Computing

Merton Tux You can use Linux at Merton.

Merton maintains its own IT pages here which provide a large amount of information. This page is designed to give you an overview the more important points and provide useful details not covered elsewhere.

Wireless in the JCR

The JCR now has wireless internet access. To use the wireless you need to fill in a wireless registration form and pidge it to Steve Williams. The password (WEP key) for the wireless will then be sent to you.

You can e-mail or pidge a note to the IT rep (ryan.lothian <at> merton.ox.ac.uk) if you have any problems.

Q1: What Facilities are Available?

Make sure you're making the most of IT at Merton, the following are all available to use for all undergraduates:

OWL Computer Room
Downstairs of OWL, can be accessed through the side entrance on Logic Lane 'after hours'
MOB Computer Room
At the far end of the library (to the right as you go in), only open during library hours
In-Room Internet
All undergraduate rooms have an ethernet network point which gives access to the university network and the Internet.
Wireless in Fellows' Garden
Great for Trinity term, take your laptop onto the lawn!

Q2: How do I connect my own computer to the network (in my own room)?

To connect your computer to the network in your own room you will need to fill out a network registration form and return it to Steve Williams. You will need to do this every year as your computer is tied to your individual room. Here's how to do it:

  1. Get the network registration form here.
  2. Read the information here to fill in your form and configure your computer.
  3. Return the form to Steve Williams (pidge is in the lodge).

You should inform the IT Manager if you get a new network card or motherboard (because that would change your MAC address), or if you change your computer. Unrecognised machines won't be able to access the network.

Q3: How do I use Linux on Merton's network?

These instructions are at your own risk and were tested on Ubuntu Linux 6.06. Hopefully they should be of use.

Finding out your MAC address

ifconfig eth0 | grep -i HWaddr

(assuming your network card is eth0, which is usually the case)

Setting your hostname

Add your new hostname to /etc/hosts as an alias for 127.0.0.1, edit /etc/hostname and reboot.

Merton requires you to set your hostname so they can identify your computer.

What they really want is for your computer to announce this name when asking for an IP address. But for security reasons, Linux distributions don't tend to do this.

So as root, edit /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf, adding the following line near the top should sort this out (semi-colon very important):

send host-name "mert****";

...where mert**** is your login id. If you don't do this you'll likely get warned by the IT Manager that you haven't set your hostname properly.

Q4: Help, I can't connect to the network in my room!

  1. If you get someone else (with working internet access) to use your cable in their room, does it work? If not, your cable is dodgy.
  2. Do the lights on the back of your computer by your network port flash when you plug it in to the network (your PC should be on at this point!)? If not, either your network port is broken or disabled or the network socket in your room is broken.
  3. Does your operating system (probably Windows XP) notice when you plug in to the network? If not, then maybe your network card isn't installed properly.
  4. If you go to http://129.67.157.90/ in your web-browser, does the MCR website come up? If not, you either haven't registered your computer's MAC (network) address with the college IT manager properly, or you haven't set your network connection to obtain IP address automatically. If your PC is a laptop, you could try using it in the Merton library (OWL) to see if the problem is just with your room.
  5. If you go to http://mcr.merton.ox.ac.uk/ in your web-browser, does the MCR website come up again? If not, your DNS isn't setup properly - in Windows XP this is under Network Connections -> Properties.
  6. If you go to http://www.google.com/ in your web-browser, does the Google come up? If not, you may be blocked from the internet by college or the university..

Q5: How can I measure my bandwidth usage?

Angel Sarmiento has kindly compiled this useful guide for anyone who wants to download a meter for their internet usage, but either doesn't know what they're doing or wants a less intrusive one.

Regrettably this application cannot run on Macs. It works with Linux if you have Wine installed [but you might want to try a native Linux solution instead].

  1. Save this file.
  2. Wait for it to finish downloading, then open it.
  3. Click "Allow" / "Yes" as many times as asked. Accept the user agreement.
  4. A new icon will appear on your taskbar (bottom right of the screen, next to the clock). It has two red gradients that might turn a bit green for some seconds. The left-hand side indicates "upstream" Internet traffic, the right-hand side downloading. It's mainly decorative. Click once on the icon for a rather cool graph of your Internet usage.
  5. To setup automatic alerts, right-click the icon and choose "Options".
  6. Ensure the following are checked: "Use old display unit descriptions", "Load on Windows startup".
  7. Choose the tab "Notifications".
  8. Choose "Use balloon hints". Check the box "Enable traffic volume alert". Choose "Upload+download" on the first box with an arrow (in computer jargon a combo box). Enter the number 1000 on the box and then select Megabyte (MB). Then select "Day". Finally make sure that "Notify monitoring problems" is checked.
  9. Click "OK"

You now have a cool graph of your Internet usage AND automatic notifications when you are about to exceed the traffic limit, when your current usage trends towards exceeding it, or when you have exceeded it! Use the Internet freely, for if the program is open it will always warn you.

Finally, for all you statistics-obsessed people, right-click your new icon to see "Totals", a screen showing some info regarding how much you've used the Internet since the program was installed.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are using the Internet around midnight, you might get a warning around 12.02 or something like that. This happens because the computer projects your usage will be the same all day as those two seconds, including sleeping time, working time (if any...) etc. Ignore warnings received at that time.