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Accessing Your Home
Directory
When you log on to an NT machine, you are automatically
authenticated with AFS,
and thus have full access to the files on your WAM account.
Your home directory is mapped to drive H: when you log in. If
you open "Windows NT Explorer" and look in drive H:, you'll
find all your files in your WAM account. This means that you
can save your files (Word Processing files, Spreadsheets,
etc.) on your H: drive, and they will be there on whatever
WAM NT machine you log into, in whatever lab. (If no WAM NT
machines are available, you can also FTP to WAM and download
your files.)
One thing to note, when you look at your home directory,
you'll also see a bunch of files and directories beginning
with a period (such as .login) that didn't show up when
you're connected to WAM. That's because files that begin with
a period are hidden files under UNIX, but not on NT. (Type
'ls -a' next time you SSH to WAM to view all the hidden
files if you want to see that they are really there.)
Do not change these files unless you know
what you're doing! Most of them are likely being
used to store your settings when you log into WAM or when you
use a Sun machine.
Files in UNIX vs. NT
Your WAM account and the files in your home directory are
stored on a UNIX System. There is a difference to note about
how UNIX and NT (as well at DOS and Win95) store text files.
When you reach the end of a line you are typing, you normally
hit the Return key (or Enter depending on your keyboard,) the
cursor moves to the next line, and you keep typing. You don't
normally think about it, but something must be saved in your
file to tell the computer that it's reached the end of a line
and to start a new one. In Windows, what is saved in the file
is a Carriage Return code (Ctrl-M for those interested) which
tells the cursor to go to the left of the screen, and a "New
Line" code (Ctrl-J) which tells the cursor to go down one
line. These Ctrl-M and Ctrl-J characters are at the end of
every line, but they are non-printable characters so you
don't see them, you just see their effects.
UNIX does things a little differently. You still press return
to go to the next line, but UNIX converts the Carriage
Return/New Line combination into just the New Line (Ctrl-J)
code, and that's all that is saved in the file. When you go
to display the file, and UNIX reads the Ctrl-J character, it
converts in back to the Ctrl-M Ctrl-J combination and
continues.
What does this mean to you? Well, if you load a text file off
your WAM account into Notepad (or some other text editor in
Windows,) you'll notice that it may not display correctly.
Depending on which editor you're using, when you get to the
end of a line you may see the next line is moved down one
line, but starts where the last line left off instead of at
the left of the screen. In Notepad, you'll notice a solid box
where the end of the line should be, and the next line
continuing on the same line. Some editors (like Wordpad and
EDIT) and Word Processors (like Microsoft Word and
WordPerfect) can detect UNIX text files and display them
correctly.
Keep in mind, this also works both ways. If you save a file
in NT on your WAM home directory and go to display it in UNIX
(by either SSH to WAM or via a Sun machine) it may not
display correctly either (often times you may get a "^M"
appearing at the end of each line.)
So what can you do about it? Well, the easiest way is to keep
the files you use in NT separate from the ones you use (for
example) when you're on a Sun. However, if you have to use
some files on both platforms there are programs that exist to
convert between the two formats. You may also be able to find
an editor on either system that correctly handles either
format. The best thing to do is experiment with a few things
to find which works best for you.
Your Profile
One of the great things about using Windows NT in the WAM
labs and having access to your WAM home directory, is you can
now save your desktop settings, backgrounds, Start Menu,
screen savers, and other preferences and have them follow you
to whichever machine your on, in whatever WAM lab you're in
(provided of course you're on an NT machine).
Your settings are stored in what is called your
profile and they are saved in your
.ntprofile directory on your WAM account. While
you don't have to know how NT handles your profile to save
your settings, if you want to modify the files in your
.ntprofile directory by hand, it's important to know what's
going on behind the scenes.
I've just told you that your profile is stored in a
".ntprofile" directory on your WAM home directory. But this
is not the copy that NT uses while you're logged in. When you
log in, NT downloads a copy of your profile to the local
machine. It's stored in the directory:
C:\WINNT\PROFILES\yourusername (where
yourusername is your WAM login id.) Any changes you
make to things like your Start Menu or your Desktop are
stored here while you are logged on. When you log off, the
profile that is stored in C:\WINNT\PROFILES is then moved
back to your WAM account and removed from the machine you
were on.
Why is this important? There are two reasons.
- First, if you make
any changes to the files in your .ntprofile directory on your
WAM account while you're logged onto an NT machine, they will
be replaced with what is in
C:\WINNT\PROFILES\yourusername when you log out (So
make sure you make your changes in the right place).
-
Second,
If you ever mess up your settings, preventing you from
logging in and fixing them, you can SSH or FTP to your WAM
account and edit or erase the files by hand.
Common and Personal
Start Menus
Those of you familiar with Windows 95 may notice something
different when you look in the Start Menu. The
Programs tab has a line in the middle dividing it
into two sections. While Windows 95 was designed for
single-user use, Windows NT was developed with multi-user use
in mind. NT allows for a common menu system for the machine,
and a personal menu for each individual user. Below the
dividing line in the Programs tab is the Common (or All
Users) menu. This is where you'll find all the programs
installed on the machine (such as Word Processors and Network
applications). While yes, it is possible to configure Window
95 to behave the same way, in 95, anyone can change items in
the common menu. Under Windows NT, you can not make any
changes to the items in the Common menu.
Above the dividing line is your Personal (or User)
menu. When you first log on, you are given the Default menu
with an Accessories and Startup tab, as well as a shortcut to
the Command Prompt and the Explorer. You are free to modify
your personal menu all you wish. Any changes you make will be
saved in your profile (see above) and will follow you to
whatever NT machine you are on. You can change your Start
Menu by clicking the right mouse button on an empty
section of the task bar on the bottom of the screen and
selecting Properties. This will pull up the
Taskbar Properties box and you will be able to
modify the look of the Taskbar as well as the Start Menu
Programs.
You can get programs to load automatically when you log on by
placing them in the Startup folder. Say, for
example, I wanted the Clock to load every time I logged on.
As you can see from the Start Menu image above, I've placed a
shortcut to the Clock.exe program in my Start Menu. This way,
every time I log on, the clock will automatically run. Note
that you do not have to place the actual program in the
Startup folder. Creating a shortcut (similar to a symbolic
link in UNIX) will do the same job and save disk space from
having two copies of the program.
Drive and Directory
Structure
When you log on to a WAM NT machine, you will notice that
there a few different drives available to you that wouldn't
normally be available on other Windows NT machines you may
encounter elsewhere. Some machines (IBMs in PG2) have Iomega
Zip Drives.
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Drive A:
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3.5" HD Floppy Drive
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Drive C:
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This is the local hard drive. It contains the Windows NT
system, along with a few applications. The directory
C:\TEMP is the only place you have access to write files.
This should only be used for temporary files. This is not
a public storage space. Files saved here may be deleted
when you log off.
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Drive D:
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Local hard drive space for temporary files.
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Drive E:
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Iomega 100MB Zip Drive. (IBMs in PG2 only)
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Drive F:
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The CD-ROM drive.
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Drive G:
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Network server drive. Contains most of the applications
you run.
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Drive H:
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This is your home directory from your WAM account.
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Drive I:
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Similar to /usr/local/bin on WAM. It contains NT-versions
of most UNIX commands (i.e. more, ls, etc.) and some
editors (like emacs and vi) and other utilities.
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Drive M:
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Your mail directory from WAM. This is where your
incoming mail to your WAM account is stored. It's best
to leave files here alone and use a mail client (Pine,
Firefox) to get your mail. If you are using a PC mail
client capable of reading Berkley standard mail files,
you can set it to read the M:\<> file.
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Drive P:
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Your pub directory. This is where you can put your web
page and files you want others to have access to.
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Drive R:
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Your user directory. Your Home, Pub, and Mail directories
are all sub directories of this directory.
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