Redbrick Wiki - User contributions [en]

User:Bunbun

2011-04-19T17:20:42Z

Train: I <3 bunbun

Ran for first year rep.

Failed.

Also an advocate for open source software and freedom in general.

User:Train

2011-03-14T19:21:49Z

Train: That accented capital A was irritating me. I'm not even sure how it got there. Stupid wiki software.

Hello there!

Unfortunately, not an actual train :-(

Failtrain © undone 2007-present

Talk:Old Skool Sweets

2010-08-04T18:00:55Z

Train: New page: This may be the greatest article on the wiki - nay, the internet

This may be the greatest article on the wiki - nay, the internet

Great Quiz Rig of 2010

2010-04-01T00:26:43Z

Train:

So here we have one of the greatest scams ever to be encountered in the history of RedBrick.

On the evening of the 30th March 2010, RedBrick had a grand wee quiz. Problem is: it was a farce.

In the raffle, receive won the Dell netbook. Fair fucks you might think. But I ask you this: why did he buy 24 tickets as opposed to 25? 24 tickets cost €28, yet 25 tickets cost €25. Surely one would go for the more economic option? Also, receive had 6 people on his team. The maximum per team was officially 4 people. We know this coz we asked the committee before it started in attempt to make some unnecessary lulz: "What actually constitutes a team?"

So yeah. Rabble etc. I call shenanigans.

<font size=50 color=blue>[Citation needed]</font>

Rage

2010-03-28T14:24:21Z

Train: edited for comedic effect

Occassionaly, Redbrick users experience rage, or 'raeg' as it's known in leetspeak. This occurs when a user has so much built-up [[emo]] anger that even the slightest things cause them to break down into a steaming furnace of fury.

Such outbursts are often spotted on [[IRC]], but have been known to occur on the boards. A common cause of rage is shit trolling by another user and/or deep-rooted psychological problems. Nobody can be sure really; but then again, nobody cares.

== Identified causes of rage ==

*"Grand"
*Losing an EGM election before you ever log onto RB
*Vegetables
*Spaceflight industry
*lil_cain
*Gardening and general horticulture
*Gmail being borked

== Examples of "teh raeg" ==

19:17 < LITHIUM> can helium form molecules?
19:18 < moju> yes
19:18 < LITHIUM> or is it naturally monatomic?
19:18 < moju> h2
19:18 < stolnart> LITHIUM: i assume so. can't every atom?
19:18 < LITHIUM> that's hydrogen moju
19:18 < andrew> heh
19:18 < moju> oh wait
19:18 < moju> helium
19:18 < moju> aye it is inert
19:18 < moju> or near a dammit
19:18 < moju> 2 electrons in outer shell etc
19:18 < LITHIUM> so it can form molecules?
19:19 < LITHIUM> i never did chemistry :(
19:19 < moju> Helium is the chemical element with atomic number 2, and is represented by the symbol He. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert monatomic gas that heads the noble gas group in the periodic table.
19:19 < moju> wiki it a hnady thing
19:19 < moju> you lazy fuck
19:19 < LITHIUM> i already looked at wiki
19:19 < moju> 19:18:09 < LITHIUM> or is it naturally monatomic?
19:19 < LITHIUM> CAN IT OR CAN IT NOT FORM MOLECULES
19:19 < moju> inert monatomic gas
19:19 < moju> yeah
19:19 < moju> read
19:19 < moju> you tard
19:20 < andrew> yea LITHIUM. no fucking asking questions.
19:20 < moju> oh
19:20 < moju> i have no objections to people asking questions
19:20 < moju> i just don't like LITHIUM
19:20 < LITHIUM> :(

22:49:40 maK | GTFO
22:51:01 maK | Anyone have a shotgun i can borrow?

20:47:34 LITHIUM | the moon is too bright
20:48:17 LITHIUM | and my screen is too small to use registax
20:48:42 LITHIUM | and i am on the rag

[[Image:Rage.jpg]]

Unix Intro

2009-11-15T14:24:02Z

Train:

Beginning Unix

This is a primer for those of you who have no previous experience of a UNIX system (which is most of us :o) ) and will teach you the basics of changing your shell and using programs such as mail and news.

== Using your shell ==

Ok, when you first start using Redbrick and you log on, you'll be looking at a screen which looks fairly plain with some basic instructions for reading mail, news, chat, etc. This is great when you're starting off, but after a while, you'll find that just staring at the screen can hurt your eyes, so you'll want to do other stuff. You'll then see why a lot of people type stuff when using computers. The way that most people prefer when they get used to it, is typing in commands in a 'shell'. This sounds really difficult, but you'll soon get into the hang of it and be heying your friends and going into chat and mailing your ma and so on :o)

== Changing your shell ==

The default shell that you start with is zsh, if (for whatever reason) you wish to change your shell here's how to do it.

At the prompt type chsh, like so:

[[Image:chsh1.jpg]]

You'll be asked for your password, enter it. Now you'll be looking at this:

[[Image:chsh2.jpg]]

This shows your current shell and is where you select your new one.

Now you'll need to give it the location of the shell you want to use. If you don't know where they are, don't worry here's a list by typing "help chsh":

[[Image:shells.jpg]]

Now all you do is select the one you want, type it in and away you go.

[[Image:chsh3.jpg]]

As it says, this can take effect immediately or in several minutes time.

== Directory Structure in Unix ==

=== The root directory ===

Every file on Redbrick has what's known as a path. Basically, it's the location of the file on the system. The format in Unix is a little different to Windows, for example, on a Windows/DOS machine, an example would be:

c:\projects\essay\essay.txt

while on a Unix system like Redbrick this could be:

/home/member/bubble/project/essay/essay.txt

The difference here is that you don't actually specify drive letters. Everything begins at the root folder, which is denoted by a forwardslash (/). Everything then goes from that, with each subfolder being separated by another /, but don't get confused by the two. One last thing on this topic, you can change to the root folder by typing:

cd /

=== Your home directory ===

Your home directory is where you store all your files. On Redbrick, your home directory is:

/home/member/u/username/

where 'u' is the first lettter of the username. Committee members would find their home directory in:

/home/committe/username

That folder, and everything in it is yours, and you have control over it. You can add files, create subfolders and change permissions on your files. Your mail is stored there, as is everything else. To change into your directory, you use the cd command. One way of changing into your home directory is by typing

cd /home/member/firstletter/username

but there is a special character to represent your home directory, namely tilde (~). So a shorter version is:

cd ~

However, cd on its own should do the same thing.

cd

=== Your current/parent directory ===

There are lots of special characters in unix. You've seen two already, / for the root directory, and ~ for your home directory. Another one is simply '.'. What a fullstop represents is your current directory. You might not think this is useful, but it is, especially in commands like cp and mv for example, where you are copying or moving stuff into your current directory. It can also be expressed as ./, but they both mean the same thing.

Then there's what's known as your parent directory, the one just before your own. In the example, if you were in the folder:

/usr/local/bin

then your parent folder would be:

/usr/local

Your parent folder is denoted by '../' So, if you wanted to change into it, you simply use the command:

cd ../

== Basic Unix commands ==

=== apropos & man===

These are arguably the two most useful UNIX commands.

The 'man' command brings up a manual on a command. There is a man page for pretty much every command (although quality of the pages differ vastly). Here's an example:

[[Image:manpage1.png]]

And the result will be:

[[Image:manpage2.png]]

You can navigate through the man page with arrow keys or page up/down.

The 'apropos' command searches through descriptions of man pages based on a keyword.

Lets say you forgot how to rename a file, or just simply didn't know how to to begin with you can type:

[[Image:apropos1.png]]

and the result will be:

[[Image:apropos2.png]]

Simple (and really useful too).

=== creating files ===

Say you wanted to create a file in your home directory called 'phonenumbers'. You need to use an editor. The editor on Redbrick that is the best to use when you're starting off, is nano. In fact, lots of experienced users still use it. So, to create your file, you would type:

nano phonenumbers

This will open up the nano editor, with a blank file called 'phonenumbers'. Now, just simply type in whatever you want in this file.... To save it you can hold down control and hit 'o' (when I say control-o, that's what I mean), then hit return to confirm the filename 'phonenumbers'. If you want to exit, then you don't have to do a control-o, you can use control-x. It will ask you if you want to save the changes, so you press 'y' and again hit return to confirm the filename.

Some more unix commands:

=== who ===

The command 'who' lists all the users on the system, what pts they're on, the time they logged on and the machine they logged on from.

=== ls ===

The command 'ls' simply lists all your files in the folder that you are in, One point, there can be 'hidden' files in a folder. Their names begin with a "." They aren't really hidden, it's just that ls won't see them, unless you tell it to look for them by using the command:

ls -A

This will show ALL files in that folder. Another 'argument' that you can pass ls, is the l option, which gives a detailed listing of the files, and you can specify more than one argument to ls, or any other command for that matter. The command:

ls -Al

will give a detailed listing of all files in your current folder, including 'hidden' files.

ls -Alh

will show the same listings with "human readable" file sizes, instead of bytes.

=== cd ===

I've already covered this in a way, it changes your current folder or 'working directory' as is the proper name for it. Some examples:

cd /usr/local/bin

changes your working directory to /usr/local/bin

cd /

changes your working directory to the root directory

cd ../

changes to your parent directory

cd ~

changes to your home directory

=== mkdir ===

This command simply creates a directory. You can only create directories in directories that you have permission to write to, such as your home directory, or /tmp for example. Some examples:

mkdir project

creates a directory called 'project' in your current directory

mkdir ~/project

does the same, only puts it in your home directory, regardless of whether your home directory is your working directory or not

=== cp ===

The command cp is used to copy files around the place. There are two arguments you must pass to cp, the source file (the one you want to copy) and the target file (the file you want to copy it to). That sounds confusing but it's not really. When you copy a file, you can specify a directory as the target, that way the file will be copied with the same name into that directory. Some examples will show this better:

cp ~/project/intro.txt ~/

will copy intro.txt out of ~/project into your home directory

cp ~/project/intro.txt ~/introduction.txt

will make a copy of the same file in your home dir, only renamed to introduction.txt

cp ~/project/intro.txt ./

will copy the same file into your current working directory

You can't copy directories like this however, to copy a directory you must use the -R switch, which will copy all sub-directories of that directory as well, so an example would be:

cp -R ~/project/images ~/images
which will copy the directory 'images' out of 'project' to your home directory

=== mv ===

The command mv moves files between folders, and can move folders themselves. Its usage is very similar to that of cp. in fact it's the same, only it deletes the source file, leaving the target file. That is, if you mv one file into another folder, the new file will remain, while the old one is deleted, in effect, a 'move'. mv is also used to rename files. Some examples:

mv ~/hello.txt ~/bye.txt

renames hello.txt to bye.txt (in your home directory)

mv ~/bye.txt ~/project/hello.txt

renames bye.txt to hello.txt and moves it into the directory ~/project

mv ~/project ~/oldstuff/project

moves the directory ~/project into ~/oldstuff

=== rm ===

The command rm is used to delete files. Be careful with this command as once you remove a file, you've lost it unless you made a backup of it. The command is easy to use, an example is:

rm ~/hello.txt

to delete the file 'hello.txt' out of your home directory

=== pwd ===

One of the simpler commands, simply typing pwd at the prompt will display your current working directory. 'pwd' stands for 'print working directory'.

=== cat ===

This stands for concatenate. This command is really useful, if you have a text file you want to view without going into a text editor, you can simply type, for example:

cat ~/hello.txt

which will simply display the text file on the screen. If the text file is large, even more than a screen, then this can be annoying. This is where the command more comes in. 'Piping' the 'cat hello.txt' into it will cause the page to be displayed on screenful at a time, using return to go down one line at a time, or space to go down one screenful at a time. There is a command called less which does the same, but it wont bring you back to the command line after youve finished viewing the text file until you press 'q'. The command you need to type is

cat hello.txt | less

The '|' is called a pipe, got usually by holding down shift and \, and is used for putting the output of one command, in this case, 'cat hello.txt' into the input of another command, in this case, 'less'. There are lots of things you can do with cat, and redirection(using pipes etc..) but I'm not going to go into that here.

That's it....

There are more unix commands that you can imagine, the ones I have given here are basic ones, with a few basic examples for you to get started. To get more uses for any of the commands or any others, simply type:

man command-name

to get detailed instructions on that command. The best way to learn Unix is to experiment, just be careful when you're going around deleting stuff. :) This is just a primer for those of you starting off on Unix, but there are numerous tutorials on unix to be found on the web and you can always talk to [[Helpdesk]] if you have a problem or a question.

=== clear ===

Oh, one other thing: the clear command.

If your screen is filled up with text or program you've quit out of and are basically just in the way you can clear your screen like so:

[[Image:clear.jpg]]

And you'll be left with this:

[[Image:clear2.jpg]]

Yay.

== Links ==
[[Unix Advanced]] - a guide to some of the more advanced parts of Unix (if you're ready).

[http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Docs/Unixhelp/TOP_.html UNIXhelp for Users ] - Unix guide.

[[Category:Helpdesk]]

Unix Intro

2009-11-15T14:23:26Z

Train:

Beginning Unix

This is a primer for those of you who have no previous experience of a UNIX system (which is most of us :o) ) and will teach you the basics of changing your shell and using programs such as mail and news.

== Using your shell ==

Ok, when you first start using Redbrick and you log on, you'll be looking at a screen which looks fairly plain with some basic instructions for reading mail, news, chat, etc. This is great when you're starting off, but after a while, you'll find that just staring at the screen can hurt your eyes, so you'll want to do other stuff. You'll then see why a lot of people type stuff when using computers. The way that most people prefer when they get used to it, is typing in commands in a 'shell'. This sounds really difficult, but you'll soon get into the hang of it and be heying your friends and going into chat and mailing your ma and so on :o)

== Changing your shell ==

The default shell that you start with is zsh, if (for whatever reason) you wish to change your shell here's how to do it.

At the prompt type chsh, like so:

[[Image:chsh1.jpg]]

You'll be asked for your password, enter it. Now you'll be looking at this:

[[Image:chsh2.jpg]]

This shows your current shell and is where you select your new one.

Now you'll need to give it the location of the shell you want to use. If you don't know where they are, don't worry here's a list by typing "help chsh":

[[Image:shells.jpg]]

Now all you do is select the one you want, type it in and away you go.

[[Image:chsh3.jpg]]

As it says, this can take effect immediately or in several minutes time.

== Directory Structure in Unix ==

=== The root directory ===

Every file on Redbrick has what's known as a path. Basically, it's the location of the file on the system. The format in Unix is a little different to Windows, for example, on a Windows/DOS machine, an example would be:

c:\projects\essay\essay.txt

while on a Unix system like Redbrick this could be:

/home/member/bubble/project/essay/essay.txt

The difference here is that you don't actually specify drive letters. Everything begins at the root folder, which is denoted by a forwardslash (/). Everything then goes from that, with each subfolder being separated by another /, but don't get confused by the two. One last thing on this topic, you can change to the root folder by typing:

cd /

=== Your home directory ===

Your home directory is where you store all your files. On Redbrick, your home directory is:

/home/member/u/username/

where 'u' is the first lettter of the username. Committee members would find their home directory in:

/home/committe/username

That folder, and everything in it is yours, and you have control over it. You can add files, create subfolders and change permissions on your files. Your mail is stored there, as is everything else. To change into your directory, you use the cd command. One way of changing into your home directory is by typing

cd /home/member/firstletter/username

but there is a special character to represent your home directory, namely tilde (~). So a shorter version is:

cd ~

However, cd on its own should do the same thing.

cd

=== Your current/parent directory ===

There are lots of special characters in unix. You've seen two already, / for the root directory, and ~ for your home directory. Another one is simply '.'. What a fullstop represents is your current directory. You might not think this is useful, but it is, especially in commands like cp and mv for example, where you are copying or moving stuff into your current directory. It can also be expressed as ./, but they both mean the same thing.

Then there's what's known as your parent directory, the one just before your own. In the example, if you were in the folder:

/usr/local/bin

then your parent folder would be:

/usr/local

Your parent folder is denoted by '../' So, if you wanted to change into it, you simply use the command:

cd ../

== Basic Unix commands ==

==== apropos & man===

These are arguably the two most useful UNIX commands.

The 'man' command brings up a manual on a command. There is a man page for pretty much every command (although quality of the pages differ vastly). Here's an example:

[[Image:manpage1.png]]

And the result will be:

[[Image:manpage2.png]]

You can navigate through the man page with arrow keys or page up/down.

The 'apropos' command searches through descriptions of man pages based on a keyword.

Lets say you forgot how to rename a file, or just simply didn't know how to to begin with you can type:

[[Image:apropos1.png]]

and the result will be:

[[Image:apropos2.png]]

Simple (and really useful too).

=== creating files ===

Say you wanted to create a file in your home directory called 'phonenumbers'. You need to use an editor. The editor on Redbrick that is the best to use when you're starting off, is nano. In fact, lots of experienced users still use it. So, to create your file, you would type:

nano phonenumbers

This will open up the nano editor, with a blank file called 'phonenumbers'. Now, just simply type in whatever you want in this file.... To save it you can hold down control and hit 'o' (when I say control-o, that's what I mean), then hit return to confirm the filename 'phonenumbers'. If you want to exit, then you don't have to do a control-o, you can use control-x. It will ask you if you want to save the changes, so you press 'y' and again hit return to confirm the filename.

Some more unix commands:

=== who ===

The command 'who' lists all the users on the system, what pts they're on, the time they logged on and the machine they logged on from.

=== ls ===

The command 'ls' simply lists all your files in the folder that you are in, One point, there can be 'hidden' files in a folder. Their names begin with a "." They aren't really hidden, it's just that ls won't see them, unless you tell it to look for them by using the command:

ls -A

This will show ALL files in that folder. Another 'argument' that you can pass ls, is the l option, which gives a detailed listing of the files, and you can specify more than one argument to ls, or any other command for that matter. The command:

ls -Al

will give a detailed listing of all files in your current folder, including 'hidden' files.

ls -Alh

will show the same listings with "human readable" file sizes, instead of bytes.

=== cd ===

I've already covered this in a way, it changes your current folder or 'working directory' as is the proper name for it. Some examples:

cd /usr/local/bin

changes your working directory to /usr/local/bin

cd /

changes your working directory to the root directory

cd ../

changes to your parent directory

cd ~

changes to your home directory

=== mkdir ===

This command simply creates a directory. You can only create directories in directories that you have permission to write to, such as your home directory, or /tmp for example. Some examples:

mkdir project

creates a directory called 'project' in your current directory

mkdir ~/project

does the same, only puts it in your home directory, regardless of whether your home directory is your working directory or not

=== cp ===

The command cp is used to copy files around the place. There are two arguments you must pass to cp, the source file (the one you want to copy) and the target file (the file you want to copy it to). That sounds confusing but it's not really. When you copy a file, you can specify a directory as the target, that way the file will be copied with the same name into that directory. Some examples will show this better:

cp ~/project/intro.txt ~/

will copy intro.txt out of ~/project into your home directory

cp ~/project/intro.txt ~/introduction.txt

will make a copy of the same file in your home dir, only renamed to introduction.txt

cp ~/project/intro.txt ./

will copy the same file into your current working directory

You can't copy directories like this however, to copy a directory you must use the -R switch, which will copy all sub-directories of that directory as well, so an example would be:

cp -R ~/project/images ~/images
which will copy the directory 'images' out of 'project' to your home directory

=== mv ===

The command mv moves files between folders, and can move folders themselves. Its usage is very similar to that of cp. in fact it's the same, only it deletes the source file, leaving the target file. That is, if you mv one file into another folder, the new file will remain, while the old one is deleted, in effect, a 'move'. mv is also used to rename files. Some examples:

mv ~/hello.txt ~/bye.txt

renames hello.txt to bye.txt (in your home directory)

mv ~/bye.txt ~/project/hello.txt

renames bye.txt to hello.txt and moves it into the directory ~/project

mv ~/project ~/oldstuff/project

moves the directory ~/project into ~/oldstuff

=== rm ===

The command rm is used to delete files. Be careful with this command as once you remove a file, you've lost it unless you made a backup of it. The command is easy to use, an example is:

rm ~/hello.txt

to delete the file 'hello.txt' out of your home directory

=== pwd ===

One of the simpler commands, simply typing pwd at the prompt will display your current working directory. 'pwd' stands for 'print working directory'.

=== cat ===

This stands for concatenate. This command is really useful, if you have a text file you want to view without going into a text editor, you can simply type, for example:

cat ~/hello.txt

which will simply display the text file on the screen. If the text file is large, even more than a screen, then this can be annoying. This is where the command more comes in. 'Piping' the 'cat hello.txt' into it will cause the page to be displayed on screenful at a time, using return to go down one line at a time, or space to go down one screenful at a time. There is a command called less which does the same, but it wont bring you back to the command line after youve finished viewing the text file until you press 'q'. The command you need to type is

cat hello.txt | less

The '|' is called a pipe, got usually by holding down shift and \, and is used for putting the output of one command, in this case, 'cat hello.txt' into the input of another command, in this case, 'less'. There are lots of things you can do with cat, and redirection(using pipes etc..) but I'm not going to go into that here.

That's it....

There are more unix commands that you can imagine, the ones I have given here are basic ones, with a few basic examples for you to get started. To get more uses for any of the commands or any others, simply type:

man command-name

to get detailed instructions on that command. The best way to learn Unix is to experiment, just be careful when you're going around deleting stuff. :) This is just a primer for those of you starting off on Unix, but there are numerous tutorials on unix to be found on the web and you can always talk to [[Helpdesk]] if you have a problem or a question.

=== clear ===

Oh, one other thing: the clear command.

If your screen is filled up with text or program you've quit out of and are basically just in the way you can clear your screen like so:

[[Image:clear.jpg]]

And you'll be left with this:

[[Image:clear2.jpg]]

Yay.

== Links ==
[[Unix Advanced]] - a guide to some of the more advanced parts of Unix (if you're ready).

[http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Docs/Unixhelp/TOP_.html UNIXhelp for Users ] - Unix guide.

[[Category:Helpdesk]]

File:Manpage2.png

2009-11-15T14:23:01Z

Train:

File:Manpage1.png

2009-11-15T14:22:44Z

Train:

File:Apropos2.png

2009-11-15T14:22:07Z

Train:

File:Apropos1.png

2009-11-15T14:21:33Z

Train: Wheeeeeeee. How have these not been added to the wiki before? :|

Wheeeeeeee.

How have these not been added to the wiki before? :|

Helpdesk

2009-09-18T00:25:00Z

Train:

Redbrick's Helpdesk is an elite team of hard working individuals dedicated to helping Redbrick users by answering queries, running workshops and forwarding hundreds of mails to the admins.

== The Helpdesk Team ==
* [[User:haus|haus]]
* [[User:elephant|elephant]]
* [[User:gw|gw]]
* <del>[[User:train|train]]</del> YOU SAW NOTHING!

Feel free to mail helpdesk[at]redbrick[dot]dcu[dot]ie with any problems at all.

== Helpdesk Tutorials ==
Here you can find guides on how to use different Redbrick services. These guides are maintained by the Helpdesk team - if there's something we've left out let us know.

=== Using Your Account ===
*[[Connect|Connecting to Redbrick]] - how to start using your account.
*[[Intro|Introduction to Redbrick]] - learn the basics.
*[[Hey|Hey]] - how to use Redbrick's instant messaging program, hey.
*[[Account Customisation (zsh)|Account Customisation]] - how to change the look and feel of your Redbrick account.
*[[Screen]] - a guide to using screen.

=== Chat ===
*[[IRC|Chat/IRC]] - find out how to chat with other brickies.
*[[Irssi]] - page about the irssi client, detailing more advanced features and commands.
*[[BitchX]] - this is an alternate chat client available on RedBrick.
*[[Bitlbee]] - use chat to connect to MSN, Yahoo & Google talk.
*[[Peepd]] - use chat to connect to Twitter.

=== Email ===
*[[Automatic Forwarding]] - how to remove or set up forwarding to different addresses.
*[[Mutt|Using mutt]] - how to use mutt to read and send emails.
*[[Webmail]] - learn more about Redbrick's web-based mail clients.

=== Web ===
*[[Help:Contents|Redbrick Wiki]] - how to use this wiki.
*[[Webspace]] - how to use your Redbrick webspace and get your website up and running.
*[[Transferring Files]] - how to use WinSCP and transfer files to and from Redbrick.
*[[Htaccess|.htaccess]] - using htaccess to password protect areas of your site.
*[[PHP]] - tutorial on using PHP on Redbrick.
*[[Tomcat|TomCat]] - provides an environment for Java code to run in cooperation with a web server.
*[[Hosting Your Domain On Redbrick]] - a quick guide.

===News===
*[[Redbrick Newsgroups]] - how to read and post to the Redbrick newsgroups using slrn.
*[[Using the Boards with Thunderbird|Boards with Thunderbird]] - how to use the boards in Thunderbird.
*[[Newsbeuter]] - how to set up newsbeuter for your rss feeds

=== Unix ===
*[[Unix Intro]] - an introduction to Unix and basic commands that you can use on Redbrick.
*[[Unix Advanced]] - some more advanced Unix features.
*[[File Permissions]] - introduction to different file permissions and how to use chmod.
*[[SSH-Keys]] - connect without typing a password

=== Programming ===
*[[Programming On Redbrick]] - how to use Java, C and C++ compilers on RedBrick.
*[[Cplusplus|C++]] - how to write, compile and run C++ programs using the g++ compiler on RedBrick.

=== Misc ===
*[[Smilies]] - a guide on smilies, with lots of different and bizarre variations. :)
*[[Creating Man Pages|Creating your own man page]] - how to make your own man page.
*[[Makefiles]] - how to write makefiles.
*[[Vim text editor]] - how to use Vim.
*[[Acronyms]] - a list of commonly used acronyms.

=== RedBrick Ubuntu ===
*[[RedBrick Ubuntu]] - read all about the special RedBrick ubuntu release.

==Other Useful Stuff==
These pages weren't written by us, but are equally helpful, so we've included them here, because we're nice :)

===Web===
*[[Installing Gallery On Redbrick|Gallery]] - how to install Gallery on your own webspace.
*[[Installing Wordpress on Redbrick|Wordpress]] - how to install a wordpress blog.
*[[DokuWiki_on_Redbrick|DokuWiki]] - how to install your own wiki.
*[[Vanilla_on_Redbrick|Vanilla]] - install a vanilla forum.
*[[PubCookie_on_Redbrick|PubCookie]] - restrict access to web pages to Redbrick members.

===Chat===
*[[Redbrick_Jabber/IM|Jabber]] - connect to the Redbrick jabber server.

===Internet===
*[[How-To:Port Forwarding|Port Forwarding]] - how to port forward through Redbrick.

===Unix===
*[[Mass Renaming Files]] - how to rename lots of files at once.

===Mac===
*[[Connecting_to_redbrick_with_Quicksilver|QuickSilver]] - connect to Redbrick from your Mac with QuickSilver.

__NOTOC__

[[Category:Helpdesk]]
[[Category:HowTo]]

Screen

2009-07-22T16:44:30Z

Train:

== Basics ==
'''Screen''' usually does not exist. This is the committee's general position on screen due to the disastrous and/or hilarious situations which often result from new members' attempts to get it working. However, for the purpose of this tutorial, screen '''does''' exist, and this is how you use it. (Blame coconut for this defiance.)

=== Omg, what's screen? ===

Screen is most commonly known as "that thing that lets you stay logged in to chat when you log out of RedBrick". It's a terminal multiplexer, which allows you to log into multiple terminal sessions from one terminal window and keeps them open when you go away to bed or whatever it is you do with your time.

=== Opening ===
Type "screen" at the prompt like this:

[[Image:screen1.jpg]]

This will open a new screen session. First you'll see the screen startup message, which gives a little info on the program.

[[Image:screen2.jpg]]

Just hit space/return as it says and you'll be running screen. You won't notice anything immediately different once running screen, instead, you'll be back at the same old terminal. Now, however, you have access to a large variety of commands and features that you didn't before.

== Screen commands ==
=== Ctrl-a commands ===
Nearly all of screen's commands are used via the ctrl-a key combination. First, you press the ctrl and a keys together, then release. Next, press the key you want to run a command. These commands can be a little awkward and difficult to remember at first, but you'll soon get the hang of it. In this tutorial, the commands will be shown as ctrl-a and then a letter, with the following letter being associated with a command.

=== Creating a new window ===
When you start screen, it presents you with the normal single window terminal you're used to. You can, however, create many more and run them all within the one screen session. The following command will create another window for you:
ctrl-a c

Just hit ctrl and a together, then release them and hit c. This keybinding will open a new window (window 2) inside screen. Now you'll have two windows to use, so you'll have to learn how to use the ctrl-a commands to switch between them.

=== Switching windows===
Once you have more than one window open, you can switch between them using some of the following commands:
ctrl-a n
This command will switch you over to the next window.

ctrl-a p
This one will bring you back to the previous window.

ctrl-a a
This will switch between the last two windows that you've been using.

ctrl-a window_number
Using this command, you can specify exactly which window you want to jump to by hitting ctrl and a, then the number on the keyboard of your desired window. This is pretty useful for when you have a lot of windows open in screen.

=== Naming your windows ===
You can give each of your windows its own name too for convenience by using this command:
ctrl-a A

This one might seem confusing first as the A is a capital letter in this case, but all you need to do is hit ctrl and a together and release as before, then hold shift and press a to get the capital. After you run it, you'll see a white bar appear at the bottom of your window, where you can change the name of your screen to whatever you like. In this case, the window has just been renamed to "chat".

[[Image:screen3.jpg]]

After you've named a few windows, you can try this command:
ctrl-a "

Yup, even quotation marks can be used in screen commands. So as before you do ctrl-a, then hold shift and hit the 2 key to get the " :) This will bring up a convenient list of all your windows with their names.

[[Image:screen4.jpg]]

From this window you can view and go to any of your windows. The flags on the right indicate whether your window is logged in or not with $ symbol.

=== Detaching and reattaching screen ===
One of the most popular features of screen is that it can keep you logged in even when you're offline. This means you can leave programs running or even stay on IRC even when you're not online. To do this, you just detach from screen instead of exiting it. To detach from screen without exiting, use the following command:
ctrl-a d

You'll then be returned to the prompt with a message telling you screen has been detached, like so:

[[Image:screen5.jpg]]

Later, you'll come back online and want to reattach to your screen session. To reattach a detached screen, use this command at the prompt:
screen -dr

The -d will detach any "attached" screens and -r will reattach your screen.

If you have more than one screen session available, you will need to specify the screen id you wish to open. You'll be given a list of the currently available screens, so then you type:

screen -r

followed by the id listed above of the screen you want to reattach to.

=== Start and stop signals ===
Quite often it happens someone may end up using the stop signal command in screen by mistake. This command is:

ctrl-a s

and you should probably avoid using it! But as the s key is beside the a key, people will occasionally run this command by accident without knowing it. As this is a stop signal, it has the unfortunate side effect of freezing up your window :( Worry not however, for to fix it, all you need to do is use the start signal again to bring it back from the dead:

ctrl-a q

This should have you back in action very shortly. However, if your screen is frozen and you can't figure out why, try asking a member of [[Helpdesk]] and they should know the answer :)

=== Killing screen while attached ===
Often enough new members (and often, experienced people) will make mistakes with screen that they can't fix. To kill screen altogether and start over, use:
ctrl-a \

Or, if you just want to kill a single window in screen, use:

ctrl-a k

or even just type "exit" at the prompt.

=== Killing screen while detached ===

'''Warning''': using the ''kill'' command to do anything can be very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. If you're unsure, reattach the screen you want to kill and follow the instructions above.

If you have more than one screen session and you want to kill one of them, type "screen -dr" to get a list of the available screens (from the terminal which appears when you first log in to RedBrick). Note the '''number''' (also known as a process id, or pid) at the beginning of each screen name. This is the process number. Ensure you know which screen session is which.

To terminate a session, use this command (''pid'' is the number of the session you want to kill)

kill ''pid''

This will send the signal SIGTERM to the process, requesting its termination.

If that fails and you want lil_cain to start complaining

kill -9 ''pid''

This will send the signal SIGKILL to the process, terminating it immediately and with lots of blood.

Then, to then get rid of the dead screen session, type

screen -wipe

== Screen Configuration ==

So after you've set up screen and have gotten used to it, you will probably want to configure it a little bit and the way to do this is by creating a ~/.screenrc

To do this just
nano ~/.screenrc

Here's an example of a .screenrc that you may want to use:

hardstatus alwayslastline
hardstatus string '%{= kg}[ %{G}%H %{g}][%= %{= kw}%?%-Lw%?%{=b kR}(%{W}%n*%f %t%?(%u)%?%{=b kR})%{= kw}%?%+Lw%? %?%= %{g}][%{Y}%l%{g}]%{=b C}[ %d %M %c ]%{W}'
deflogin off
screen -t irc 1 irssi
screen -t Email/slrn 2 mutt -Z
screen -t heys -L -l 3

Basically this only really does two things, sets a hardstatus (basically a line that contains some information) and makes it display only on the bottom line and also creates a few new windows.

The new windows created are given names and optionally a number or command (or both).

screen -t irc q irssi

This will create screen window 1, give it the title "irc" and then run irssi when you start screen.

deflogin off

This sets windows logged out by default, which means that you won't have to "mesg n" windows to not receive heys

screen -t heys -L -l 3

Will create a logged in window specifically for heys. Handy.

All this makes it very simple to restart all your processes if Redbrick ever crashes.

With the above configuration file it will look something like this:

[[Image:screenrc.jpg]]

== Useful links ==
If you'd like to learn more about the program, a long list of screen commands can be found here: http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/linux/cmd/cmd.csp?path=s/screen

Help edited a screenrc: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/560

A starting guide to screen: http://magazine.redhat.com/2007/09/27/a-guide-to-gnu-screen/

The Gentoo wiki article on screen (quite in depth) : http://www.gentoo-wiki.info/Screen

[[Category:Helpdesk]]

Screen

2009-07-22T16:41:03Z

Train:

== Basics ==
'''Screen''' usually does not exist. This is the committee's general position on screen due to the disastrous and/or hilarious situations which often result from new members' attempts to get it working. However, for the purpose of this tutorial, screen '''does''' exist, and this is how you use it. (Blame coconut for this defiance.)

=== Omg, what's screen? ===

Screen is most commonly known as "that thing that lets you stay logged in to chat when you log out of RedBrick". It's a terminal multiplexer, which allows you to log into multiple terminal sessions from one terminal window and keeps them open when you go away to bed or whatever it is you do with your time.

=== Opening ===
Type "screen" at the prompt like this:

[[Image:screen1.jpg]]

This will open a new screen session. First you'll see the screen startup message, which gives a little info on the program.

[[Image:screen2.jpg]]

Just hit space/return as it says and you'll be running screen. You won't notice anything immediately different once running screen, instead, you'll be back at the same old terminal. Now, however, you have access to a large variety of commands and features that you didn't before.

== Screen commands ==
=== Ctrl-a commands ===
Nearly all of screen's commands are used via the ctrl-a key combination. First, you press the ctrl and a keys together, then release. Next, press the key you want to run a command. These commands can be a little awkward and difficult to remember at first, but you'll soon get the hang of it. In this tutorial, the commands will be shown as ctrl-a and then a letter, with the following letter being associated with a command.

=== Creating a new window ===
When you start screen, it presents you with the normal single window terminal you're used to. You can, however, create many more and run them all within the one screen session. The following command will create another window for you:
ctrl-a c

Just hit ctrl and a together, then release them and hit c. This keybinding will open a new window (window 2) inside screen. Now you'll have two windows to use, so you'll have to learn how to use the ctrl-a commands to switch between them.

=== Switching windows===
Once you have more than one window open, you can switch between them using some of the following commands:
ctrl-a n
This command will switch you over to the next window.

ctrl-a p
This one will bring you back to the previous window.

ctrl-a a
This will switch between the last two windows that you've been using.

ctrl-a window_number
Using this command, you can specify exactly which window you want to jump to by hitting ctrl and a, then the number on the keyboard of your desired window. This is pretty useful for when you have a lot of windows open in screen.

=== Naming your windows ===
You can give each of your windows its own name too for convenience by using this command:
ctrl-a A

This one might seem confusing first as the A is a capital letter in this case, but all you need to do is hit ctrl and a together and release as before, then hold shift and press a to get the capital. After you run it, you'll see a white bar appear at the bottom of your window, where you can change the name of your screen to whatever you like. In this case, the window has just been renamed to "chat".

[[Image:screen3.jpg]]

After you've named a few windows, you can try this command:
ctrl-a "

Yup, even quotation marks can be used in screen commands. So as before you do ctrl-a, then hold shift and hit the 2 key to get the " :) This will bring up a convenient list of all your windows with their names.

[[Image:screen4.jpg]]

From this window you can view and go to any of your windows. The flags on the right indicate whether your window is logged in or not with $ symbol.

=== Detaching and reattaching screen ===
One of the most popular features of screen is that it can keep you logged in even when you're offline. This means you can leave programs running or even stay on IRC even when you're not online. To do this, you just detach from screen instead of exiting it. To detach from screen without exiting, use the following command:
ctrl-a d

You'll then be returned to the prompt with a message telling you screen has been detached, like so:

[[Image:screen5.jpg]]

Later, you'll come back online and want to reattach to your screen session. To reattach a detached screen, use this command at the prompt:
screen -dr

The -d will detach any "attached" screens and -r will reattach your screen.

If you have more than one screen session available, you will need to specify the screen id you wish to open. You'll be given a list of the currently available screens, so then you type:

screen -r

followed by the id listed above of the screen you want to reattach to.

=== Start and stop signals ===
Quite often it happens someone may end up using the stop signal command in screen by mistake. This command is:

ctrl-a s

and you should probably avoid using it! But as the s key is beside the a key, people will occasionally run this command by accident without knowing it. As this is a stop signal, it has the unfortunate side effect of freezing up your window :( Worry not however, for to fix it, all you need to do is use the start signal again to bring it back from the dead:

ctrl-a q

This should have you back in action very shortly. However, if your screen is frozen and you can't figure out why, try asking a member of [[Helpdesk]] and they should know the answer :)

=== Killing screen while attached ===
Often enough new members (and often, experienced people) will make mistakes with screen that they can't fix. To kill screen altogether and start over, use:
ctrl-a \

Or, if you just want to kill a single window in screen, use:

ctrl-a k

or even just type "exit" at the prompt.

=== Killing screen while detached ===

'''Warning''': using the ''kill'' command to do anything can be very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. If you're unsure, reattach the screen you want to kill and follow the instructions above.

If you have more than one screen session and you want to kill one of them, type "screen -dr" to get a list of the available screens (from the terminal which appears when you first log in to RedBrick). Note the '''number''' (also known as a process id, or pid) at the beginning of each screen name. This is the process number. Ensure you know which screen session is which.

To terminate a session, use this command (''pid'' is the number of the session you want to kill)

kill ''pid''

This will send the signal SIGTERM to the process, requesting its termination.

If that fails and you want lil_cain to start complaining

kill -9 ''pid''

This will send the signal SIGKILL to the process, terminating it immediately and with lots of blood.

Then, to then get rid of the dead screen session, type

screen -wipe

== Screen Configuration ==

So after you've set up screen and have gotten used to it, you will probably want to configure it a little bit and the way to do this is by creating a ~/.screenrc

To do this just
nano ~/.screenrc

Here's an example of a .screenrc that you may want to use:

hardstatus alwayslastline
hardstatus string '%{= kg}[ %{G}%H %{g}][%= %{= kw}%?%-Lw%?%{=b kR}(%{W}%n*%f %t%?(%u)%?%{=b kR})%{= kw}%?%+Lw%? %?%= %{g}][%{Y}%l%{g}]%{=b C}[ %d %M %c ]%{W}'
deflogin off
screen -t irc 1 irssi
screen -t Email/slrn 2 mutt -Z
screen -t heys -L -l 3

Basically this only really does two things, sets a hardstatus (basically a line that contains some information) and makes it display only on the bottom line and also creates a few new windows.

The new windows created are given names and optionally a number or command (or both).

screen -t irc q irssi

This will create screen window 1, give it the title "irc" and then run irssi when you start screen.

deflogin off

This sets windows logged out by default, which means that you won't have to "mesg n" windows to not receive heys

screen -t heys -L -l 3

Will create a logged in window specifically for heys. Handy.

All this makes it very simple to restart all your processes if Redbrick ever crashes.

With the above configuration file it will look something like this:

[[Image:screenrc.jpg]]

===More commands===
If you'd like to learn more about the program, a long list of screen commands can be found here: http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/linux/cmd/cmd.csp?path=s/screen

[[Category:Helpdesk]]

File:Screenrc.jpg

2009-07-22T16:40:07Z

Train: Showing what screen will look like after you add in a config.

Showing what screen will look like after you add in a config.

Irssi

2009-07-22T16:36:42Z

Train:

In the [[IRC|chat]] tutorial we went through all the basics of using chat on Redbrick. This tutorial goes through some of the more advanced features specific to the default chat client irssi.

== Moving windows ==

When you start chat you'll have two windows, #lobby and the status window, but of course you're going to want to open more windows. The more windows you have open the harder it is to keep track of them so most people like to keep their different channels & private messages in the same place all the time.

Windows can be moved either left/right by typing

/window move left
/window move right

Or, you can move a window straight to a certain number. For example, if you join the #gamessoc channel and want it in window 3 next to #lobby you can use the command

/window move 3

== Irssi Scripts ==

Scripts allow you to add functionality to irssi that wasnt originally part of the program, like extensions in firefox. Some members have scripts that allow you to set yourself to set yourself away automatically after you have been idle for a set period of time, and others to list the current windows you have open.

So, undone has given you a cool autoaway script, but how do you use it. The first thing you have to do is move it to the proper scripts directory which is ~/.irssi/scripts. You can do this using [[Transferring_Files|winscp]]. Once you've done that you need to load it, just type
/run <script-name>
from irssi to start it. If you want to search for your own cool scripts there's loads at the [http://www.irssi.org/scripts/ irssi homepage]

== Irssi Themes ==

Just as scripts can add functionality to irssi themes can be added that change the look of it. Adding themes is just like addming scripts, just copy them into the ~/.irssi folder. To use your new theme type
/set theme <theme-name>

There are lots of themes on the [http://www.irssi.org/themes irssi homepage], some better than others. The themes are written in plain text, so if you find a well written example they're pretty easy to change around slightly.

== Configuration file ==

The easy way to enter chat is with the alias "chat" - this runs irssi with a default Redbrick config.

This is fine for a while, but it's nice to personalise things a little and to do this you can edit your ~/.irssi/config file.

Every time you type "irssi" it will start with this configuration file by default.

Here's an basic file to get you started:

servers = (
{
address = "irc.redbrick.dcu.ie";
chatnet = "RedBrick";
port = "6667";
autoconnect = "yes"; },
);
chatnets = {
RedBrick =
{
type = "IRC";
autosendcmd = "/msg chanserv identify <password>";
};
};
channels = (
{ name = "#lobby"; chatnet = "RedBrick"; autojoin = "yes"; },
{ name = "#mychannel"; chatnet = "RedBrick"; autojoin = "yes"; },
);
aliases = {
J = "join";
WJOIN = "join -window";
WQUERY = "query -window";
LEAVE = "part";
BYE = "quit";
EXIT = "quit";
SIGNOFF = "quit";
DESCRIBE = "action";
DATE = "time";
HOST = "userhost";
LAST = "lastlog";
SAY = "msg *";
WI = "whois";
WII = "whois $0 $0";
WW = "whowas";
W = "who";
N = "names";
M = "msg";
T = "topic";
C = "clear";
CL = "clear";
K = "kick";
KB = "kickban";
KN = "knockout";
BANS = "ban";
B = "ban";
MUB = "unban *";
UB = "unban";
IG = "ignore";
UNIG = "unignore";
SB = "scrollback";
UMODE = "mode $N";
WC = "window close";
WN = "window new hide";
SV = "say Irssi $J ($V) - http://irssi.org/";
GOTO = "sb goto";
CHAT = "dcc chat";
RUN = "SCRIPT LOAD";
UPTIME = "eval exec - expr `date +%s` - \\$F | awk '{print \"Irssi uptime: \"int(\\\\\\$1/3600/24)\"d \"int (\\\\\\$1/3600%24)\"h \"int(\\\\\\$1/60%60)\"m \"int(\\\\\\$1%60)\"s\" }'";
CALC = "exec - if which bc &>/dev/null\\; then echo '$*' | bc | awk '{print \"$*=\"$$1}'\\; else echo bc was not found\\; fi";
SBAR = "STATUSBAR";
INVITELIST = "mode $C +I";
};
statusbar = {
# formats:
# when using {templates}, the template is shown only if it's argument isn't
# empty unless no argument is given. for example {sb} is printed always,
# but {sb $T} is printed only if $T isn't empty.
items = {
# start/end text in statusbars
barstart = "{sbstart}";
barend = "{sbend}";
# treated "normally", you could change the time/user name to whatever
time = "{sb $Z}";
user = "{sb $cumode$N{sbmode $usermode}{sbaway $A}}";
# treated specially .. window is printed with non-empty windows,
# window_empty is printed with empty windows
window = "{sb $winref:$T{sbmode $M}}";
window_empty = "{sb $winref{sbservertag $tag}}";
prompt = "{prompt $[.15]T}";
prompt_empty = "{prompt $winname}";
topic = " $topic";
topic_empty = " Irssi v$J - http://irssi.org/help/";
# all of these treated specially, they're only displayed when needed
lag = "{sb Lag: $0-}";
act = "{sb Act: $0-}";
more = "-- more --";
};
# there's two type of statusbars. root statusbars are either at the top
# of the screen or at the bottom of the screen. window statusbars are at
# the top/bottom of each split window in screen.
default = {
# the "default statusbar" to be displayed at the bottom of the window.
# contains all the normal items.
window = {
disabled = "no";
# window, root
type = "window";
# top, bottom
placement = "bottom";
# number
position = "1";
# active, inactive, always
visible = "active";
# list of items in statusbar in the display order
items = {
barstart = { priority = "100"; };
time = { };
user = { };
window = { };
window_empty = { };
lag = { priority = "-1"; };
act = { priority = "10"; };
more = { priority = "-1"; alignment = "right"; };
barend = { priority = "100"; alignment = "right"; };
};
};
# statusbar to use in inactive split windows
window_inact = {
type = "window";
placement = "bottom";
position = "1";
visible = "inactive";
items = {
barstart = { priority = "100"; };
window = { };
window_empty = { };
more = { priority = "-1"; alignment = "right"; };
barend = { priority = "100"; alignment = "right"; };
};
};
# we treat input line as yet another statusbar :) It's possible to
# add other items before or after the input line item.
prompt = {
type = "root";
placement = "bottom";
# we want to be at the bottom always
position = "100";
visible = "always";
items = {
prompt = { priority = "-1"; };
prompt_empty = { priority = "-1"; };
# treated specially, this is the real input line.
input = { priority = "10"; };
};
};
# topicbar
topic = {
type = "root";
placement = "top";
position = "1";
visible = "always";
items = {
barstart = { priority = "100"; };
topic = { };
topic_empty = { };
barend = { priority = "100"; alignment = "right"; };
};
};
};
};
#THIS SECTION DEALS WITH SETTINGS SUCH AS YOUR NAME AND TIMESTAMP FORMAT
settings = {
core = {
real_name = "Newb McNewberton";
user_name = "newb";
nick = "newb";
timestamp_format = "%H:%M:%S";
};
"fe-text" = { scrollback_time = "24h"; };
"fe-common/core" = { autolog = "yes"; };
};
#THIS SECTION DEALS WITH YOUR HILIGHTS
hilights = (
{ text = "newb"; nick = "yes"; word = "no"; },
);
settings = {
core = {
settings_autosave = "no";
}
};

Now, you don't need to worry about most of this as it's just setting a lot of default things that won't need to be changed.

However there are a few sections you will/may want to change:

chatnets = {
RedBrick =
{
type = "IRC";
autosendcmd = "/msg chanserv identify <password>"; # put in your identify password here.
};
};

channels = (
{ name = "#lobby"; chatnet = "RedBrick"; autojoin = "yes"; },
{ name = "#mychannel"; chatnet = "RedBrick"; autojoin = "yes"; },
);

What this part does is when you start irssi, it sends a priavte message to chanserv identifying you as you (if you've registered your nickname) and the bit underneath will automatically join you to the channels listed, namely #lobby and #mychannel. You can add as many channels as you want to this list, just copy and paste the same lines and edit the "#channel" bit. Simple really. This saves time and hassle if Redbrick ever restarts or you lose your connection for whatever reason as you don't have to remember all the channels you want to join.

#THIS SECTION DEALS WITH SETTINGS SUCH AS YOUR NAME AND TIMESTAMP FORMAT
settings = {
core = {
real_name = "Newb McNewberton";
user_name = "newb";
nick = "newb";
timestamp_format = "%H:%M:%S";
};
"fe-text" = { scrollback_time = "24h"; };
"fe-common/core" = { autolog = "yes"; };
};

#THIS SECTION DEALS WITH YOUR HILIGHTS
hilights = (
{ text = "newb"; nick = "yes"; word = "no"; },
);

Here you'll want to set your own name/nickname into the appropriate places. You may also want to change the timestamp_format = "%H:%H"; if you don't like having seconds displayed as well.

You may also want to delete the "autolog = "yes";" line too, if you do not want all you chat logged. Some users find this usual for checking back over past conversations. (It will save all chat in all the channels you're joined to, even if you haven't read it to ~/irclogs/RedBrick/)

The hilights section well, hilights specific words, commonly people will put their nickname in here, or other key words that they may be interested in.

== Configuration Options ==

Irssi comes with loads of options, so i've just included the ones I think are useful (These are to be used in chat)

/set window_history off
Irssi remembers the last few lines of text you've typed into it, just press up to view them. With this you have a seprate buffer of commands for each window, so you cant accidentally send the last line of a private message into #lobby for all to read

/set autolog on
/set autolog_path ~/irclogs/$tag/$0.log
This turns on irssi logging, and setting the paths like this with the variables means that the irssi will save all the logs for a certain channel/pm in a different file each day.

/set autoclose_query 86400
This sets a time in seconds after which idle windows will be closed automatically, so your private message windows will be closed if you don't use them for a whole day (86400 seconds)

/set show_quit_once on
Say you and undone are in three of the same channels, with this set on if he quits for the night his quit message will only appear to you in one of your open windows, not all of them.

/set quit_message <my personal quit message>
Change the default quit message to your own personal one.

/last receive 10
Say i've just come back from a lecture, and i want to see was anyone talking about me while i was gone this shows me the last 10 lines in the current channel that contain my username.

/set real_name Andrew
This sets my real name to Andrew, so people know who i am if they use the /whois command on me.

==Ignoring==

In a channel with lots of people coming and going, you may want to ignore certain messages, such as joins. You can do this (in lobby for example) by typing
/ignore #lobby JOINS

Here's a list of the different message catagories you could set to ignore
NOTICES - Match NOTICE messages.
SNOTES - Match server notices.
CTCPS - Match CTCP messages.
ACTIONS - Match CTCP actions.
JOINS - Match join messages.
PARTS - Match part messages.
QUITS - Match quit messages.
KICKS - Match kick messages.
MODES - Match mode changes.
TOPICS - Match topic changes.
WALLOPS - Match wallops.
INVITES - Match invite requests.
NICKS - Match nickname changes.
DCC - DCC related messages.
DCCMSGS - Match DCC chat messages.
CLIENTNOTICE - Irssi's notices.
CLIENTCRAP - Miscellaneous irssi messages.
CLIENTERROR - Irssi's error messages.

== Saving Your Config ==

When you type chat at your prompt this loads irssi with all the default Redbrick settings. This is useful, because if you've broken something with your changes you can just restart and irssi will be just as it was before, but you'll want to save your personal configuration so you don't have to set up irssi the way you like it everytime you start.

To save all the current options and theme to a file type
/save my-irssi.conf

To use this configuration rather than the default to start chat type
receive@murphy (~) % irssi --CONFIG=my-irssi.conf

== Some Other Handy Commands ==

To join the channel, #intersocs, type
/j #intersocs

To leave the channel, #intersocs, without entirely quitting chat, type
/part #intersocs

To close a window you're not using anymore, type
/wc

To find out who someone is, for example, haus, type
/whois haus

To see the list of all the channels on the network, type
/list

Or if you're looking for a channel but can't remember the exact name, but you know it contains "inter", type
/list *inter*

Wanna see if someone mentions you (or something you're interested in, eg: helpdesk), type
/hilight helpdesk
Now whenever helpdesk is mentioned it'll highlight you

Say you're going to a lecture, but you don't want to have to scroll back up and see if someone hilighted you when you weren't looking, you set irssi to /away with a message, to do this type
/away gone to my lecture, back soon.
When you come back type just /away and you'll see any hilights you might've picked up between you going and coming back.

If you're lazy (like me), you can find loads of uses for the /alias command.
Example:
I like having the same away message all the time, and it's a bit long, so I made it into an /alias command by typing
/alias awaymsg /away haus is off in the real world if you need to talk to him you can reach him on <phone_num>
Now instead of typing the away message out everytime I can just type /awaymsg instead.
It's also really handy for typos, like when I'm typing /me sometimes i end up typing /mw and then irssi tells me it's not a command, which can get really annoying. To fix it just type:
/alias mw /me
Now when you typo it doesn't matter \o/

== Further Configuration ==

This tutorial was just to get you started on some of the things you can do with irssi, for more have a look at the [http://www.irssi.org/documentation irssi documentation].

To give you an idea of what you can do, here's a screenshot of how i have irssi set up. Happy Configuring!

[[Image:Irssi_custom.gif]]

If you need any more help with irssi, please feel free to hey a helpdesk member or mail at helpdesk@redbrick.dcu.ie

[[Category:Helpdesk]]

User:Haus

2009-05-10T19:34:58Z

Train: New page: His real account name is actually haus17.

His real account name is actually haus17.

RBOnly:Minutes

2009-04-29T17:41:48Z

Train: Changed protection level for "Minutes" [edit=autoconfirmed:move=autoconfirmed]

This is where you'll find the minutes from the Redbrick Committee's many meetings over the years. Minutes are viewable by all RedBrick members.

Which minutes are ''your'' favourite?

== 2007/2008 Committee ==
=== July ===
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 28 07 2007|July 28th]]

=== September ===
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 17 09 2007|September 17th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 25 09 2007|September 25th]]

=== October ===
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 02 10 2007|October 2nd]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 09 10 2007|October 9th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 16 10 2007|October 16th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 18 10 2007|October 18th]] (EGM)
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 23 10 2007|October 23rd]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 30 10 2007|October 30th]]

=== November ===
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 06 11 2007|November 6th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 20 11 2007|November 20th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 27 11 2007|November 27th]]

=== December ===
*[[RBOnly:Minutes_04_12_2007|December 4th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes_11_12_2007|December 11th]]

=== January ===
*[[RBOnly:Minutes_08_01_2008|January 8th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes_29_01_2008|January 29th]]

=== February ===
*[[RBOnly:Minutes_05_02_2008|February 5th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes_07_02_2008|February 7th]] (EGM)
*[[RBOnly:Minutes_12_02_2008|February 12th]]

=== March ===
*[[RBOnly:Minutes_04_03_2008|March 4th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes_11_03_2008|March 11th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes_18_03_2008|March 18th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes_25_03_2008|March 25th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes_31_03_2008|March 31st]]

== 2006/2007 Committee ==
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 30 01 2006|January 30th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 06 02 2006|February 6th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 13 02 2006|February 13th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 06 03 2006|March 6th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 18 04 2006|April 18th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 16 04 2007|March 16th]]

== 2006/2005 Committee ==
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2005 02 14|February 14th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2005 02 21|February 21st]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2005 03 01|March 1st]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2005 03 23|March 23th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2005 04 11|April 11th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2005 04 18|April 18th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2005 08 30|August 30th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2005 09 29|September 29th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2005 10 06|October 6th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2005 10 24|October 24th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2005 11 07|November 7th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2005 11 14|November 14th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2005 11 21|November 21st]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2005 11 28|November 28th]]

== 2005/2004 Committee ==
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 02 11|February 11th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 02 16|February 16th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 02 23|February 23rd]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 03 15|March 15th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 03 29|March 29th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 04 06|April 6th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 04 13|April 13th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 04 19|April 19th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 04 20|April 20th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 04 27|April 27th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 08 25|August 25th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 09 08|September 8th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 09 27|September 27th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 10 07|October 7th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 10 11|October 11th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 11 15|November 15th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2004 12 01|December 1st]]

== 2004/2003 Committee ==
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 01 17|January 17th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 02 03|February 3rd]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 02 12|February 12th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 02 17|February 17th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 02 24|February 24th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 03 03|March 3rd]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 03 19|March 19th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 03 24|March 24th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 04 28|April 28th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 08 13|August 13th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 09 23|September 23th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 10 06|October 6th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 10 13|October 13th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 10 15|October 15th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 10 20|October 20th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 11 03|November 3rd]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 11 17|November 17th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 12 01|December 1st]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2003 12 08|December 8th]]

== 2003/2002 Committee ==
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2002 02 28 |February 28th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2002 03 21 |March 21st]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2002 04 16 |April 16th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2002 06 11 |June 11th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2002 09 02 |September 2nd]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2002 10 04 |October 4th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2002 10 14 |October 14th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2002 11 04 |November 4th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2002 11 18 |November 18th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2002 11 25 |November 25th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2002 12 02 |December 2nd]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2002 12 09 |December 9th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2002 12 11 |December 11th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2002 12 16 |December 16th]]

== 2002/2001 Committee ==
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2001 03 11|March 11th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2001 04 07|April 7th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2001 04 30|April 30th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2001 05 28|May 28th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2001 07 11|July 11th]]

== 2001/2000 Committee ==
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2000 04 17|April 17th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2000 05 08|January 8th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2000 08 16|August 16th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2000 10 23|October 23rd]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2000 11 06|November 6th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2000 11 17|November 17th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 2000 11 21|November 21st]]

== 2000/1999 Committee ==
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1999 01 26|January 26th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1999 02 19|February 19th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1999 03 03|March 3rd]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1999 03 24|March 24th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1999 03 31|March 31st]]

== 1999/1998 Committee ==
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1998 02 05|February 5th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1998 03 19|March 19th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1998 03 27|March 27th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1998 03 31|March 31st]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1998 04 02|April 2nd]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1998 10 29|October 29th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1998 11 05|November 5th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1998 11 19|November 19th]]

== 1998/1997 Committee ==
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1997 04 11|April 4th]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1997 09 23|September 23rd]]
*[[RBOnly:Minutes 1997 11 06|November 6th]]

[[Category:Minutes]]

RBOnly:Minutes

2009-04-29T17:30:33Z

Train: Changed protection level for "Minutes" [edit=sysop:move=autoconfirmed]

Mutt

2009-04-24T17:31:57Z

Train:

This page details how to use mutt to read and send email on Redbrick. If you're new to Redbrick, make sure to take a look at the [[Automatic Forwarding|Forwarding]] first.

== Reading your mail ==
Mutt is the default mail program on RedBrick. To start it, simply type "mutt" into your terminal and hit return.

[[Image:mutt1.jpg]]

When you start mutt with its default settings you will taken to your default mailbox. Here you will see a list of all your email split into columns. The first column shows the status of the mail, "N" for new mail, "O" for unread and blank for previously read mail. The next columns contains the number of the mail in the list, the date the mail was received followed by the sender's name. The final column displays the subject of the mail. A highlight bar will show which mail is currently selected.

To read the currently selected mail, press the return key and the contents of the mail will appear in the lower half of the screen. If the mail is too big to fit in the one screen you can continue down through the text by using either the return key or the spacebar. When you are finished reading a message, type "q" This will return you to the main list of emails. To save time you can type the number of the mail in the list followed by the return key to jump to that mail.

== Sending an email ==
To send a mail from mutt, first hit the "m" key.

At the bottom of your screen you will see "To:". If you're sending a mail to another Redbrick user, simply type in their username and hit the return key. The program will take care of the rest. For anyone else, you enter the full email address of of the person you wish to mail: To:anyone@dcu.ie and hit return.

Next you will see "Subject:". Just enter the mail's subject and hit return again. Your default text editor will now launch, on Redbrick this is set to nano, so type in your message here and when you're done, hit ctrl and x to save, then y and return to accept. You will be brought to a menu that confirms the details of your mail at the top. If you are happy with all the details, simply press "y" to send and you're done.

There are more options you have access to before you press "y" outlined below

* e: Re-edit the message
* t: Change the primary recipients address
* c: Add the email address of others you wish to recieve the mail seperated by commas
* b: Add the email address of others you wish to recieve the mail without the primary recipient knowing
* s: Change the subject
* r: Change the default reply-to address
* f: Define the folder you want a copy of the mail to be saved in
* q: Cancel the email
* a: Attach a file to the email. You will be prompted for its location

== Deleting email ==
While viewing the email list, highlight the desired mail, and press "d". The mail is now marked to be deleted. If you wish to delete it immediately, press the $ key (shift and 4). You will be prompted to confirm deletion, hit "y" to delete or "n" to cancel. Otherwise, you will be prompted to confirm deletion when you exit the program.

If you wish to undelete a mail, highlight it and press "u".

== Forwarding an email ==
To send a mail you have received on to another person, highlight the mail and press "f".

You'll have the same options as when you are sending a normal mail. When your editor opens, it will contain the mail you are forwarding and you may add extra text and change it if you wish, or simply leave it as it is. Save and send the message as before.

== Setting a signature ==
A signature is generally a piece of text, a quote, details or whatever that people add onto the end of their mail at the bottom. You can set this permanently by creating a .signature file that gets added on to every mail you send.

To create one, type:

nano ~/.signature

Add in whatever you'd like to be in your signature and save it. Mutt will now add this to all outgoing mails from you.

== Exiting mutt ==

To quit mutt, just press the "q" key while in the mail list. If you're asked to confirm, then hit "y" or "n".

== Mailboxes ==

You can also sort all your incoming mail into categories, making things easier to find and read. There are a few steps involved in setting this up, but once they're done you don't have to worry about it anymore. The first step is to create new mailboxes, to do so all you have to do is type "nano ~/.muttrc" (or replace nano with your favourite text editor)

[[Image:mutt2.jpg]]

There won't be much here (well anything actually) but we can soon change that.

[[Image:mutt4.jpg]]

In the above, what we've done is created four different mailboxes (you can have more if you want) - inbox, spamtrap, gmail and sent. We've also set it so that every mail you send is copied and saved in an inbox called sent.

Once this is done, you will need to cd to ~/Maildir and type "mdmake <mailbox name>" to create it. You will have to do this separately for each one.

You should now start mutt by typing "mutt -y". This will give you a list of all your mailboxes when the program starts. Simply highlight a mailbox and hit return to view it's contents.

[[Image:mutt5.jpg]]

To switch to another mailbox hit "c" and enter = followed by the name of the name of the mailbox: =helpdesk. Alternatively, hit "c" and then hit "?" to see a list of all mailboxes. To return to the original mailboxes list hit the tab key.

However none of your mails are currently being filtered, you've just created the mailboxes. To start the filter process you're going to have to use procmail. To do this you're going to have to type "nano ~/.procmailrc" at the termainl (as in the picture above).

[[Image:procmailrc.jpg]]

It may look like a lot at first, but most of it is the same type of thing again and again. It's basically checking for spam and putting it in the spam folder (Instead of deleting the "spam" mail, we are going to redirect it to a mail folder of its own so that you can occasionally check if it really is spam.) or checking the To/From/Subject fields and matching them to other inboxes. The bit at the very end sets inbox as the mailbox that all the mail that doesn't match any of the other criteria will go to. You may also want to set a more suitable USER= (perhaps your own account name)

You can also type "man procmail" at the terminal for more information.

Another [http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/help/tutorials/spam/procmailrc example] or [http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~receive/configfiles/procmailrc two] of procmailrc here

== Fast Storage ==

The default storage location for your redbrick files is the large storage array on minerva. This would be great for keeping your porn (if we allowed that) but it's not as fast as the smaller storage array on deathray. Normally the speed difference isn't noticeable, but when you have thousands of emails, it starts to cause problems. To move your mail to faster storage you'll need to email the admins, and ask for space there.

Once you've got fast storage set up you'll need to run the following commands to symlink to your Maildir:

This moves your Maildir into your fast-storage account
mv Maildir /fast-storage/users/<first letter of your username>/<username>

This creates a symlink to it
ln -s /fast-storage/users/<first letter of your username/<username>/Maildir ./Maildir

To check it's worked properly run:
ls -al Maildir

And you should get something like:
lrwxrwxrwx 1 haus committe 34 2009-04-22 15:56 Maildir -> /fast-storage/users/h/haus/Maildir
Only with your account name ;)
And that's it. Done \o/

[[Category:Helpdesk]]

Helpdesk

2008-11-12T22:16:47Z

Train:

Redbrick's Helpdesk is an elite team of hard working individuals dedicated to helping Redbrick users by answering queries, running workshops and forwarding hundreds of mails to the admins.

== The Helpdesk Team ==
* [[User:train|train]] :(
* <del>[[User:revenant|revenant]]</del> :(
* <del>[[User:gmblitis|gmblitis]]</del> :(

Feel free to mail helpdesk[at]redbrick[dot]dcu[dot]ie with any problems at all.

== Helpdesk Tutorials ==
Here you can find guides on how to use different Redbrick services. These guides are maintained by the Helpdesk team - if there's something we've left out let us know.

=== Using Your Account ===
*[[Connect|Connecting to Redbrick]] - how to start using your account.
*[[Intro|Introduction to Redbrick]] - learn the basics.
*[[Hey|Hey]] - how to use Redbrick's instant messaging program, hey.
*[[Account Customisation (zsh)|Account Customisation]] - how to change the look and feel of your Redbrick account.
*[[Screen]] - a guide to using screen.

=== Chat ===
*[[IRC|Chat/IRC]] - find out how to chat with other brickies.
*[[Irssi]] - page about the irssi client, detailing more advanced features and commands.
*[[BitchX]] - this is an alternate chat client available on RedBrick.
*[[Bitlbee]] - use chat to connect to MSN, Yahoo & Google talk.

=== Email ===
*[[Automatic Forwarding]] - how to remove or set up forwarding to different addresses.
*[[Mutt|Using mutt]] - how to use mutt to read and send emails.
*[[Webmail]] - learn more about Redbrick's web-based mail clients.

=== Web ===
*[[Help:Contents|Redbrick Wiki]] - how to use this wiki.
*[[Webspace]] - how to use your Redbrick webspace and get your website up and running.
*[[Transferring Files]] - how to use WinSCP and transfer files to and from Redbrick.
*[[Htaccess|.htaccess]] - using htaccess to password protect areas of your site.
*[[PHP]] - tutorial on using PHP on Redbrick.
*[[Tomcat|TomCat]] - provides an environment for Java code to run in cooperation with a web server.

===News===
*[[Redbrick Newsgroups]] - how to read and post to the Redbrick newsgroups using slrn.
*[[Using the Boards with Thunderbird|Boards with Thunderbird]] - how to use the boards in Thunderbird.

=== Unix ===
*[[Unix Intro]] - an introduction to Unix and basic commands that you can use on Redbrick.
*[[Unix Advanced]] - some more advanced Unix features.
*[[File Permissions]] - introduction to different file permissions and how to use chmod.
*[[SSH-Keys]] - connect without typing a password

=== Programming ===
*[[Programming On Redbrick]] - how to use Java, C and C++ compilers on RedBrick.
*[[Cplusplus|C++]] - how to write, compile and run C++ programs using the g++ compiler on RedBrick.

=== Misc ===
*[[Smilies]] - a guide on smilies, with lots of different and bizarre variations. :)
*[[Creating Man Pages|Creating your own man page]] - how to make your own man page.
*[[Makefiles]] - how to write makefiles.
*[[Vim text editor]] - how to use Vim.
*[[Acronyms]] - a list of commonly used acronyms.

=== RedBrick Ubuntu ===
*[[RedBrick Ubuntu]] - read all about the special RedBrick ubuntu release.

==Other Useful Stuff==
These pages weren't written by us, but are equally helpful, so we've included them here, because we're nice :)

===Web===
*[[Installing Gallery On Redbrick|Gallery]] - how to install Gallery on your own webspace.
*[[Installing Wordpress on Redbrick|Wordpress]] - how to install a wordpress blog.
*[[DokuWiki_on_Redbrick|DokuWiki]] - how to install your own wiki.
*[[Vanilla_on_Redbrick|Vanilla]] - install a vanilla forum.
*[[PubCookie_on_Redbrick|PubCookie]] - restrict access to web pages to Redbrick members.

===Chat===
*[[Redbrick_Jabber/IM|Jabber]] - connect to the Redbrick jabber server.

===Internet===
*[[How-To:Port Forwarding|Port Forwarding]] - how to port forward through Redbrick.

===Unix===
*[[Mass Renaming Files]] - how to rename lots of files at once.

===Mac===
*[[Connecting_to_redbrick_with_Quicksilver|QuickSilver]] - connect to Redbrick from your Mac with QuickSilver.

__NOTOC__

[[Category:Helpdesk]]
[[Category:HowTo]]

Helpdesk

2008-11-12T21:58:34Z

Train:

Redbrick's Helpdesk is an elite team of hard working individuals dedicated to helping Redbrick users by answering queries, running workshops and forwarding hundreds of mails to the admins.

== The Helpdesk Team ==
* [[User:train|train]]
* [[User:revenant|revenant]]
* [[User:gmblitis|gmblitis]]

Feel free to mail helpdesk[at]redbrick[dot]dcu[dot]ie with any problems at all.

== Helpdesk Tutorials ==
Here you can find guides on how to use different Redbrick services. These guides are maintained by the Helpdesk team - if there's something we've left out let us know.

=== Using Your Account ===
*[[Connect|Connecting to Redbrick]] - how to start using your account.
*[[Intro|Introduction to Redbrick]] - learn the basics.
*[[Hey|Hey]] - how to use Redbrick's instant messaging program, hey.
*[[Account Customisation (zsh)|Account Customisation]] - how to change the look and feel of your Redbrick account.
*[[Screen]] - a guide to using screen.

=== Chat ===
*[[IRC|Chat/IRC]] - find out how to chat with other brickies.
*[[Irssi]] - page about the irssi client, detailing more advanced features and commands.
*[[BitchX]] - this is an alternate chat client available on RedBrick.
*[[Bitlbee]] - use chat to connect to MSN, Yahoo & Google talk.

=== Email ===
*[[Automatic Forwarding]] - how to remove or set up forwarding to different addresses.
*[[Mutt|Using mutt]] - how to use mutt to read and send emails.
*[[Webmail]] - learn more about Redbrick's web-based mail clients.

=== Web ===
*[[Help:Contents|Redbrick Wiki]] - how to use this wiki.
*[[Webspace]] - how to use your Redbrick webspace and get your website up and running.
*[[Transferring Files]] - how to use WinSCP and transfer files to and from Redbrick.
*[[Htaccess|.htaccess]] - using htaccess to password protect areas of your site.
*[[PHP]] - tutorial on using PHP on Redbrick.
*[[Tomcat|TomCat]] - provides an environment for Java code to run in cooperation with a web server.

===News===
*[[Redbrick Newsgroups]] - how to read and post to the Redbrick newsgroups using slrn.
*[[Using the Boards with Thunderbird|Boards with Thunderbird]] - how to use the boards in Thunderbird.

=== Unix ===
*[[Unix Intro]] - an introduction to Unix and basic commands that you can use on Redbrick.
*[[Unix Advanced]] - some more advanced Unix features.
*[[File Permissions]] - introduction to different file permissions and how to use chmod.
*[[SSH-Keys]] - connect without typing a password

=== Programming ===
*[[Programming On Redbrick]] - how to use Java, C and C++ compilers on RedBrick.
*[[Cplusplus|C++]] - how to write, compile and run C++ programs using the g++ compiler on RedBrick.

=== Misc ===
*[[Smilies]] - a guide on smilies, with lots of different and bizarre variations. :)
*[[Creating Man Pages|Creating your own man page]] - how to make your own man page.
*[[Makefiles]] - how to write makefiles.
*[[Vim text editor]] - how to use Vim.
*[[Acronyms]] - a list of commonly used acronyms.

=== RedBrick Ubuntu ===
*[[RedBrick Ubuntu]] - read all about the special RedBrick ubuntu release.

==Other Useful Stuff==
These pages weren't written by us, but are equally helpful, so we've included them here, because we're nice :)

===Web===
*[[Installing Gallery On Redbrick|Gallery]] - how to install Gallery on your own webspace.
*[[Installing Wordpress on Redbrick|Wordpress]] - how to install a wordpress blog.
*[[DokuWiki_on_Redbrick|DokuWiki]] - how to install your own wiki.
*[[Vanilla_on_Redbrick|Vanilla]] - install a vanilla forum.
*[[PubCookie_on_Redbrick|PubCookie]] - restrict access to web pages to Redbrick members.

===Chat===
*[[Redbrick_Jabber/IM|Jabber]] - connect to the Redbrick jabber server.

===Internet===
*[[How-To:Port Forwarding|Port Forwarding]] - how to port forward through Redbrick.

===Unix===
*[[Mass Renaming Files]] - how to rename lots of files at once.

===Mac===
*[[Connecting_to_redbrick_with_Quicksilver|QuickSilver]] - connect to Redbrick from your Mac with QuickSilver.

__NOTOC__

[[Category:Helpdesk]]
[[Category:HowTo]]

Unix Intro

2008-11-12T21:55:41Z

Train:

Beginning Unix

This is a primer for those of you who have no previous experience of a UNIX system (which is most of us :o) ) and will teach you the basics of changing your shell and using programs such as mail and news.

== Using your shell ==

Ok, when you first start using Redbrick and you log on, you'll be looking at a screen which looks fairly plain with some basic instructions for reading mail, news, chat, etc. This is great when you're starting off, but after a while, you'll find that just staring at the screen can hurt your eyes, so you'll want to do other stuff. You'll then see why a lot of people type stuff when using computers. The way that most people prefer when they get used to it, is typing in commands in a 'shell'. This sounds really difficult, but you'll soon get into the hang of it and be heying your friends and going into chat and mailing your ma and so on :o)

== Changing your shell ==

The default shell that you start with is zsh, if (for whatever reason) you wish to change your shell here's how to do it.

At the prompt type chsh, like so:

[[Image:chsh1.jpg]]

You'll be asked for your password, enter it. Now you'll be looking at this:

[[Image:chsh2.jpg]]

This shows your current shell and is where you select your new one.

Now you'll need to give it the location of the shell you want to use. If you don't know where they are, don't worry here's a list by typing "help chsh":

[[Image:shells.jpg]]

Now all you do is select the one you want, type it in and away you go.

[[Image:chsh3.jpg]]

As it says, this can take effect immediately or in several minutes time.

== Directory Structure in Unix ==

=== The root directory ===

Every file on Redbrick has what's known as a path. Basically, it's the location of the file on the system. The format in Unix is a little different to Windows, for example, on a Windows/DOS machine, an example would be:

c:\projects\essay\essay.txt

while on a Unix system like Redbrick this could be:

/home/member/bubble/project/essay/essay.txt

The difference here is that you don't actually specify drive letters. Everything begins at the root folder, which is denoted by a forwardslash (/). Everything then goes from that, with each subfolder being separated by another /, but don't get confused by the two. One last thing on this topic, you can change to the root folder by typing:

cd /

=== Your home directory ===

Your home directory is where you store all your files. On Redbrick, your home directory is:

/home/member/u/username/

where 'u' is the first lettter of the username. Committee members would find their home directory in:

/home/committe/username

That folder, and everything in it is yours, and you have control over it. You can add files, create subfolders and change permissions on your files. Your mail is stored there, as is everything else. To change into your directory, you use the cd command. One way of changing into your home directory is by typing

cd /home/member/firstletter/username

but there is a special character to represent your home directory, namely tilde (~). So a shorter version is:

cd ~

However, cd on its own should do the same thing.

cd

=== Your current/parent directory ===

There are lots of special characters in unix. You've seen two already, / for the root directory, and ~ for your home directory. Another one is simply '.'. What a fullstop represents is your current directory. You might not think this is useful, but it is, especially in commands like cp and mv for example, where you are copying or moving stuff into your current directory. It can also be expressed as ./, but they both mean the same thing.

Then there's what's known as your parent directory, the one just before your own. In the example, if you were in the folder:

/usr/local/bin

then your parent folder would be:

/usr/local

Your parent folder is denoted by '../' So, if you wanted to change into it, you simply use the command:

cd ../

== Basic Unix commands ==

Say you wanted to create a file in your home directory called 'phonenumbers'. You need to use an editor. The editor on Redbrick that is the best to use when you're starting off, is nano. In fact, lots of experienced users still use it. So, to create your file, you would type:

nano phonenumbers

This will open up the nano editor, with a blank file called 'phonenumbers'. Now, just simply type in whatever you want in this file.... To save it you can hold down control and hit 'o' (when I say control-o, that's what I mean), then hit return to confirm the filename 'phonenumbers'. If you want to exit, then you don't have to do a control-o, you can use control-x. It will ask you if you want to save the changes, so you press 'y' and again hit return to confirm the filename.

Some more unix commands:

=== who ===

The command 'who' lists all the users on the system, what pts they're on, the time they logged on and the machine they logged on from.

=== ls ===

The command 'ls' simply lists all your files in the folder that you are in, One point, there can be 'hidden' files in a folder. Their names begin with a "." They aren't really hidden, it's just that ls won't see them, unless you tell it to look for them by using the command:

ls -A

This will show ALL files in that folder. Another 'argument' that you can pass ls, is the l option, which gives a detailed listing of the files, and you can specify more than one argument to ls, or any other command for that matter. The command:

ls -Al

will give a detailed listing of all files in your current folder, including 'hidden' files.

ls -Alh

will show the same listings with "human readable" file sizes, instead of bytes.

=== cd ===

I've already covered this in a way, it changes your current folder or 'working directory' as is the proper name for it. Some examples:

cd /usr/local/bin

changes your working directory to /usr/local/bin

cd /

changes your working directory to the root directory

cd ../

changes to your parent directory

cd ~

changes to your home directory

=== mkdir ===

This command simply creates a directory. You can only create directories in directories that you have permission to write to, such as your home directory, or /tmp for example. Some examples:

mkdir project

creates a directory called 'project' in your current directory

mkdir ~/project

does the same, only puts it in your home directory, regardless of whether your home directory is your working directory or not

=== cp ===

The command cp is used to copy files around the place. There are two arguments you must pass to cp, the source file (the one you want to copy) and the target file (the file you want to copy it to). That sounds confusing but it's not really. When you copy a file, you can specify a directory as the target, that way the file will be copied with the same name into that directory. Some examples will show this better:

cp ~/project/intro.txt ~/

will copy intro.txt out of ~/project into your home directory

cp ~/project/intro.txt ~/introduction.txt

will make a copy of the same file in your home dir, only renamed to introduction.txt

cp ~/project/intro.txt ./

will copy the same file into your current working directory

You can't copy directories like this however, to copy a directory you must use the -R switch, which will copy all sub-directories of that directory as well, so an example would be:

cp -R ~/project/images ~/images
which will copy the directory 'images' out of 'project' to your home directory

=== mv ===

The command mv moves files between folders, and can move folders themselves. Its usage is very similar to that of cp. in fact it's the same, only it deletes the source file, leaving the target file. That is, if you mv one file into another folder, the new file will remain, while the old one is deleted, in effect, a 'move'. mv is also used to rename files. Some examples:

mv ~/hello.txt ~/bye.txt

renames hello.txt to bye.txt (in your home directory)

mv ~/bye.txt ~/project/hello.txt

renames bye.txt to hello.txt and moves it into the directory ~/project

mv ~/project ~/oldstuff/project

moves the directory ~/project into ~/oldstuff

=== rm ===

The command rm is used to delete files. Be careful with this command as once you remove a file, you've lost it unless you made a backup of it. The command is easy to use, an example is:

rm ~/hello.txt

to delete the file 'hello.txt' out of your home directory

=== pwd ===

One of the simpler commands, simply typing pwd at the prompt will display your current working directory. 'pwd' stands for 'print working directory'.

=== cat ===

This stands for concatenate. This command is really useful, if you have a text file you want to view without going into a text editor, you can simply type, for example:

cat ~/hello.txt

which will simply display the text file on the screen. If the text file is large, even more than a screen, then this can be annoying. This is where the command more comes in. 'Piping' the 'cat hello.txt' into it will cause the page to be displayed on screenful at a time, using return to go down one line at a time, or space to go down one screenful at a time. There is a command called less which does the same, but it wont bring you back to the command line after youve finished viewing the text file until you press 'q'. The command you need to type is

cat hello.txt | less

The '|' is called a pipe, got usually by holding down shift and \, and is used for putting the output of one command, in this case, 'cat hello.txt' into the input of another command, in this case, 'less'. There are lots of things you can do with cat, and redirection(using pipes etc..) but I'm not going to go into that here.

That's it....

There are more unix commands that you can imagine, the ones I have given here are basic ones, with a few basic examples for you to get started. To get more uses for any of the commands or any others, simply type:

man command-name

to get detailed instructions on that command. The best way to learn Unix is to experiment, just be careful when you're going around deleting stuff. :) This is just a primer for those of you starting off on Unix, but there are numerous tutorials on unix to be found on the web and you can always talk to [[Helpdesk]] if you have a problem or a question.

=== clear ===

Oh, one other thing: the clear command.

If your screen is filled up with text or program you've quit out of and are basically just in the way you can clear your screen like so:

[[Image:clear.jpg]]

And you'll be left with this:

[[Image:clear2.jpg]]

Yay.

== Links ==
[[Unix Advanced]] - a guide to some of the more advanced parts of Unix (if you're ready).

[http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Docs/Unixhelp/TOP_.html UNIXhelp for Users ] - Unix guide.

[[Category:Helpdesk]]

Mutt

2008-11-12T21:51:46Z

Train:

This page details how to use mutt to read and send email on Redbrick. If you're new to Redbrick, make sure to take a look at the [[Automatic Forwarding|Forwarding]] first.

== Reading your mail ==
Mutt is the default mail program on RedBrick. To start it, simply type "mutt" into your terminal and hit return.

[[Image:mutt1.jpg]]

When you start mutt with its default settings you will taken to your default mailbox. Here you will see a list of all your email split into columns. The first column shows the status of the mail, "N" for new mail, "O" for unread and blank for previously read mail. The next columns contains the number of the mail in the list, the date the mail was received followed by the sender's name. The final column displays the subject of the mail. A highlight bar will show which mail is currently selected.

To read the currently selected mail, press the return key and the contents of the mail will appear in the lower half of the screen. If the mail is too big to fit in the one screen you can continue down through the text by using either the return key or the spacebar. When you are finished reading a message, type "q" This will return you to the main list of emails. To save time you can type the number of the mail in the list followed by the return key to jump to that mail.

== Sending an email ==
To send a mail from mutt, first hit the "m" key.

At the bottom of your screen you will see "To:". If you're sending a mail to another Redbrick user, simply type in their username and hit the return key. The program will take care of the rest. For anyone else, you enter the full email address of of the person you wish to mail: To:anyone@dcu.ie and hit return.

Next you will see "Subject:". Just enter the mail's subject and hit return again. Your default text editor will now launch, on Redbrick this is set to nano, so type in your message here and when you're done, hit ctrl and x to save, then y and return to accept. You will be brought to a menu that confirms the details of your mail at the top. If you are happy with all the details, simply press "y" to send and you're done.

There are more options you have access to before you press "y" outlined below

* e: Re-edit the message
* t: Change the primary recipients address
* c: Add the email address of others you wish to recieve the mail seperated by commas
* b: Add the email address of others you wish to recieve the mail without the primary recipient knowing
* s: Change the subject
* r: Change the default reply-to address
* f: Define the folder you want a copy of the mail to be saved in
* q: Cancel the email
* a: Attach a file to the email. You will be prompted for its location

== Deleting email ==
While viewing the email list, highlight the desired mail, and press "d". The mail is now marked to be deleted. If you wish to delete it immediately, press the $ key (shift and 4). You will be prompted to confirm deletion, hit "y" to delete or "n" to cancel. Otherwise, you will be prompted to confirm deletion when you exit the program.

If you wish to undelete a mail, highlight it and press "u".

== Forwarding an email ==
To send a mail you have received on to another person, highlight the mail and press "f".

You'll have the same options as when you are sending a normal mail. When your editor opens, it will contain the mail you are forwarding and you may add extra text and change it if you wish, or simply leave it as it is. Save and send the message as before.

== Setting a signature ==
A signature is generally a piece of text, a quote, details or whatever that people add onto the end of their mail at the bottom. You can set this permanently by creating a .signature file that gets added on to every mail you send.

To create one, type:

nano ~/.signature

Add in whatever you'd like to be in your signature and save it. Mutt will now add this to all outgoing mails from you.

== Exiting mutt ==

To quit mutt, just press the "q" key while in the mail list. If you're asked to confirm, then hit "y" or "n".

== Mailboxes ==

You can also sort all your incoming mail into categories, making things easier to find and read. There are a few steps involved in setting this up, but once they're done you don't have to worry about it anymore. The first step is to create new mailboxes, to do so all you have to do is type "nano ~/.muttrc" (or replace nano with your favourite text editor)

[[Image:mutt2.jpg]]

There won't be much here (well anything actually) but we can soon change that.

[[Image:mutt4.jpg]]

In the above, what we've done is created four different mailboxes (you can have more if you want) - inbox, spamtrap, gmail and sent. We've also set it so that every mail you send is copied and saved in an inbox called sent.

You should now start mutt by typing "mutt -y". This will give you a list of all your mailboxes when the program starts. Simply highlight a mailbox and hit return to view it's contents.

[[Image:mutt5.jpg]]

To switch to another mailbox hit "c" and enter = followed by the name of the name of the mailbox: =helpdesk. Alternatively, hit "c" and then hit "?" to see a list of all mailboxes. To return to the original mailboxes list hit the tab key.

However none of your mails are currently being filtered, you've just created the mailboxes. To start the filter process you're going to have to use procmail. To do this you're going to have to type "nano ~/.procmailrc" at the termainl (as in the picture above).

[[Image:procmailrc.jpg]]

It may look like a lot at first, but most of it is the same type of thing again and again. It's basically checking for spam and putting it in the spam folder (Instead of deleting the "spam" mail, we are going to redirect it to a mail folder of its own so that you can occasionally check if it really is spam.) or checking the To/From/Subject fields and matching them to other inboxes. The bit at the very end sets inbox as the mailbox that all the mail that doesn't match any of the other criteria will go to. You may also want to set a more suitable USER= (perhaps your own account name)

You can also type "man procmail" at the terminal for more information.

Another [http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/help/tutorials/spam/procmailrc example] or [http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~receive/configfiles/procmailrc two] of procmailrc here

== Fast Storage ==

The default storage location for your redbrick files is the large storage array on minerva. This would be great for keeping your porn (if we allowed that) but it's not as fast as the smaller storage array on deathray. Normally the speed difference isn't noticeable, but when you have thousands of emails, it starts to cause problems. To move your mail to faster storage you'll need to email the admins, and ask for space there.

[[Category:Helpdesk]]

Connect

2008-11-12T21:25:17Z

Train:

== Using Putty ==
Download putty from [http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/services/downloads/putty.exe here].

Open it up and click the redbrick button.

[[Image:Putty_configuration.png]]

Type in your username.

If you make a mistake typing in your username while using SSH (ie when you click the big "Redbrick" button to log in) you'll have to restart as you can't go back to edit it.

Type your password (note, nothing appears when your doing this. That's delibrate. It's a unix thing).

When you're logged in, type help.

Or if you want to dive right in, type [http://wiki.redbrick.dcu.ie/mw/IRC chat].

Once you've finished with all that and find you want to leave (!) you can type logout to end your session.

Something to note if you're logging in using the Computing Buildings (and I assume other buildings) computers:

All the machines in DCU are in a state of deep freeze, this means that anything that you do will be competely "forgotten" when the machine is turned off.

This means that all the software on the machines will not change, so any changes to settings will not be saved.

When PuTTy was installed, our own version with the "RedBrick!" button was not used, instead you'll have to type "login.redbrick.dcu.ie" into the "Host Name (or IP address)" bar and click on Open. You'll then be asked about changed RSA keys, to which you should click "Yes" and then you can log in.

Also the character encoding is wrong, it should be UTF-8. To change this go to Window -> Translation -> Received data assumed to be in which character set: and choose UTF-8

Alternatively, you could try installing PuTTy on your H:/ drive where it will remain saved after you log off.

Anyway.

After you've clicked on the RedBrick button (or used login.redbrick.dcu.ie) you should get somemthing that looks like this:

[[Image:Login1.jpg]]

Only instead of "newb" as used here, you insert your own username (note: if you make a spelling mistake with your username with PuTTY and press return, you will have to close PuTTY and start all over again because PuTTY is weird like that). After you press return you will then be asked for your account password like so:

[[Image:Login2.jpg]]

Don't worry that nothing comes up when you type your password in, it's a unix thing, the password is still being entered.

And that's it! You're officially on RedBrick, congratulations. It should look something like this:

[[Image:Login3.jpg]]

Now, I'm sure you're wondering about all the fun things you can get up to. Well to start with you could try typing "help" to give a brief list of available commands:

[[Image:Help.jpg]]

Fun times.

The best step would probably be to type chat.

[[Image:Login4.jpg]]

...and hit return. This will cause this to appear:

[[Image:Login5.jpg]]

You've come so far in such a short space of time. It's time to move on to the [[IRC]] wiki page.

=Note about copy/paste with PuTTY=

By default, PuTTY has highlighting as copy and right click as paste. This leads many people who try to copy and paste for the first time to copy the same link into chat several times, here's how to do it properly:

[[Image:Puttyhl2.jpg]]

If you wanted to highlight the url to the RedBrick website all you do is simple click and drag over it to highlight it (it'll look like this:)

[[Image:Puttyhl.jpg]]

And that's it copied, you can now go to your web browser and ctrl + v or right click and paste like you would normally.

If you want to paste some copied text into chat, all you simple have to do is right click.

== See Also==
[http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.54/htmldoc/ PuTTY Manual] - A more indepth tutorial on how to use PuTTY

[[Category:Helpdesk]]

File:Puttyhl2.jpg

2008-11-12T21:19:54Z

Train:

File:Puttyhl.jpg

2008-11-12T21:19:43Z

Train:

Lil cain

2008-11-12T21:08:30Z

Train:

[[Image:Lil cain.jpg]]

== The many faces of Cian Brennan ==

[[Image:Cian_brennan.jpg]]

Main Page

2008-11-12T13:13:20Z

Train:

<div id="mainpage"></div>__NOTOC__ __NOEDITSECTION__

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Among other things, the Redbrick wiki is home to the Helpdesk tutorials. These guides detail how to use all the features of Redbrick.<br><center>[[Intro|Introduction]] | [[IRC|Chat]] | [[Hey|Hey]] | [[Redbrick_Newsgroups|News]] | '''[[Helpdesk|View All Tutorials]]'''</center>
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TimeLine2008

2008-10-18T01:42:34Z

Train:

{{Timeline Years}}
[[Category: Redbrick History]]

== January ==

Christmas Cake & exams, not much happens here.

== February ==

* Thursday 7th - EGM Held to fill vacant admin position. There were no candidates. The committee asked to modify the constitution to reduce the size of Helpdesk from 3 to 2. This was not passed.

* Saturday 16th - minerva.redbrick.dcu.ie goes live as login.redbrick.dcu.ie

* Monday 25th - Techweek begins with the Video Editing Tutorial by Allen Dixon. Later that day there is a launch party in the old bar, which was epic win.

* Tuesday 26th - Install Fest in the seminar room, followed by Filmsoc's showing of DieHard 4pointless.

* Wednesday 27th - Techweek continues in the seminar room with talks from demonware, Sean Hand, and Colm MacCarthaigh.

* Wednesday 27th - Murphy takes over from Deathray as www.redbrick.dcu.ie. Horrid hash bangs no longer required in php :)

* Thursday 28th - Web Design & Photoshop workshops, followed by Q-Zar and beers.

==March==

* 4th - Amy deemed to be resigned for missing lots of committee meetings. She won't be replaced until the AGM.

* 7th - Deadling for socs awards. Redbrick submits nomination for Most Improved Society. The competition will be: College View, FotoSoc, Flashback, Juggle Soc & St Vincent de Paul. Redbrick also submits a nomination for Tech Week, which will be competing against Ross O'Carrol Kelly, Arts Week, Fame the musical, Debate's DCU Open, European Business Weekend, Jugglesoc's Unicycle to Galway, MPS's Shag pad, and the Andorra Trip.

* 11th - Follow up workshop to the Linux Install Fest held.

==April==
* 1st - Redbrick annual table quiz is held. Western Digital Passport 160GB external hard drives are given to the winners. gamblitis wins the raffle of an EEE PC.

*3rd - AGM

Chairperson:

Robert O'Reilly (robby) was elected with 16 votes. Kat Farrell
(angelkat) received 14 votes.

Secretary:

Damien Rathigan (dano) was the only candidate, and was
elected by a majority show of hands.

Treasurer:

Leah Doyle (bambi) was the only candidate, and was
elected by a majority show of hands.

Public Relations Officer:

John Needham (colossus) was elected with 22 votes. Matt Fitzpatrick
(snoogins) received 9 votes. Failchair received one vote :(

Events Officer:

Lotta Mikkonen (attol) was the only candidate, and was
elected by a majority show of hands.

Helpdesk:

Sean Hand (revenant), Seaums Ronan (train) and Gavin Tubritt
(gmblitis) were the only candidates and were elected by a
majority show of hands.

Webmaster:

Andrew Martin (werdz) was the only candidate, and was
elected by a majority show of hands.

System Administrators:

Andrew Harford (receive), Cian Brennan (lil_cain), Eoghan Cotter
(johan) were the only candidates and were elected by a
majority show of hands.

* Redbrick wins Best Website at the Clubs and Socs Awards, which were held in the Helix on Thursday 10th of April. Redbrick Chairperson Andrew Harford wins a First Five award for Best Individual.

*17th - Redbrick wins Best Society Website of a Large College at the BICS Awards in Dundalk - Best Website in Ireland!

*19th - Admins take down Murphy for a while to rearrange disk partitions, because /var/tmp really doesn't need 105GB. This part goes suspiciously smoothly, with nothing breaking. Admins then begin to move vhosts to murphy (unrelated, but we had planned it today anyway). This part takes 6 hours, and involves pain and cursing at computer screens, and werdz committing his second ever [[Inevitable Admin Fuckups|IAF]] when he accidentally deletes the apache configuration, and realises we had no backups of it. Luckily, the important parts were modularised (thank you, Debian), so restoring the default configuration and rewriting our bits only took about half an hour. The Redbrick main site is then moved to murphy's local disks, and everything is faster afterwards.

*24th - It is pointed out in #lobby that Redbrick hasn't been rooted in years.

*25th - Redbrick gets rooted. Elected root holders (three out of four of them on INTRA) cry.
** Decision taken to take redbrick offline at about 10am. Network is disconnected by taking down the interface connecting us to CSD on enzyme.
** Root holders in DCU spend the day running between fourth year projects and looking through logs looking for evidence of the intrusion.
** Reinstall begins later on, with the help of atlas. Minerva is reinstalled first, as it's needed for us to receive mail. First packages are installed again there by 9.50pm that night. The internet connection is switched back on and deathray is configured to receive and store mail by about 1am. Everything else remains unavailable, and the network is left in a rediculously complicated segregated state to stop anyone accessing anything.

== September ==

*29th Academic year starts back up.

CAIS and CASE are no longer streams of the CA course. Instead there are now two courses: Computer Applications (CASE) and Enterprise Computing (CAIS).

For some reason EC does not actually require you to do programming and is considered a joke by many.

== October ==

*8th EGM takes place.

First year representative:

Emma was the only candidate and was elected by a majority show of hands

Chairperson:

Kat Farrell (AngelKat) was elected with 29 votes. Kevin Lally
(kevinly) received 12 votes.

*25th Intersocs paintballing event

RBOnly:Minutes 2008 10 8

2008-10-15T18:45:46Z

Train:

Present: Dano, Andrew H, Andrew M, Gavin, Sean, Seamus, John, Eoghan, Leah
Excused: Lotta

==EGM==

*First year rep:

Emma nominated and seconded

Elected by a majority show of hands

*Chair

Kat and Kevinly nominated and seconded

Speeches are made

Questions are asked

Candidates leave the room while a secret ballot and count take place. Shadow is independent adjudicator.

Kat wins the election with 29 votes to 12.

==Pizza arrives==

There is a stampede of people towards said pizza

A slice ends up on the ground

Two members (who shall remain anonymous) eat the floor pizza.

==Signups==

Finland and paintballing signups take place

[[Category:Minutes]]

RBOnly:Minutes 2008 10 8

2008-10-15T18:45:22Z

Train:

RBOnly:Minutes 2008 6 19

2008-10-15T18:44:11Z

Train:

Minutes for 19 June 2008

Persons present:
Andrew H, Andrew M, Cian, Damien, Eoghan, Lotta, Seamus

Persons excused:
Gavin, John, Leah, Sean

Previous minutes defferred
Agenda approved

==Nomination of a chairperson and a secretary==

Damien was nominated as chairperson and was seconded.
Seamus was nominated as secretary and was seconded.

==Stalker complaint==

We are awaiting a final response from CSD in regards to this manner. The offending pictures have been removed by CSD themselves.

==Zyox's ban==

The committee have come to the decision that Zyox should be allowed to return to IRC on a trial basis,
with an e-mail to be drafted and sent to him.

==Lithium's proposal==

Defferred until we have more committee members present and a more indept solution can be worked out

==ITT's proposal of closer netsocs==

The committee agrees that this would be a good idea. An e-mail is to be drafted in responce.

==Broken stuff and it's status==

*Cian is currently firewalling our servers and also working on postgres sql
*Murhpy needs to be brought back online asap so we can move our webservices to it.
*Progress is being made on repairing Gallery.
*LDAP is to be moved to cynic/deathray
*More committee members are needed for a discussion on a new set of web-based forums.

==Freshers Ball/Orientation week==

*We hope to hold the freshers ball in the old bar if possible. A decision for an alternative venue is to be made at a later date.
*The EGM is to be held on freshers week.
*We want free stuff to give out for clubs and socs day. Ents and chair are going to try find stuff.
*Finland trip - A trip to Finland is being organised for the inter semester break. Bookings are to be held at freshers week
with somewhere between 2-4 people sharing a room. Estimated cost is somewhere between â‚¬190 and â‚¬250 for flights and accomidation.
*It is also agreed that we re-do this years booklet for freshers week.

==Change!11!==

*People with skillz are to be e-mailed/posts on boards are to be made to find people to give tutorials on various programming
languages and computery things next year.
*Write a proposal for a VM server.
*Redbrick radio - Cian needs to find out the legal side of things and the cost. Then we need someone to buy the licence.

[[Category:Minutes]]

RBOnly:Minutes 2008 10 06

2008-10-15T18:40:44Z

Train:

Minutes for 6th October

Present: Andrew H, Andrew M, Gavin, Leah, Dano, Lotta, Sean, John, Cian, Seamus, Eoghan
Excused: n/a

Previous minutes approved

==Freshers Ball==

Prizes to be bought by Dano and whoever else is available to go into town
Finding a presenter for the night (Niall was chosen in the end)
Need to consider stockpiling prizes for future events
Possibilty of going to a nightclub after(didn't happen)

==C&S days==

Slushie machine to arrive at 9am(it was late =[)
First year booklets to be printed en masse
Lecture crash on Tuesday at 9am to give out java CDs to first years (dano, receive and John went)
Rostering for C&S days

==EGM==

Seminar room booked/given to us by GamesSoc (<3)
Finland and paintballing signups to take place there
Taking place at 4pm

==Grant app==

Due on the 17th

==Finland==

Finland priced at around â‚¬120 (estimate)
To take place from thr 6th-9th of Feb
20 places available

==Helpdesk talks==

Intro to RedBrick to take place Tuesday the 14th October in LG26.
Possibly including an intro to linux

==Webboard==

A date to be set by admins for a webboard.

==AOB==

None

[[Category:Minutes]]

RBOnly:Minutes 2008 09 29

2008-10-15T18:38:43Z

Train:

Two part mintues for 29th & 30th September

Present: Andrew H, Andrew M, Gavin, Leah, Attol, Dano, Sean, John, Cian, Seamus
Excused: Eoghan

==Clubs & Socs day==

Table to be booked by any available committee member, if nobody is free
Andrew H will be around to book one for us anyway.

A slushie machine has been booked to give out a free slushie to everyone
who signs up for membership.

It's been agreed that John will talk to Charlie Daly about crashing the
Tuesday morning lecture to advertise RedBrick and its events and also
give out java install CDs.

==Grant apps==

A grant application for paintballing has been sent to the SPC. However
the grant for Finland will have to be added to the main grant app in
October.

==CA & freshers balls==

Freshers ball is being held on Thursday the 16th, the week after C&S
days. The preffered venue is either the oldbar or the nubar, but there
also a list of off campus alternatives incase we are unable to book
either of these. We also need to buy prizes to raffle off throughout the
night, free drink vouchers, hire/get someone to present and hire a DJ.

The CA ball date has yet to be choosen as we need to wait for
confirmation from Julie Ann Ennis, however we hope to hold this in the
same place as the Freshers ball, but have it at an earlier date if
possible.

==EGM==

The EGM is to be held on Wednesday the 8th of October in the Seminar
room at 4 O'Clock.

Signups for the Finland trip are also being taken at the same time as
the EGM.

==Helpdesk talks==

Nobody has been found yet to give talks on Web Design/Programming from
week 4 onwards. It was decided that Andrew H give the introduction to
RedBrick talks while he was out of the room for a few minutes.

==AOB==

*Video sharing - No Sean, just no.
*Web forums - Currently in development
*Campus blurb - We need a paragraph to put into Campus.

[[Category:Minutes]]

Coconut

2008-10-14T22:48:38Z

Train:

<3 <3 <3

Profesional vandal

Helpdesk

2008-10-11T07:29:05Z

Train:

Redbrick's Helpdesk is an elite team of hard working individuals dedicated to helping Redbrick users by answering queries, running workshops and forwarding hundreds of mails to the admins.

== The Helpdesk Team ==
* [[User:train|train]]
* [[User:revenant|revenant]]
* [[User:gmblitis|gmblitis]]

Feel free to mail helpdesk[at]redbrick[dot]dcu[dot]ie with any problems at all.

== Helpdesk Tutorials ==
Here you can find guides on how to use different Redbrick services. These guides are maintained by the Helpdesk team - if there's something we've left out let us know.

=== Using Your Account ===
*[[Connect|Connecting to Redbrick]] - how to start using your account.
*[[Intro|Introduction to Redbrick]] - learn the basics.
*[[Hey|Hey]] - how to use Redbrick's instant messaging program, hey.
*[[Account Customisation (zsh)|Account Customisation]] - how to change the look and feel of your Redbrick account.
*[[Screen]] - a guide to using screen.

=== Chat ===
*[[IRC|Chat/IRC]] - find out how to chat with other brickies.
*[[Irssi]] - page about the irssi client, detailing more advanced features and commands.
*[[BitchX]] - this is an alternate chat client available on RedBrick.
*[[Bitlbee]] - use chat to connect to MSN, Yahoo & Google talk.

=== Email ===
*[[Automatic Forwarding]] - how to remove or set up forwarding to different addresses.
*[[Mutt|Using mutt]] - how to use mutt to read and send emails.
*[[Webmail]] - learn more about Redbrick's web-based mail clients.
*[[Procmail]] - filter your mail and set up different mailboxes.
*[[Spam Removal]] - a way of cutting down the spam in your inbox.

=== Web ===
*[[Help:Contents|Redbrick Wiki]] - how to use this wiki.
*[[Webspace]] - how to use your Redbrick webspace and get your website up and running.
*[[Transferring Files]] - how to use WinSCP and transfer files to and from Redbrick.
*[[Htaccess|.htaccess]] - using htaccess to password protect areas of your site.
*[[PHP]] - tutorial on using PHP on Redbrick.
*[[Tomcat|TomCat]] - provides an environment for Java code to run in cooperation with a web server.

===News===
*[[Redbrick Newsgroups]] - how to read and post to the Redbrick newsgroups using slrn.
*[[Using the Boards with Thunderbird|Boards with Thunderbird]] - how to use the boards in Thunderbird.

=== Unix ===
*[[Unix Intro]] - an introduction to Unix and basic commands that you can use on Redbrick.
*[[Unix Advanced]] - some more advanced Unix features.
*[[File Permissions]] - introduction to different file permissions and how to use chmod.
*[[SSH-Keys]] - connect without typing a password

=== Programming ===
*[[Programming On Redbrick]] - how to use Java, C and C++ compilers on RedBrick.
*[[Cplusplus|C++]] - how to write, compile and run C++ programs using the g++ compiler on RedBrick.

=== Misc ===
*[[Smilies]] - a guide on smilies, with lots of different and bizarre variations. :)
*[[Creating Man Pages|Creating your own man page]] - how to make your own man page.
*[[Makefiles]] - how to write makefiles.
*[[Vim text editor]] - how to use Vim.
*[[Acronyms]] - a list of commonly used acronyms.

=== RedBrick Ubuntu ===
*[[RedBrick Ubuntu]] - read all about the special RedBrick ubuntu release.

==Other Useful Stuff==
These pages weren't written by us, but are equally helpful, so we've included them here, because we're nice :)

===Web===
*[[Installing Gallery On Redbrick|Gallery]] - how to install Gallery on your own webspace.
*[[Installing Wordpress on Redbrick|Wordpress]] - how to install a wordpress blog.
*[[DokuWiki_on_Redbrick|DokuWiki]] - how to install your own wiki.
*[[Vanilla_on_Redbrick|Vanilla]] - install a vanilla forum.
*[[PubCookie_on_Redbrick|PubCookie]] - restrict access to web pages to Redbrick members.

===Chat===
*[[Redbrick_Jabber/IM|Jabber]] - connect to the Redbrick jabber server.

===Internet===
*[[How-To:Port Forwarding|Port Forwarding]] - how to port forward through Redbrick.

===Unix===
*[[Mass Renaming Files]] - how to rename lots of files at once.

===Mac===
*[[Connecting_to_redbrick_with_Quicksilver|QuickSilver]] - connect to Redbrick from your Mac with QuickSilver.

__NOTOC__

[[Category:Helpdesk]]
[[Category:HowTo]]

Connect

2008-10-11T07:26:43Z

Train:

== Using Putty ==
Download putty from [http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/services/downloads/putty.exe here].

Open it up and click the redbrick button.

[[Image:Putty_configuration.png]]

Type in your username.

If you make a mistake typing in your username while using SSH (ie when you click the big "Redbrick" button to log in) you'll have to restart as you can't go back to edit it.

Type your password (note, nothing appears when your doing this. That's delibrate. It's a unix thing).

When you're logged in, type help.

Or if you want to dive right in, type [http://wiki.redbrick.dcu.ie/mw/IRC chat].

Once you've finished with all that and find you want to leave (!) you can type logout to end your session.

Something to note if you're logging in using the Computing Buildings (and I assume other buildings) computers:

All the machines in DCU are in a state of deep freeze, this means that anything that you do will be competely "forgotten" when the machine is turned off.

This means that all the software on the machines will not change, so any changes to settings will not be saved.

When PuTTy was installed, our own version with the "RedBrick!" button was not used, instead you'll have to type "login.redbrick.dcu.ie" into the "Host Name (or IP address)" bar and click on Open. You'll then be asked about changed RSA keys, to which you should click "Yes" and then you can log in.

Also the character encoding is wrong, it should be UTF-8. To change this go to Window -> Translation -> Received data assumed to be in which character set: and choose UTF-8

Alternatively, you could try installing PuTTy on your H:/ drive where it will remain saved after you log off.

Anyway.

After you've clicked on the RedBrick button (or used login.redbrick.dcu.ie) you should get somemthing that looks like this:

[[Image:Login1.jpg]]

Only instead of "newb" as used here, you insert your own username (note: if you make a spelling mistake with your username with PuTTY and press return, you will have to close PuTTY and start all over again because PuTTY is weird like that). After you press return you will then be asked for your account password like so:

[[Image:Login2.jpg]]

Don't worry that nothing comes up when you type your password in, it's a unix thing, the password is still being entered.

And that's it! You're officially on RedBrick, congratulations. It should look something like this:

[[Image:Login3.jpg]]

Now, I'm sure you're wondering about all the fun things you can get up to. Well to start with you could try typing "help" to give a brief list of available commands:

[[Image:Help.jpg]]

Fun times.

The best step would probably be to type chat.

[[Image:Login4.jpg]]

...and hit return. This will cause this to appear:

[[Image:Login5.jpg]]

You've come so far in such a short space of time. It's time to move on to the [[IRC]] wiki page.

== See Also==
[http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.54/htmldoc/ PuTTY Manual] - A more indepth tutorial on how to use PuTTY

[[Category:Helpdesk]]

File:Help.jpg

2008-10-11T07:22:14Z

Train:

File:Login5.jpg

2008-10-11T07:16:02Z

Train:

File:Login4.jpg

2008-10-11T07:15:34Z

Train:

File:Login3.jpg

2008-10-11T07:15:21Z

Train:

File:Login2.jpg

2008-10-11T07:15:17Z

Train:

File:Login1.jpg

2008-10-11T07:15:11Z

Train:

Unix Intro

2008-10-11T02:23:57Z

Train:

Beginning Unix

This is a primer for those of you who have no previous experience of a UNIX system (which is most of us :o) ) and will teach you the basics of changing your shell and using programs such as mail and news.

== Using your shell ==

Ok, when you first start using Redbrick and you log on, you'll be looking at a screen which looks fairly plain with some basic instructions for reading mail, news, chat, etc. This is great when you're starting off, but after a while, you'll find that just staring at the screen can hurt your eyes, so you'll want to do other stuff. You'll then see why a lot of people type stuff when using computers. The way that most people prefer when they get used to it, is typing in commands in a 'shell'. This sounds really difficult, but you'll soon get into the hang of it and be heying your friends and going into chat and mailing your ma and so on :o)

== Changing your shell ==

The default shell that you start with is zsh, if (for whatever reason) you wish to change your shell here's how to do it.

At the prompt type chsh, like so:

[[Image:chsh1.jpg]]

You'll be asked for your password, enter it. Now you'll be looking at this:

[[Image:chsh2.jpg]]

This shows your current shell and is where you select your new one.

Now you'll need to give it the location of the shell you want to use. If you don't know where they are, don't worry here's a list by typing "help chsh":

[[Image:shells.jpg]]

Now all you do is select the one you want, type it in and away you go.

[[Image:chsh3.jpg]]

As it says, this can take effect immediately or in several minutes time.

== Directory Structure in Unix ==

=== The root directory ===

Every file on Redbrick has what's known as a path. Basically, it's the location of the file on the system. The format in Unix is a little different to Windows, for example, on a Windows/DOS machine, an example would be:

c:\projects\essay\essay.txt

while on a Unix system like Redbrick this could be:

/home/member/bubble/project/essay/essay.txt

The difference here is that you don't actually specify drive letters. Everything begins at the root folder, which is denoted by a forwardslash (/). Everything then goes from that, with each subfolder being separated by another /, but don't get confused by the two. One last thing on this topic, you can change to the root folder by typing:

cd /

=== Your home directory ===

Your home directory is where you store all your files. On Redbrick, your home directory is:

/home/member/u/username/

where 'u' is the first lettter of the username. Committee members would find their home directory in:

/home/committe/username

That folder, and everything in it is yours, and you have control over it. You can add files, create subfolders and change permissions on your files. Your mail is stored there, as is everything else. To change into your directory, you use the cd command. One way of changing into your home directory is by typing

cd /home/member/firstletter/username

but there is a special character to represent your home directory, namely tilde (~). So a shorter version is:

cd ~

However, cd on its own should do the same thing.

cd

=== Your current/parent directory ===

There are lots of special characters in unix. You've seen two already, / for the root directory, and ~ for your home directory. Another one is simply '.'. What a fullstop represents is your current directory. You might not think this is useful, but it is, especially in commands like cp and mv for example, where you are copying or moving stuff into your current directory. It can also be expressed as ./, but they both mean the same thing.

Then there's what's known as your parent directory, the one just before your own. In the example, if you were in the folder:

/usr/local/bin

then your parent folder would be:

/usr/local

Your parent folder is denoted by '../' So, if you wanted to change into it, you simply use the command:

cd ../

== Basic Unix commands ==

Say you wanted to create a file in your home directory called 'phonenumbers'. You need to use an editor. The editor on Redbrick that is the best to use when you're starting off, is nano. In fact, lots of experienced users still use it. So, to create your file, you would type:

nano phonenumbers

This will open up the nano editor, with a blank file called 'phonenumbers'. Now, just simply type in whatever you want in this file.... To save it you can hold down control and hit 'o' (when I say control-o, that's what I mean), then hit return to confirm the filename 'phonenumbers'. If you want to exit, then you don't have to do a control-o, you can use control-x. It will ask you if you want to save the changes, so you press 'y' and again hit return to confirm the filename.

Some more unix commands:

=== who ===

The command 'who' lists all the users on the system, what pts they're on, the time they logged on and the machine they logged on from.

=== ls ===

The command 'ls' simply lists all your files in the folder that you are in, One point, there can be 'hidden' files in a folder. Their names begin with a "." They aren't really hidden, it's just that ls won't see them, unless you tell it to look for them by using the command:

ls -A

This will show ALL files in that folder. Another 'argument' that you can pass ls, is the l option, which gives a detailed listing of the files, and you can specify more than one argument to ls, or any other command for that matter. The command:

ls -Al

will give a detailed listing of all files in your current folder, including 'hidden' files.

ls -Alh

will show the same listings with "human readable" file sizes, instead of bytes.

=== cd ===

I've already covered this in a way, it changes your current folder or 'working directory' as is the proper name for it. Some examples:

cd /usr/local/bin

changes your working directory to /usr/local/bin

cd /

changes your working directory to the root directory

cd ../

changes to your parent directory

cd ~

changes to your home directory

=== mkdir ===

This command simply creates a directory. You can only create directories in directories that you have permission to write to, such as your home directory, or /tmp for example. Some examples:

mkdir project

creates a directory called 'project' in your current directory

mkdir ~/project

does the same, only puts it in your home directory, regardless of whether your home directory is your working directory or not

=== cp ===

The command cp is used to copy files around the place. There are two arguments you must pass to cp, the source file (the one you want to copy) and the target file (the file you want to copy it to). That sounds confusing but it's not really. When you copy a file, you can specify a directory as the target, that way the file will be copied with the same name into that directory. Some examples will show this better:

cp ~/project/intro.txt ~/

will copy intro.txt out of ~/project into your home directory

cp ~/project/intro.txt ~/introduction.txt

will make a copy of the same file in your home dir, only renamed to introduction.txt

cp ~/project/intro.txt ./

will copy the same file into your current working directory

You can't copy directories like this however, to copy a directory you must use the -R switch, which will copy all sub-directories of that directory as well, so an example would be:

cp -R ~/project/images ~/images
which will copy the directory 'images' out of 'project' to your home directory

=== mv ===

The command mv moves files between folders, and can move folders themselves. Its usage is very similar to that of cp. in fact it's the same, only it deletes the source file, leaving the target file. That is, if you mv one file into another folder, the new file will remain, while the old one is deleted, in effect, a 'move'. mv is also used to rename files. Some examples:

mv ~/hello.txt ~/bye.txt

renames hello.txt to bye.txt (in your home directory)

mv ~/bye.txt ~/project/hello.txt

renames bye.txt to hello.txt and moves it into the directory ~/project

mv ~/project ~/oldstuff/project

moves the directory ~/project into ~/oldstuff

=== rm ===

The command rm is used to delete files. Be careful with this command as once you remove a file, you've lost it unless you made a backup of it. The command is easy to use, an example is:

rm ~/hello.txt

to delete the file 'hello.txt' out of your home directory

=== pwd ===

One of the simpler commands, simply typing pwd at the prompt will display your current working directory. 'pwd' stands for 'print working directory'.

=== cat ===

This stands for concatenate. This command is really useful, if you have a text file you want to view without going into a text editor, you can simply type, for example:

cat ~/hello.txt

which will simply display the text file on the screen. If the text file is large, even more than a screen, then this can be annoying. This is where the command more comes in. 'Piping' the 'cat hello.txt' into it will cause the page to be displayed on screenful at a time, using return to go down one line at a time, or space to go down one screenful at a time. There is a command called less which does the same, but it wont bring you back to the command line after youve finished viewing the text file until you press 'q'. The command you need to type is

cat hello.txt | less

The '|' is called a pipe, got usually by holding down shift and \, and is used for putting the output of one command, in this case, 'cat hello.txt' into the input of another command, in this case, 'less'. There are lots of things you can do with cat, and redirection(using pipes etc..) but I'm not going to go into that here.

That's it....

There are more unix commands that you can imagine, the ones I have given here are basic ones, with a few basic examples for you to get started. To get more uses for any of the commands or any others, simply type:

man command-name

to get detailed instructions on that command. The best way to learn Unix is to experiment, just be careful when you're going around deleting stuff. :) This is just a primer for those of you starting off on Unix, but there are numerous tutorials on unix to be found on the web and you can always talk to [[Helpdesk]] if you have a problem or a question.

== Links ==
[[Unix Advanced]] - a guide to some of the more advanced parts of Unix (if you're ready).

[http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Docs/Unixhelp/TOP_.html UNIXhelp for Users ] - Unix guide.

[[Category:Helpdesk]]

Intro

2008-10-11T02:15:25Z

Train:

'''Welcome to Redbrick!'''

This is a brief introduction to some of the more common services available to you now that you have a Redbrick account. For more detailed tutorials on the services mentioned, simply follow the links provided, or visit the [[Helpdesk]] page!

== Chat ==
One of the most common ways for Redbrick members to stay in touch is through Chat, or [[IRC]] (Internet Relay Chat). IRC basically lets you chat with a lot of different people at the same time.

To begin using chat, simply type 'chat' into your terminal. There are lots of different chatrooms, or "channels" on Redbrick, the default one being #lobby. There is also a WebChat client available, so you can talk to your friends on Redbrick through your browser. [http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/chat/ www.redbrick.dcu.ie/chat/]

You can get more info about chat and its different commands and features by visiting the [[IRC]] page.

== Email ==
When you join Redbrick, you get your own email account, your address being <username>@redbrick.dcu.ie.

By default, your mail will be forwarded to your DCU account, so that you won't miss any mails. To turn this off, type "noforward" in your terminal.

Redbrick has a variety of different ways in which you can read and send mail. By typing "email" in your terminal, you can use the Mutt client to check your mail, but there are also two clients available if you'd prefer to read email in your browser.

Redbrick now has two Web-based email clients, SquirrelMail and RoundCube. These can be accessed by pointing your browser at [http://webmail.redbrick.dcu.ie webmail.redbrick.dcu.ie].

== Newsgroups ==
The [[Redbrick Newsgroups]] (the boards) are a place for our members to exchange views, seek help or generally rant about anything they want. The default news reader on Redbrick is called slrn. To start it simply type "news" or "slrn" into your terminal. With slrn you can read and post to all of the Redbrick Newsgroups plus some Intersocs Newsgroups.

The boards can also be read using [[Using the Boards with Thunderbird|Thunderbird]].

== Redbrick Software ==
RedBrick has a vast array of software installed on the system that was written by our members. As you gain more experience using your account, you will come across a lot of the programs out there.

One of the most used of these programs is [[rbusers]]. If you type "rbusers" into your terminal, you will see a list of users currently logged on. [[Hey]] is a way for Redbrick users to send instant messages to each other's terminals. Heys are heavily customisable and there are lots of different ways to use it. See the [http://wiki.redbrick.dcu.ie/mw/Hey#Tutorial tutorial] for more information. The list of user written software is endless and you will come across loads of them on your travels.

== Unix ==
Redbrick's operating system of choice is UNIX. Our primary server, ([[murphy]]), is running the Ubuntu Linux operating system and our secondary server runs Debian (carbon and deathray). In the Windows point and click world, don't let a command line usage put you off. Once you get comfortable you'll be amazed how much you can accomplish in a command line Unix environment. A standard user only need a very basic knowledge to gain usage from their Redbrick account. For a starting point and a guide to some of the more common commands, see the [[Unix Intro|introduction to Unix]].

==Changing your password==
When you first join RedBrick, your assigned password will probably be some ugly, difficult to remember assortment of characters and numbers. Thankfully you can quite easily change it, and here's how.

When you first log in you'll be greeted with a black screen with your username and the time. All you have to do is type "passwd" like so:

[[Image:Password1.jpg]]

and hit enter. Now you have to enter your current (soon to be old) password.

[[Image:Password2.jpg]]

Almost finished now, I told you it was easy. You'll be asked what you want your new password to be, like this:

[[Image:Password3.jpg]]

you'll have to enter it twice, just for comparisons sake, to make sure you've typed it correctly.

After you've done that, that's it! You're done.

[[Image:Password4.jpg]]

Make sure to remember this password, but if you forget it's not a big deal, you'll just have to e-mail the admins and ask them nicely to reset it for you.

==Changing finger information==

Finger information is what people see when they "finger" you, this shows your username as well as your real name. At first, your real name and username will both be set to the same thing. Basically, this name is used when posting to the news boards and when e-mailing. If you'd like to change what it says, this is how:

At the prompt, type chfn like so:

[[Image:chfn1.jpg]]

and hit return. Next it'll ask for your password, just type it in the same as you would when logging in

[[Image:chfn2.jpg]]

Now you can set your name to whatever you want, it can include capital letters and spaces

[[Image:chfn3.jpg]]

After you've entered it in, hit return until it exits. It should look like this:

[[Image:chfn4.jpg]]

And you're done. As it says, this may take effect instantly or in ten minutes, but it will change.

== More ==
For a list of the main features at any time, type "help" into your terminal. Remember that you can always ask the Redbrick [[Helpdesk]] questions if you have any problems or need assistance. Once you are comfortable with the general setup of your account and the system take a look at the other tutorials to learn a little more and improve your use of Redbrick.

Good luck, and enjoy your Redbrick experience!

[[Category:Helpdesk]]

Intro

2008-10-11T02:06:43Z

Train:

'''Welcome to Redbrick!'''

This is a brief introduction to some of the more common services available to you now that you have a Redbrick account. For more detailed tutorials on the services mentioned, simply follow the links provided, or visit the [[Helpdesk]] page!

== Chat ==
One of the most common ways for Redbrick members to stay in touch is through Chat, or [[IRC]] (Internet Relay Chat). IRC basically lets you chat with a lot of different people at the same time.

To begin using chat, simply type 'chat' into your terminal. There are lots of different chatrooms, or "channels" on Redbrick, the default one being #lobby. There is also a WebChat client available, so you can talk to your friends on Redbrick through your browser. [http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/chat/ www.redbrick.dcu.ie/chat/]

You can get more info about chat and its different commands and features by visiting the [[IRC]] page.

== Email ==
When you join Redbrick, you get your own email account, your address being <username>@redbrick.dcu.ie.

By default, your mail will be forwarded to your DCU account, so that you won't miss any mails. To turn this off, type "noforward" in your terminal.

Redbrick has a variety of different ways in which you can read and send mail. By typing "email" in your terminal, you can use the Mutt client to check your mail, but there are also two clients available if you'd prefer to read email in your browser.

Redbrick now has two Web-based email clients, SquirrelMail and RoundCube. These can be accessed by pointing your browser at [http://webmail.redbrick.dcu.ie webmail.redbrick.dcu.ie].

== Newsgroups ==
The [[Redbrick Newsgroups]] (the boards) are a place for our members to exchange views, seek help or generally rant about anything they want. The default news reader on Redbrick is called slrn. To start it simply type "news" or "slrn" into your terminal. With slrn you can read and post to all of the Redbrick Newsgroups plus some Intersocs Newsgroups.

The boards can also be read using [[Using the Boards with Thunderbird|Thunderbird]].

== Redbrick Software ==
RedBrick has a vast array of software installed on the system that was written by our members. As you gain more experience using your account, you will come across a lot of the programs out there.

One of the most used of these programs is [[rbusers]]. If you type "rbusers" into your terminal, you will see a list of users currently logged on. [[Hey]] is a way for Redbrick users to send instant messages to each other's terminals. Heys are heavily customisable and there are lots of different ways to use it. See the [http://wiki.redbrick.dcu.ie/mw/Hey#Tutorial tutorial] for more information. The list of user written software is endless and you will come across loads of them on your travels.

== Unix ==
Redbrick's operating system of choice is UNIX. Our primary server, ([[murphy]]), is running the Ubuntu Linux operating system and our secondary server runs Debian (carbon and deathray). In the Windows point and click world, don't let a command line usage put you off. Once you get comfortable you'll be amazed how much you can accomplish in a command line Unix environment. A standard user only need a very basic knowledge to gain usage from their Redbrick account. For a starting point and a guide to some of the more common commands, see the [[Unix Intro|introduction to Unix]].

==Changing your password==
When you first join RedBrick, your assigned password will probably be some ugly, difficult to remember assortment of characters and numbers. Thankfully you can quite easily change it, and here's how.

When you first log in you'll be greeted with a black screen with your username and the time. All you have to do is type "passwd" like so:

[[Image:Password1.jpg]]

and hit enter. Now you have to enter your current (soon to be old) password.

[[Image:Password2.jpg]]

Almost finished now, I told you it was easy. You'll be asked what you want your new password to be, like this:

[[Image:Password3.jpg]]

you'll have to enter it twice, just for comparisons sake, to make sure you've typed it correctly.

After you've done that, that's it! You're done.

[[Image:Password4.jpg]]

Make sure to remember this password, but if you forget it's not a big deal, you'll just have to e-mail the admins and ask them nicely to reset it for you.

== More ==
For a list of the main features at any time, type "help" into your terminal. Remember that you can always ask the Redbrick [[Helpdesk]] questions if you have any problems or need assistance. Once you are comfortable with the general setup of your account and the system take a look at the other tutorials to learn a little more and improve your use of Redbrick.

Good luck, and enjoy your Redbrick experience!

[[Category:Helpdesk]]

Redbrick Newsgroups

2008-10-11T01:55:26Z

Train:

The Redbrick newsgroups, "the boards", are essentially an electronic bulletin board. People can post messages asking for help, talking about the latest news item, discussing computing or just generally ranting about anything at all. The newsgroups have remained highly active over the years, though they tend to be more popular among older generations of Brickies, while the younger, trendier crowd are more likely to hang out on [[IRC]].

== Accessing the boards ==
To gain access to the newsgroups, simply type "news" at the prompt.

[[Image:news1.jpg]]

And you'll be greeted a screen that looks like this:

[[Image:news2.jpg]]

Just hit return to continue.

Initially, you won't be subscribed to any of the newsgroups and your screen will be empty, like this:

[[Image:news3.jpg]]

so to see them hit L (shift + l)

[[Image:news4.jpg]]

and then *, followed by return. This should display all of the boards.

[[Image:news5.jpg]]

The groups you are not subscribed to will be marked with U, which will be all of them if this is your first time. Move up and down the list to view the available groups. If you wish to subscribe to a group simply highlight the board and press the s key.

== Navigating ==
To navigate the groups use the up and down arrow keys. When you find a board that you want to read, hit the return key. You will then see a list of posts by other users. You can scroll up and down through the post with the u and d keys respectively.

Highlight the post you wish to read using the arrow keys and then hit return. You will now be able to read that user's post. To go back to the list of posts hit h. To back to the list of boards hit q.

You will notice that all responses to a particular topic appear under the heading for that topic. This series of messages is called a thread.

== Posting ==
On the main screen highlight the group you want to post to and press the p key. When asked if you want to post, press y.

Let's try redbrick.hello

[[Image:news6.jpg]]

It will now display the name of the board you're post to, so hit return. The next option is to give your post a title. Make it as clear as possible. When you're done, press the return key.

[[Image:news7.jpg]]

Now your text editor will launch and you can type your post. When you are done, save the file in the usual manner. The default text editor is Nano, so this will be ctrl + x, and then y to save and quit.

[[Image:news8.jpg]]

You will be asked to confirm that you want to post, simply press y again.

Your message will now appear in that group

[[Image:news9.jpg]]

...and what it looks like

[[Image:news10.jpg]]

== Replying/Following up ==
Replying to someone else's post is very straightforward. Whilst viewing the post, simply hit the f key. The options from there on are very similar to posting yourself, so simply follow the instructions as before.

If you wish to reply directly to the user by mail, hit the r key instead.

== Saving ==
When you are reading a posting, and you want to save it, hit the o key. You'll then be asked what filename you'd like to save it to. Simply enter where you would like the file to be saved and what you want it saved as i.e.

~/savedPost

Then just hit the return key and the post is saved.

== Crossposting ==
Sometimes you may want to post the same article to more than one newsgroup, because the article may be of interest to more than one audience or you want to get a wider response. If you simply post copies of the article in the usual way to each newsgroup, it not only takes more of your time but anyone subscribed to both groups sees the message twice, which can be pretty annoying. ;)

The crossposting mechanism allows you to post one copy of the article simultaneously to more than one newsgroup. With some newsreaders, including slrn, reading a crossposted article in one group marks it as read in the other groups, if you read more than one of the groups in question, you see the article only once. Crossposting is always preferable to making multiple separate identical postings.

To crosspost an article, start by posting as usual to one of the newsgroups in which you want the article to appear. Look at the headers of the article. For example the headers of this post are as follows:

Newsgroups: redbrick.babble
From: "Mr.Sephiroth" <Moridin@3l33t.RedBrick.cx>
Subject: Re: Website hosting
References: <slrnae2607.gus.henough@Prodigy.redbrick.dcu.ie>
Reply-To: moridin@redbrick.dcu.ie
Followup-To:

The top line, Newsgroups: specifies the groups that this message will get posted to. Now, suppose I want to post this both to redbrick.babble and redbrick.help. In that case the headers need to be amended to the following:

Newsgroups: redbrick.babble,redbrick.help
From: "Mr.Sephiroth" <Moridin@3l33t.RedBrick.cx>
Subject: Re: Website hosting
References: <slrnae2607.gus.henough@Prodigy.redbrick.dcu.ie>
Reply-To: moridin@redbrick.dcu.ie
Followup-To:

Now the message will go to redbrick.babble and redbrick.help. You need to make sure that there are no spaces between the names of the groups on the newsgroups line, i.e. it's just comma delimited.

Followup articles normally appear in the same newsgroups as the original article. The author of the followup article can change this by editing the Newsgroups: line in the header. The author of the original article can also change this, by editing the Followup-To: line, which is normally blank. If the Followup-To: line is not blank, all followup articles appear in the specified newsgroup.

This is commonly done in two situations. First, the author of the article may want to attract the attention of readers of several newsgroups, but then restrict any followup discussion to one newsgroup. For example, I'm going to set the follow-ups to this post to go to redbrick.help, as I'm being nice and helping you to understand stuff. ;)

Second, the author may want all responses to go directly to him/her via e-mail, so that he/she can prepare a summary of them to post later. Placing the word poster in the Followup-To: line accomplishes this.

Finally, here's the headers for this post after all my modifications to them:

Newsgroups: redbrick.babble,redbrick.help
From: "Mr.Sephiroth" <Moridin@3l33t.RedBrick.cx>
Subject: Re: Website hosting
References: <slrnae2607.gus.henough@Prodigy.redbrick.dcu.ie>
Reply-To: moridin@redbrick.dcu.ie
Followup-To: redbrick.help

Then you can continue to post as normal. :)

== Links ==
[https://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~link/news/ Newsgroups] - link's web based version of the boards.

[[RBOnly:NewsgroupRSSFeed]] - access details for a RSS feed of the newsgroups

[[In_Jokes|In-Jokes]] - explanations of some of the common boards in-jokes.

[[Top_Ten_Redbrick_Arguments|Top Ten Arguments]] - a list of the most common debates.

[https://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~cammy/v/ Web Forums] - an online alternative to the boards.

[[Using the Boards with Thunderbird|Using the boards with Thunderbird]] - how to use the boards in Thunderbird.

[[Category:Helpdesk]]

File:News9.jpg

2008-10-11T01:40:47Z

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File:Chsh1.jpg

2008-10-11T01:37:35Z

Train: