Today:
This week’s social software: tilde server and finger
After listening to the interview with Lee Felsenstein about Community Memory and his work designing computer systems we have a good sense of how computer systems worked in the 60s, 70s and 80s. As computers were so expensive it was common for people to connect remotely from a lab. The machine they used had a monitor with a “dumb” terminal and keyboard connected to a remote shared computer in an arrangement called “Timesharing.” Community Memory acted as a kind of bulletin board with networked terminals set up at record shops and local student and hipster hangouts.
Computers today almost universally still function with the ability to support multiple users on a single machine, a result of this history.
Servers are the remote computers that host websites and applications and databases powering social software of today. But we can step back in time so-to-speak and use a remote shared computer system. A community of users of these shared systems are called a tilde community, and each user of the system is listed a tilde followed by their username.
~username
The tilde key can be found on the upper left of your keyboard. Press shift to activate the key.
Tilde communities are groups of people that use a shared computer together. They are places to practice using Linux, play games, host a blog, chat with other people, post to message boards, keep a wiki, explore new software. A tilde server might have a theme (science fiction, baking) or just be a place for shared enthusiasm for exploring computer systems. Some tilde communities are many years old and have hundreds of users. Others are tiny, with a handful of users. In many tilde servers the community gets to know each other over time through reading each other’s posts and having chats.
Tildeverse is a website that lists many tilde communities, and has shared software and projects to explore.
Our server is called anti-soft and you can login via ssh, secure shell.
ssh username@149.28.226.230
Replace username with your name on the server
ssh stands for secure socket shell. The shell is the text command line interface to interact with the computer system (as opposed to the GUI). This is a secure method for a user to log in to a remote computer’s shell. We’ll all be accessing the same shell but with different accounts on it.
When you first log in, you’ll type in your password and you’ll see the Message of the Day displayed.
Afterwards you are presented with a friendly prompt so that you can enter commands into the server’s shell.
These commands will work on any Linux or BSD-derived system, including OS X’s Terminal. Windows users will want to install git-shell.
cd <foldername> to jump to a directory or cd .. to go back (and cd by itself to go home)
ls to list files in current directory
pwd to display current directory (aka folder) name
cat <filename> prints out a file
touch <filename> creates a new file
nano <filename> edits a file
man <command> displays the manual for a command. arrows to scroll. q to quit.
mkdir <directory-name> creates a folder (directory)
rm <filename> deletes a file permanently (careful!)
Note: You can read any Linux resource for more info on basic linux commands.
users - lists all users on the computer
who - lists everyone currently logged in
write <username> - starts a direct live message
wall "my message" - broadcasts your message (and Control-L to clear screen of messages)
cowsay "my message" - for important announcements
sl - When you type ls backwards
figlet - for creating banner images
ansiweather -l "Brooklyn, NY" - fetch weather
w3m <url> - web browser
python - the programming language
finger <username> - displays info on a user
fish - our shell (already running)
We also have many games installed:
adventure, arithmetic, atc, backgammon, battlestar, bcd, boggle, caesar, canfield, countmail, cribbage, dab, go-fish, gomoku, hack, hangman, hunt, mille, monop, morse, number, pig, phantasia, pom, ppt, primes, quiz, random, rain, robots, rot13, sail, snake, tetris-bsd, trek, wargames, worm, worms, wump, wtf
Linux systems have this interestingly named tool called finger that shows you the personal information of other users, as well as their current plans and the project they are working on.
finger [username]
Examples:
finger jroig@finger.farm
or
finger lee
In the top example, jroig is on a different server so we type the full domain as well. In the second example, ~lee is on the same server so we only need to write the username.
To set your own details, “change finger”: chfn.
You can notify others what you are up to by making a file .plan at ~/.plan. Do you remember how to create a file? All files starting with a period are hidden.
You can also indicate to others about a project you are working on by making a file at ~/.project. Both of these files are plain text.
All this information will be included when people “finger” you.
See who’s online with who.
You can write to all, with wall "message". This will dump your message on the screen of all logged in users, interrupting their work. This is fun or annoying, depending on who you ask and how often you do this. Others can clear their screen and continue working with Ctrl-L.
You can also write to individual users, simple say write [user]. It can occur that a user is logged in multiple times, in that case you need to be more specific, for example write edwin pts/0. You can find all that info under who. Also handy to know: you quit writing a message, type Ctrl-D.
Some info in this section adapted from Edwin Wenink
Read The Origin of the Finger Command, originally an email sent to the Alt.folklore.computers usenet group in 1990.
Fill out your finger profile, plan and project. Run the finger command on other users.
Read What Are Tildes and How You Can Use Tilde Computing
Browse Tildeverse Zine issue 1
Try out the various installed programs on our tilde server. Navigate through the file system. Chat with others. Use finger to view other users.
Our anti-soft tilde server is a smaller area for social software and social media. You may also have experience with social software serving a smaller community: a family text group or a Discord server for a group of friends playing a game for example.
On your class blog you set up on your student server space, add a post: