Purdue Mathematics IT

For security reasons the Department of Mathematics does not allow users from outside the purdue.edu domain to log into our change password web page.

If you are away from the purdue.edu domain and need to change your password you can us the SSH method as describe below. This only works if you know your math password and want to change it. If you have forgotten your password or it has been reset then this method will not work.

1. SSH into bers.math.purdue.edu.

   • Mac OS and Linux have SSH clients in the OS. See man ssh

   • For MS Window OS you can download a simple SSH program called PuTTY which can be downloaded from http://www.putty.org. PuTTY does not require any installation, just double click on the downloaded .exe file to run.

     • Set Connection Type is set to SSH.
     • Enter bers.math.purdue.edu in Host Name field.
     • Click on Open button.
     • At this point a window will pop up connecting you to UNIX computer bers.math.purdue.edu. If a PuTTY Security Alert window pops up then click Yes.

2. Login with your math username and password.

3. At UNIX command prompt enter the command passwd.

4. You will be prompted to enter your current password and then prompted to enter your new password twice.

   • Your new password should be at least 8 characters and contain the following:

     • at least 1 upper case character.
     • at least 1 special character.
     • at least 1 number.

5. The program will let you know if the new password was accepted. You can always CTRL-C out of the passwd program and execute again if you get into problems.

6. Once you have change your password you can type the command logout to exit the session.

Generally speaking, program updates are important (many updates fix security problems), and while we attempt to automate as many updates as possible, some updates cannot be applied without an administrator’s password. When this situation arises, please send e-mail to helpdesk@math.purdue.edu and we will be happy to help you finish the install process.

Additionally, the many common applications available by opening Finder, selecting [Macintosh HD] and then selecting [Math Applications], are regularly updated by the Math Computer Systems staff.

Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) doesn’t auto-discover printers on Math’s network to the same effect as 10.4.If you have administrative rights on your machine, follow this url:http://localhost:631/admin?op=config-serverand find these lines:

# Show shared printers on the local network.

Browsing On

BrowseOrder allow,deny

BrowseAllow all

You need to add a new configuration setting, so that this section of the config file looks like this:

# Show shared printers on the local network.

Browsing On

BrowseOrder allow,deny

BrowseAllow all

BrowseProtocols cups

• Click the “Save Changes” button, enter the username and password of a user with administrative rights and the cups server should restart.
• Reboot the computer, open up System Preferences, and then the “Print & Fax” pane.
• You should now be able to add the Math printers to your list of printers.
• Again, you need administrative rights to do this.

Email clients, like Mail.app and Thunderbird, like to know that they’re the only program accessing email stored on the local machine. This avoids potential email file corruption.

Sometimes, however, these email clients get confused and insist that another program is writing to their files. If this happens to you, you can assure Mail.app that its files are okay by removing a lock file.

From the command line, run this command:

rm ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index.lock

From Finder, navigate from your home directory, to Library, to Mail and drag the Envelope Index.lock file to the Trash.

Of course, sometimes Mail.app files really do get corrupted. If you continue to experience problems, you can reset Mail.app and wipe out all of its settings and start fresh*.

From the command line, run this command:

rm -rf ~/Library/Mail ; rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist

Now open Mail.app and (re)create your mail account.

* Sometimes a fresh start is a bad thing. If you use POP to grab your email from the server, you should not do this. If you have spent lots of time writing client side email filter/rules, you should not do this.

In order to connect a laptop to Mathematics computer network, you will need to provide your computer’s MAC address.

The MAC address look like xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx where x is a hexidecimal character. The method for retrieving a computer’s MAC address varies for different operating systems:

• Windows.
  • From the Start Menu, choose the “Run…” option.
  • Run the “cmd.exe” program.
  • Once the DOS box has appeared, type “ipconfig /all” into it.
  • The output from the ipconfig command lists the MAC address for each of the network interfaces on your computer. If your computer can connect to a wireless network, you have two MAC addresses. You need to find the non-wireless address.
• Mac OSX
  • Click on the Apple () in the top left corner of your screen.
  • Click the “About this Mac” option.
  • Click the “More Info” button.
  • Click on the top level “Network” link.
  • Scroll down to the bottom of the resulting information, until you see the MAC address entry.
  • It will look something like this:
  • 
• Linux
  • Run the command: ifconfig -a
• Solaris
  • Run the command: arp computer_name (or arp `uname -n`)

By default, Mac’s Terminal.app application declares itself to be of terminal type “xterm-color”. You can change this by changing Terminal.app’s default.

Go to Terminal’s Preferences

Change “xterm-color” to “xterm”.

Alternatively, one can change their terminal type from the command line by typing:

setenv TERM xterm

(if that doesn’t work, try export TERM=xterm)

From a MAC:

From Mac OS X 10.1 or higher

1. In the Finder, click on the Go menu
2. Select “Connect to Server”

3. In the “Server Address:” field enter

smb://smbhost.math.purdue.edu/{yourusername}

4. Click the “+” button on the right side of the field to
add this address to your favorites.

5. Set the “WorkGroup or Domain” field to ‘MATH’.
6. Enter your Math account login for “Name” and your Math account password for “Password”

Visit ITaP’s website for detailed instructions to setup a VPN connection for a Macintosh.

http://www.itap.purdue.edu/connections/vpn/

Use the following command:

ssh -Y user@host

-Y enables “trusted X11 forwarding”

Alternately, have the two lines:

ForwardX11 yes
ForwardX11Trusted yes

in ~/.ssh/config

This error is because the default setting for the Connection type is set to TCP/IP + HTTP, instead of just TCP/IP.

To change this setting, browse to your Applications folder, then to the Citrix ICA Client Folder.

- Launch the Citrix ICA Client Editor.
- On the Network Connections tab, click on the “Default Settings” button towards the bottom left. On the “Making a Connection” tab, you will see an area for Network Protocol.
- Click on the drop down box and change the setting from TCP/IP + HTTP to just TCP/IP.
- Save your settings and try connecting again.