Purdue Mathematics IT

Adrian Barreno-Quintanar, our technical assistant, will be graduating and moving on soon. In preparation we have trained two new student workers who are ready to help you with your IT problems.

Dustin Mitchell	Vashisht Lakhmani

You may have seen Dustin Mitchell and Vashisht Lakhmani as they were being brought up to speed. They are now experts on our systems and when you e-mail helpdesk or visit http://www.math.purdue.edu/help to file a trouble report, they may be dispatched to help you.

1. You need to create two files.
   1. ~/WWW/protecteddir/.htaccess
   2. ~/.htpasswd
2. An .htaccess file can be used to specify webserver settings at the directory or file level. Here is a sample .htaccess file:
   • AuthName “Display name of protected area”
     AuthType Basic
     AuthUserFile /homes/ivetter/.htpasswd
     #require user ivetter
     require valid-user
3. Your .htaccess file points to a file of usernames and passwords, commonly named .htpasswd
   1. To create your .htpasswd directory and place a user in the file, run a command like this:
      1. /opt/csw/apache/bin/htpasswd -c ~/.htpasswd username
      2. You’ll be prompted for the password twice.
      3. Voila! You should now have a username and encrypted password in the ~/.htpasswd file.
   2. To add another username to your .htpasswd file, run this command:
      1. /opt/csw/bin/apache/htpasswd ~/.htpasswd username2
4. Please note that your .htpasswd file can go anywhere in your home directory, but must be readable (but never writable!) by the ‘nobody’ user (or the world). Additionally, it’s best to not place the ~/.httpasswd directory under your WWW folder.

Customizing the Gnome menus with Gnome 2.0 in Solaris 9.
- or -
Corrections to Solaris document 817-3851 “Gnome 2.0 Desktop for the Solaris Operating
Environment Systems Administration Guide” chapter 2, “Customizing Menus”.

So you have installed Solaris 9 with Gnome 2.0 on some 150 machines and now you
would like to customize the Applications menu to list your specific applications.

Every single pathname in that chapter is wrong and is pretty useless in actually attempting
this task, though I do make the assumption through the rest of this post that you have read
it.

1. Create a central repository for your menus and menu items:
To simplify menu administration you want to have all the menu items you are going to be
adding to be located in a single directory which is shared out to all your machines. In my
world we use the following directories that are nfs mounted on all hosts:
/pkgs/gnome/applications
/pkgs/gnome/vfolders
/pkgs/gnome/pixmaps

applications holds the .desktop files that are the actual menu items
vfolders holds the .directory files that will create the submenus for you
pixmaps holds the icons that will be used next to your menu items

2. Create an initial .directory file to hold your new menu items.
For example:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Math Dept Apps
Comment=Local Dept of Mathematics Applications
Icon=/pkgs/gnome/pixmaps/gnome-calc2.png
Type=Directory

NOTE: I still haven’t gotten Icons working for the Desktop Entries this way, though they
do work for menu items

3. Modify the applications-all-users.vfolder-info file:
The correct location of this file is:
/etc/gnome/gnome-vfs-2.0/vfolders/applications-all-users.vfolder

A. Before the first <mergedir> tag add the following two lines:
<mergedir>/pkgs/gnome/vfolders/</mergedir>
<mergedir>/pkgs/gnome/applications/</mergedir>

B. Fix what Seth had correct and his buddy didn’t understand
Inside the first <folder> tag change the following block of code:
From:
<query>
<and>
<keyword>Core</keyword>
<!-- FIXME: Seth, why would this be wanted? -->
<!--<not>
<keyword>Merged</keyword>
</not>-->
</and>
</query>

To:
<query>
<and>
<keyword>Core</keyword>
<not>
<keyword>Merged</keyword>
</not>
</and>
</query>

Otherwise every .desktop entry will show up in your root Applications menu.

C. Add our new menu:
Gnome will look in our /pkgs/gnome/vfolders directory to find the following .directory
files.
Before the final closing and add the following chunk of code:

<folder>
<name>Math Dept Apps</name>
<desktop>Mathapps.directory</desktop>
<query>
<and>
<keyword>Application</keyword>
<keyword>Math</keyword>
<not>
<keyword>Editor</keyword>
</not>
</and>
</query>
<dontshowifempty>
<folder>
<name>Text Editors</name>
<desktop>Mathappseditors.directory</desktop>
<query>
<and>
<keyword>Application</keyword>
<keyword>Math</keyword>
<keyword>Editor</keyword>
</and>
</query>
<dontshowifempty>
</folder>

Note: This adds two menus so you end up with “Applications -> Math Dept Apps -> Text
Editors” to remove the second menu take out the nested <folder>…</folder>, or merely un-
nest it to create to top level menus.

4. Now add some menu items to your new menus:
In /pkgs/gnome/applications start adding new .directory files and if they are properly
formatted they will start showing up in your menus. You will need to use the full pathname
to icon files if they do not exist in /usr/share/pixmaps.

Example:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Evolution Email Client - TESTING
Comment=Evolution Email Client 1.4
Exec=/pkgs/misc/bin/evolution
Terminal=0
Type=Application
Icon=/pkgs/gnome/pixmaps/evolution.png
Categories=Application;Math;

Categories to Menu Correlation:
Menu Name: Categories (Keywords):
Applications (root) Core NOT Merged
Accessories (Application AND Utility) NOT System
Other Application
Programming Application AND Development
Games Application AND Games
Graphics Application AND Graphics
Internet Application AND Network
Multimedia Application AND AudioVideo
Office Application AND (Office OR Spreadsheet OR
WordProcessor OR Calendar OR ProjectManagement)
System (Application AND System) NOT Settings
Mathematics (Application AND Math) NOT Editors
Text Editors Application AND Math AND Editors
Final Notes:
The standard .directory files live at:
/usr/share/gnome/vfolders
The standard .desktop files live at:
/usr/share/applications
The standard .png icons live at:
/usr/share/pixmaps

This post was written by Neal A. Lucier

There are at least two web accessibility guidelines: Section 508 from the federal government and WCAG from the W3C .

What’s an quick, simple, cheap method for testing or validating web accessibility?

Their are a number of tools available that attempt to provide automated accessible testing:

• Firefox Plugins
  • Fangs – a screen reader emulator
  • Firefox Accessibility Extension – from uiuc.edu
  • TAW3 – uses tawdis.net and the WCAG 1.0
• Validation services:
  • webxact
  • Cynthia Says – can select section 508, or WCAG 1 through 3
  • FAE – Functional Accessibility Evaluator
• Testing
  • VisCheck – simulation of web page experience for the color blind

These tools are a great place to start and by passing these tests your website will be usable by screen-readers, braille printers and other accessibility tools. That said, making an excellent site really cannot be automated. Improving accessibility includes things such as descriptive links, content that doesn’t require a user to visually scan a page, using the <abbr> tag, useful description of images, labels, allowing text to be resized (use em not px), etc. The W3C provides an excellent article entitled: How People with Disabilities use the Web.

Accessibility software:

• Kurzweil 3000 – “the comprehensive reading, writing and learning software solution for any struggling reader, including individuals with learning difficulties, such as dyslexia, attention deficit disorder or those who are English Language Learners”
• JAWS – Windows screen reader
• Dolphin Hal – Windows screen reader
• Orca – gnome’s visual assistive technology
• Sun’s Solaris 10 includes much built-in accessibility functionality, including a screen reader for gnome
• Apple’s Mac OS X contains tightly integrated accessibility features

What about PDF’s?

Isaac Vetter – Webmaster

Every so often I find a need for a small little web service type widget.

I leave many of them open to the world, others are restricted to just .purdue.edu, or maybe just .math.purdue.edu.

Here’s a few of them:

• “What’s my PUID?” – enter your Purdue Career Account username and password and get back your PUID and name (from i2a2).
  • www.math.purdue.edu/resources/whatsmypuid
• ip2country – Checks your ip against an incomplete database of ip ranges and the country listed (with cool country flags.)
  • www.math.purdue.edu/resources/ip2country
• PDFtoHTML – Converts and hosts a pdf file (that’s currently on a purdue.edu url) to an html file. PDF images are converted to .png’s.
  • www.math.purdue.edu/resources/pdftohtml

If you want to use something or need something changed, let me know.

Isaac Vetter

Webmaster

Do sites using Google Analytics (GA) allow Google to correlate GA traffic with user’s search/gmail/maps/doubleclick/etc traffic?

Google Analytics is a web traffic analysis service offered for free by Google to website owners. The owner of a site merely needs to register with Google and place a snippet of javascript on each web page. Here’s an example of that snippet:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
	_uacct = "UA-555555-1";
	urchinTracker();
</script>

As one can see from the above code, a javascript file on google.com is included, the site owner’s identifier (_uacct) is defined and then the urchinTracker() function is called.

This function places four cookies on the end user’s browser. It’s important to note that these are first party cookies, meaning that the domain associated with the GA cookies is the current website and therefore, these cookies can only be read by the current website. This means that if x.com uses GA, and a user visits x.com, and then visits google.com, google can not connect the user’s analytics traffic from x.com with the user’s google.com visit using the unique identifier in the cookie.

That said, Google could connect those two visits with an ip address or ip and user-agent string. This is less reliable that the cookie, but still possible.

These four cookies are:

• __utma
  • This cookie expires in year 2038 and contains a long string that looks like this:
    • 2252076.984943658.1189608517.1189608517.1189610067.2
  • The first number (2252076) is a hashed value of the current website’s domain. The second number (984943658) is just a random number. The third, fourth and fifth are timestamps of different events. The third records the date/time that the cookie was first written. The fifth contains the most recent date/time that this cookie was edited (this cookie is written to every time __utmb or __utmc is written, i.e. every 30 minutes or anytime the browser has been closed and reopened). The fourth contains the previous value of the fifth. The sixth value is an integer that records the number of times this cookie has been written.
• __utmb
  • This cookie expires thirty minutes after last visiting a tracked page for the current website. (This is how GA defines a session.)
• __utmc
  • This cookie expires when the browser is exited.
• __utmz
  • This cookie expires in five months (?) and contains another long string that looks something like this:
    • 2252076.1189608517.1.1.utmccn=(direct)|utmcrs=(direct)|utmcmd=(none)
  • The first number is a hashed value of the current website’s domain.
  • The second number is the timestamp that this cookie was written.
  • The utm (Urchin Traffic Monitor) fields, utmccn (click content), utmcsr (click source), utmcmd (click medium), and the optional utmctr (click term), and utmcca (campaign). Each of these fields can be set by adding HTTP GET parameters, like so:
    • http://www.domain.com/
      • ?utm_source=sitethelinkison
      • &utm_medium=organicORcpc
      • &utm_term=successfulsearchtime
      • &utm_campaign=AdCampaign
      • &utm_content=

If you wish to specifically stop website owners from aggregating details of your use of their website, a good firefox extension is CustomizeGoogle.

Here are some interesting pages about Google Analytics:

• Want to Hack Google Analytics? Simple!
• Here’s a rarely used fix to the above method.
• Enhancing Web Analytics Tracking
• Testing Keyword Landing Pages

Isaac Vetter

Webmaster

Department of Mathematics

Purdue University

www.math.purdue.edu/help

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`)

You can find information about making adjustments to your Department of Mathematics account and other helpful information for new users on the New Account Information page.

The Department of Mathematics is using the AMS backed mathjobs.org job application system for tenure-track and research assistant professors.

Mathjobs.org provides nice documentation for Logging on, getting started as well as a User Guide and a short video introduction (in flash). Any question not answered by the available documentation can be asked of Math’s Web-Helpdesk.

1. You should have received (yet another) password in an email to your math email account. Using that password you can Login to Mathjobs.org at https://www.mathjobs.org by clicking the “… as Faculty or staff at employer institutions” link (under the “Login to MathJobs.org” heading). Use your email address at which your received your temporary password for your username. Upon logging in, you will be asked to change your password. You must pick a password that does not include a “dictionary word”.
2. Upon logging in, the list of applicants is displayed for our two open positions. TT is the Tenure Track Professor position, RAP is the Research Assistant Professor. (Please make sure both entries in *[RAP0018362007 TT0018372007]* are shaded green. If, for example, *RAP0018362007* is shaded gray, the listed applicants will not include those applying only for RaP’s. Click on either of these entries to go back and forth from green to gray.) Also, as the list of applicants grows, they will not all be display on the first page. Please click on the “ALL” button at the top (or bottom) of the page to display all applicants.
3. Clicking on a name will open a new window with that applicant information. Here you can read the various parts of the application separately (cover letter, letters of recommendation, teaching statement, research statement, etc.). You can click on the “All” button at the very top (to the right of “Address“) to generate a single pdf file which is just like a complete paper application.
4. For each applicant, one can assign Ratings, Refer the applicant to another faculty member, and even jot down private notes.
   1. “Refer this appl to“: You can select other faculty on the list (right to the left of this box) who you think should also read it and select “email notify” to have the system send email to that person. Note: to select multiple usernames, one must hold down the the command key on a Mac (), or the Ctrl key on a Unix or Windows machine.
   2. Your Private Notes. These notes appear as “yellow smiley faces” right below the applicants name once you return to the main Application List and after you click on the list again to update the system. These notes are only visible to you and the “managers” of the system who are the Department Head, Sally Goeke and the Webmaster.
5. IMPORTANT: Please make sure you click on the “submit” button at the bottom of the screen or else your work will not be recorded!
6. A useful tool for finding applicants that match specific parameters is the “Search” link at the top of the mathjobs.org webpage.