First steps for Math 461 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

This guide explains how to set up your Engineering Work Station (EWS) account. The level of detail (and the inclusion of rather obvious steps) is not meant to belittle you; we just want to make sure that everyone gets started without a hitch, so that we can focus on mathematics. If you run into trouble, you can always ask one of the lab attendants for help.

• Activate your account at http://www.cites.uiuc.edu/ews/index.html. (Engineering students can skip this step.) Have an extended coffee break (an hour is usually enough) while your new password is being propagated to the lab machines.
• In 406B1 Engineering Hall (or 252 Everitt Laboratory, or 57 Grainger Engineering Library), sit down at a Linux machine or Sun workstation and log in with your NetID and your new password. If this doesn't work yet, have a coffee break and try again later. (If the lab machine lets you in but then kicks you out a few seconds later, just log in again and you'll be fine.)
• Start Matlab by typing matlab at the prompt in your terminal window.
• Click on the Netscape logo on the right hand side of the screen, wait for the browser window to appear (this may take a moment due to network congestion), then point your browser to http://www.math.uiuc.edu/iprom/. Bookmark the page by right-clicking in the browser window.
• Click on Download in the navigation bar on the left, then follow the installation instructions.
• Log out: When you're done, remember to exit from Matlab, and finally log out of your account by clicking on the Exit button in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
• Keep in mind that in the future, you need to cd into your IPROM installation directory before starting Matlab. For instance, if you have installed IPROM in the directory my_iprom, you need to type cd my_iprom in your terminal window before typing matlab.

Printing at EWS labs

When you issue a print command, your print job is not immediately sent to a printer. Rather, it is put on hold in a queue until you give the print command from the "Print Jobs" window. You need to open the "Print Jobs" window by clicking on the corresponding icon on the right hand side of the screen, and then repeatedly type q to cycle through the various printer queues until you find the one containing your print job. Then use the arrow keys to move down to your job, and print it by typing p or cancel it by typing c. This seems rather arcane, but the EWS people have good reasons for doing it this way.

Note: EWS lets you print 300 free pages per semester. After that, you have to pay. You can find out how many pages you have already printed by typing uquota in a terminal window.

Print accounts for non-engineering students: Non-engineering students can set up printing privileges for their EWS account by going to https://www-s.ews.uiuc.edu/ews-s/print_agree. Printing will then be billed to Student Accounts Receivable at a rate of 8 cents per page for black and white printing and 32 cents per page for color printing.