PHYSICS 141/241

 

Laboratory Session I: Linux and Visualization

1. The Computational Physics Laboratory

As an important part of the new Computational Physics Program, in a collaborative effort with UCSD Academic Computing Services, we built a computational physics laboratory which is located at 6126 Urey Hall. The new laboratory has a farm of modern workstations with scientific visualization and multimedia capabilities, access to a server of sufficient computational power and disk storage to implement the software gracefully, and auxillary equipment such as high-resolution laser printer, color printer, color scanner, etc. The configuration of the workstation platform was designed to be flexible. Each machine is dual bootable into Windows and the Linux operating systems on demand, and a fast ethernet connection provides access to the campus and the Internet.

Laboratory Setup:

  • Accounts
  • Network
  • File System
  • Printing
  • Operating System

    • Assignment: Familiarize yourself with the Computer Lab setup as much as possible. Get your account working, access phcomp.ucsd.edu from different environments, check out your file system, check out the printer environment.

    2. Unix/Linux Tutorials 

    Basic Unix Tutorial

    Unix Tutorial

    Redhat Linux Enterprise 4 online manual (very similar to CentOS 5)

    We will practice the following selected topics:

  • Work With Your Users Account (Intro)
  • Getting Started
  • KDE and Gnome Desktops
  • The Shell

    • Assignment: Work through the selected topics as listed above.

    3. C tutorial and Gnu web site

  • C programming course

  • Most complete C course

  • GNU Software

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    4. Firefox WEB Browser

    The main functions of Firefox:
  • Browsing on the Internet
  • Reading manuals
  • Displaying animations

    • Assignment: Set up Firefox according to your preferences.

    Toy Galaxy Simulation with Java

    5. First Look at Data Visualization: GNUPLOT

  • GNUPLOT WEB SITE FOR INFORMATION

  • GNUPLOT ONLINE DOCUMENTATION

  • FAQ

  • Not so FAQ

  • Useful and simple tutorial

  • command:

    /software/physics/bin/gnuplot

    •

    6. Industry Strength Data Visualization: IBM Data Explorer  (OpenDX)

    This professional grade visualization platform is in the public domain now. We will adapt this package as our data visualization package. The introductory manual (Quickstart Guide) is available now for a first look. You can read the manual in HTML format using your Netscape browser. You can also download the manual in postscript and PDF format.
    The IBM Documentation for Data Explorer exists in different formats.

    Quickstart Guide: This guide presents a "hands on" introduction to Data Explorer and is designed to help you start working with it immediately.
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