FAQs - 1 - General
Matrix runs on Sun's Solaris Operating system version 2.8 (a.k.a. OS 8)
Matrix is Sun E450. It was kindly donated to us by Sun Microsystems Ireland. It has
- 2 x 400Mhz Ultra Sparc II processors each with 4Mb's of cache
- 2 Gigabytes of memory
- 20 x 9.1G hard disks at 7200 rpm
Matrix is situated in the maths department via 100Mb network connection to the Trinity network. Learn more about the Trinity network here.
Matrix accounts are available to all our trinity members. If you are already a netsoc member then send a mail to help@netsoc.tcd.ie asking for an account. If you are not a member then you will have to join first. You can join by
It is college policy not to give accounts on college machines to non college members.
There are many ways to use your Matrix account. If you can use you the college machines, you'll find some services that benefit you. See 1.8 - I don't care about this Unix stuff. What other services does Matrix offer?
Unix is an operating System created in the 70's. It is a multi user operating system and it is very stable. It is also text based!
With matrix you can
Apollo is netsoc's backup server running mail and dns.
That's just the way it is.
No! Murdock, Face, Hannibal and BA are the names of machines on the Netsoc LAN. Eg, face.netsoc.tcd.ie is the old (last year's) matrix that is now in the Netsoc room, being used as a terminal, and murdock.netsoc.tcd.ie is the CD burner machine.
All the a-team machines are in the Netsoc room, so it's a good way to see if anyone is down there. You can even log on from them in the room.
You can use most popular services from Matrix, eg. web, mail and irc. But a lot of other ports are blocked, so that bold users can't run anything we don't approve, like proxies and file-sharing apps. This is a restriction handed down to us by ISS, and prevents us getting in trouble!
If you would like a particular port enabled, apply using this form.
Yes! Usage of Matrix is governed by the Matrix Acceptable Use Policy (MAUP) and you must agree to this policy to get an account. In a nutshell, the rules are there to prevent misuse of the system, such as interfering with other people's accounts or using Matrix to store copyright material (eg. software or music). The MAUP is available for on inspection on the Netsoc website: http://www.netsoc.tcd.ie/MAUP/ If you have any questions please e-mail help@netsoc.tcd.ie.
Because the CVS port is blocked from matrix, you'll have to tunnel it though ssh. Some would argue that you should be doing this anyway as it secures the connection.
Instructions on how to do this can be found here although some settings will have to be customised for the CVS server you want to connect to.
CVS pserver is allowed through the firewall.
ZIP Drive: mount /mnt/zip
CD-ROM Drive: mount /mnt/cdrom0
CDR Drive: mount /mnt/cdrom1
All off these drives are user-mountable.
From another Matrix terminal run ps auxwww | grep dcop and see if there's a dcopserver process running as your username.
If there is then kill it using kill -9 processid and try again.
If there isn't, try deleting the .dt* files and directories and try again.
Yep, we have DHCP set up in the room, so just plug your laptop into a spare port on the hub, and you're online.
This, of course, is assuming you have DHCP set up on your laptop (which you would normally, if using the TCD network). For example, in Windows, make sure "obtain IP address automatically" is ticked in TCP/IP setup.