UC San Diego SearchMenu

Open Computing Environment (OCE)

OCE accounts are designed to provide students with on-going access to computers labs and servers that are dedicated to supporting their major or division.

OCE accounts support both personal computing and course work. They receive additional resource allocations depending on the student's enrollment in corresponding courses. It is important to be aware that disk space allocations are reduced again when courses end.

Facilities

In addition to the computer labs and servers shown below, all students have access to ACMS General Purpose computer labs.

Table of Account Types and Available Facilities

Revised: May 2003

Account Types and Available Facilities
Account Type Group Servers Labs
oce-beng
oce-cse
oce-ece
oce-ee-g
oce-mae
oce-mcse
oce-se
iacs5
ieng9
ieng6
EBU1 3327 HP Lab
EBU2 203 HP MEDA Lab
EBU2 3329 Sun Lab
all EBU3B Labs
PFBH 161 Linux Lab
oce-ling ieng9 AP&M B325 Sun Lab
SLH 105 PC lab
oce-vart sgva-serv1 VIS 228 SGI Lab
UC201 230 PC Lab
oce-icam sgva-serv1
imusic1
VIS 228 SGI Lab
MAN B104 SGI Lab
MAN B206 Mac Lab
UC201 230 PC Lab
oce-bi-u
oce-ch-u
oce-ma-u
oce-ph-u
ieng9 AP&M B325 Sun Lab
SLH 105 PC labs
oce-bi-g
oce-ch-g
oce-ma-g
oce-sio
ieng9 AP&M B325 Sun Lab
SLH 105 PC labs
oce-ph-g nssgi-1
oce-binf bioinf Geisel-2093
oce-cogs icogcci1 CSB 115 Sun Lab
oce-ec-g iacs5 Econ 200
oce-mus imusic1 MAN B104 SGI Lab
MAN B206 Mac Lab
oce-thea iacs5 GH 18A & 18B PC Lab
pa-sdcc13 sdcc13
pa-sdcc15 sdcc15
pa-sdcc17 sdcc17
pa-sdcc21 sdcc21
ga sdcc3

Table of Account Types and Qualifying Majors

Revised: May 2003

If you are in one of the qualifying majors (and class levels) as shown below, you can upgrade to an OCE account.

OCE Qualifications Table
Type Eligibility Rules
pa all Undergraduates who do not qualify for an OCE-type account
ga all Graduates who do not qualify for an OCE-type account
oce-beng Bio-Engineering Majors and Graduates
oce-cse CSE Undergrad Majors
oce-ee-u ECE Undergrad Majors
oce-ee-g ECE Graduates
oce-mae MAE Majors and Graduates
oce-mcse Math-Computer Science Majors and Graduates
oce-se Structural Engineering Majors and Graduates
oce-vart Upper Division Visual Arts Majors and Graduates
oce-icam Upper Division ICAM Undergrad Music & Visual Arts
oce-bi-u Upper Division Biology Majors
oce-ch-u Upper Division Chemistry Majors
oce-ma-u Upper Division Math Majors
oce-ph-u Physics Majors
oce-bi-g Biology Graduates
oce-ch-g Chemistry Graduates
oce-ma-g Math Graduates
oce-sio Scripps Institute of Oceanography Graduates
oce-cg-u Upper Division Cognitive Science Majors
oce-cg-g Cognitive Science Graduates
oce-mu-u Upper Division Music Majors
oce-mu-g Music Graduates
oce-thea Theatre and Dance Graduates
oce-ln-u Upper Division Linguistics Majors
oce-ln-g Linguistics Graduates
oce-binf Bioinformatics Graduate Majors
oce-ec-g Economics Graduate Majors

How to Use an OCE Account for Classwork

-- the "prep" command

To use an OCE account for classwork you should first log into the facility (host or lab) which supports the class. Some classes require special software that is only available on certain machines. Your instructor will let you know which computers to use. Additionally the Account Look-up Tool is useful. It shows the OCE compatible courses that have been linked to your OCE account, and lists the facilities assigned to each class.

When you login on Unix systems, you'll be prompted (this example for "jsmith" who is taking CSE 131, CSE 167 and ECE 171):

  Below is a list of the computing environments you have available.

        If one of them corresponds to the class for which you are logging

        in to do work, type its number and hit return.

        1) jsmith

        2) cs131w

        3) cs167s

        4) ee171s

        5) Stop asking me this

        Choose one, or hit enter to use personal account -->
In this example, if you are going to work on CSE 167 assignments, and you know that the course identifier for your class is "cs167s", you'd pick '3' from the list.

This runs the 'prep' command and will locate the "umbrella" directory for cs167s, beneath which the course support files reside. If your instructor has created a world readable "broadcast" file in the umbrella "public" directory, prep will display the message it contains. Prep will modify the shell prompt and will offer to change directory to your storage directory beneath the class umbrella (unless you are already there).

Finally, prep will perform any other steps that your instructor has added to the class prepfile. This might include things such as defining aliases, adding directories to "path", or defining environment variables for special software.

You can also run the prep command, e.g. 'prep cs167s', from the command prompt in a terminal window. This can be useful if you wish to work on classwork for more than one class in different windows during the same session.

OCE Domains and Storage Directories

Revised: May 2003

Your OCE account may exist in multiple administrative domains in order to provide access to the full spectrum of platform types and physical computer systems appropriate for your major.

OCE Account Resources
Domain Facilities
ieng6 ieng6, PFBH 161, all EBU3B Rooms, EBU2 239
ieng9 ieng9, EBU1 3327, EBU1 3329, EBU1 5702
iacs5 iacs5
icogsci1 icogsci1, CSB 115
man104-1 imusic1, MAN B206, MAN B104
sgva-serv1 sgva-serv1, VIS 228, UC201 230
sdcc3 sdcc3
sdcc13 sdcc13
sdcc15 sdcc15
sdcc17 sdcc17
sdcc21 sdcc21

Your OCE account has one home directory for each domain in which it exists. Thus for example, an OCE account in the ieng9 domain has one home directory there that is the same regardless of whether you log in from ieng9, uAPE, SunPal, EBU1 3327 or EBU1 3329 lab. If your OCE account exists in another domain, say ieng6, then it has a different home directory there. So when you login to different domains you should expect the contents of your home directory to be different.

OCE STORAGE Directories

In addition to home directories, your OCE account typically will have a satellite STORAGE directory (not a home directory) for each OCE compatible class in which you are enrolled. Storage directories of this type are located beneath the "umbrella" directory which houses the class. Thus, for example, OCE account jsmith could have home directory /home/solaris/ieng9/oce/81/jsmith in the ieng9 domain, and it could also have a satellite storage directory /home/solaris/ieng9/cs161f/jsmith for CSE 161 on ieng9. When jsmith gets ready to work on CSE 161 and issues the command "prep cs161f", a check is done to see if they have already done a change directory to the /home/solaris/ieng9/cs161f/jsmith tree. If not, prep offers to do the change directory using pushd. (For information about the pushd command, see "help pushd").

Saving STORAGE Directories in Your OCE Home

At the end of the quarter when an OCE compatible class is finished the satellite STORAGE directories for that class are destroyed. Frequently however, students value their classwork accomplishments and wish to preserve them for future reference. While downloading to a home computer or to portable media are ways to do this, the long lifetime of your OCE home directory makes it an attractive alternative. Before storing your class files, it is a good idea to reduce the ammount of disk space they take up. One way to do this is to remove files which can be easily recreated, such as executables and object (*.o) files. Use the compress command (see "help compress") on the remaining files. To store your class files, you can login to your OCE account, and type

        mkdir from.CLASS

       
(where CLASS is the name of the class for which the files were made). Then use the command
        prep CLASS

       
to change your current directory to the STORAGE directory under consideration, and type
        cp -r . ~/from.CLASS
       

to make a backup of all your files.

Saving Non-OCE Home Directories in Your OCE Home

This is a relatively simple matter with the use of the program cphome. To copy the contents of another account into your OCE account directory, login to your OCE account and use cphome with a command of the form

     cphome OTHER-ACCOUNT@MACHINE

This will not work for copying class storage directories.

Receiving Email

If you have an OCE account, you may have access to more than one server (mailhost). It is important to know where your @UCSD.EDU messages are delivered. You can check or change the delivery destination specified for your @UCSD.EDU e-mail address.

Also it is a good idea to put a .forward file on the mailhosts where you do not normally check mail to ensure that all you mail goes to one place.

Default Mail Host for each Account Type

OCE Account Default Mail Hosts
Account Type Default Mailhost
pa-sdcc13 sdcc13
pa-sdcc15 sdcc15
pa-sdcc17 sdcc17
pa-sdcc21 sdcc21
ga sdcc3
oce-beng iacs5
oce-cse ieng9
oce-ee-u ieng9
oce-ee-g ieng9
oce-mae iacs5
oce-mcse ieng9
oce-se iacs5
oce-vart sgva-serv1
oce-icam sgva-serv1
oce-bi-u ieng9
oce-ch-u ieng9
oce-ma-u math
oce-ph-u ieng9
oce-bi-g ieng9
oce-ch-g ieng9
oce-ma-g ieng9
oce-sio-g ieng9
oce-cogs icogsci1
oce-mus imusic1
oce-thea iacs5
oce-ling ieng9
oce-ec-g iacs5
oce-cg-g cogsci
oce-binf bioinf