Return to BIRCH
home page
See your system administrator, to get an account.
| The first time you login, you will be see the
MATE Welcome screen which is the best starting point for
learning about the MATE desktop environment. |
 |
Setting the path and environment variables
Two things need to be setup in order to use the programs. First, your $PATH must include the directories in which BIRCH executable files are found. Secondly, many of the programs need to know where to find data or configuration files. The locations of these files are specified by environment variables that are automatically set when you login.
All of these processes can be made transparent to the user by
running the 'newuser' command.
Open a terminal window by going to Menu --> System tools
--> MATE Terminal.
(Hint: It's a good idea to create a shortcut by dragging this menu
item to the toolbar at top.)
At the command prompt, type (or past in the line below) and press Enter.
/home/birch/BIRCH/admin/newuser
You will see the following messages:
| getting
home directory Writing .login Writing .cshrc & .tcshrc Writing Bourne Shell .profile, .bash_profile, .zshenv, etc. Setting up VNC Creating launcher links PLATFORM: Linux Made symbolic link to launcher on desktop Made symbolic link to launcher on desktop linklauncher.py: completed execution normally. Done - newuser.py! Logout and login again so that the changes can take effect. |
This will add some lines to your .login and .cshrc and
.profile files, which contain commands that execute each time you
login. (Comparable to AUTOEXEC.BAT in DOS). These commands 1) set
your path 2) set your environment variables, 3) set your prompt to
display the current working directory and hostname. You will also
see the BIRCH launcher appear on your desktop.
Now, open a new terminal window. It should now look something
like this (text inside the {} will differ from system to system):
Next: Customizing your
desktop
What if I want to remove BIRCH access from my user account?
To remove BIRCH access for your account, type
/home/birch/BIRCH/admin/nobirch
This deletes the lines that were added by the 'newuser' script to your .login, .cshrc, .profile, .bash_profile, and .bash_login files. (All of these lines contain the string '#_BIRCH'). You can always restore BIRCH access by running 'newuser' as described above.