Computers

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Contents

Machine Names and Locations

The Robotics Laboratory in Room 301, Building K17, has the following workstation computers available for use:

  • c3p0 (desk 02)
  • hal (desk 01)
  • johnny5 (southern wall)
  • kitt (southern wall)
  • martin (southern wall)
  • panshin (desk 14)
  • r2d2 (southern wall)
  • robbie (southern wall)
  • roomba (southern wall)
  • smith (southern wall)
  • t1000 (southern wall)
  • wopr (southern wall)

If needed, future machines will be called k9, gort, t800, optimus, ed209, thx1138, sonny, vincent, cylon, hector, vectrocon, max404, preston, rodney, twiki, daryl. In case you have not figured it out yet, all our workstation computers are named after robots in movies. :-)

Configuration

Each of the workstation machines is configured identically, with the following specifications:

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.80GHz
Memory: 1GB
Hard drive: 40GB (for system files, /tmp and /var/tmp)
Video card: nVidia GeForce4 MX 440
Operating system: Ubuntu 8.10 with Gnome and KDE

Note that the /home and /data directories are stored on the Robolab server itself. There are no quotas currently being enforced, but please do not abuse this! /tmp and /var/tmp use the local 40GB hard drive; /tmp is automatically wiped at reboot and at other times.

The workstation hal has a PCI BT848-based video capture (framegrabber) card installed for experiments with, among other things, the Scorbot robot arm.

Using the Workstation Computers

Accounts

You need to have an account created on the Robolab server before you can log in to any of the workstation machines. Undergraduate student accounts tend to have names like group05 and thesis14; postgraduate students and staff have accounts named the same as their CSE login.

Desktop Environment

You can select either the KDE or Gnome desktop environments from the graphical login screen: click on Options in the bottom left-hand corner, then Select Session. The default is Gnome.

Installed Software

All workstation machines are running Ubuntu operating system. Many major packages have been installed, including:

If you need software that is not currently installed and is available in Ubuntu, please contact John Zaitseff. You can also install software into your $HOME directory by compiling it from source.

Changing Your Password

Due to limitations in the NIS password database implementation, you can only change your password on the Robolab server. To do so, log in to any workstation, open a terminal window, then type:

ssh robolab
passwd
logout

Accessing the Web Outside UNSW

The computers cannot access the Internet outside UNSW. You can, however, use your CSE account (and IP quota) to tunnel Web pages via SSH. To do so, open a terminal window, then type:

cse_login=<your CSE login> start-http-proxy

Once the HTTP proxy has started, you need to change the web browser's proxy to http://localhost:3128/. In Firefox, select EditPreferences, then Advanced, Network, (Connection) Settings, then enter Manual proxy configuration with HTTP Proxy to localhost and Port to 3128.

Backing Up Your Home Directory

Data stored on the Robolab server (including your home directory) is backed up each night at 3am. However, you should not rely on this: you are responsible for backing up your own data! You can use the rsync utility to do this efficiently; read the manual page for more information. There is also an insync script in /usr/local/bin that wraps rsync with somewhat easier-to-remember command line options.

NB: Data stored on the Pioneer robots is not backed up at all. You should use rsync to make sure appropriate directories on the robots are the same as those on Robolab. A typical invocation (run on a workstation computer) might be:

rsync -vauSHz --delete /home/group01/pioneer-files/ bass:/home/group01/pioneer-files/

This would synchronise files and directories in /home/group01/pioneer-files on the local machine and the Pioneer robot bass. Remember the trailing slashes on directory names!

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