A Brief Orientation for New Affiliates

Here we provide basic computing survival information for persons joining the Duke Sociology Department. We link liberally to many other sections of this wiki and to other web sites. These materials are used in conjunction with orientations done at the start of the academic year.

1. Computing Staff

• Bob Jackson, IT Manager - Room 140A - 660-5601
• Rob Marks, IT Analyst - Room 141 - 660-5616
• Jesse Riggan, IT Analyst - Room 140 - 660-5602

• See IT Staff section for more information

• See Scope of Services for point person for various service points

2. Computing Accounts

• Duke NetID - issued by Office of Information Technology - required for many institutional services at Duke

• Sociology Domain Account - issued by Sociology - used for network login to the Sociology domain

• Sociology Linux Account - issued by Sociology - used for email, personal web pages and research computing

• All three accounts have the same ID composed of your initials and a number
• Password on your NetID should be unique
• Password on your two Sociology accounts should be synchronized, but different from that of your NetID

• See Accounts, Passwords and Logins for more information on accounts

3. Changing Passwords

• Duke NetID passwords are changed at the OIT Password Reset page

• Sociology passwords are changed by running a password change script described in the detailed accounts section

4. Duke Email

• There are two choices:

  • Sociology Email [using Sociology Linux account] - IMAP service - configure email client of your choice or use WebMail through http://webmail.duke.edu

  • Duke Office 365 [using NetID account] - a cloud-based Microsoft Exchange service for Duke

• Important considerations:
  • If you do not use Sociology Email, make sure that your Sociology address is forwarded to the address you use (see Bob Jackson for assistance)

  • If you do not use Office 365, make sure that your NetID address is forwarded to the address you use (see http://oit.duke.edu/selfservice)

  • If you use Sociology Email, make sure your Duke alias points to your Sociology address (see http://oit.duke.edu/selfservice)

5. Wireless Networking

• Good wireless service is central to student, staff and faculty computing
• The campus is wireless throughout and services are generally of high quality
• You must register your laptop for network services using your NetID to authenticate your Duke identity - your laptop web browser will be effectively hijacked for this purpose by the network - once a device is registered you should not have to do this again unless you are gone from campus for several months

• Take the browser of an unregistered wireless device (laptop, tablet, or smartphone) to https://dukereg.duke.edu/ to register it

6. The Sociology Computing Lab

• Located in Room 135 Soc/Psych
• Access by cypher lock - get the code from a computing staff member
• Lab is available 24x7
• Has 8 PCs and a network printer
• Login with your Sociology Domain account

7. Logging Into the Sociology Domain on Lab PCs

• Most networked PCs in Sociology allow domain logins
• The Lab PCs allow logins by anyone with a Sociology Domain account
• To login to a Lab PC:
  • Enter your userid and password
  • Type the Enter key and wait

  • If the login fails, expand the Options button and make sure Log on to: is set to SOCIOLOGY

8. What the Lab PCs Provide

• The machines are locked down so that each person sees the same menus and applications
• Users cannot install applications - for reasons of licensing, security and consistent service

• See the Computing Lab for a list of installed applications - includes some advanced applications not elsewhere available

9. What a Domain Login Provides

• Most desktop computers in Sociology are joined to the Sociology domain and default to domain logins (based on your Sociology account) that include:
  • A network home directory (drive letter H:)
  • Access to your Linux home directory (drive letter L:)
  • Same home directories at any machine
  • Network printing
  • Nightly system backups of everything stored on the L: drive (which includes H:)
• Please observe the following limits on what you store on the network.
  • Use for professional work - papers, documents, datasets, programs and other research/instructional material
  • The network is not intended for personal music, photo, video collections or to backup your laptop

• General guidelines for use of network resources are found in the Sociology Acceptable Use Policy

10. Approaches to Use of Departmental Network Space on a Personal Laptop

Mapping a Drive Letter (Windows) or a Share (Mac)

• Your network folders become immediately accessible just like local drive space
• Requires pre-loading of the VPN to successfully map

Accessing Through a Secure Shell File Transfer Utility

• Provides a graphical interface to remote and local folders with drag and drop capabilities between
• Allows you to use the network as a digital dropbox for storage of key files or folders
• Does not require pre-loading of the VPN

11. Role of the VPN

• The Duke VPN (Virtual Private Network) when activated provides you a Duke IP number over an encrypted connection

• Ensures secure access to Duke network resources (such as the mapping of your Sociology network directory)

• The VPN must be installed on your laptop

• Installation probes for the platform of your system (Windows/Mac/Linux) and its architecture (32-bit/64-bit) to decide which version of the VPN to install and then proceeds with installation
• Use of the VPN requires care in the order of operations - activating changes your effective IP, which will break pre-existing email sessions or other types of logins

12. Logging Into Sociology Linux Servers

• Logins are allowed from anywhere

• Machines available (see Linux logins for more detail):

  • login.soc.duke.edu - general purpose system

  • verstehen.soc.duke.edu - light duty statistical and data management server

  • paradigm.soc.duke.edu - primary statistical and data management server

• Logins require use of an SSH (Secure Shell) client, which provides end-to-end encryption of a session, and X11 services for graphical display
  • Windows PCs
    • There are many clients available for Windows - we generally install F-Secure SSH
    • Also need X-Win32 to provide an X Window environment that supports display of graphical applications
    • Preload X-Win32, then load F-Secure and login
  • Macs
    • SSH is a native facility on Macs
    • X11 services are native on OS X 10.5.x (Leopard), 10.6.x (Snow Leopard) and 10.7.x (Lion)

    • X11 services may be installed under OS X 10.8.x (Mountain Lion) or OS X 10.9.x (Mavericks) from http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/

    • Once configured, a graphics-capable login to paradigm is launched as below, where <userid> is your userid

      $ ssh -X <userid>@paradigm.soc.duke.edu

13. Services Provided Under Sociology Linux Systems

• Network storage and nightly backups - your Linux home directory is identical to the L: drive in a domain login to a lab PC

• Network printing - as detailed in Linux Printing

• Email service - as described under Email

• Space for a personal web page - for example, Jen'nan Read

• Hosted websites for faculty research - for example, the National Congregations Study

• Archival secondary data resources - particularly holdings from ICPSR located in the /opt/archive/icpsr directory

• Text editors for writing programs or composing web pages - pico, emacs, vi
• Large data set processing - with memory, CPU capacity, and disk space
• Applications for data management and statistical modelling, which can be run interactively or in batch mode

14. Linux Applications

• The following apps are available on paradigm.soc.duke.edu - with modes of invocation noted for each

  Application	Version	Graphical Mode	Text Mode	Batch Mode	Web-Based
  SAS (see SAS for Linux)	9.3	sas &		sas <program_file>.sas &
  Stata/SE (see Stata for Linux)	13.1	xstata-se &	stata-se	nohup stata-se -b do <filename> &
  R	3.1.1	R -g Tk &	R	R CMD BATCH <program_file>.R &	https://rstudio.soc.duke.edu
  Matlab	7.10.0 (R2010a)	matlab &	matlab -nodesktop
  Stat/Transfer	11.1	stattransfer &	st	st <infile_spec> <outfile_spec> &

• SAS, Stata, R and Matlab are general purpose data management and analysis applications
• Stat/Transfer is a utility for converting system files from one format to another

15. Other Topics

• Personal computer purchases - consider offerings of the Duke Computer Store (more expensive, but complete care warranties and local repairs through Duke) - talk your needs over with Rob, Jesse or Bob
• Hardware failures - consult with staff - Rob first, Jesse if issues get complicated
• System and application updates - patch, patch, patch - perform regularly or set to autoupdate
• Security - keeping viruses and malware at bay - install Symantec Endpoint Protection and keep updated daily - come to staff for assistance and cleanup tools

• Software - become familiar what the OIT Software License Office distributes - http://www.oit.duke.edu/comp-print/software/

  • see also downloads that are available from the departmental web site

• Data - become familiar with the resources of ICPSR at the University of Michigan - http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/

  • please speak with Bob Jackson as your data needs increase or become more complex, particularly on the network, to ensure efficient use and storage

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