If you are a current PhD student in the UBC Economics Department, you ought already to know how to get an account.

It's primarily a place to serve web documents for professional or personal purposes (non-commercial and in accordance with UBC appropriate use policies).  It also provides an email forwarding address (yourusername@grad.econ.ubc.ca).  Because you can also upload/download files to a location which is not accessible to the Web, your account can also be used as a place to store files.  Lastly, if you are familiar with unix, it is a unix shell account accessible through ssh.

For some advice on choosing an acceptable password, please read (for example): http://www-biocomp.doit.wisc.edu/password_advice.shtml.

This is the first thing you will need to do when you get your account.  If you are using Microsoft Windows, please go through these instructions carefully.  If you are using Mac or a unix, just type

ssh yourusername@grad.econ.ubc.ca 

at a shell prompt and run the "passwd" command on the remote host.

It is very important that you remember your password in order to minimise maintenance needed for these accounts (and to maximise security). If you ask for help resetting your password, response may not be quick and there will be a required significant cash contribution to the "upgrade fund".

Your new account has a template (sample web page) already set up for you. It is the file web/index.html in your account. To change it, you will need to upload a modified "index.html" file to the "web" folder in your account on grad.econ.ubc.ca. There are ample resources on the web (try Google) to help you get started with how to edit HTML. 

If you want to suggest an improved standard template home page for our department's students, please draft one! Here is the current template.

Just upload to your web folder a good portrait photo of yourself, in JPEG format, named "username.jpeg", using your username.

Please, you can put what you like on your own web page, but this photo for the main index page is meant to be a mugshot, not a scenery shot! Crop your image to show just your FACE before uploading.

Don't have a photo of yourself? Here's how I got mine. I'm not sure if this works for everyone (please let me know), but if you've been in on-campus residence recently, it certainly will. Log in at https://ssc.adm.ubc.ca/ and click on "Housing" (bottom left) and then on "Profile" -> "Update Photo". Grab your photo from there! This is the same one that's on your library card and U-Pass.

If you are using Microsoft Windows, please go through these instructions carefully.  If you are using a unix, just type "man scp" or "man rsync" at a shell prompt for info on these powerful commands.

Your email address (yourusername@grad.econ.ubc.ca) is likely already set up to forward to your interchange account. Test it out.  If for some reason you want to keep your mail on grad.econ.ubc.ca or want to forward it somewhere else, you just need to edit (or delete) the file ".forward" (note the dot) in your home directory.  Make sure immediately to test the results of your work.
Examples:

• If you delete your .forward file, then you can access your mail at https://grad.econ.ubc.ca/gradmail (note the "s" in https:// !! This ensures security) [actually, not anymore: autumn 2006, unless many have a reason to want it] or [still offered] via pine or mutt or so on under unix. (Did you know that you can read your Interchange mail directly using pine also (not that you'd necessarily want to); that server runs unix, too.).
• If you want to forward your mail to your interchange account, just put a single line in .forward with the destination email address.
• If you want both to forward your email AND to keep a copy on grad.econ.ubc.ca, put a line such as the following in .forward, where "username" is your grad.econ.ubc.ca username:

  myname@interchange.ubc.ca, \username

Test your work! It is very important that you always receive and read email sent to your address at grad.econ.ubc.ca.

Unknown.  But it will certainly eventually be spontaneously destroyed if your forwarding email address (ie, your .forward file) is not kept up to date. It might be reasonable to expect it to last at least a year beyond your stay in the department. If you graduate here, you might be able to keep it as long as you need it.

A fair bit. If you are one of the heaviest users, you will receive email letting you know it and asking you to cut back.

Just install an X server (sounds scary, but it works like a client) on your computer. It's already installed on the lastest Mac OS; is of course on any GNU/linux machine; and one good-looking one can be found here for Windows: Xming. With this, you can run graphical software running on grad.econ.ubc.ca from anywhere in the world. (Welcome to 1980's unix technology. Recently there is a commercial product, Citrix, which does something similar for MS Windows, but the unix world has had such network transparency for nearly two decades [rant, rant]).

Jian gives this advice for setting up xming:

Just in case, the trick is to choose the file Xlaunch to initiate X-server
using Xming, choose 'Multiple Windows' with '0' displays, and then 'Start A
Program' and then 'Using Putty(plink.exe)' and entering 'grad.econ.ubc.ca'
as the 'connect to computer' option and inserting the user name.

After all these, the command 'xstata &' would give you the actual STATA
page.

Currently the accounts are somewhat safe against a single hard-disk failure (backed up nightly or weekly). Ask if you need restoration. You should occasionally back up your files yourself. Currently (2007) the backup routine is set to ignore files ending in ".tar.gz".

• All other students with accounts can read anything in your web directory. Anyone in the world who knows to look can access things there, too, although anything which is not hyper-linked in html will not generally be visible.
• Anything in your private folder is generally hidden from everyone but you, unless you change the permissions using chmod. Anything you wish to remain private should be kept there or should have its permissions changed, since:
• The rest of your account is also readable by other students with accounts, unless you change permissions. Unix account structure evolved as a collaborative environment and tends to encourage openness.
  

• You have access to all the software on the department's computation server.

  See csrv.econ.ubc.ca for information on on running software, etc on the server...

  Please suggest additions to the documentation.

  • Is there support?

  Support is through your peers! Most questions are about using Windows to access the server (I will never help with this beyond take advice for documentation upgrades for this page) or for lost passwords. Don't try to figure out things by yourself much. Ask a fellow student who is already using the server for some quick help.

  By the same token, please contribute to this help page (by sending stuff to me)!

  By the way, if you ever are reporting a problem, please follow standard guidelines for reporting bugs effectively. Never tell an administrator "It doesn't work"! For instance, from Simon Tatham:

  • The first aim of a bug report is to let the programmer see the failure with their own eyes. If you can't be with them to make it fail in front of them, give them detailed instructions so that they can make it fail for themselves.
  • In case the first aim doesn't succeed, and the programmer can't see it failing themselves, the second aim of a bug report is to describe what went wrong. Describe everything in detail. State what you saw, and also state what you expected to see. Write down the error messages, especially if they have numbers in.
  • When your computer does something unexpected, freeze. Do nothing until you're calm, and don't do anything that you think might be dangerous.
  • By all means try to diagnose the fault yourself if you think you can, but if you do, you should still report the symptoms as well.
  • Be ready to provide extra information if the programmer needs it. If they didn't need it, they wouldn't be asking for it. They aren't being deliberately awkward. Have version numbers at your fingertips, because they will probably be needed.
  • Write clearly. Say what you mean, and make sure it can't be misinterpreted.
  • Above all, be precise. Programmers like precision.
  
  

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