Site Computers: There are several computers in
the MMT control room that are reserved for observer use. The primary
observer computer for MMT instruments such as Blue and Red Channel is alewife which is located next to the hand paddle that controls the calibration lamps. The computers clark and lewis are used to operate CfA instruments such as MegaCam, Hectospec/chelle, and SWIRC. Behind clark there is a small form-factor PC called homer
that is also available for observer use and provides easily accessible
USB and FireWire ports. The designated observer account on alewife and homer is mmtobs. Separate accounts are configured for each CfA instrument on clark and lewis. Consult the documentation for the CfA instruments for details. Passwords for all observer accounts can be found in the drawer to the right of clark's keyboard and monitors.
Data Backup: The radio link between Mt. Hopkins and
Tucson is quite fast so the quickest and easiest way to backup one's
data may be to simply scp or ftp it to their
own computer. This is especially true for the smaller datasets produced
by Blue and Red Channel, but more problematic for instruments like
MegaCam. There are high capacity DLT and AIT tape drives available on clark. Consult the CfA documentation for details on their use. There is also a traditional DDS-3 DAT drive on alewife, though its use is largely deprecated. There are DVD burners on both alewife and homer that support most formats of writable CD and DVD media. For best results, we recommend using the K3b
application to create data CDs and DVDs. It can be found in the “Sound
& Video” menu and has extensive on-line help available.
Auto-mounted CDs and DVDs can be ejected by right-clicking on the
appropriate icon and selecting “Eject”.
For the very large datasets generated by MegaCam the easiest way to
backup or transport data may be via large external hard drives. They
can be attached to the USB 2.0 or FireWire ports on the front of homer.
The FireWire port requires a special 4-pin to 6-pin cable so the USB
2.0 ports are probably easier to use. We recommend that the disks you
use be formatted as VFAT (Windows) or HFS+ (OS X, e.g. iPods). This way the disks will be automatically mounted with the approprite permissions to allow the mmtobs
user to write to them. If you want to use a disk that has been
formatted under linux, you will need to configure a world-writeable
directory on the disk for mmtobs to access. You can access data on the other computers from homer using NFS automounting via /net/alewife or /net/clark or by using scp or ftp. Before you unplug an external drive, you MUST UNMOUNT IT FIRST!! You can do this by right-clicking on the appropriate icon and selecting “Unmount Volume”.
Instrument Control Software: Launchers are provided on the mmtobs desktop on alewife for the Blue Channel (bccs) and Red Channel (rccs) Control Systems. See the SCCS User Manual for details on using these systems. Information on MMT instruments in general can be found here and CfA instruments here.
Analysis Software: Launchers are provided for IRAF
and DS9. The MMTO is running IRAF 2.14 which includes enhanced command-line support. Image acquisition for Blue and Red Channel is performed within
the IRAF environment. IDL 6.4 is also available for use by observers.
Simply invoke idl from any terminal window to run it.
Personal Computers: Observers are welcome to connect their own laptops or other computers to the MMT network. We provide gigabit ethernet and 802.11b/g wireless. We recommend you take advantage of the wireless. It is configured to be fully open and to provide network configuration information via DHCP. No special configuration should be required on the client-end to use it. If you wish to use ethernet, you must first contact Tim Pickering (tim@mmto.org) or Tom Trebisky (tom@mmto.org) who can provide you with either a static or DHCP IP address. If you use ethernet without contacting one of them first, you will still get an IP address via DHCP, but it will not be on the main MMT network and you will not be able to access some MMT resources such as the printer. There is wireless networking available in the Common Buildings at the Bowl and Ridge as well as wireless and ethernet in the dormitories.
If you have connectivity problems, try ping 128.196.100.19 to see if you can get tp a machine on the local network. Then try ping 128.196.100.1
to make sure the radio link to the mountain is up. If there are still
problems or if you have other special requirements, contact Tim or Tom.
Printing: The default printer for site computers is lw14,
a Brother HL-5170DN duplex postscript network printer. If you wish to
print from a personal machine, we recommend you print to lw14 directly using a hostname of lw14.mmto.arizona.edu and port 9100, the standard HP JetDirect port. The printer configuration tools under linux and OS
X both provide an option for a networked JetDirect printer. Select
that, provide the hostname and port number, and then use a generic
postscript driver if the correct model is not already available in the
menu. OS X users using ethernet can also access the printer via Bonjour printer sharing.
Configuring MS Windows to use the printer is somewhat more complicated. The best way is probably to go to the printer's home page at http://lw14.mmto.arizona.edu/ and click on “Brother Solutions Center”. From there follow the links to the appropriate driver for your version of Windows.