Getting Started

Welcome to iCIMS, (otherwise known as the VLSI Circuits Group) at UIUC.

Computing Help at iCIMS

If you are really new to the UIUC campus, here is a building and street map (PDF), or Google map.

For a brief overview of our computing facilities, see: the main help page, and some other really rough documentation here.

Your personal web page is accessible at http://icims.csl.uiuc.edu/~yourlogin The html and other files for your web page should be kept in the public_html directory under your home directory.

Windows Users

Windows users have a separate account on the CSL Windows Domain. See Help for Windows Users.

Getting Help

To activate our help system, send email to:
help@uivlsi.csl.uiuc.edu
That will page me and leave me a record of the problem.

File Storage and Copying: 

There is plenty of shared disk space available on the ICIMS/VLSI UNIX systems. You have a "/home/yourlogin" directory and a "/data/yourlogin" directory. Use the command 

	df -k directory_name
to find out how much space is free on the disk partition where "directory_name" is located.

Backups

Your home and data directories are backed up (with program called AMANDA. The backup scheme is a complex algorithm, but basically any files you change are saved that night. Every semester I save a complete copy of your data. I don't save it forever.

When you leave the group, I make two copes of your data on CD or DVD as appropriate. I keep one copy and you get the other.

Please don't store important files on the local hard disks of the PCs in the various offices. Historically they have been unreliable, and we don't archive the files on them at all.

Passwords
You potentially can have several different passwords: 

They should all be different (if not, then since someone finding out one of them will probably try the others, you can have a giant hassle). If you want them to be the same, change the password frequently.

If you forget one or all of them, whoever manages that account will be glad to reset it for you.

To set or change your Windows (Active Directory) password, Press <Control>-<Alt>-<Delete>, and follow the prompts.

If you change your Active Directory password, you'll have to use the "smbpasswd" command on vlsisrv1 before you can access your UNIX files from Windows. 

SSh is available, and should also allow file transfer from either a Windows or UNIX system. Ftp is currently unavailable. You can use telnet and ftp to connect to the student and staff clusters.