Frequently Asked Questions

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What is the meaning of these "lx" host names anyway?

→ MachineTypes

How can I use the HPC resources to do some calculations?

→ Cluster Computing

On the clusters everything's working but it's extremely slow

This is most likely related to high load on one of the central file systems, e.g. a user has submitted many batch jobs that are writing to a single file right now. Anyhow it may be the network as well. >:-)

Where to find home-directories of users, software, and data?

→ FileSystems

How do I connect to the Windows Terminal Servers from Linux?

Take a look at the instructions on the GSI web page.

How to create a GSI Linux boot floppy?

Insert a new floppy into your drive and issue the following command: gsi_bootfloppy

Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird/Icedove/Iceweasel complains about "Profile in use"

At first make sure you don't have the program running on another machine. If not it crashed and left a lock file inside its profile directory. The exact profile directory location depends on the specific application:
For Firefox/Iceweasel it is beneath ~/.mozilla/firefox/, for Icedove beneath ~/.icedove resp. ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/ for older Icedove versions and Thunderbird.
The profile directory itself consists of a random string followed by your profile name which is normally default as long as you don't have multiple profiles, eg. asdf1234.default (sometimes it's the other way round to complicate things a bit: default.asdf1234).
The lock file in this directory is called lock and is a symlink to an IP address plus port number. Make sure you really have no Mozilla running on the host given in this link and then remove the lock file.
Sometimes you will also have to remove a file named .parentlock in your profile folder. (Remember that the leading dot means that this is a hidden file, so you'll need to use ls -a to see it.) Here is a short shell command to find all possible lock files: find ~/.mozilla -iname '*lock'

I closed all applications but top still claims almost all memory is used.

The memory counted as used includes the disk cache and kernel buffers that are dynamically reduced when applications need more memory. If you want to see how much space is actually used by applications take a look at the output of either free (2nd row) or memstat (total at the end).

I've deleted many files but still get e-mails that my home directory is using too much disk space

Please make sure that the files are really deleted, not only moved to the trash folder (see also TipsTrash).

This problem may also take place if you have deleted a file, but there are still processes accessing it (e.g. ~/.xsession-errors). To close all open file handles you'll have to finish your current session(s) and login again.

When my screen is locked I enter my password correctly and it says I'm unauthorized*

This might be the result of wrong keymap settings in the screensaver unlock window. Choose the keymap you'd like to use. If you can't choose another keymap, you need to start a new KDE session and in KDE language settings add a second keymap to your available keymaps. This enables you to switch keymaps in the screensaver unlock window.