local network information

Local System Information

This page provides information local system functions, for use by the hydrology work group. Most of what is contained on this page is applicable only to the the hydro network.

Using the scanner
Using the UNIX system CD-ROMs
Using the tape drives
Using GMT (Generic Mapping Tools)

Using the scanner on carbon

Scanning an image:
1. The scanner must be turned on before the PC is turned on, or the PC will not be able to access it.
2. Start Photoshop (the scanner software can be run directly, but results are much better if done within Photoshop).
3. Select File->Aquire->TWAIN_32, this starts the scanner software.
4. Load a settings file if you have one. The default settings do not produce the best results for photos, but work resonably well for line drawings. (Setting files produced while the scanner was on ephemeral were lost when it died, and have not yet been recreated on carbon).
5. Select Preview
6. Set the bounding box to crop the part of the image you want scanned.
7. Adjust the settings so that you can see the image. The preview image is not very high resolution, but you can use it to check contrast - if the preview is all black, it will produce a black final image.
8. Set the resolution you want for the final image - remember higher resolution means a larger file size. Always scan the image at a resolution higher than you want for the final image. Photoshop does a much better job reducing the resolution than the scanner software.
9. Hit scan to get the final image
10. Exit the scanner software, the scanned image has already been opened in Photoshop.
11. Use photoshop to adjust colors, brightness, contrast, and to reduce the image size and resolution to it's final value. Web graphics should be stored as JPG (for photos), or GIF (for line drawings), and are displayed using a resolution of 72 dots/inch.
12. Save the file.
Using the optical character reader software to scan text

Using the CDROM on the UNIX systems:

The following commands should be used only within a window opened to the machine on which the cd-rom is mounted (meter and the LINUX systems):

rda mount cdrom
this mounts the cdrom to the directory /cdrom on meter
rda umount cdrom
this unmounts the cdrom from meter, allowing it to be ejected

Reading Files from Tape:

Put the tape into the tape drive.
Operate directly from plane or from a plane shell window. Using these commands on another machine, manipulates the numbered remote drive on that system (since most of our machines do not have other devices, this will not normally be a problem).
TAPENAME: for plane the tape drive is always /dev/rmt/0 (0 refers to the remote device number) followed by one or more of the following letters (I suggest using only only one compression type per tape to simplify tape access - 0h and 0hn yield the most storage space, and they will be used in the following example commands):
1. b - BSD-style device semantics
2. n - No rewind on close
3. l - Low density (Exabyte 8200 mode)
4. m - Medium density (Exabyte 8500 mode)
5. h - High density (Exabyte 8500 mode, with compression) (~10 Gigs per tape)
6. c - Same as h for 8mm drives
7. u - Same as h for 8mm drives
Using the magnetic tape control (mt) command to manipulate the tape:
- mt -t /dev/rmt/0hn fsf n
  this skips over 'n' files
  Make sure TAPENAME includes 'n' for no rewind, otherwise the commands skips the files and then rewinds the tape.
- mt -t /dev/rmt/0h rewind
  this rewinds the tape
- mt -t /dev/rmt/0h offline
  this rewinds the tape and ejects it
Using gtar and tar to archive files:
1. Rewind the tape (to be safe) with 'mt -t /dev/rmt/0hn rew'.
2. Skip over files you don't want, make sure you name the drive '0hn', otherwise the tape will rewind after skipping files.
3. use 'gtar -[x/t/c]vf /dev/rmt/0hn ' to
  'x' - extract files
  't' - print a listing (table) of files in the archive
  'c' - create a new archive file

NOTE: include an 'n' in TAPENAME if you don't want the tape to rewind after the tar
NOTE: to use wildcards (* and ?) when extracting from the tape, enclose the search string in single quotes - '/nfs/usr3/temp*'
WARNING: creating a new tar file will destroy all files after the new file on the tape
WARNING: You should use the same compression level everytime you use the tape

IMPORTANT: USE GTAR INSTEAD OF TAR. On our systems tar does not always work as it is supposed to, but gtar has never been reported to cause problems.

Using the Generic Mapping Tools (GMT):

Set the following environment variables for ontario (works the same on all LINUX machines, except scope. on scope, the path /nfs/scope/home does not work so use /home instead):

setenv GMTHOME /nfs/scope/home/cherkaue/GMT/GMT3.1
set path = (/nfs/scope/home/cherkaue/GMT/GMT3.1/bin $path)
setenv MANPATH '/usr/lang/man:/usr/local/man:/usr/man:/usr/share/man:\
/usr/bin/man:/opt/gnu/man:/nfs/scope/home/cherkaue/GMT/GMT3.1/man