There are three sources of local help maintained on the Econometrics Laboratory system. These are accessible only from EML hosts.

The official, online UNIX manual
From the shell prompt, users can read the manual page on any UNIX command. The command "man man" will display the manual page about the manual itself. The command "man tsp" will display the manual page about the TSP program. Users may also view the manual pages using "xman &", which will put you into the x-windows version of the online UNIX manual. The difficulty in using the "man" pages is that you must know the exact UNIX command, which is sometimes not known by the user. In that case, you can use a keyword option, such as "man -k copy" to find the UNIX copy command, which is "cp". Or, you can also access the manual pages through the EML's local (EML hosts only) hypertext "help" system, where searching is enabled. Commands are also organized by category, such as "user commands". When you click on the category link, you will find an alphabetized list of commands. The list is linked to the correct man page for each command.

The local system "help" files
To see an index of topics, type "help- -l" at the shell prompt. These are files written on various topics by users, for users. They are ascii text files, and can be read from the command line with the command "help- filename". They may prove to be more helpful to you than the "man" pages. The "help" files are also part of the local hypertext "help" system, and are searchable by keyword.

The local system "news"
Users are urged to read the "news" at least once a week. Type "help- news" at the shell prompt. To continue scrolling, hit the space bar. To quit, use "q". Items of interest are posted here regarding software and system updates, new installations, bugs and fixes, and so on. The "news" is also accessible via the local hypertext "help" system.

We also strongly recommend that users pay attention to the "message of the day" banner that appears when you first login. It contains topical information about changes to the OS and applications software.

Help by Email
Send email to if you are having difficulties with your email.
Send email to if you are having difficulties with your EML account.
Send email to if you have questions about supported software.
Send email to to report hardware or network infrastructure problems.

There also is a trouble reporting wizard available. At the command prompt (%), type "trouble" and a carriage return. Use the GUI to create a trouble report by following the prompts and menus.