Q.When I want to access my Minerva account, which network computer should I log in to, Minerva, Mercury, or Morpheus? (And, furthermore, when are we going to break out of this silly habit of naming Yale's computers after ancient Mediterranean gods whose names happen to start with the letter M? Doesn't thor.cis.yale.edu have a nice ring to it?)
A. I like thor.cis.yale.edu, too, but for now we'll have to suffer with the three M's. The basic principle to follow when accessing your Minerva account is this: log in to the machine that has the lowest "load average" at the time you're working. When you have reached the login screen for Minerva, Mercury, or Morpheus, you'll notice that all three machines are listed on the screen, along with corresponding numbers. These numbers are the load averages, measures of the amount of work the machines are performing at any given time. The higher the load average, the more work a machine is doing. Which, from the network user's perspective, means fewer resources to devote to any one user's job. Slowdown City. If you are at the login screen for Minerva, but the load average for Mercury or Morpheus is lower, what should you do? First, press control-d (that is, hold down the control key and the letter "d" at the same time). This will close the login screen and give you a chance to "telnet to" (call up the login screen for) Mercury or Morpheus. If you are working at a Mac or PC and first got to the Minerva login screen by clicking on the Minerva icon, you should look under the File menu and select the Open Connection command, then type either "mercury" or "morpheus" to reach the appropriate login screen. If you are using a modem to dial in, you should type either "mercury" or "morpheus" at the Yale-Remote-01> prompt to reach the appropriate login screen. The Minerva, Mercury, and Morpheus computers are all designed to give you equal access to your network accounts and to the features of the Internet -- so you don't have to worry about sacrificing any of your network capabilities if you log in to Mercury or Morpheus instead of Minerva. Your network account is called a "Minerva account" only because Minerva was the first of the three machines to go online.
Q. I'm working on a paper for my U.S. history class and want to know if there are any resources on the Internet that can help me. Do you have any suggestions?
A.No problem. David Phillips, a Yale graduate student in American Studies, has produced a remarkable index of network sites for the humanities. It's called the "American Studies Web" and is available at the following World-Wide-Web address (URL, Uniform Resource Locator): http://www.cis.yale.edu/ ~davidp/amstud.html
If you don't want to remember this address, you can also look for it on the Yale World-Wide-Web homepage, where it's listed along with lots of other cool sites. You can use the World-Wide-Web with the Netscape and Mosaic programs on Macintoshes and PCs with Ethernet, LocalTalk, SLIP, or Apple Remote Access, or with the lynx program on Minerva, Mercury, and Morpheus. Just type "lynx" at the prompt to access the WWW from your network account.
Q.I've heard that I can use YaleInfo to access resources throughout the Internet, but how?
A. YaleInfo is one of more than 5,000 information centers throughout the world that are tied together in an online menu system called Gopher. One particularly helpful resource for picking your way through the information available in Gopher is the subject-tree. This is an index that provides "pointers" to network resources, organized by subject. In YaleInfo, you can find a wide range of subject-trees by selecting the "Internet Resources by Subject" option. Once you're that far, try the "Subject Tree from Rice University"; RiceInfo is generally considered to be one of the finest indexes available on the Internet.
Q.Where can I go for help with all this network stuff?
A. The Internet Information Center, located in the Yale Computer Center, 175 Whitney Avenue. The center is open 1-5 p.m. weekdays and by appointment. Also, feel free to call 432-5116 or to write iic@minerva.cis.yale.edu.
Lane Witt (Lane.Witt@yale.edu)is a graduate student in the History department and a consultant at the Internet Information Center.