NYX, The Spirit of the Night Introductory Information What is Nyx? Nyx is a public access Unix system that brings you as much access to the resources of Unix and the Internet as we can allow. It is a public computing equivalent to public TV. Nyx is a free, public system that provides access to the Internet for users who otherwise cannot reach it. Nyx is run by a non-profit, tax exempt corporation called "Nyx Net." Reaching NYX Nyx can support 24 users dialed in on 303-409-1401. In addition, an users can telnet in from other computer networks. Fun things to do on Nyx The best way to see the system is to try out all the various menus. Most people enjoy the Communications area (particularly "NetNews", which can be quite addictive), downloading/uploading files, and using the raw Unix system underneath the menus. Local messages and bulletins are in the "news", contained in newsgroups whose names begin with "nyx.", such as "nyx.misc". First time users should head this way first and regular users should check these groups ... regularly. NetNews is where the major "action" is on Nyx, with tens of thousands of worldwide message areas that see considerable traffic. Policies You must get "validated" to do anything. See the 'how' option in the 'val' menu. Please do *exactly* what it says in that file in order to gain access. Users are requested to keep disk space usage to a minimum, and will suffer the dreaded "all files removed" fate if they exceed 1 MB in their HOME directory. Please see the disk space usage guidelines for information on this and the /nyx/tmp directory, where you can temporarily store larger amounts of data. Please try to keep your space in "home" under 2MB. Users not logging in for more than 90 days will be removed (including all files). If you have been validated you can be revalidated (val menu 'r' option) but your files are not recoverable. Currently a volunteer time limit of one-hour a day connect time is requested to provide fair access to all. Backups of files are NOT performed regularly and are only for use in case of disaster (like disk crash) -- this system is run by volunteers. Thus we can't recover files if you lose them (it's too time consuming). Don't even ask. Basic & Advanced Menu Navigation At each prompt of "Choice:" you should pick one of the letters or words found down the left side of the menu. At various places you may find yourself at a prompt of "--More--" or similar -- such as at the bottom of the screen right now. At this prompt you may press the space bar to continue, control-B to go back a screen, or the "q" key to quit reading. To leave the system, type "bye" at the "Choice:" prompt. "x" will exit any menu and return you to the previous menu. "top" or "T" (capital T) will take you to the top (initial) menu. (Note that various *programs* use 'q' to quit, vs. 'x' to exit. Try 'q' first.) To set your terminal type, choose "c" from the "s" (System Status) menu. The initial type is vt100, suitable for many micro communication programs. For extended information about the commands that are run, use the "help" command from any menu; follow it with the option letters of what you're interested in, such as "help f" for help on what choosing option "f" would do. (Note that some options have no help -- just try them!) You can 'batch' menu commands, by separating them with a comma. As in, typing "i,h,x" from the main menu will go into the info menu, read the nyx history, and exit the info menu. Also, you can create menu macros: create a file .mshellmac in your home directory, where you want to put lines like name=commands as in hist=top,i,h,x And execute as #hist (including inside other macros or multi-command lines). To execute a "pure" Unix command you may enter it at the "Choice:" prompt preceded by an exclamation mark, as in "!who". It is NOT recommended that you do this unless you are familiar with Unix. You may learn Unix by choosing the "learn" option from the education menu. You may abandon the use of this menu system and use the standard Unix environment (the "shell") by doing "!csh" ("exit" to return to the menu). If you have any questions or need help, send mail to support ("fb" from the main menu). First, though, see 'faq' (Frequently Asked Questions) on the main menu -- all the common questions are answered there. System Information Nyx provides public access to the Internet and the Unix environment, and all this entails, such as: - Internet access. There are many other systems that have files you can grab (via "ftp"), creating an effective download area of many Terabytes. - World Wide Web access with the text browser "Lynx" and your own webspace. - Usenet news, a bulletin board with messages in over 30,000 categories, shared by a network of millions of machines around the world, with millions of readers. - Complete access to a multi-tasking operating system. Feel free to engage in text processing, programming, game playing, or other recreational activities. The system itself is on two Sun SparcServer 2's (nyx & noc), a Sun SparcServer 1+ (arachne), a SparcServer 10 (nyx10 or nox) and the new 586 (iris). All machine were entirely paid for by user donations. The Suns were purchased as the result of fund drives while Nyx was still part of the University of Denver Math & Computer Science Department and the 586 was added a few months after the network left the University in the fall of 1997. Nyx has 32 Mb of primary memory and about 1.5 gigabyte of disk space, and runs SunOS 4.1.4. Nyx10 has 32Mb RAM and 5Gb disk and runs SunOS 4.1.2 (soon to be upgraded). The modems are connected to two Annex terminal servers, all of which were also purchased via donations. All this is maintained by an administrative staff of volunteers including, Terry Knab, System Administrator. Donations of equipment or time are welcomed and will be acknowledged in this file (and soon in a special webpage). (Updated 3/04/02) Acknowledgements... This system owes thanks to: The several thousand donors who pitched in to purchase - 14 AT&T Dataport modems - Annex XL terminal server - SparcServer 10 Jill Fildey and GWL again, for a port board and other Sun parts The two hundred or so loyal Nyx users for donating to the fund drive for the SparcServer II (too many to list -- but thank you all!) Lisa Ray and USWest, for another Vax [no longer with us, though] Cyro Lord, family, and friends at Alpha Communications for a Telebit 2500 PEP/v.32 9600 bps modem DU's Computing & Information Resources, for all the Vaxen [Which were subsequently donated to Geo. Washington HS, 6/91] Brian Lord and Martin/Martin Associates, for a power conditioner Trygve Lode, for a 2400 baud modem Jim Hensley, for a 2400 baud modem so we could retire a 1200 Pyramid Technologies, for helping in a time of need Practical Peripherals, for two v.32 9600 bps modems The following users, for donating the cash to buy the USR Dual Standard 9600 bps modem: Blanche Cohen and the local ACM, Dom Bucciarelli, Ron Carter, Garth Courtois, Jill Fildey, Bill Hester, Michael Hill, David Kessner, Trygve Lode, Mike Holmes, Dave Schneider, Tim Wilhite, and Jack Woehr Eric Eastman of Telectronics, for donating 1Gb of disks Mike Weaver of Great West Life, for donating 1Gb of disks, a laser printer, and networking gear Jimmy LaVita, the department Chair, for allowing the use of the old Pyramid system for Nyx Don McCarthy, Math/CS Operations Manager who's always willing to fix what's broken Dinesh Punjabi, for coding the first version of the menu system Staff of Computing and Information Resources, for allowing the use of their phone lines, and donating lots of equipment Mark Armbrust, for donating ten much needed modems Ben Scott, for donating a much needed modem, helping us go multi-line Zimmerman Metals, for donating the orignal hardware (a PDP 11/70) And many others.....