Information about the MI network


Account

Application

If you need a new account, please send us an email including the following Information:

  • First and last names
  • Your preferred username (max. 8 characters), otherwise we will assign you a username constructed from your name
  • Room number
  • Telephone number
  • Your manager, if applicable
  • Your status (guest, employee etc.)

We will send you, as soon as possible, your temporary password via email.

Data

Your data is located on a central file server, secured by a RAID system. A (non versioned) backup is copied every night, to a server in a different location ("Rechenzentrum"). Please handle your data with care.

Jointly Used Data

It is possible for a work group to jointly access data. A work group name can be assigned and jointly usable folders are furnished. Furthermore, a jointly usable www folder is furnished for publishing group results. If you want such a group account, please send us an email, and provide the following data: Head of the work group, the required folders and the names of the work group members.

Password

Due to security concerns, you are reminded to change your password annually.

With the command passwd (in a terminal) you can change your password (At the time of this writing, this works only on the desktop computers and not on the login servers).

Quota

Every user has a maximum amount of storage available

An explamation of the amount of available storage is available here. Furthermore you will be warned via email if you have exceeded or are about to exceed your quota.

You may read about why quotas were introduced here. and why we can't "simply" buy bigger hard disks here .

Publishing Weppages

In every home folder there is a folder named "www". This is the right place to publish your webpages. Please make sure that your files are readable for others (the files have to be readable either for the group www or for everybody).

An explanation on how to use the corporate design of the institute for your personal pages can be found here

If you want to make webpages only iavailable to certain people, you just have to generate a folder with a cryptic name, and put your files in there.

Example: Generate a folder www/ASJDHu9z2sjja87 and then put your file secret.pdf in there. This file is only acessable under www.math.uni-bonn.de/people/username/ASJDHu9z2sjja87/secret.pdf. Those who don't know the exact link will not be able to find or access the file. This method has the same level of security as a password! (Just make sure that you either have an index-file in your www folder or adjust the file rights of your www folder (the folder must not be readable for www and others) - otherwise other people can get a directory listing of your www folder).

Desktop Computers

Operating System and Programs

The most recent version of Debian stable is the one that usually runs on all desktop computers. Currently the version "Etch" is installed.

When you log in on any desktop computer you are going to see the K Desktop Environment (short: KDE) and a couple of common applications installed. Should you require any application that is not installed, please let us know via email. We will try to find out if there are already installed alternatives and if it is expedient to install that application on all desktop computers.

Central Administration

All desktop computers are administered centrally:
All software on all desktop computers is identical (i.e. if a new program is to be installed, it will be installed on all desktop computers!) Furthermore, the hardware within one of a few hardware generations is identical. This means that we can't "easily" install or replace pieces of hardware.

The advantage for you is that, in case of a problem, we can just exchange your computer without you noticing any difference (same software+hardware). You also can log into any desktop computer and find the exact same setup..

Computeserver

Mathematica and Maple

The computer algebra packages mathematica and maple are installed on the computer called "kraftwerk". The graphical version can be called via:

ssh -X kraftwerk mathematica
ssh -X kraftwerk xmaple

Thanks to a campus wide license, mathematica can also be found on all desktop computers.

Printing

Printer Locations

A complete list of printers and locations can be found here. (In a terminal window, all information concerning printers can be found with the command lpstat -l -p.)
To reduce the number of erroneous printing jobs, an authorization is necessary for office printers. If you need permanent access a printer, just let us know.

Printing Commands in a Terminal

Files can be printed with the command lpr -P printername filename.
lpq -P printername shows all currently active print jobs.
lprm -P printername jobnummer deletes a print job.

Printing with Mac OS X

If Mac OS 10.4 (aka tiger) is installed on your computer the printers should appear automatically under "shared printers" in the printing dialog. After rebooting your computer it can take a few seconds until all available printers have been found.

In version 10.5 (aka leopard) Apple has unfortunately changed that process.. Here the following command must be issued in a terminal window: sudo cupsctl BrowseProtocols=CUPS. Additionally you may have to open port 631 in the firewall.

Consumption Items (Toner and Paper)

Please contact our janitor Holger Hammes about consumption items.

E-Mail

Mail-Server

Outgoing mail server: smtp.math.uni-bonn.de, port 25 (encryption via TLS). Incoming mail server: imaps.math.uni-bonn.de, port 993 (encryption via SSL).
Should you be inside a network that (for very good reasons) blocks the outgoing port 25, you can try to switch to port 587 (the so-called submission port). We here also block port 25 to external mail servers. Generally, other "providers" allow switching to port 587.
Should you want to use an external imap mail server from within our network, please use port 993 (SSL) since we don't allow non-encrypted traffic to the outside world (security policy of the university's data processing center).

Mailing Lists

You may find the existing mailing lists here.
Please keep in mind that emails with large attachments that are sent to a great number of accounts can produce heavy traffic. We kindly ask you to consider putting your attachment (when possible) into your www folder and only sending a link.

Spamfilter

For spam filtering we use the spam filter service of the data processing center. This means that all mail sent to your @math.uni-bonn,de address, without exception, passes through their spam filter. Every monday you will get a message from the data processing center informing you about mail that has been put into "quarantine". You can click on that mail to get it forwarded to your account, in case it was a false positive. Please keep in mind that mail in quarantine will be automatically deleted every fortnight. We strongly recommend disablng the internal spamfilter in browsers. For example, in mozilla thunderbird (icedove): Extras -> Junk-Filter-Einstellungen -> Lernfähiger Filter -> Junk-Filter aktivieren [uncheck] -> OK

Webmail

The webmail interface can be found under https://webmail.math.uni-bonn.de. However, the faster and more comfortable way to read your mail is to use a specialized mail client (Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Outlook...). You can save passwords and you can also read mail if you don't have a network connection.

Forwarding

A forwarding procedure can be configured with the program CompoSiever. Please enter the command composiever in a terminal window. You will see a simple, dialog oriented user interface, that should be self explanatory. You can also indicate if a copy of forwarded mail should be put in your mailbox at the institute.

Vacation Message

You can also configure a vacation message via CompoSiever should you be away for a longer amount of time. You can specify a time frame for this well ind advance. Please keep in mind that the end date specifies when the vacation mail must not be sent anymore (e.g. first working day). Should you have a mail alias (e.g. your name was too long and you wanted to be reachable under your full name), please contact us

Access from Outside

Login Server

From the outside of the Institute you can reach our network via login.math.uni-bonn.de. From there you are able to connect to any computer within the institute (e.g. to start a text based program). Please don't start any unnecessary processes on login since you are slowing down the connection for other users. Of course, you can quickly check your email. The programs alpine and mutt are installed for this purpose. To avoid problems with the authentification process (man-in-the-middle-attack warning if strict host checking is activated), please add the follwing Keys to your known_hosts file. For doing that, you can save the file on your desktop. In a terminal, please type cat ~/Desktop/ssh-host-keys.txt >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts . The warnings should disappear. The file ssh-host-keys.txt can now be deleted.

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Proxy of the Institute (Access to MathSciNet, JStor etc.)

To access the online archives of different paper collections, you need to have an IP from the institute.
One way of achieving this is to use our proxy server through an ssh tunnel from your outside location. Under unix like system (Linux,MacOS...) issue the command ssh -L 3128:proxy.math.uni-bonn.de:3128 user@login.math.uni-bonn.de. For Windows, the programme PuttY is required.
Please configure your browser then to use the http-proxy localhost:3128.

Alternatively, you can tell your browser directly to use our proxy. The hostname ist proxy.math.uni-bonn.de and the port is 3128.

Laptops

Connecting

If you want to use a laptop at the institute, please let systems administration know on which jack you want to connect (jacks are labeld with room numbers and a letter above the jack). If you want to use our printers and mail server, then please tell us also your MAC address. In the best of cases, the laptop now automatically aquires its IP adress. Please make sure that your operating system is configured to receive IP adresses via DHCP (usually the default setting). Also make sure that your browser is configured to use "automatic proxy configuration".

Printing

With Linux and MacOS laptops you can use the institute's printers as follows: For Linux please configure the print server to be "cups". For more recent versions of MacOS, you should find them under "Shared Printers.
With Windows XP you should be able to reach the printers via http://cups.math.uni-bonn.de:631/printers/printername

Proxy-Server

If you want to surf the internet, please configure your browser to use the correct proxy. That usually means use "automatic proxy configuration". If that fails, you can configure manually using http://wpad/wpad.dat

Wireless LAN

In both Endenicher Allee 60 buildings (main and new building) you can use WLAN. As a student or employee you can use the solution provided by the data processing center using Cisco-Client (SSID: MIbonnet). On the other hand, you can connect with our own infrastructure (SSID: MI). To get access permission (as an employee or guest) please send an email to the system administration.
You may find instruction for a variety of operating systems here.

In the lecture halls in Wegelerstraße 10, only data processing center's solution is available

The University of Bonn participates via the DFN in the project eduroam. Should you have a university-wide account of the data processing center, you can login the WLAN of other participating institutionis. You can get an unproblematic access after you once have configured (e.g. in Bonn) your eduroam.

Eduroam is not yet available in all the Endenicher Allee 60.

Scanner

Instructions on how to use our two (professional grade) scanners in the library can be found here.

Miscellaneous

Root Certificate

If you need the root certificate of the institute's certification authority, here are the pem and der format.

Skype

The VoIP application Skype can be used (laptop network) in our institute. Configure the proxy setting (if necessary)i, and click on the little "S" lower left corner). In "options", enter: Type: HTTP-Proxy, Host: proxy.math.uni-bonn.de, Port 3128 (please leave name and password empty). Attention: Newer versions of Skype don't always run on linux. The last version we tested succesfully is 2.0.

Dropbox

The data synchronization program dropbox is installed on all standard desktop computers.

You can launch the program either via the icon Internet-->Dropbox in the K menu or by typing dropboxe in a terminal window. After a successful login, the program generates its own icon within the task list.

Since this program is propritary, commercial product (in contrast to the vast majority of the other installed programs) we want to stress a couple of points:

  • Since we dont't have access to the source code of the program, we can be only of little help in the case of a problem. Also, we lack any ability to influence the reachability of the servers (e.g. server problems).
  • Technically speaking, the program has access to ALL of your data. We can't verify that the server (due to mistake or on purpose) only hands out the data that you intended.
  • The data is being stored on servers in the US. American law inforcement agencies do have access to these.

Browser

The feature "safe browsing" is disabled in the default installation of the preinstalled icewesel/firefox browser. You may find more information on "safe browsing" here. You can reenable "safe browsing" by activating the last two of the top three options under "Edit" --> "Preferences" --> "Advanced" --> "Security". To turn it on: Type about:config into the address line --> I'll be careful, I promise -> change browser.safebrowsing.dataProvider to 0 (right click onto the entry -> Modify -> Replace -1 by 0 -> OK). Please keep in mind, that the database of potentially malicous websites counts towards your quota.

Information about the System Administration

Should you have problems or questions about our network, you can ask us for help

In your own interest, we prefer that you contact us via email instead of calling us over the phone. This is because all people working here (full time, part time and students) have access to the same email account. Here we process all incoming question in the form of a ticket system. Since some employees are only in the office on certain weekdays, it may happen that you have to wait a couple of days until that person is back to work. Furthermore, we too are human and it could happen that something, told to us in passing, is forgotten.

Office: Endenicher Allee 60, room N1.018
Email: support@math.uni-bonn.de
Telephone: +49.228.73-7773
Office hours: Mo-Fr 9-17 Uhr

Thorsten Wörmann
Edgar Fuß

Jonas Brandes
Julian Dammann
Manuel Hachtkemper
Daniel Schmitz
Axel Sorge