Connecting to Cattell or Mail.sas
If you have a "shell account" on Cattell or Mail.sas, it is a
good idea to log in and use this account. You can send and read mail,
check your quota,
transfer files,
edit files,
make yourself a web page,
and a lot more.
Do you have a shell account?
Graduate students, faculty, and staff have shell accounts.
Undergraduates in the School Arts and Sciences (SAS) have them if
they selected this option when they started their accounts.
If you are SAS undergrad, you can check to see whether you
have a shell account, and create one if not, by going to
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/account, logging in with your
mail.sas username and password (not your Pennnet password), and
selecting the "Shell account" menu item. If you already have a
shell account, you won't see this button. Then select the button
labeled "Enable Shell Account." Your account will be available
20 minutes after you enable the option.
Connecting to a shell account
Here are the basic steps for Windows users to connect to
a shell account on mail.sas. Mac users simply subsitute
dataComet-secure for SecureCRT. (For linux it is much much easier:
just ssh loginname@mail.sas.upenn.edu.)
- Install
SecureCRT, using the version that Penn gives you.
- Start SecureCRT and connect to mail.sas. Use your login name
and password. This is not your Pennnet ID but the password you
use to read your mail.
- Hit ENTER and you will see a login screen. You can read your mail with
elm (not recommended), or read news with tin (recommended).
- One of the options is "unix". If you take that option, you will
get to your Unix account. Then you can just type tin to read
news, or mutt to read email.
- (Optional) If you want to really use your Unix account,
here are some of
the commands you will need and
here is a version
you can print out and keep handy. The first thing you should do is
get rid of the menu. Edit your .login
using Pico or Emacs. and put "#" before "loginmenu".
- (Optional) You might improve how your account works by saying chsh
and entering /pkg/bin/tcsh (on mail.sas) for your new shell. This
gives you all the commands listed in the last item, including the ability
to recall old commands with the up-arrow key (the next time you log in).
- When you are done, make sure to log out properly. The "logout" command
will do it.
Comments
to baron@psych.upenn.edu