This is the March, 2000 newsletter of the ITC Research Computing Support Group. If you have any questions or concerns on the information presented here please contact the ITC Research Computing Support Group via email to res-consult@virginia.edu, or at the Research Computing Support Center, 244 Wilson Hall, 243-8800. The Research Computing Support Center is open 9AM-5PM, Monday through Friday.
Some ITC-licensed software (primarily statistical software) that was being distributed by Cavalier Computers is now available at ITC's Research Computing Support Center, 244 Wilson Hall (around the corner from the ITC Help Desk).
The software packages formerly available at Cavalier Computers that are now distributed at the RCSC are eXceed, Maple, SAS, SPSS, and Amos. All the same license terms and conditions still apply and in general the cost of the media is the same or less. The software may be purchased with department fund codes or by check, we can not accept cash or credit cards.
Student and non-site-licensed versions of software packages (such as SPSS "GradPack" or Student versions of Maple or S-Plus) will continue to be available at exclusively at Cavalier Computers.
For a list of software packages now distributed at the Research Computing Support Center, and the related student versions available at Cavalier Computers, click here.
If you don't see the software you want listed on this page, email us at res-consult@virginia.edu and let us know. If we get enough mailings on a particular package we'll investigate site licensing.
AMOS 4.0 has been released to the public for some months and the site-licensed version can be purchased for $10.00 at the Research Computing Support Center. AMOS is an easy-to-use software package intended for structural equation modeling. To find out about new features of AMOS 4.0, check out the following URL:
http://www.smallwaters.com/amos_4/amos4_features.html
For users who want to continue using AMOS 3.6 (the main reason for doing so is that AMOS Text, the textual command interface to AMOS, is no longer available in AMOS 4.0) should download the latest AMOS patch. This patch is for users of AMOS versions 3.6.0, 3.6.1, 3.6.1a or 3.6.1b and it will upgrade your AMOS software to version 3.6.2. This patch will fix a Y2K problem with AMOS 3.6.x, in which AMOS 3.6.x quit producing graphical output. The user was not able to use the "Groups/Models" tool button to select the graphical output. Even though AMOS successfully fitted the model, no "OK:Output" showed up to select. This 3.6.2 patch will allow AMOS to work properly.
Download this patch from the following URL:
http://www.spss.com/tech/downloads/amos.htm?su
Additional information about AMOS can be found at the Research Computing Support Group's AMOS webpage at the following URL:
http://www.itc.Virginia.EDU/research/amoshelp.html
The Research Computing Support Group has entered into an agreement with the Stata Corporation making the University of Virginia a GradPlan site for Stata statistical software. Under the GradPlan, faculty, staff and students can now obtain Stata software at reduced, academic pricing, and the software can be installed on home or office computers, either UVa or personally owned. To obtain software under this plan, individuals contact Stata Corp. directly to order Stata software and documentation. You can then pick up your materials the next business day (generally) from the Research Computing Support Center which holds a supply of Stata materials in inventory. Prices for the GradPlan software and documentation are as follows:
| Small Stata 6.0 and Getting Started manual | $55 |
| Intercooled Stata 6.0 and Getting Started | $99 |
| User's Guide and Extract Manual (GradDoc) | $49 |
| Stata User's Guide | $25 |
| Stata Extract Manual | $35 |
| 4-volume Reference Manual set | $105 |
| Stata Graphics Manual | $15 |
| ProfDoc (4-Volume reference, Graphics & Guide) | $130 |
Stata 6.0 is available under GradPlan for Windows 95/98/NT, Windows 3.1, Power Macintosh, 680x0 Macintosh, and Linux. Only Intercooled Stata is available on the Linux platform, not Small Stata. Small Stata has all the features of Intercooled Stata but can only process datasets of around 1,000 observations and 99 variables.
The table of contents for each manual can be viewed at the following URL: http://www.stata.com/bookstore/documentation.html
You can order Stata in any of the following ways (be sure to specify that you are ordering Stata under the GradPlan at the University of Virginia):
After your order is received by Stata, they will notify the Research Computing Support Center and you may pick up your materials there (244 Wilson Hall) the next business day.
Departments wishing to purchase multiple copies of Stata should inquire with the Research Computing Support Group about lab packs. Lab pack pricing is as follows:
| $125.00 | STATA Lab starter Kit 6.0 (Windows 95/98/NT) containing 1 full manual set |
| $70.00 | per user for Intercooled Stata 6.0 |
| $18.00 | shipping via UPS Ground |
The lab pack version can be put on faculty home computers, office machines and lab machines without any restriction except that you cannot exceed the number of licensed installations. For individual users, the difference between buying software under a lab pack arrangement through your department versus the GradPlan is that the former option is slightly cheaper ($70.00 versus $99.00) but the latter comes with a Getting Starting manual.
For more information about Stata, please visit their website at the following URL:
Also, the Research Computing Support Center (244 Wilson) has Stata installed on its Windows platforms and users are encouraged to come by and try it out.
The Gauss software program was recently upgraded to version 3.2.40. Users can access Gauss via an account on blue.unix (an RS/6000 machine running the Unix-based AIX operating system). The University has a license for 10 concurrent users of Gauss which is paid for by the Department of Economics.
GAUSS is a high level matrix programming language specializing in commands, functions, and procedures for data analysis and statistical applications. These functions include mathematical, statistical and scientific functions; data handling routines (including data matrix manipulation and description routines); and file input/output programming statements (including branching, looping, display features, error checking, and shell commands).
Users should invoke Gauss on blue.unix by typing "gauss" at the prompt. For more information about Gauss, please check out the Research Computing Support Group's Gauss webpage at the following URL:
http://www.itc.Virginia.EDU/research/gauss.html
The new teTeX distribution can be accessed with the following commands:
teTeX 1.0 contains many enhancements over the current distribution of teTeX, for more information on these new features visit:
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/tetex1.newhelpindex.html
Additional information on teTeX 1.0 can be found at:
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/tetex1.helpindex.html
AMBER, a package of molecular simulation programs which include source code and demos, has been updated from Version 5 to Version 6.0 for AIX, IRIX and Solaris on all systems which mount the /common tree from jeeves.itc.virginia.edu. For general information on this package, users should see:
http://www.amber.ucsf.edu/amber/amber.html
AMBER 6.0 is considered stable, and AMBER 5.0 users are encouraged to move to AMBER 6.0 as soon as possible.
Instructions for using AMBER on UVa systems can be found in /common/amber6/README. Specifically, in order to use AMBER, you must set the environment variables PATH and AMBERHOME as follows:
for ksh users
PATH=$PATH:/common/amber6/exe
AMBERHOME=/common/amber; export AMBERHOME
or for csh users
set path=($path /common/amber6/exe)
setenv AMBERHOME /common/amber6
ITC provides only limited support and assistance for AMBER, therefore questions should be sent to res-consult@virginia.edu
The old, cantankerous, data archive known as "maggie" or "/archive" is gone for good. This is really old news to those who had an "archive" account, but we want to emphasize the change, because the switchover has gone so well, and performance has been so positively enhanced, we think many may have missed the improvement.
Through IBM's Shared University Research (SUR) program, ITC obtained an IBM 3494 tape robot, with an initial capacity of 6 terabytes running the ADSTAR Distributed Storage Manager (ADSM). The migration of files from maggie to the new Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) system was done last fall, finishing in December, 1999. If you were a past user of maggie, you have already been migrated and contacted by Hamp Carruth about the switchover.
To access your files and data, you now go to /net/hsm/user-id where "user-id" is your blue.unix user-id, e.g, abc1z If you try to use "/archive/user-id" or "/net/archive/user-id" you will get a not found or permission denied message. Simply change to using "/net/hsm/user-id" to access your files.
If you need large data file archive space and do not have an HSM directory or you have questions about your migration from "maggie" to the HSM, please contact us at Res-Consult@Virginia.EDU or stop by the Research Computing Support Center, 244 Wilson Hall, 243-8800.
ITC has licensed the data analysis/visualization software IDL 5.3 with the help of several departments. The University now has 50 floating network licenses for IDL 5.3 on the following platforms: Sun Solaris, SGI IRIX, IBM AIX, Linux, Compaq Tru64 Unix, and HP-UX, Windows (95/98/NT), and Macintosh. In addition to the standard IDL environment functionality, the University has 10 floating network licenses for the IDL Wavelet Toolkit on the same platforms.
IDL combines tools for projects ranging from "quick-look," interactive analysis and display to large-scale commercial programming projects in an easy-to-use, fully extensible environment. A detailed description of IDL can be found at the URL,
http://www.rsinc.com/idl/index.cfm
Further information regarding the new IDL license, including how to get started and get help using IDL, can be found on the Research Computing Services Web page at,
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/research/idl.html
Specific questions about the new license as well general questions concerning as the use of IDL should be directed to res-consult@virginia.edu.