Technical Briefs
Answers to Computing Problems

• Data Communication
• Email on ROHAN
• Logging into ROHAN
• ROHAN Quota
• Saving ROHAN Files to a Floppy
• UNIX Commands
• USENET Postings
• World Wide Web
• Xsessions

I now have an Aznet account, and I need to load Telnet so I can access the PAC. I tried to download Telnet but it leads me to a page where I have to pay for the telnet program. Is there some way to download telnet for free from the University? I'm on Windows 95, doesn't it have a telnet program?

You can download Telnet from the web at http://rohan.sdsu.edu/~scc/software/softwareindex.html. However, Windows 95 provides a Telnet application you can use to connect to remote systems.

To access the PAC, go to http://libweb.sdsu.edu/pac.html. Follow the steps on that page to access the web version or the telnet version of PAC.

During my telnet session from home to ROHAN, screen starts printing stuff like &}{\:Uk:&:]&}{\:} vk:vv&Uk:&:& -- What is this stuff?

Most likely you are seeing line noise on your modem.

I am having trouble accessing from the 594-9900 line, please help.

The 594-9900 line works just fine. Are you set up with 8 bits data, no parity, one stop bit, at 14.4 to 33.6 kpbs? Also, you need to press the RETURN key a couple of times when you see the CONNECT message. As an extra measure, you can press the Ctrl-Q key combination a couple of times and type ATZ just before you dial.

Keep track of what time/date you try (and fail), along with whatever unusual output you see. Just in case it's a hardware problem on this end.... and then report the problem to TNS (594-5261).

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I would like to check my email messages from AOL. Is that an option, or do I need to use Netscape Navigator?

If you are using Windows 95 and AOL, you can Telnet into ROHAN.

--Log onto AOL

--After you are connected go to your START menu and select Run.

--In the window that pops us, enter telnet: rohan.sdsu.edu

--You will then be prompted for your login: (username) and password

--at the rohan% prompt, enter pine or elm to check your email

If you want to check your email using Netscape Navigator or Communicator, go to SCC's On-line Guides http://rohan.sdsu.edu/~scc/guides/guidesindex.html and look at solutions sheet #1102 for Navigator and #1103 for Communicator directions.

If you want to check your email via a web browser, go to ROHAN's webmail at http://rohan.sdsu.edu/webmail.

How do I forward my mail from my ROHAN account to my Aznet account?

One way to do this is to create a .forward file containing the new Email address:

At the rohan% prompt, type:

cat > .forward user@aznet.sdsu.edu

Press Ctrl-D key combination to terminate input to the cat command. (This is explained in the Guide to Using ROHAN.

Can you tell me why I can't read my mail? This is what I get:

     Your mailfile was found to be corrupted (Content-length mismatch). 
     Message #0 may be truncated,with another message concatenated to it.

It means the Email received was damaged and the mail reader your using does not know what to do. This rarely happens. When it does, you can view the mail directly by typing

less /var/mail/xxxxx

and empty your mailbox by typing

cp /dev/null /var/mail/xxxxx

Note: Replace xxxxx with your account name in each example.

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Is there a problem with the system or has someone corrupted my account and changed my password? I was unable to log in to my account on ROHAN this morning. Also, when I do a finger of anybody, it won't come up.

When the system is down for maintenance, the system will not allow any login. It may however, prompt for and ignore your username and password. Finger requires the system to be up, also.

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I'm getting an error message that says I have exceeded my disk quota on /home. How do I delete files from /home on ROHAN, and what caused me to go over my quota?

To remove files from the /home directory, at the rohan% prompt, type:

rm filename

The file named "filename" will be deleted from your account.

If you're over quota, there are several possible problems:

1. You have a core file (created when a program such as Netscape crashed) in your account. Core files are huge and should be removed from your account.
2. You have been running Netscape in your account (from an X-Terminal) and you still have the cache enabled. This will fill up your account. Your Netscape cache should be set to 0. You don't need to cache files because the ROHAN proxy does it for you.

How do I find out what files are in my ROHAN account and how much space they are using?

From the rohan% prompt, enter:

ls -la

This will list all your files along with their sizes.

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I would like to put the file(s) on a floppy disk and take them home to use on my computer. How do I do this?

Go to the Student Computing Center (LL-200), load up the FTP program on either a PC or Mac, and log into rohan.sdsu.edu as yourself (not anonymous), change directory if needed, and download your file to your floppy.

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To receive an ASCII text file via a modem when working on ROHAN, what is the UNIX command?

The equivalent is to type at the rohan% prompt:

cat > myfile

then use the Ctrl-D key combination, when the transmission is finished to close the file. See man cat for more info on this command.

Another way to send or receive a text file is using Zmodem. At the rohan% prompt, enter:

sz filename
sends filename from ROHAN to PC

rz filename
receives filename from PC to ROHAN

I'm having trouble doing my plan file. Here's what I've done:

vi .plan (edit and stuff)
chmod +r .plan

And it still doesn't work. Is there something else I need to do? When I finger myself it says, "No plan." Thanks in advance for any help...

This is covered in the #0200 Guide to Using ROHAN. Your home directory must also allow execute access for others to see your .plan file.

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I'm getting error message 441 followed by "Article rejected" when trying to post an article in tin. What is the problem?

When you get error 441 posting a message, the news server can't accept your article. There are two reasons this can happen; if the disks are full, or articles are being expired. The article expire runs are normally scheduled between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.

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I would like to download a 2.9 MByte file from the WWW in BA-110 using Netscape. I only have 2 MBytes of local disk storage on ROHAN. How do I do this and store it on a floppy?

The Save As... option will let you specify a path. Then use /tmp -- so the pathname would be

/tmp/myfile.3megs

Once the file is in /tmp, you go to the Student Computing Center (LL-200), load up the FTP program on either a PC or Mac, and log into rohan.sdsu.edu as yourself (not anonymous), change directory to /tmp, and download your file to your floppy.

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After editing something in my .xsession file, I can't login anymore to an xsession.

The best thing to do if you want to be able to log in again is to rename your .Xsession file. When the system no longer finds an .Xsession file, it will default to a generic session and allow you to log in.

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