athena% zlocate username
This will bring up a list of hostnames of Athena machines that person
is logged into currently. If you get a message that says Hidden
or not logged in
, this can mean several things. First, it can
mean that person is not logged into an Athena machine. It can also
mean that for some reason, that person has decided to hide himself or
that the person has turned off his ability to receive zephyr messages
by terminating his zwgc process. Note that if you try to
zlocate
a username that does not exist, you will still
receive the Hidden or not logged in
message.
Note that Athena cluster computer hostnames are based on the building and room number of the cluster. For example, if zlocating a friend shows that he is logged into w20-575-67 and m66-080-1, that means that he is logged into a computer in room 575 in building W20 (Student Center) and a computer in the basement cluster (room 080) of building 66.
.anyone
file is a buddy list. By creating a text
file named .anyone
in your home directory with a list of
Athena usernames (one on each line), you can easily see which of them
is logged in. To see who on your .anyone
file is logged
in, type:
athena% xzul &
For a more informative, non-refreshing display, type:
athena% znol
After issuing znol
, you will receive zephyrgrams when
people in your .anyone file log in or log out, if they have set their
exposure appropriately. If you wish for this to happen automatically
upon logging in, append znol
to the end of the
.startup.X
and/or .startup.tty
files in your
home directory. (You may have to create the files if they don't exist
already.)
athena% zwrite username1 username2 username3
where username1
, username2
, and
username3
are the usernames of the intended
recipients. You can add as many (or as few) usernames as you want to
the zwrite
command. If you zephyr multiple people, and
you wish to add a CC line to inform them who you are zephyring, add
the "-C" flag right after the zwrite
. Keep in mind that
command line options for zwrite
are case-sensitive, so -C
is not the same as -c.
A Zephyr class exists as long as at least one person is subscribed to it, so if you want to use a new Zephyr class to talk with a group of friends, just come up with a name, and make sure you and your friends are subscribed to that class.
To temporarily subscribe to a Zephyr class for just your current Athena session, type:
athena% zctl sub class_name \* \*
To subscribe to a Zephyr class for current and future Athena sessions, type:
athena% zctl add class_name \* \*
To temporarily unsubscribe from a Zephyr class, type:
athena% zctl unsub class_name \* \*
To unsubscribe from a Zephyr class for current and future Athena
sessions, type:
athena% zctl del class_name \* \*
To subscribe to or unsubscribe from a Zephyr instance, you should use
class MESSAGE
, and the name of the instance in place of
the first \*. For example, to subscribe to white-magic
athena% zctl add MESSAGE white-magic \*
athena% zwrite -i instancename
This changes the instance you are sending to from
PERSONAL
to
instancename
, and by default sends to the class
MESSAGE
. For example, zwrite -i help
would
send a zephyrgram to the instance help
, and anyone who
had subscribed to the help
instance would receive the
zephyrgram.
To send a zephyr to a class, type:
athena% zwrite -c classname
This sends a zephyrgram to class classname
instead of class
MESSAGE
. By default, it will send to the instance
PERSONAL
within class classname
.
To send a zephyr to an instance within a class, type:
athena% zwrite -c classname -i
instancename
Capitalization does not matter in the names of Zephyr classes
and instances. For example, zwrite -i white-magic
is the
same as zwrite -i WHITE-MAGIC
, which is the same as
zwrite -i WhIte-mAGiC
, etc. Anyone subscribed to the
instance white-magic
will receive zephyrgrams sent with
any of these capitalizations.
Also note that people will often refer to zephyr classes and instances
by -c
and -i
respectively. For example,
-c help -i food
would refer to zephyr instance
food
within the zephyr class help
.
-i network
. This is not an officially supported
channel, however, meaning that information is not always sent here,
and this is not a guaranteed way to contact the network group.
As mentioned in Friday's column, 3-DOWN provides information about
both scheduled and unscheduled network and service outages. To
receive updates every time the information on 3-DOWN changes, you can
subscribe to -c 3down
.
If you'd like to get zephyr notification when you receive new mail,
you can subscribe to -c mail
. If you have SpamAssassin
set up, as described in the March 14, 2003 column, you can subscribe
to -c mail -i inbox
to receive notification only for
non-spam messages.
Finally, for help on any topic you can think of, you can subscribe to
-c help
and send zephyrs there with your questions.
Other people who have also chosen to subscribe to -c help
may then respond. If you know the answer to a question, you are
encouraged to participate as well and help others.
Keep in mind that when send zephyrs to classes, it is customary to also use an instance name to specify the subject, e.g.:
athena% zwrite -c help -i
motorcycles
For example, if the user named sipbtest wanted to communicate with a group of his friends, he could send zephyrs to class sipbtest, and ask his friends to subscribe to class sipbtest. In addition, random acquaintances often subscribe to the personal zephyr classes of people they know.
If you are interested in personal zephyr classes, it may be a good
idea to subscribe to the zephyr classes corresponding to everyone in
your .anyone
file. Many of your friends may be using
their personal zephyr classes already.
Owl
" as an easy-to-use text-mode Zephyr client.
owl
is in the ktools
locker and can be run like this:
athena% add ktools
athena% owl
The most important command to know in owl is 'h
', which
brings up the online help. Here is quick summary of the other commonly
used keys:
<up> <down> | move up and down between zephyrgrams |
<left> <right> | scroll around within long zephyrgrams |
z | send a zephyrgram (you can use -C , -c and -i just as with zwrite ) |
r | reply to current zephyrgram |
d | mark current zephyrgram for deletion |
x | delete marked zephyrgrams |
l | show list of online users (equivalent of znol) |
:q<enter> | quit owl |
If you are interested in learning more about owl
, check
out the owl webpage: http://web.mit.edu/ktools/www/owl.html
You can also use owl-beta
, currently version 2.0.7, which
has some advanced features, including the ability to log into AIM.
Though other programs, such as gaim
in the
im
locker provide more familiar interfaces for using AIM,
owl-beta
can provide one convenient interface for both
instant message protocols. Keep in mind, though, that this is a beta
version, and may contain bugs. To run owl-beta
, type
athena% add ktools
athena% owl-beta
In order to log into AIM, first type ":" This should bring up a prompt
at the bottom of your owl-beta
window. Type
aimlogin yourscreename
and owl-beta
should
prompt you for your password. In order to add a buddy to your buddy
list (on both the AIM server and your session), use addbuddy aim
samplescreenname
, and to delete a buddy from your buddy list,
use delbuddy aim samplescreenname
. To send an instant
message to someone, you follow almost the exact same procedure as
sending a Zephyr: type "a", and then enter the screenname of that
person.