Tips and Tricks

Build personal home page on Physics Department Server

If you have an account on Physics server, you can have a personal homepage at https://physics.nyu.edu/~yourusername

Installing extra latex packages

For department linux computers,

If you have PACKAGE_NAME.tds.zip, go to step 4. Otherwise, unzip PACKAGE_NAME.zip
cd PACKAGE_NAME If there is a PACKAGE_NAME.ins, run latex on the ins latex PACKAGE_NAME.ins
If there is a PACKAGE_NAME.dtx, and you want documentation latex PACKAGE_NAME.dtx. Visit the title link for details.
Create ~/texmf if you don't have the directory cd ; mkdir texmf
If there is a PACKAGE_NAME.tds.zip, cd ~texmf/; unzip PATH/PACKAGE_NAME.tds.zip. Otherwise, if there is no special instructions in README file, put the unzipped folder from step 1 in ~/texmf/tex/latex/
Run texhash ~/texmf

Include EPS figures and other image formats in LaTeX/TeX documents

Include this package, \usepackage{graphicx}. And here is sample line on how to include an image: \includegraphics[width=.3\linewidth]{example-image}. dvi only supports eps, the other image formats would only show up in pdf.

Dial NYU Internal Telephone Numbers

Just dial the 5-digit number for calls to any NYU NY buildings (except NYU Langone).
To call outside of NYU, dial "9" first, such as ``91212xxxxxxx'' (for 212 area code) and ``91718xxxxxxx'' (for 718 area code).
If you only know the extension and are calling from outside to an NYU NY building(except NYU Langone):
- Before the 5-digit number that starts with 2 or 8: add 99 and the area code is 212.
- Before the 5-digit number that starts with 3: add 44 and the area code is 212.
- Before the 5-digit number that starts with 7: add 99 and the area code is 646.

Set aliases for Unix/Linux commands

Aliases are short cuts of long commands. You can set aliases in bash, csh and tcsh. Following are examples of setting alias lp6 to print file on hp9050.

bash: Add following line in your ~/.bashrc file
alias lp9='lpr -Php9050'
csh/tcsh: Add following line in your ~/.cshrc file
alias lp9 'lpr -Php9050'
Use command source ~/.bashrc or source ~/.cshrc to make aliases available.
Type alias to see the list of all your aliases.
The the command of printing file paper.ps will be lp9 paper.ps instead of lpr -Php9050 paper.ps
You can remove the alias by some thing like unalias lp9
If the alias line is in your ~/.bashrc(~/.cshrc) file, you will have the alias everytime you login.

Forward email to another account

Change login shell from bash to tcsh

Usually, the default login shell on Physics Department Linux computers is bash. Email us to change your default shell. Or put tcsh in your ~/.bash_profile; however, this method means you need to exit both shells when you logout.