Getting Started as the Computer Lab TA.

Current TA schedule.

Primary job: Keep the students away from Ron, Gerry & Hongyun.

Key tasks

Manage the printers, see departmental printers

Keep them stocked with paper. Check each printer at the start and end of each day.
Clear any page jams.
Keep the printer area neat.

Staple jobs and cover sheets together.
File day-old printouts into the pigeon holes.
Re-cycle any print jobs that are not claimed within two weeks.

If maintenance or supplies other than paper are required, please let one of the PHAS-IT staff know.
Monitor the printers at the CUPS webpage to watch for problems. You may also use the following command line tools. lpq shows the print queue. There is a script called lpcheck in ~clabta/bin which easily checks all three printers at once.
Answer student's questions.

Read the FAQ pages. Send updates to Mary Ann. You are on the front lines, so are among the first to know when the pages are out of date.
Know the basic usage of gnuplot. The best source of information, for yourself and the students, is the gnuplot homepage. Gnuplot questions are asked most frequently.
If possible, become familiar with the use of the following programs:
- Octave
  GNU Octave is a high-level interpreted language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides capabilities for the numerical solution of linear and nonlinear problems, and for performing other numerical experiments. It also provides extensive graphics capabilities for data visualization and manipulation. Octave is normally used through its interactive command line interface, but it can also be used to write non-interactive programs. The Octave language is quite similar to Matlab so that most programs are easily portable.
- SciPy.
  SciPy (pronounced “Sigh Pie”) is a Python-based ecosystem of open-source software for mathematics, science, and engineering.
You are not a course or lab TA. Questions about the physics they are working on can be referred to their course TA.

Other tasks assigned by Ron, Gerry, or Hongyun.

Install/upgrade hardware/software.
Write web pages.

`sudo` Commands

sudo commands are commands that you will run as root. You will not have full root access (of course!). To list these commands, go to a command prompt and type: sudo -l

Printing: On host 'print' clabta has permission to access commands:

/usr/local/bin/addquota
- For adding print quota for students who bring you the receipt from the main office.
  Generally one of the main office staff uses the addquota command once at the end of each day to add the quota purchased by students that day. However, there are times when the student needs to print sooner, so in these cases the student will be sent to you to get the purchased quota added into the system right away.
- Run the addquota script (sudo addquota. When prompted, enter username and $$ paid).
- Unfortunately, you cannot check someone's present print quota - one of the ITstaff will have to do that.
lpc and lprm
- Access to print queue is no longer done via sudo commands.
- Someone please get instructions for CUPS web interface and put here.

User Accounts: On host 'ssh.phas.ubc.ca' clabta has permission to access commands:

/usr/local/bin/grab
- Look up information about one or more user account(s).
- Fields shown are:
  username:Full Name:Account:Category:ExpDate:Account#:student#:Comment
- Eg. grab <student#> will give you a non-empty result if the account has been created.
- Note: Click to view Computer Lab Registration email message.
/usr/local/bin/initpw
- For looking up the default password generated by the registration script. Asks for the username.
- Best practise is to ask them for their student card and then use "grab" (see above) to determine the username.
- This doesn't help with older accounts or ones where the user has changed the password.
- Note: Click to view Computer Lab Registration email message.

Problematic Printers

A stalled job is generally not an indication of a problem, it just means the job is taking longer to print than the "default". A normal job can be "stalled" for up to 10 minutes.

If a job is definitely stuck, generally you can cancel the job using the CUPS web interface.

If this fails, ask one of the PHAS-IT staff for assistance.

Login Problem on ssh.phas.ubc.ca (currently points to hyper.phas.ubc.ca)

Do the following:

First, ask the user to logout
Check for running user processes by executing: ps -ef | grep user. Make a note of the process IDs.
If there are *no* zombie processes, goto #5; otherwise, continue
Execute: kill -9 zombie_processes_pids

Go to /home[2]/user, and use the following command to remove problematic files and directories ..

\rm -r .gnome .gnome2 .gnome2_private .gconf .gconfd .gstreamer-0.8 .gtkrc-1.2-gnome2 .ICEauthority .metacity

Accounts

There are two accounts created for you: clabta & clabugrad

Both have the same password.

clabta has administrative privileges on the Windows machines; use this account for any admin tasks.
clabugrad is a standard ugrad account with the appropriate restrictions. This is a good way to test how changes to the system are going to look to the undergrads.

Hours

A normal TA position is 76.8 hours. Using the following guidelines, you should work out a schedule and give it to Ron for approval.

Start in the second week of class.
End on the last day of class.
10-2 every weekday.