2.670 ME Tools

Using Zephyr Instances

Zephyr is Athena's text based communication systems, for sending instant zephyrgrams among users who are logged onto athena. Instances are like mailing lists for zephyrs. You can send a zephyr to an instance, and everyone subscribed to that instance will get your message. This is helpful for group zephyr discussions and specially with getting help in classes with other people in the course such as instructors, UA's, and other students who are are logged on and are on the instance.

To subscribe to the 2.670 instance, type in your Xterm:

	zctl sub message 2.670 \* 
Then to write to the instance, type:
	zwrite -i 2.670 
Another important thing is unsubscribing to instances. To do this, type:
	zctl unsub message 2.670 \* 



If you don't want to keep typing the whole zwrite -i 2.670 line whenever you want to zephyr the instance, you can use an alias for the command. For example, if you want to use z2670 as an alias, open your .cshrc.mine file from your home directory.
	emacs ~/.cshrc.mine 
Add the following line:
	alias z2670 'zwrite -i 2.670' 
Save and exit the file:
	Control-x, Control-s

	Control-x, Control-c 
To activate the alias right away, type in your xterm:
	source ~/.cshrc.mine 
Now all you have to do to zwrite the instance is type z2670. Cool, huh?

Instructors and UA's should be subscribed to the 2.670 instance so that they can help you out. Since we all have different levels of experience with Athena and computer tools, you guys can also help each other out if you know the answer to a question. But if you still can't figure something out, contact your instructor, UA, or email 2.670adm@mit.edu.

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