Getting Started

From BarnOwl

This document will make a few assumptions: You have an Athena account, you want to use zephyr, and you want to be able to use barnowl for zephyr the way a lot of other barnowl users do. This document will refer to barnowl, but most or all of it should apply to owl as well.

How (and why) do most barnowl users use barnowl?

1. They subscribe to a large number of zephyr classes. barnowl makes it easy to subscribe to a large number of zephyr classes without becoming overwhelmed, because barnowl allows the user to narrow their view of zephyr messages down to a particular class, or even to customs sets of classes described by filters.

2. They're always logged on to zephyr, even when they're not at a computer terminal. Not only do they subscribe to lots of classes, but they may be interested in what people say on those classes while they're not around, so they keep barnowl running on a server inside a program called screen. They connect to their screen session from just about any computer, sort of like checking their email, and approximately as compulsively.

How to get barnowl running in a screen session:

Note: There's a detailed tutorial on this subject, by kchen, available on the web at http://web.mit.edu/kchen/bin/owl-screen.txt or on Athena at /afs/athena.mit.edu/users/k/c/kchen/bin/owl-screen.txt . The following instructions are a paraphrased, abbreviated adaptation of that tutorial.

!!!UNDER CONSTRUCTION, look at kchen's tutorial until this is finished!!!

0. Set up your Athena account to be able to run the programs involved here: if you don't already automatically add the gnu and barnowl lockers when you log in, add the following line into your .environment file:

add gnu barnowl

1. Log in to the server: Use ssh to log in to an athena server that won't kick you off. The athena 'dialups' reached through athena.dialup.mit.edu aren't suitable for this, but the public 'debathena' server linerva.mit.edu, run by SIPB, will work. An even better solution is to log into a friend's private athena server, if you know someone who runs one.

2. Learn to use a screen session: detaching, reattaching, and manipulating windows

3. Run the barnowl-screen script *only once* (there is no such script yet, but there might be soon)

4. Set up $foo kerberos ticket management solution in your screen session

5. Get more advanced with your barnowl use with various colors and filters

6. Become hopelessly addicted to zephyr as a social medium and worry about the utility or futility of it all.