MATH DEPT Computer News, Volume 3

How to take advantage of the newer, faster machines on our network

If you sit in front of the console of a machine that is named after a really famous dead mathematician, then chances are your machine is rather slow. The department has recently added several new ULTRA Sparcs to the system and named them after dead mathematcians who aren't very famous or famous mathematicians that aren't very dead. I will explain how you can take advantage of these faster machines.

I assume that you use X-windows.

Let's say that you are sitting at the console of the slow machine lie and you want to run an xmaple window from the faster ULTRA Sparc ahlfors but see and control the xmaple window on the screen of lie. Here's what you do.

On your machine (lie in this example), type

xon ahlfors

in an xterm window running on lie. A new xterm window should pop up with an ahlfors-% prompt. Now when you type

xmaple &

at the ahlfors-% prompt, the xmaple window will appear on the screen at the console of lie and you can use it in the comfort of your own chair. (If ahlfors can't find xmaple, you need to set your path correctly as described in Network News, Volume 1, You and your .chsrc).

If you are sitting at an X-termial connected to banach or cantor, you can do a similar thing. Click HERE for more information.

By the way, a typical command in maple that runs rather slow on the older machines is

with(plots):
animate3d(sin(2*x)*sin(2*y)*cos(t),x=0..Pi,y=0..Pi,t=0..2*Pi);

Here is a LIST OF MACHINE NAMES on math. To find a fast machine, look for a dead mathematician who is not very famous or a famous mathematican who is not very dead. Then rlogin to that machine and type

uname -m

If the output of this command is sun4u, you have found yourself an ULTRA. (I have found the ULTRA's, morse, polya, ahlfors, macaulay, hopf, and peano in this way.)

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