Splus Introductory Course

The Maths Sun Computers

Splus runs on the two Sun computers in the maths department. These are imaginatively named mathssun4 and mathssun5. Before you can use Splus, it will be useful to set up your cent1 account so you can log in easily.

First log in to the cent1 machine.

Now type rlogin mathssun4 or mathssun5. It will ask for your password - it should be the same as on cent1.

Now it is necessary to set up some files and things in your account.

Dont do this if you have set up your cent1 account to use an alternative window manager, or have any other special things in your login!

Type the following on the sun login:

~maa017/XSetup/DOSETUP

This will change several things in your account.

Now log out of the maths sun, (type logout) and then exit from cent1 (usually by logging out of the Session Control window).

Now log in again.

You may notice some changes.

Your xterm windows are called Session 1 and Session 2.
You have an xlogout icon - click this once, to open it, and again to logout.
If you hold the middle mouse button down over the grey background, you will get a menu with cent1, mathssun4 and mathssun5 on. Bring the mouse down to one of the maths suns, let go, and a window logged into that machine will appear.

Using this middle button menu is the best way to log in to the maths suns - don't use rlogin since that wont set everything up the way the middle button menu does.

Starting Splus : Quitting Splus

To run Splus, just type Splus at the unix prompt. Don't forget the capital S.

Splus will then start - you will get some messages followed by a prompt:

To quit from Splus, use q(). It seems a strange way to exit, but all will become clear soon!

.Data directories

One of the messages that you get on starting Splus is something like:

Working data will be in .Data

Splus uses a directory called .Data to store things in. It first looks for a directory called .Data as a subdirectory of the directory you started Splus in. If it doesn't find one there, it will try and use a .Data directory in your home directory. If it still doesn't find one there then it will create one there.

So, if you want to organise your Splus work into different areas, you need to make a subdirectory, and then make a .Data directory in that. For example:

mathssun45% mkdir Project
mathssun45% cd Project
mathssun45% mkdir .Data

Now if you run Splus it will store all its data in the .Data directory in the Project subdirectory.

Next section - arithmetic

Baz<B.Rowlingson@lancaster.ac.uk>

Last modified: Thu Oct 12 09:52:12 BST 1995