I'm New. What Do I Need to Know?
If you're new to McMaster, there are dozens of things for you to do, to find, and to figure out. Here are a few things about computing that you'll want to know right away; the rest can wait.
A Preface for Visitors
The information on this page is aimed at new graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and faculty members. Visitors will find some of this information helpful, but should also look at the Visitors section of the FAQ.
Accounts
Your departmental computer account gives you access to the department workstations, servers and printers. You should have received your username, password and some general information on a sheet of paper from the office staff or a pdf file from the sysadmins. Details here.
You will want to get your campus computer account (MAC ID) activated so that you can use campus systems such as univmail, the undergraduate labs and the wireless network; details here.
Laptops, Network Access and Wireless
Wireless is avaiable in Hamilton Hall and many other campus buildings (and much of the outdoors) via the MacSecure netork, but you will need to have your MAC ID activated in order to use it. You may plug your laptop into a physical connection in your office once you have registered it, though you may need a network switch first since most offices have only one or two network ports. Details here.
You can read your Math & Stats email via the web at http://mathmail.mcmaster.ca, via pine on ms.mcmaster.ca or an ms workstation, or with a mail client on your laptop or workstation; details here.
People can send mail to you at username@math.mcmaster.ca or Firstname.Lastname@math.mcmaster.ca.
Spam filtering is activated automatically for accounts created after May 31st, 2008; details here.
Personal Web Site
Your web address is http://www.math.mcmaster.ca/Firstname.Lastname. Put your web files in the folder public_html on mathserv (or your linux workstation). You can also have a course site separate from your personal site. Details here.
Things You Can Use: Computers, Servers, Printers and Software
Graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and visiting researchers will have use of a recent-model linux workstation with file space on the central server. Faculty may choose to have RHPCS maintain their linux or OS X workstation.
Everyone has access to the departmental compute servers as well as to the SHARCNET super-computing systems at McMaster and partner institutions. Details here.
There are shared laser printers in Hamilton Hall and BSB; the Departmental Printers page has full details - models, features, locations, restrictions and instructions for laptop access. The department will bill you for use beyond a threshold; details here. The HPLJ 4345 outside of HH-303 is the main shared printer and is also a high-speed, two-sided scanner which will email PDF files to you.
There is a broad range of general and scientific applications on the linux workstations and the computer servers, including OpenOffice (Microsoft Office compatible suite), LaTeX, R, MATLAB, Maple, gcc, and the Intel compilers. Details here.
Support
Support for research systems (including the main file server, email server and web server) is provided by Research & High Performance Computing Support; support for instructional computing is provided by University Technology Services and the Learning Technologies Resource Centre; support for general computing, including the campus email service, the network and MacSecure wireless, is provided by UTS. Yes, that's a little confusing; there's a story behind it; ask me over coffee sometime. Details here.
The Full Story
See the Math & Stats Computing Resources web site for an overview of campus computing support and much more information about research computing, including the latest news and announcements (also published on the Computing News blog). You might want to check the FAQ, too.