, where you can store big files. The CASTOR directory per user is 
/castor/cern.ch/user/<first_letter>/<userID>
If you are using your own computer with AFS access, you can probably use your local disk and won't need scratch space.

E-mail at CERN

Changing the GEM mail addr
Go to the CERN administrative page and login. You can select a different GEM address and click "update".
You can also define a new GEM address with a different firstName. Enter in the Nickname field the firstName, which you want to use in your GEM email address firstName.FamilyName@cern.ch. Then click "update". You have now a new GEM, select it and click again "update".

Printing

Printing or preview hangs
Browser: Mozilla and Firefox
The problem was seen for page newWeb.php, which used to list many items in a single ul list. We have since divided the list into several shorter ul lists and the problem has disappeared. It was also seen with page organization.php when trying preview with format portrait; preview with landscape, however, has no problem.
The problem is probably related to a too long (or wide) "box" which the print/preview process tries to fit on one page.

HTML validation

The line numbers of the validator do not correspond to the line numbers of the file
This happens for *.php files, because they are processed in the server and then sent to the browser; the W3C validator sees this preprocessed file. If the validator signals an error which is difficult to locate, copy the *.php file temporarily to a *.html file. Then validate this file; the line numbers are now exactly those which you see in your editor. Do not forget to remove the *.html file when you have finished the validation.
HTML 4.01 validation
W3C validation service: The URL for Savannah does not validate and causes 1 warning and 7 error reports. This seems to be a limitation of the W3C validation service. More generally all URLs which contain arguments, which are indicated by & are signalled as having errors. Example: a URL pointing to the transparencies of an agenda page.
The <p> tag and other block tags
The W3C validation service signals an error if the <p> tag encloses a <ul> block or a <pre> block. You have to terminate the <p> element, add e.g. the <ul> block and then restart a new <p> block. This seems not very natural.

Browser quirks

When you submit your question, please specifying the browser, which you are using.

Choice of browsers
If you use one of the following browsers, consider to upgrade to Firefox or Mozilla 1.7.x
  • Internet Explorer 5 for Mac: It has been cancelled.
  • Internet Explorer 5: there are better subsequent releases. IE 5.5 does not implement the box model correctly. Though there are work-arounds, we have not made use of them, because they make the css less readable. Upgrade at least to IE 6 or to the superior Firefox.
  • Mozilla 1.4.x
<abbr> and <acronym> tags and title
The title attribute is not displayed for all Mozilla (1.7.x) installations -- reason not yet understood
Browser message: "redirection limit is reached"
Means that the URL is broken, the message is confusing

Reporting problems

Please report bugs and tasks concerning documentation, information and communication to one of the following Hypernews forums or to Savannah

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