By Brian Lin
If you are a regular user of the ccsun workstation, you must have noticed that for the last several weeks, when you log in to your account you are not able to use pine, elm or any other common features under the UNIX system, although you do get a message telling you that “you have new mail”. This is naturally a frustrating and confusing experience and so far, the authorities in the computer center have only posted a letter of apology stating briefly that “part of the hard disk hosting the ccsun server has been broken into and some data may be permanently lost even though they are trying to find the monthly backup tape”. Translating that into plain language, it means that if you cannot find anything in your account when you log in, you are most likely never going to. Exactly what happened is yet to be confirmed by the computer center, and they have been awfully silent except for the one posting I found on the cc.ntu.help newsgroup apologizing for the mishap. There have been speculations that the system was broken into by a hacker and the whole system, due to out-dated security measures, was wiped out as part of a sick practical joke. Another rumor states that there was a power outage which resulted in the total burn-out of the hard disk. Yet another explanation is that the hard disk was filled to capacity and thus crashed. Regardless of what happened or how it did, there’s not much left to do on the account user’s part except for grieving over the lost personal mail or other data stored in each account. The chances for retrieving them are slim. In that respect, I strongly suggest that ccsun users switch their service to the newer ms server group, namely ccsun 31 through 57. As long as you have a ccsun account you are automatically set up with an ms account and your log in name and password are identical. Just sign on to ccsun 31 through 57 and login with your ccsun name and password, you are set for surfing the web on a much more stable and secure server within the campus. If you decide to move, you might want to inform your friends of your new email address on the ms server. If your old email address is [email protected], your new email address on the ms server would be [email protected]. You may also like to set up a “forward” command in the old ccsun account so any mail sent to the old server will be automatically forwarded to your new e-mail address. Simply open a new file with one of the word processor programs under UNIX (pico, vi, etc.). In the file type in the forwarding address, then close the file, naming it .forward (don’t forget the little period “.” at the beginning). You can now use your new ms account without worry. If you insist on using your old ccsun account but are having trouble using pine or elm, this is because when the hard disk crashed, it also wiped out all the programs under your UNIX account which enable you to run email. In other words, you now have a totally empty disk space. In order to retrieve these program files, type in “tar xvf /remote/etc/rc.tar” (without the quotes) at the UNIX prompt, log out, then log in again, you will now start over with an empty mailbox but capable of reading in-coming mail and other email tasks. For homepage hosts, you can either rebuild your homepage under the same ccsun account or transfer them to the ms account. You still need to make the public_html directory under which to store your HTML and graphic files but the opening page should be named index.html instead of Welcome.html as those under the ccsun server. And to open access to your page, type “chmod +x .” without the quotes under your home directory prompt. Your new URL under the ms account will be http://www_ms.cc.ntu.edu.tw/~b0123456, providing that your account name is b0123456, of course. In light of this disaster, one must always remember that all important information must be backed up on a floppy disk or on your own personal computer if available. Computers are smart, but they are still operated by human beings who are permitted to make mistakes. a
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May 2024
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