Guides
Communicating With Other Users
finger or who to see who is logged on to Matrix and where they're logged on from.
finger [username] to get more info on a user including their .plan.
Traditionally, a plan is supposed to be information on what projects and things a user is working on. People generally put in quotes or other bits of information. To edit your own plan file type pico .plan, and save it as you exit. Then to make it readable so people are allowed to view it, type chmod 755 ~/.plan.
w to see what command users last typed and how long they've been logged on for.
last -[number] [username] to see the information about that last [number] of times a user has logged in.
To get information about people logging in and out as you're logged on, make a .login file. (Type pico .login) Put the following in it set watch = ( 1 any any ) and you'll be able to see the busy bees of Matrix logging in and out. Once you edit your .login file you'll need to logout and login again for it to have effect.
Type logins to see what no life losers, I mean, dedicated users, have been logged in the most.
aun <username> to find out more details (eg. college email address, course) about a Matrix user.
To get info on TCD students in general, you can use tel.
tel s=helena will give you all students named Helena, as you
can see there are 21 of us. tel group=g0233, will reveal what
course this Helena does. (Please stop laughing at my middle name). This
is useful for things like tel s=jackson, which shows there there's no
Joshua Jackson enrolled in TCD this year. Shame.
Hey is a useful little program for talking to other people on Matrix.
Type hey [username], hit return, type your message, hit return, and then hit control+D to send. If you want to send the another message, hit the up arrow and Matrix will give you the last command you typed, in this case hey [username].
If you're in another programs and someone heys you and you want to clear the screen, hit Control+L. If the message was garbled, type heylog to see your recent heys.
If you don't want to be able to recieve messages from other users, type mesg n when you log in.
To temporarily suspend the current program, press Control+Z, and the program will be put in the background. Type fg to resume.
talk will open a screen where you and another user can type simultaneously. It's shite and nobody uses it. I just feel you should know about it because it's an old UNIX thing.