If you're planning on working on your thesis or Clinic report
using systems not run by the department, you will need to download
the
cmtty package to use these classes.
The cmtty package specifies Computer Modern
Typewriter as the default monospace typeface when typesetting
theses or Clinic reports. Computer Modern Typewriter is more
compact and better formed than Courier, which is the default
monospace font with many of LaTeX's font packages.
The package is licensed under the GNU General Public License, and you are welcome to use it for any of your own projects under that license.
As announced in November, 2005, support for the use of PHP, a popular, but problematic, web-programming language, has now ceased.
Any pages that relied on the Apache PHP module being available will no longer render properly.
If the lack of PHP poses a problem for you, please let me know and we can look into alternatives that pose less of a security risk for our system.
I have converted and updated the old Beowulf cluster documentation to match the mathematics and computer-science departments' current cluster, Amber.
I have not yet been able to test and verify all of the example code provided on the old site, but the code that does work properly is included, along with links to upstream documentation.
Please note the new policies and account-request process. Amber accounts require a standard math-cluster account (as Amber nodes are, basically, standard math cluster nodes with some additional software).
If you have comments or questions, please send them to
beowulf at math.hmc.edu.
I am in the process of converting the only system pages that make use of PHP to a form that does not use PHP. Once that conversion is complete (probably by the end of the day on Monday, 2005 November 14), I will be removing all support for the use of PHP on the department's web server(s).
PHP is a server-side programming language that allows developers to write web pages with computer code embedded in them. It is widely used in the hobbyist market for writing web log, bulletin board, and forum-type applications. Unfortunately, PHP appears to be insecure by design, as numerous security holes continue to be found in the core PHP Apache module even though the system is about ten years old and has undergone several major rewrites and reimplementations.
Note that I am not speaking of insecure code written in PHP -- such buggy code is trivial to produce in any language. But we are still seeing numerous flaws in the Apache module that implements the core language itself. Such flaws can open up the entire server to attack, and the risks are greater than the benefits.
The revamped combined sample thesis and Clinic report is now available for download and use.
This document provides you with
hmcthesis or hmcclinic
classesThe sample document can be downloaded from
http://www.math.hmc.edu/computing/support/tex/sample-report/,
which is the new canonical home for this material. In addition to
links to download the files in ZIP or tar.gz format,
there are basic instructions on how to typeset the sample files to
generate a sample thesis, sample clinic report, or both.
Remember, if you're working on your TeX system, you'll also need
to be sure that you have the latest version of the
hmcthesis or hmcclinic class files. The
class files can be found by going to http://www.math.hmc.edu/computing/support/tex/
and following the links to the appropriate pages.
Eric Malm '05 put together a nice LaTeX class
(hmcpset.cls) for typesetting math homework
assignments. The class, along with a template
(hw-template.tex) and a sample document
(hw-example.tex) is available for your use and
enjoyment.
The class file, which helps you typeset homework assignments
according to the
department's homework guidelines is installed in the shared
TEXMF tree at
/shared/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/hmcpset/ so it can
be used from any department Linux workstation.
If you want to use the class and template on your own TeX system, it can be downloaded from the new home for departmental LaTeX classes.
I am taking over maintenance and development of the class from Eric, so if you have any changes you'd like to see made or bugs fixed, please let me know.
I have created a new home for the department's LaTeX classes:
http://www.math.hmc.edu/computing/support/tex/classes/.
You will find links to download these classes, along with
information about using and customizing them.
I will remove or edit pages referring to older versions of this material so that we can, finally, have a single place to send people to find the most up-to-date versions of these files.
At the moment, there are pages for the hmcclinic,
hmcposter, and hmcthesis classes. More
will be added when the department adds more classes. (I will be
installing the homework class that Eric Malm put together
soon.).
As always, the latest version of this code is also available in
/shared/local/share/texmf on the math cluster
machines. You should be able to use any of these classes without
having to do anything special beyond specifying them in your
\documentclass command in the preamble of your
document.
I've downloaded the install images for the i386 and
x86_64 architectures for Fedora Core 4. They're
available from http://yum.math.hmc.edu/os/fedora-core/4/i386/os/
and http://yum.math.hmc.edu/os/fedora-core/4/x86_64/os/,
respectively.
Red Hat released version 4 of their Red Hat Enterprise Linux products last week. RHEL 4 is based on Fedora Core, Red Hat's ``free'' distribution, and includes features such as GNOME 2.8, SELinux, and the 2.6 Linux kernel.
RHEL 4 also drops the Mozilla suite in favor of Firefox and Thunderbird, and changes a whole bunch of other stuff in ways I haven't yet discovered.
CentOS 4 will be coming out soon, incorporating these changes.
I have been running a release candidate of CentOS 4 on a machine in my office, and thus far my impression is that it has many shiny improvements over CentOS 3, but that the changes may cause some issues if they aren't handled carefully. I expect to install CentOS 4 on my workstation and run it for a while before making a decision about rolling the new version of the OS out onto desktops. (Among other things, there's a fair amount of locally built and deployed software that will need to be rebuilt, updated, or replaced before a rollout can happen.)
Exactly when we upgrade workstations to CentOS 4 is unclear at this time, although it's likely that the upgrade will happen this summer at the latest, and probably sooner than that for lab workstations.
I may update the Amber cluster sooner, to see whether the changes affect some problems that have been seen there. Our servers will remain on CentOS 3 until I can see clear evidence that updating them would add enough valuable features to be worthwhile.
As usual, if you have any questions or comments, please feel
free to write to me at cmc@math.hmc.edu.
We've made the switch to our new web server. The new server is
configured to work pretty much like the old one, with the major
exception being that users can no longer log onto the server
directly. Changes made in your personal web space
(~/public_html) will take effect immediately; changes
to the ``core'' web space (/home/www) will not take
effect until that material is synced with the live website.
Until I get a handle on how frequently automated updates need to
happen, please notify me (or the webmaster alias) when
you make a change that requires the core site to be updated.
We are experiencing some problems with CGI scripts pointing to
nonexistent binaries (e.g., /usr/local/bin/perl) and
compiled programs that do not work on the new server.
I've created a link for perl, but the compiled
programs can only be fixed by being recompiled. Please contact me
with the location of the source so that I can rebuild these
programs.
Along with the web server switchover and the retirement of
naomi, we have made some changes to the
shell.math.hmc.edu alias. Now, instead of pointing to
naomi, shell points, round-robin, at the
machines in the lab. Thus connecting to shell will
give you one machine; a second connection might give you a second
machine; a third connection a third machine; and so on. (Depending
on your OS's caching policy.)
A nasty side effect is that you may see the WARNING:
REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! warnings from
ssh on each attempted connection. This issue can be
solved by including the keys for all the machines
shell points to in your
~/.ssh/known_hosts file. Details on the fix, as well
as the file you'll need, are available on our security
page.
The ssh fingerprint information on that page has
also been updated.
Added some information on using our systems with Mac OS X. There's a similar Windows page, as well.
OpenOffice installation instructions available. If you have ideas about other applications that need documentation, let me know.
We now have some notes on TeX and LaTeX resources available.