A Guide to CLASSE Computing Services

Log In

When you obtained your CLASSE computing account, you were provided a userid and you set your own password. You can use them to login on any CLASSE managed computer, including your desktop computer if one was provided. Some lists of CLASSE computers are available at
https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/WhichComputer

Changing Passwords

You can change your CLASSE password at any time. Use the Web page https://www.classe.cornell.edu/pwm/
CLASSE managed computers: Your initial login MUST take place while connected to a CLASSE network
Reocmmended: log OUT immediately after initial login to make sure you can log in when not connected to a CLASSE network.

Instructions are available at
https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/UserAccountsAndPasswords
and at
https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/FirstWindowsLogon

Reading Email and Scheduling Meetings

All Laboratory staff and faculty have accounts in Cornell's Exchange service, which is provided by Microsoft's cloud-based Office 365. It processes email associated with your Cornell email address and is used to schedule meetings.

Note: Please report Office 365 email problems, including long delays in mail delivery, to the CIT help desk at 255-5500 or itservicedesk@cornell.edu If you don't report it, they can't know there's something wrong.

Outlook Web App

Outlook Web App (OWA) is Microsoft's Web-based email reader and meeting scheduler at
http://outlook.cornell.edu/

Login to OWA by providing the userid your-NetID@cornell.edu (the suffix @cornell.edu is required) and the password associated with your Cornell NetID.

For more information, see
http://www.it.cornell.edu/cms/services/owa15/index.cfm

Outlook

The full Outlook application provides somewhat different features from OWA. Outlook is installed as part of Microsoft Office on CLASSE-managed Windows and Macintosh computers. For more information, see
http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/guides/facstaff_email/choose.cfm

Outlook (along with many other Windows applications) is available to Linux (and other) computers by using WinAPP, the CLASSE Windows "Terminal Server". For details, see
https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/AccessingWinApp

Microsoft Office is available to the Cornell community to use on personally owned computers for a nominal fee. See
http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/software_licensing/available/ms_office.cfm#ms_hup

Web Browsing

The supported web browser at CLASSE is Vivaldi. Cornell and CLASSE web-based services sometimes do not work well with other browsers. Support for other browsers will be provided only on a "best effort" basis.

Printing

To print to a CLASSE printer, you must be on a CLASSE network. If your computer is connected to RedRover, eduroam or any other non-CLASSE network, please first connect to the CLASSE VPN by following the instructions at ClasseVPN.

Please see PrintingAtCLASSE for printing instructions.

CLASSE provides a large number of printers with a variety of capabilities. A black-and-white printer is easily available near every office. A large format color printer is available in each of the research buildings. See PrinterList to find the printer nearest you.

Please do not attempt to fix printer problems on your own. It's too easy to mess them up and cause problems for everyone who needs to use them. Instead, please contact a member of the computer group or a designated printer support person.

Set default printer

Make sure you have configured your default printer to be one that's nearby. If your default printer is wrong, it'll print somewhere else. You might not want that to happen. In some cases it can be quite embarrassing.

A4 vs 8.5" x 11" vs 11" x 17"

Be careful to specify the correct paper size. U.S. printers are designed for paper which is 8.5" x 11". Most European documents are formatted for "A" size, which is larger. Trying to print A-sized documents usually will cause the printer to seem to hang, since it is waiting for someone to load the correct paper size. Similarly, only a few CLASSE printers can handle "Tabloid" documents which are sized 11"x17".

File Storage

Don't keep important files on the local computer you sit in front of! It's vital that you use CLASSE's backed-up file services. See
https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/DataStewardship

Your Linux home disk, user disk, scratch disk and project disk space are all on CLASSE file servers and are available using Samba.

Turning Off Computers: Please Don't!

Saving energy is great, but please do not turn off your CLASSE managed desktop computer. Doing so prevents software and anti-virus updates which usually happen during off-hours. However, turning off just the display is OK: it saves energy and does not prevent updates.

In particular, notebook and laptop computers should be left powered on and connected to the network Monday evenings. If updates cannot be performed then, then the updates will happen as soon as the computer is turned on and connected to the network. This can make the computer almost unusable for a long time, just when you need it the most.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

The CLASSE IT group is allowed to provide only a limited amount of support for computers not owned by CLASSE. A brief list of some non-CLASSE support services is available at
https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/OutsideSupport

Personally owned devices usually can access CLASSE resources from home or when connected to Cornell's RedRover or eduroam networks. See the Remote Access section.

Services for External Users

External users may be issued a CLASSE computer account, which provides access to most CLASSE computer services, such as printing and centralized file storage. However, there are some limitations to the resources that can be accessed by external users. Please contact the CLASSE IT group for assistance if you find that you need additional access.

For information on CLASSE IT support for user-managed or personally-owned computers, see above.

Running Programs

Linux

CLASSE encourages using Scientific Linux because this centralized computing resource is easy to access remotely, is highly available, provides more computing power, and is more supportable.

For a list of Available Packages, Recommended Software, more Documentation and other useful information, see Linux Support

Many computational resources are provided by CLASSE's Linux Compute Farm. It contains hundreds of CPU cores which can run jobs in batch or interactively, The farm is managed using the Grid Engine queuing system. See
https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/GridEngine

qsub

qsub is the Linux command used to schedule batch jobs on the Linux Compute Farm. See
https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/GridEngine#Submitting_a_job_script

qrsh

qrsh is the Linux command used to initiate an interactive session on the Linux Compute Farm. It's often used to run software like Matlab. See
https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/GridEngine#Interactive_Jobs

Windows

While Linux is the preferred operating system at CLASSE, Windows may be required when connecting to hardware, using an app with no Linux version installed (e.g. Inventor, LabVIEW), or running a very graphics-intensive application. A list of the software provided on all CLASSE Windows 7 computers is available at
https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/StandardSoftware#Windows_7

Quite a few additional products have been licensed and can be provided with little or no additional charge. A few can be easily installed by anyone. See
https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/SelectedSelfServiceSoftware

Please contact the CLASSE IT group for information about additional software products.

Macintosh

A list of the software provided for CLASSE Macintosh computers is available at Macintosh CLASSE-Standard Software

Available, not fully supported programming/scripting environments

  • Mac: XCode
  • Windows: Visual Studio Express

CLASSE CAD/Illustration standards

CLASSE has a EngineeringDesignDrafting/Illustration Department to assist in the production of computer aided design and technical illustrations. Autodesk Inventor Professional (3D) and AutoCAD (2D) are the applications used by the EngineeringDesignDrafting/Illustration Department in the design, creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of physical components; drawings produced by Autodesk Inventor Professional or AutoCAD are stored in a Vault database. Adobe Creative Suite is used to do other graphics-related tasks.

Drafting/illustration/graphics documents that are important for CLASSE research or education must meet CLASSE standards and must be accessible to appropriate CLASSE staff for future reference/modification. The EngineeringDesignDrafting/Illustration Department and associated infrastructure are set up to effectively attain these goals. For "one-off" projects of limited usefulness, the CLASSE IT group recommends the use of gimp on a Linux computer; gimp is also available on Windows/Mac.

For assistance, or more information on CAD, illustration or other graphics needs, see:
https://www.classe.cornell.edu/Internal/DesignDraftingServices/WebHome.html
or contact Tim O'Connell .

Plotting/Graphing

Most project staff settle on a plotting/graphing standard for themselves; consult your PI/mentor/librarian for more information on plotting or graphing. The selection of packages available can be found on https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/PlottingGraphingPackages
The plotting or graphics results provided by Microsoft Excel don't meet publication standards and are of limited usefulness.

Editing Documents

General Documents

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office (including Microsoft Word) is available on all Windows and Macintosh computers managed by CLASSE,
See

Microsoft Office is available to members of the Cornell community for a low fee. However, the CLASSE IT group urges the use of LibreOffice (which is free) on personally owned computers of all types. See below.

Information about Office for personal use is available at
http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/software_licensing/available/Microsoft-Office-for-Faculty-and-Staff.cfm
and
http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/software_licensing/available/Microsoft-Office-for-Students.cfm

Open Source Office Software

LibreOffice is available on all Linux computers managed by CLASSE. It's available for free from their official Web site. It is available to everyone at CLASSE when you login on LNX201.CLASSE.CORNELL.EDU

See http://www.libreoffice.org

Technical Documents and Papers for Publication

Although people find Microsoft's Word document processing system to be convenient for small projects, it has many bugs, limitations and compatibility problems which make it extremely inconvenient when used for large, collaborative documents or for documents which need to be readable after several years. At least twice, Microsoft has dropped support for documents written in previous Word formats. As a result, editing environments based on LaTeX are much more robust. Detailed comparisons between LaTex and Word are available at
http://www.streamtoolsonline.org/word-v-latex.html
and
http://openwetware.org/wiki/Word_vs._LaTeX

LaTeX

LaTeX is suitable for producing large, collaborative documents The LaTeX format is very stable and portable; it produces documents that are readable and editable over time, and is available on all CLASSE Linux, Windows and Macintosh computers. The file format is independent of which version of LaTeX used, and which host operating system it is running on.

Information about the use of LaTeX at CLASSE is available at https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/LaTeX

Time Accounting and WBS numbers

Many of CLASSE's research grants require detailed time accounting so that each person's pay is charged to appropriate accounts. Each account has its own set of WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) numbers. Members of the CLASSE IT group have to keep careful track of how much time they charge to which WBS, for example.

Replicon

Replicon and WBS numbers are used by CLASSE to do time accounting for both salaried and hourly staff. See
https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/RepliconQuickstart

Workday

For salaried staff, Workday is used to record vacation and sick time. See
http://workday.cornell.edu/

Collaborative Communication

#Zoom

Zoom

Zoom is a no-cost Web-based video conferencing system provided by Cornell. It can be used to contact anyone who has a computer.

  1. Zoom Login
  2. Transition from Webex to Zoom
  3. Zoom Video Help
  4. Zoom training
  5. Typical Zoom session
**not yet translated from Webex instructions**

    • follow the instructions at https://it.cornell.edu/zoom/zoom-scheduling-help-topics
      • Additional instructions for "Audio Conference" (steps 7 - 9)
      • AudioConferenceDialog.jpg
      • the safest choice is "WebEx Audio" - when asked, supply the 10-digit phone # for a speakerphone in YOUR meeting room; WebEx will call that phone and use it for the audio portion of the conference
      • "Use VOIP Only" uses the speakers and microphone attached to your computer for the audio portion of the conference.
        • the more network bandwidth you have (wired is usually better than wireless), the better the audio will be.
        • the less network contention you have (morning is usually better than afternoon), the better the audio will be.
  1. Tips
    • to avoid feedback, make sure that only ONE microphone is active in any physical room
    • a conference with bad video can be usable; a conference with bad audio is unusable

For complete details, see
https://it.cornell.edu/zoom

Wiki

The CLASSE Wiki lets you share documentation and other information in a variety of formats. Most pages are public, but some are private, requiring your CLASSE userid and password. See
https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/ClasseWikis

Cornell Box

Similar to Cornell's own DropBox, Box provides a way for you to share large files internationally. See
http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/box/

Please do not use the commercial Dropbox service.

Responsible Use

Since CLASSE's computational resources were purchased using tax-payers' money, it behooves us to use them responsibly. CLASSE's "Responsible Use statement" provides a description of expectations when you use computers at the Lab:
https://wiki.classe.cornell.edu/Computing/ComputerUseGuidelines

Contact Us

If you have any questions about CLASSE computing, or would like help with a problem, please don't hesitate to contact the CLASSE computer group:

Topic attachments
I Attachment Action Size Date Who Comment
AudioConferenceDialog.jpgjpg AudioConferenceDialog.jpg manage 31 K 23 Jun 2014 - 11:40 MichaelRoman WebEx Audio Conference Settings
topbar.csscss topbar.css manage 241 bytes 29 Apr 2014 - 16:17 MichaelRoman topbar
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Topic revision: 19 Mar 2024, WernerSun
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