BIO 542L: Graphic Publication for Biologists

Introduction to the Cal Poly Pomona Intranet

Important References:


Information

A computer network is a bunch of computers connected electronically in such a way that they can exchange information. Computer networks are an important part of modern society; an example that most of you have used, perhaps without realizing that it is a computer network, is the system of ATMs or “cash machines”.

In order to communicate successfully, computers have to “speak the same language”. We're not talking here about “computer languages” such as C++, Visual Basic, or Java, but rather network protocols. Different kinds of networks use different protocols, and so they are not directly compatible.

The Internet (not Intranet, which is the subject of this exercise, but the Internet which is so heavily hyped these days) is a “network of networks” that allows computers on different networks to communicate with each other. You might ask, “How do they do that? Do they speak the same language?” They do indeed, a protocol called TCP/IP, which stands for “Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol”. TCP/IP is the language of the Internet. Fortunately, it is a language that you don’t need to know in order to use the Internet. A computer can “speak” TCP/IP even if it is able to speak other protocols as well.

An intranet (we’re finally here!) is a single computer network: in a sense, the Internet is made of intranets. But in common usage, the term refers to a computer network used by a company (or university) for internal comunication that uses many of the same sorts of programs as the Internet. So in a way, it is a private Internet.

The Cal Poly Pomona Intranet (hereafter called Intranet with a capital “I”) was first implemented in 1996, and although has had full support of the campus administration for only the last few years, it is already providing services to a large part of the campus community. The Intranet can seem confusing at first, because there are so many things that it does. Physically, it consists of a number of computers (mainly Sun workstations) all running the Unix operating system (an operating system is the set of programs that tells a computer how to be itself; MS-DOS, Windows XP, and Macintosh OS X are all examples of operating systems). Because of special software running on these computers, they can do several useful things:

You’ll need an Intranet account for this class; if you don't have one, go back and read the General Information page and find out how to get one. Your account will automatically have the following:

Here are some things you can do with your account:


Assignment

In this assignment, you will do three things:

  1. Change your password. Go to the Intranet Services page (http://www.csupomona.edu/~intranet/services/), find the entry for “Configure your Account”, scroll down to the password button, and follow the directions (when it initially pops up a box asking for your user name and password, enter your old password: you are establishing your identity, and it doesn't know your new one yet). Some guidelines for picking a password:
    • It can be up to 255 characters long, but you should keep it eight characters or less if you plan to connect to the Intranet as a network drive on a pre-OSX Macintosh.
    • Don’t pick an obvious word for your password; in fact it is better to not pick a word at all, since there are programs that try every word in a dictionary to try to get unauthorized access to accounts.
    • Instead, try one of these tricks: Spell a word backwards (ygoloib). Insert a number (biol8ogy) or substitute a number for a letter (bi010gy). Use weird capitalization (remember that it counts), or combine words (cATPaws). Use the first letters of each word in a phrase (“I love grad biology at Cal Poly Pomona” = ilgb@cpp).
    • Remember: When you use your password with a web browser like Netscape or Internet Explorer, it saves the password in memory as long as it is running, so remember to quit the browser when you are finished using it unless no one else has access to the computer you are using.
    Don’t tell your password to anyone, including me. That means I have no way of checking to see whether you did this part of the assignment, but I imagine you’ll want to do it anyway, if you are still using the default password.
  2. Next, you will change the access controls to your Intranet account so that anyone on the internet can read the web pages which you will build later in this course (I’ll be using the temporary index.html file that came with your account to test your completion of this assignment, so don't delete it).
    • Go back to Intranet Services, look under File and Directory Services, and pick Control Access to Files and Directories. The next screen will show several choices; pick “Your home directory”. Netscape will ask you for your user name and password.
    • The next screen will look kind of complicated at first. There is a button at the top labeled Modify Access, and the text to the right says “throughout directory:”. To the right and below that is “/dfs/user/username”, where “username” is your user name.
    • Below all that is a table. The top line of the table has type “other” and name “Internet”. To the right are two check boxes for read and write. Below are two other lines for giving access to specific groups or people.
    • You are going to change access so that everyone on the internet can read your web pages. Check the box under “read” in the top (“Internet”) row, and then click the Modify Access button. The page will re-load, looking the same except that the box is checked.
    • Exit the browser (so that it will forget your password) and start it up again. Now type in your URL in the Location box, and hit the enter key (it will have the form http://www.csupomona.edu/~username/, where username is your Intranet user name). If you set the permissions correctly, you will see the default home page that is provided for all new Intranet accounts, without having to enter your password. (You will be replacing it later.)
    • At some point you may want to store private files on your Intranet account. Doing so simply requires making a folder and turning off read permission for it and its contents. If you are interested in doing this, I will show you how.
  3. When you have completed the items above, send me an email message. My email address is jcclark@csupomona.edu. The message must have the subject: BIO 542L assignment 1. It must contain your name (Last, First), SSN (no hyphens!), and the e-mail address that you ordinarily use (even if it is not a Cal Poly address), in a specific format: They must be typed in that order, separated by hitting the tab key once after each item, and on a single line (don’t worry if the e-mail program wraps it to another line, but don't hit the Enter or Return key until you have typed all the information). See the example below, but only type the data (the bottom line), not the headings (the top line).
    Name [tab] SSN [tab] e-mail [enter]
    Curie, Marie 123456789 mcurie@csupomona.edu

    When I get the message, I will acknowledge it by email.

You have now completed the Intranet assignment.