The ECE Computer Support Group would like to welcome our new and returning students to the ECE Computing Facilities. The School of ECE provides computing facilities for use by all ECE students and non-ECE students enrolled in ECE courses. These facilities are located in the academic wing of the Klaus building and throughout the Van Leer building. We support both course-specific and public computing labs. This document should help you to get started using these facilities.
Locations
Public Lab Locations:
Klaus 1446
30 Windows Workstations
Open 24-hours (via Buzz Card access)
Lenovo T93P Tiny Workstations featuring Intel i5 processors
User Assistant (UA) Schedule
Klaus 1448
26 64-bit Red Hat Linux Workstations
Open 24-hours (via Buzz Card access)
Dell Precision 3630 (Intel i7 8-core processor, 16G RAM)
nVidia video driver support
Klaus 2440
30 Windows Thin Clients
Open 24-hours (via Buzz Card access)
Dell Wyse D10 Thin Clients
Van Leer C257
30 Windows Thin Clients
Open 24-hours (via Buzz Card access)
Dell Wyse D10 Thin Clients
Names of Publicly Available Linux Machines
Note: Jobs are limited to one interactive or background process per login for all machines. Accounts running more than one job will lose login privileges for these machines for two weeks.
Accounts
All students who have declared ECE as his/her major or who are enrolled in an ECE Course (or any non-ECE course that has been cross-listed with an ECE course) are granted access to log in to the ECE Windows Public and Academic Computer Labs. All graduate students who have registered for ECE classes are granted access to log in to the ECE Linux Public and Academic Computer Labs; any ECE undergraduate or non-ECE student enrolled in an ECE course must request to have his/her Linux account activated as described in the next section. You should use your OIT user account when logging in. At the beginning of each semester the access is provisioned based on enrollment in class. The following sections will detail how each account may be used.
Linux Accounts
By default, a Linux account is created for each ECE graduate student as mentioned above.
For ECE undergraduate and non-ECE students enrolled in ECE courses, you may request to have your ECE Linux account activated by sending a request to help@ece.gatech.edu specifying that you need to activate your ECE Linux account and including your GTED username, the course for which the account is required, and the instructor for the course.
Windows Accounts
Use your GTAD user account (AD domain) to access ECE Windows systems.
If you are unsure of your GTED/GTAD username, have forgotten your password, or need other general information about the GTED/GTAD account, please visit https://passport.gatech.edu for assistance. The ECE Computer Support Staff will not be able to reset passwords for this account – you must visit the Passport site.
Removal of Accounts
Accounts are provisioned at the beginning of each semester based on enrollment status information provided by Oscar. Accounts will remain active for ECE majors for as long as you are considered so by Oscar. Windows accounts for non-ECE majors will remain active as long as you are registered for an ECE or ECE cross-listed course. Although we make every effort possible to archive user data once a provisioning is removed, you should make a copy of important files when you are about to graduate and/or leave Georgia Tech. Non-ECE majors should save any important data at the end of each semester.
Please note that this process is automatic, hence there will not be any verbal or written warning when account provisions are removed.
If you experience other problems when logging in to an ECE Public or Academic Computer Lab, please submit a request for support via email to help@ece.gatech.edu. Please include as much detail as possible, including:
Your Name
Your Username
Which lab you were in
Which computer you were using
Date and Time of the problem
EXACT text of an error messages
Detailed description of the problem(s)
Remote Access
Certain ECE Linux systems can be accessed via SSH and SFTP from outside of the ECE network. You may view a list of these systems on the Computer Support Group Remote Access web page.
If you still have an ECE provided “Z:” drive, Please see our FAQ, “How do I access my Windows files (“Z-Drive”) remotely?” for detailed instructions. Otherwise, see OIT’s FAQs, “How do I mount my Prism home directory using Windows?” and “How do I mount my Prism home directory using Mac OS X?” for details.
Also, check out our ECE Virtual Windows Lab.
Storage (Disk Space)
See the “Remote Access” section above for details on how to access your files from outside of ECE. The following sections detail the use of your home directory on the Linux and Windows systems:
Linux Home Directories
When you login to the Linux systems, you will be placed in your home directory during the login process. You are permitted to store up to 8GB of data in your Linux home directory. We ask that you please utilize the local “scratch” space on each system you log into (/usr/scratch) to perform your simulation then copy the final data to your home directory (~/). We do not backup /usr/scratch on any machine, but your home directory is backed up nightly.
Windows Home Directories
When you login to the Windows systems, certain parts of your profile are stored on OIT’s PRISM storage space to provide a level of centralized access and backup. The PRISM space is mapped as drive “P:” for your convenience. At the time of this writing, current allocation quota is 4GB. ECE has no control over this space, so we cannot increase the quota.
Printing
All the Linux and Windows systems are connected to the network printers available in the computing labs. Most labs have a printer physically located in the lab. Other labs are situated near a printer if one is not available in the lab itself.
Print Queues
In order to conserve paper and cut down on cost, the School of ECE no longer provides public print access for students. The school has switched the OIT manage Pharos Pay-For-Print system. There are three print queues where you can submit your print jobs.
- ECE_Black
- ECE_Color_Xerox
- ECE_Color _Dell
The systems are configured to print to one of three different print queues. The default print queue is ECE_Black. The ECE_Black print queue will release jobs to the Xerox Phaser 5550s, which are located in all the ECE Public Computing Labs. The ECE_Color_Xerox print queue will release jobs to the Xerox Phaser 7400DN color printer in Klaus 1446. The ECE_Color_Dell print queue will release jobs to the Dell 5110cn color printer in Klaus 1448 and Van Leer 452.
Releasing Print Jobs
In order to release your print jobs, you must go to one of the Pharos release stations in the lab next to the printers. You will log onto the system with your OIT assigned username and associated password. Once you are logged onto the Pharos system, you can select the print jobs you wish to release to the printers. You must then swipe your Buzzcard on the keyboard.
All the ECE Pharos printers are linked together. Any Pharos release station can release your print job. Print jobs will remain in the print queues for 60 minutes before they are purged from the queue.
Costs
Please note that there is a cost associated with printing. You must have funds on your Buzzcard to release print jobs. Insufficient funds will fail to release your print jobs to the print queue. The costs associated for printing are:
- Black and White prints cost $.04 per page
- Color prints cost $.20 per page
***NOTE***
The ECE Pharos Print Queues are not associated with the OIT Pharos Print Queues. The print quota provided by OIT does not transfer to the ECE printers. There are no refunds to jobs mistakenly released.
You may always print your work on OIT systems to the OIT central printers. OIT can assist you in using these facilities.
Microsoft Software for Student’s Personal Machines
See our page about Microsoft Imagine (formerly Dreamspark) for details.
General Rules/Guidelines
While we try to provide as relaxed an atmosphere as possible, we must enforce some rules in order to make the facilities as good as they can be:
- No food or drink is allowed anywhere in the lab. You will be asked to leave if you enter the lab with food or drink.
- Do not litter.
- No smoking.
- No loud or boisterous behavior is allowed in the lab.
- No personal software is to be installed on the lab systems.
- Recreational activity (i.e. checking email & surfing the net) is allowed, but you may be asked to leave if students are waiting for computers.
- Never turn off any computer. If you run into a problem, please ask the UA for assistance.
- You will take the full responsibility for your own account, so be sure to log out after you have finished your work and do not let anyone else use your account.
- Every account has a limited disk quota. You will receive a warning message if you have exceeded the limit. Each account will also have limited CPU time. If you exceed the limit, your account will be deactivated until the next semester.
- Do not lock a machine for more than 60 minutes. The UA will override the locked machine and log you out if this happens.
Other rules and guidelines may be instituted as necessary.
Students who are found to continually break the rules are subject to having their user account deactivated and/or being referred to the Dean of Students for disciplinary action.
Lab Hours
We strive to provide as much open lab time as possible throughout the semester. To that end, the labs are open 24-hours a day during the semester and can be accessed at any time by using your Buzzcard.
We hire undergraduate assistants to staff the labs during peak hours. Under most circumstances the following UA hours are maintained (see the UA schedule):
- First week of class: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
- Normal schedule: 10:00 AM – 10:00 PM
- Finals Week: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
- The labs are normally not staffed between semesters.
- The labs are normally not staffed on official institute holidays and when the campus is considered “closed”. However, every effort is made to allow the user assistants to volunteer for hours during these occasions.
Assistance
Everyone has a question or problem from time to time and we are here to help. The user assistant can answer most of your questions and can often help solve any problem you may have. However, there are times when they cannot. In the event the user assistant is unable to help you, please send email to help@ece.gatech.edu and provide as much detail as possible. You should also examine the Computer Support Group web site at https://help.ece.gatech.edu.
If you are ever interested in working as a user assistant, please send email to lab-manager@ece.gatech.edu.
Last revised September 2, 2020.