Administration of the Earthquake Display Station

Introduction

This is a work under progress.

The Earthquake Display Station (EDS) operates under the RedHat Linux operating system. The windowing system is fvwm2. The goal of this page is to describe the organization of the EDS software and files. Most of the files that make up the EDS are managed at the earthquakes account level. Only a minimal amount of system level

General UNIX/RedHat Linux Information

For those of you familiar with the UNIX operating system, and in particular RedHat Linux, this section should be redundant. Unix is a multitasking, multiuser operating system. Unix systems utilize the idea of a login connection. A login can be either local (at the computer console) or remote (from anywhere on the connected network). A "user" is a person who has an "account" on the system. An "account" on the unix system contains information about who can get login to the system. It also contains a password that only the "user" should know. The multiuser part means that an arbitrary number of "users" can be "logged into" the system at any time. There is a specific account set up for the EDS called "earthquakes". This is the account that the EDS is run under.

System Files

There are only a few system files that are modified to configure the EDS. The main startup script /etc/rc.d/rc.local is modified to start up the ~earthquakes/EQInit script at system startup.

There is also a root level cron job that is run every 5 minutes that checks to see if the EDS is still running. If it isnt, it runs EQinit again.

EDS Files

The shell script ~earthquakes/EQInit does the following:

There is a cron job set up that runs ~earthquakes/EQCheck every 5 minutes. The shell script ~earthquakes/EQCheck does the following:

Installing an EDS

The biggest problem with installing the EDS is getting the IP address changed to the one required to run at its new home from that of the test site. The administrator needs to modify the following system files:

Installed Systems