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Accessing Your Home
Directory
When you log on to a machine, you are automatically
authenticated with Andrew File
System (AFS),
and thus have full access to the files on your TerpConnect account.
Your home directory is mapped to drive H: when you log in. If
you open "Windows Explorer" and look in drive H:, you'll
find all your files in your TerpConnect account. This means that you
can save your files (word processing files, spreadsheets,
etc.) on the H: drive, and they will be there on whatever
machine you log into, in whatever Office of Information
Technology (OIT) Computer Lab. (If no
machines are available, you can also FTP to TerpConnect and download
your files.)
NOTE: When you look at your home directory,
you'll also see files and directories beginning
with a period (such as .login) that don't display when
you're connected to Terpconnect. This is because files, that begin with
a period, are hidden files under UNIX, but not on Microsoft Windows.
(Type
'ls -a' next time you SSH to TerpConnect 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 your account.
Files in Microsoft Windows vs. UNIX
Your TerpConnect account and the files in your home directory are
stored on a UNIX System. There is a difference to note between
how UNIX and how Microsoft Windows store text files.
When you reach the end of a line that you are typing, you normally
hit the Return key (or Enter depending on your keyboard,) the
cursor moves to the next line, and you continue typing. You don't
normally think about it, but something must be saved in your
file to tell the computer that it has reached the end of a line
and to start a new line. In Windows, what is saved in the file
is a Carriage Return code (Ctrl-M) 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? If you load a text file from
your TerpConnect 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 it 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 Windows on your TerpConnect home directory and go to display it in UNIX
(SSH to TerpConnect) 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? The easiest way is to keep
the files you use in Windows separate from the ones in UNIX.
If, however, 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.
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