Computer Labs

EMS E173 is run by IMT.
EMS E256, E270, E285 and E384 are run by CEAS EMS.
E286 and W203 are run by the EE Department http://www.uwm.edu/CEAS/departmentsME.html

The CEAS computer labs are accessible 24/7 with your student ID. Check with your instructor for departmental lab availability times.

You can use your student ID in the card reader located in the main level of the basement parking structure

Tell someone! The 24/7 access CEAS students have to the computer laboratories and EMS building is not a right, but is rather a priveledge. With that priveledge comes responsibilities.

• If you notice someone misbehaving in the laboratories you should contact the CEAS IT staff noting the time and lab workstation.
• For misconduct within the EMS building, send the information to the building chairperson.
• For serious matters, please contact the University Police directly. Their phone number is 229-4627.
• For grave situations use 911.

Essentially none. As the CEAS computer labs are open to all CEAS students, faculty and staff 24/7 and there are no walls or dividers around the individual stations in each lab, you should not have any expectation of privacy. Additionally, there are video cameras installed in the EMS E384 lab as well as network monitors that will indicate when someone is running software from their network home directory.

Generally no. Because academic institutions, like CEAS, receive software at steeply discounted prices, one of the most common licensing provisions is that the software only be used for instructional purposes. The one exception to this rule can be when you are using a project from your employer for a class project. Before starting this sort of project, you should check with both your course instructor and the CEAS IT staff.

It’s not a question of responsibility, it’s a matter of liability. If any illegal software was found on a lab PC or file server, the college could face some very severe penalties and fines

Disk quotas are determined by the number of CEAS offered lecture/laboratory sections you are enrolled in for the current semester. For each lecture/laboratory section you sign up for you will receive 40 megabytes of disk space on the CEAS file server.
Please note: Disk quotas will be adjusted up during the initial 2 week add period of each semester. Disk quotas will also be adjust ed downward only after the 8 week drop period has passed.

Because we assign disk quota based on the number of courses you are taking. It is very likely, if the accounts were preserved semester to semester and just the disk quota adjusted, students would end up with all their disk allocation used up from the start of the semester resulting in the system being useless for them until they removed enough files to get under quota. At the end of each semester you should backup any files you want to keep.

To facilitate backing up your files, the E260 lab has 2 computers each with 100 Mbyte Zip drives and CD-RW’s, the E285 lab has 25 PC’s with CD-RW’s, and the E384 lab has 32 PC’s with CD-RW’s and 1 with a 100 Mbyte Zip drive.

That was a decision made by the CS department faculty to give course instructors and TA’s greater flexibility in course management and to easily facilitate the electronic submission of homework assignments.

There are two issues here, both related to how frequently the lab systems are used. The first issue is maintaining the lab hardware. Each system in the CEAS labs is used o n the average about 7 times per day during the Fall and Spring semesters. No matter how carefull students are accidents are bound to happen and spilled coffee or soda will really mess up a keyboard and/or mouse. The second issue is hygeine. While we try to clean the keyboards, monitors and mice on a regular basis, it’s actually sort of gross to sit down to use a computer and stick your fingers in a glob of ketchup or mayonnaise.
When the lab temperature is high, we will allow students to bring water into the labs, as long as it’s in a sealable container.

Your protection. The college does not have the resources to watch over unattended computers. It is possible, and has happened in the past, that other students have deleted all the files from the I: drive of an unattended computer or used an unattended computer to send malicious e-mail or use the account to run unauthorized software. In cases of mailicious behavior, the student leaving the computer unattended will be held at least partially responsible for any misconduct.

No. For group projects, we will provide a shared folder for your group. Follow this link to get to the form to request a group folder.

The CEAS computer lab policies are posted on the web.

That depends on the severity of the violation, in general:

• For a first offense of general CEAS lab rules/policies, your account will be impounded until you explain in writing your actions.
• Subsequent violations of lab rules/policies will be referred to the Associate Dean’s office for possible misconduct proceedings.
• Actions the break the law (i.e. pirating software, music, movies or hacking) will be referred directly to the University Police.

If you have an issue with a CEAS IT staff member, you should first report it to the Manager of Information Technology in E384D. If that does not prove satisfactory, you should then take discuss the issue with Associate Dean Perez in room 516.

Planned down time will be posted in the system messages and appear in the dialog box that appears when logging into a Windows PC or in the root window of a lab X-terminal.

Stop by one of the CEAS IT staff offices in E384B, E384D or 811 and your password can be reset. Because the system uses encrypted passwords, there is no way for us to tell you what your password is should you forget it.

Unfortunately, no. This is one drawback to our mixed Windows/Unix environment. To find out how much disk space you are using:

• Open I: drive folder
• Choose Edit option
• Choose Select All option
• Right click in folder and choose properties option, a summary of the disk space you’ve used should appear.

Alternatively, you can log into on of the system UNIX hosts (i.e., wolffe or miller) and use the quota -v command to see your current disk usage.

This is true. It is because your desktop information is stored in your network home directory. You will see reduced performance if you store all your files on the desktop as any changes to your files will require a refresh across the network.

Try sending the file in a zipped (compressed) format. This will help when the file is very large or created by one of the high end CAD (Pro/E) or analysis packages.

Sorry, no. The licensing agreements for many of the software packages installed on the CEAS network do not allow this.You can plug a laptop into an open network jack in the EMS classrooms. The E190 and E295 classrooms have jacks at each seat.

The databases for the door entry system are generated and updated using enrollment data for the current semester. If you are not enrolled in an engineering or computer science course in a given semester, you will not have access to the building or computer labs.If you should have access to the building and labs, contact the CEAS IT staff, it could either be a discrepancy in the data we recieve from the PAWS system or your ID may have gone bad.

Save your work and restart the computer! When the PC’s memory becomes corrupted, you will almost always continue to have problems. If the program consistently fails be sure to let the CEAS IT staff know about the problem.

Unfortunately no. If your course instructor expects you to use the software for classwork, have your instructor contact the CEAS IT staff. We can tell the instructor the proper procedure for obtaining permission to load the software on the network and have the program installed on all the CEAS lab PC’s.

No. Special heavy weight resume or watermarked papers regularly cause printer jams. The wrong type of transparency film can actually damage the printer. Preventing students from loading the wrong type of media into the printers is one of the main reasons the CEAS lab printers are in cages.

Your best bet is to send an email to the Perez reflector. This reflector will send your request to all the CEAS IT staff, ensuring the promptest possible action.

Most commonly this is caused by having the wrong permissions on your .xsession file. To check for this problem:

• Telnet or ssh to the appropriate UNIX host (i.e. miller or wolffe)
• Enter the command ls -al .xsession, if you see something like:
  • -rw-r--r-- 1 dan staff 6 Jan 28 10:31 .xsession
• The permissions are wrong, to correct them:
  • Execute the command chmod 744 .xsession

Use the UNIX man (manual) pages, by executing the command  man vi or  man emacs. We are currenlty working on compiling a web page of the most common vi and emacs commands.

There are two different methods to map a drive.

To map the drive for the current working session, follow these steps:

1. Double click on My Network Places.
2. Double click on Entire Network in the Other Places window
3. Double click on Microsoft Windows Network icon
4. Double click on CEAS icon
5. Double click on Samba 2.2.1a (walt) icon.
6. Right click on your project folder and choose the Map Network Drive option

Alternatively, you can create a batch file that will map the drive for you. To do this simply use notepad or edit from a command prompt to create a batch file with the single line: net use drive_letter: \\users-50\project_folder /user:course_account

Where:

• drive_letter is a drive letter other than A, B, C, D, E, Q, R, or S as they are already used by lab systems
• project_folder is the name of your group project folder
• course_account is your course account login

You can then map the project folder by double clicking on the icon for this batch file.