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.

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`)

You can learn more about UNIX right at your workstation. Jennifer Myers has compiled a useful directory of UNIX tutorials and information.

http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/

From the command line of one of the Suns, paste this command:
echo 'user@purdue.edu' > .forward
Where user@purdue.edu is the email address that you wish to forward your mail mail to.

Additionally, documentation for new math account holders provides more information: https://www.math.purdue.edu/resources/computing/newaccount/

This information contributed by Edray Goins.

To use Mathematica via X Windows you must either have a local copy of or a font path directed to the following two directories:

/pkgs/mathematica/SystemFiles/Fonts/BDF/
/pkgs/mathematica/SystemFiles/Fonts/Type1/

For example, on a Macintosh running X11 these folders should be copied and placed in the directory:

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/

This way Mathematica will load without any error messages on missing fonts.

Click Here to visit IU’s Computer Science information page on ACL’s.

Use the following commands:

% tex file.tex
% dvips -Pweb file.dvi
% /pkgs/usrlocal/bin/distill file.ps

It also works with “latex file.tex”, etc.

To create a tar file:

tar cfv [filename.tar] [directory/file to tar]

To extract files from a tar file:

tar xfv [filename.tar] [directory to extract to]

To view the contents of a tar file:

tar tfv [filename.tar]

Type the following command on any math server:

passwd -r ldap -e

This will prompt you to enter your current password. It will then ask you to enter the path to a “New Shell”.

Common Shells:
/bin/bash
/bin/tcsh
/bin/sh
/bin/csh
/bin/ksh

Type the following command on any math server:
passwd
This will prompt you to enter your current password. Then it will ask you to type a new password.

Alternatively, you can change your password by logging into MathNet.

If you can’t remember your password, please contact us.