Math department policy on web pages and guide for new web users

Contents

1. Policy for web pages
2. Policy for entries in the users page
3. A brief description of our setup for web pages
4. How to create a homepage for yourself
5. Problems which you may encounter

Policy for web pages

Any user of the mathematics department computer system who has an active account is eligible for a directory on the web server. This directory should be created at the same time as the home directory. It will be called /d/www/undergrad/username if you are an undergraduate, and /d/www/undergrad/users otherwise.

Policy for entries in the users page

The users page is the page with URL: http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users.html; it provides a list of the faculty, graduate students and staff in the depatment who have web pages. Any user in the groups "fac", "staff" and "grad" may have an entry on this page. Here, "group" refers to your login group. You can find out this with the id command: type id at a command prompt on one of the Suns or PCs and you should see a listing such as
uid=941(fred) gid=26(grad) groups=26(grad)
Thus, fred is in the group, "grad".

If you think you should be in one of these login groups, but your group is something else, please email gripe@math.utexas.edu.

To obtain an entry all you need do is create a homepage for yourself, and give it the name index.html. The system will notice this page and add you to the list, hopefully in the correct place.

A brief description of our setup for web pages

The next three sections assume that you are a user called fred whose web directory is /d/www/users/fred/. All of this applies to undergraduates if you just replace users with undergrad.

Here are a few comments, hints and tips on how our system is set up. It is based on questions people have asked us. If you are unfamiliar with any of the terminology then you should read some documentation on HTML. The page http://www.ma.utexas.edu/misc-links.html has links to some online documentation.

• The "base directory" of the server is /d/www/. This means that any references you make to files in your web directory should not include this section of the path. For example, if fred has a file called fun.html then he should refer to it with the reference http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/fred/fun.html.
• Undergraduate directories are in /d/www/undergrad while the rest are in /d/www/users.
• The users page is generated automatically by a perl script. The script is run periodically and looks in the directory of every user who is eligible for a listing on the page. If the file index.html is found there then an entry is made. Thus you no longer need to ask anyone to set up the link for you - it will be created automatically.
• There is a program which will put in the link .public_html into your home directory, pointing to your web directory, and which will also create a very basic homepage for you. It is called gen_homepage and has instructions with it. You can run it from a Sun or a PC.
• Fred can point to his homepage with any of the following URLs:
  http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/fred/
  http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/fred/index.html
  http://www.ma.utexas.edu/~fred/
  http://www.ma.utexas.edu/~fred/index.html
  but to use either of the last two he needs two things. The first is a link /home/fred/.public_html which points to his web directory (this link can be set up automatically, see the next section) and the second is that fred's home directory must be executable by all users. You can do this with the following:
  bash$ cd
  bash$ chmod +x .
• If you get a message which says "Permission denied" or something similar on your web pages then you probably don't have the permissions set correctly. For more information on permissions see the chmod man page, but the following commands should help:
  bash$ cd ~/.public_html
  bash$ chmod -R +r *

How to create a homepage for yourself

To create a homepage you need to do the following:

1. Create a symbolic link from your home directory to your web directory:
   ln -s /d/www/users/fred ~/.public_html
2. Create a file called index.html and copy it to ~/.public_html/
3. Make sure it has world read permission:
   chmod 644 ~/.public_html/index.html
4. Optionally, make sure your home directory has world execute permission: chmod +x ~/.

If you don't like the sound of this then don't panic. There is a program which will perform the first three steps for you. Simply run the command gen_homepage on any of the Suns or PCs. If you get a message saying something like, "Command not found" then use it as: /public/bin/gen_homepage. If you are eligible for an entry in the users page pointing to your homepage then the entry should appear in a couple of days.

Problems which you may encounter

• I don't have a directory /d/www/users/fred
  By some accident this was never created for you. Please email www@math.utexas.edu and request a directory.
• I already have a file .public_html in my home directory
  You need this file to be a symbolic link, pointing to /d/www/users/fred in order to use the URL: http://www.ma.utexas.edu/~fred/ to point to your homepage. It is also a quick way of getting to your web directory from your home directory. Before creating the link you should rename this file or directory to something else.
• I don't have an entry in the users page which points to my homepage
1. Check that you are eligible to have an entry in it. Please see the section on the users page to see if you are eligible.
2. Check the date stamp at the bottom of the users page. If the date is before the time when you created your file then the page hasn't been updated yet - wait until it has been.
3. Check that you have a file called index.html in the directory /d/www/users/fred
• When I try to open the URL, http://www.ma.utexas.edu/~fred/ I get the message "Permission denied" or "Forbidden to open."
1. Check that you have the link ~/.public_html/ pointing to your web directory, with the command ls -ld ~/.public_html/ You should see something like:
   1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 fred 19 Sept 11 21:34 /home/fred/.public_html/ -> /d/www/users/fred/
2. Check that your home directory has world execute permission, with ls -ld ~/.
   The permissions should be drwx--x--x at least. If not then you can add execute permissions with chmod +x ~/.
   NOTE: If you do not want execute permission on your home directory then you cannot use this URL. You must use http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/fred/ instead.
3. Check that the file /home/fred/.public_html/index.html exists and has world read permission. Use: ls -l ~/.public_html/index.html you should see the permissions rw-r--r--. If not then change them with
   chmod 644 ~/.public_html/index.html

If you have tried the above and you haven't resolved your problem then please email www@math.utexas.edu explaining your difficulty.