Workstation configuration

Network configuration

You should get a static IP from the system administrator. Your hostname will be the name of a famous scientist and the domain is ulb.ac.be. Other relevant addresses are:

Description	IP address
Gateway	164.15.10.254
DNS1	164.15.59.200

You might also need to add the following data, althoug many systems set it automatically:

Description	Value
Network	164.15.10.0
Netmask	255.255.255.0
Broadcast	164.15.10.255

Wi-Fi network configuration

All IRIDIA lab is covered by a wireless network. To join it you should get the password from the system administrator. Relevant configuration data are:

Description	Value
Network name	dorigoextreme
Radio mode	802.11b/g Compatible
Channel	1
Wireless Security Mode	128bit WEP
DNS Server	164.15.59.200
Distributed IPs	10.0.2.2-200

Firewall configuration

Since the computers are available through direct connections from internet you should protect your machine with a firewall. Linux provides an integrated mechanism for accepting or rejecting incoming packets.

If you want to setup a good firewall quickly, you may use the following link : Firewall script generator

How to generate the firewall script ?

Usually, the interface to internet is eth0. You can check your available interfaces by typing (as root) :

# ifconfig -a

Most of the time, you wish to have an access to the computer, but you still want it to be secure. The best is to disable any inbound service except SSH. The SSH connections are encrypted so that you can safely access to the computer even if someone is tcpdumping your connection.

For the moment, I don't know how to use the Fireparse format. If you know about it just use it. Otherwise you'll have to take a look at the logs (/var/log/syslog) to monitor the possible network problems or attacks.

Now that you have all the necessary informations, you can generate the firewall script. Name this script iptables, give it execution rights (chmod u+x iptables) and put it under the directory /etc/init.d/.

Be aware that the script loads some iptables modules in your kernel. If you have recompiled your kernel then you should ensure that the necessary modules are present. If you have statically linked the code to the kernel then you should remove the modprobe commands in the firewall's script.

Now simply add a symbolic link in the runlevel 2 to this script by typing (as root) :

# ln -s /etc/rc2.d/S12iptables /etc/init.d/iptables

You should adapt the number 12 to your needs. The firewall must be run as early as possible. For example if telnet services are run before it, an attack is still possible. Be careful about this.

If you want to understand more deeply iptables, you can check the following URLs :

Iptables official website

Iptables tutorial and explanations

Setting up a firewall using iptables (in french)

Printer configuration

Name	URL	Model	Location
Gutenberg	gutenberg.ulb.ac.be	HP4100	Office C.5.106A
Meucci	meucci.ulb.ac.be	Ricoh Aficio 1027	Office C.5.106A
EPSON_Stylus_Photo_1290	tinbergen.ulb.ac.be	EPSON Stylus Photo 1290	Office C.5.102A

Linux Install

1. Install CUPS (Debian: apt-get install cup-sys).
2. Run cups daemon
3. Point printer at localhost:631
4. Click on Printers tab. Click the button 'Add printer'

Use following configuration options

• Location and description: Ping Pong Room - Meucci OR Gutenberg
• Device: LPD/LPR Host or Printer
• Device URL: lpd://gutenberg.ulb.ac.be:515/lp OR lpd://meucci.ulb.ac.be:515/lp
• Model/Driver: Raw Queue

Windows XP Install

1. Goto Printers->Add New Printer
2. Select Network Printer
3. Enter URL http://gutenberg.ulb.ac.be OR http://meucci.ulb.ac.be

The IRIDIA and the ULB network

The IRIDIA system administrator can create an account on the local subnet for you, however, if you want to have access to some of the computer services of the university, you'll need an account on the university network as well. Ask the secretary for the forms and the process.

Mail configuration

Assuming that you have an account on both the local and the university network the mail settings are as follows:

Service	URL
SMTP	smtp.ulb.ac.be
Iridia POP	iridia.ulb.ac.be
Iridia IMAP	iridia.ulb.ac.be
ULB POP	pop.ulb.ac.be
ULB IMAP	pop.ulb.ac.be

The SMTP server does not require authentication. The POP and IMAP services of ULB accept unsecure connections (no SSL). The POP and IMAP servers of Iridia require secure connections (with SSL).

There are also web interfaces available to read the email if you can not connect to the above servers via POP or IMAP:

SERVER	URL
ULB	https://wwwdev.ulb.ac.be/webmail2/webmail.php
IRIDIA	https://iridia.ulb.ac.be/squirrelmail/

See also

Software HOWTOs

For Mac OS X users

In order to help Mac OS X users staying updated for what concerne security issues with their systems I suggest to subscribe to the following mailing list:

Security-announce -- product security notifications and announcements from Apple

Mac OS X Software for doing research

Here you can find a list of softwares that you might want to check out:

• LaTeX

MacTeX.dmg package - Easy-to-Install Package, which contains a complete and up to date TeX system from Gerben Weirda's gwTeX redistribution Free

TexShop - graphical front-end for TeX Free, GPL

BibDesk - graphical BibTeX-bibliography manager Free, BSD-license

LaTeXiT - small utility to quickly typeset LaTeX equation obtaining PDF images Free

• Statistical analysis

R.app - Cocoa-based GUI for Mac OS X that was introduced in R 2.0 Free, GPL

• Secure Shell

Fugu - Mac OS X SFTP, SCP and SSH Frontend Free, BSD-license

SSH Tunnel Manager - front-end for the ssh command when used to open tunnels between two hosts Free

• Version Control System

Subversion Client with SSL and JavaHL Bindings - Binary Package Free

• System utilities

BSP - customize the Spotlight search results with your own categories Creative Commons, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5

Unison - cross platform file synchronization software - Binary Package Free, GPL

Setting up OS X as a Scientific Programming Environment

Great little article in setting up a scientific programming environment on OS X

Performance Optimization on Mac OS X

WWDC 2004 - Optimization Tutorial

WWDC 2005 - Performance Analysis of Your Memory Code