11. Help

11.1 Who, When, Where

For information on the use of SISSA research and computing facilities, please contact staff by e-mail, by phone or directly. The Computer Staff offices are located at the ground floor.

Accesses to Staff rooms as well as the telephone calls are limited from 9:30 to 11:30 in the morning and from 15:00 to 16:00 in the afternoon. Outside these periods you are kindly invited to use the e-mail.

Identification of the problem is a prerequisite for an effective solution. The following scheme will help you in the choice of the right assistant.

If your problem is...	Assistant (Substitute)
a Linux workstation	M. Picek, P. Accerboni (L. Urgias)
a Windows (NT/2000) computer	A. Tomicich (F. Lonzar)
Hardware failure	F. Lonzar (A. Tomicich)
Computer network & Internet	M. Talpo (D. Brunato)
E-mail	D. Brunato (L. Urgias, M. Talpo)
Calculus machines (OpenMosix, MPI)	P. Calucci (D. Brunato)
Programming & compilers	L. Urgias, M. Talpo (D. Brunato)
SISSA web pages	M. Zanello (L. Urgias, D. Brunato)

Please contact the substitute only in the case of absence of the assistant. If you are unable to identify the problem, send an e-mail with a description to helpdesk@sissa.it.

11.2 How

When asking for help please be prepared to answer the following questions:

1. what are the sympthoms of the problem?
   • bad answer: «I can't log in»
   • good answer: «when I try to log in via ssh, I get an error message about server key having been changed»
2. which machines are involved?
   • bad answer: «the main cluster»
   • good answer: «I was trying to log in from my home PC running BrandNewOS to
     [4]veryoldserver.sissa.it»
3. what applications/commands/actions/files are involved?
   • bad answer: «my favourite editor»
   • good answer: «nedit 5.3-1 with Motif 2.1.30, running on RedHat 8.0»
4. is the problem reproducible? how?
5. what were you doing just before the problem arose?
6. have you recently changed your password/preferences/configuration files?
7. do you know if this applies to other users as well?
8. (if you have solved or worked around it) how did you do?

Personnel addresses and working hours
Name	E-mail	Phone	Office location	Working hours
Pietro Accerboni	ace@sissa.it	485	ground floor, room 29	8:30-14:30 (17:30 tue, thu)
Mirna Avezzù	avezzu@sissa.it	536	ground floor, room 30	8:30-14:30 (17:30 wed, fri)
Davide Brunato	brunato@sissa.it	538	ground floor, room 28	8:30-14:30 (17:30 wed, fri)
Piero Calucci	calucci@sissa.it	496	ground floor, room 27	8:30-14:30 (17:30 tue, fri)
Fabio Lonzar	lonzar@sissa.it	540	ground floor, room 26	8:30-14:30 (17:30 mon, tue)
Marina Picek	marina@sissa.it	415	ground floor, room 27	8:30-14:30 (17:30 mon, tue)
Marco Talpo	talpo@sissa.it	506	ground floor, room 30	8:30-14:30 (17:30 mon, wed)
Andrea Tomicich	tomicich@sissa.it	537	ground floor, room 26	8:30-14:30 (17:30 tue, thu)
Luisa Urgias	urgias@sissa.it	539	ground floor, room 29	8:30-13:30
Maurizio Zanello	zanello@sissa.it	542	ground floor, room 28	8:30-14:30 (17:30 tue, thu)