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Finance Data Station
Research Computing (on UNIX)
Getting Setup to work on the U System
The U-System is The UA's unix system that most individuals in the department of finance and accounting will access in order to conduct research and access certain sets of data. The UA offers numerous applications for use in the unix environment of the U System including SAS, Fortran 77 and 90/95 (information on accessing IMSL libraries is here), Matlab, Splus, and several others. A complete list of the applications available on the U system is here. To begin getting the process of getting setup to do research on the U System, follow Mark Trombley's easy step by step process on his website at http://www.ic.arizona.edu/ic/trombley/dbdocs/setup.html.
Follow steps 1 through 3 to establish your account, download SSH if you have not already, and log on to the unix "U" system.
After you have access to the Unix system, you will need to get further permission to access the "/fa" folder system which is where all of the financial and accounting data is stored. The person that can give you this permission is Mark Trombley in the Accounting department. Email Mark at trombley@email.arizona.edu in order to get this permission set. Be sure to include your association with the department (e.g. why do you want to access the financial data?) and your U system username.
Once you have this permission set, follow steps 5 and 6 on Mark's website above to create your working research directory and set some unix preferences. From there, it's all about knowing some basic unix commands (for navigating the unix system and working with files and directories) and working on the fortran code itself.
One of the steps listed on Mark's site is to create a .tcshrc file which is simply a text file that includes a list of unix commands that will be executed every time you log in to the system. Import this .tcshrc file in to your home unix directory by using the secure ftp function of SSH. To import the .tcshrc file that already has the two lines of code added to access the crsp libraries (and which Mark's website discusses in #6), follow these instructions:
TCSHRC file instructions
- Right click here
- Click "Save Target As" Save the .tcshrc file to your desktop
- Open the .tcshrc file with wordpad
- Scroll to the last two lines of the file
- Where it says "yourusername" type in your U system username
- Save the file
- Open an SSH File transfer window (or Open SSH Terminal Window and hit Alt-W-F
- Drag and drop the manipulated tcshrc file in to your main directory window.
- Right click on it and select rename
- Rename the file ".tcshrc" and hit enter
- When you hit enter, the file should disappear, because files with no characters to the left of the dot are recognized as hidden files by unix
- Logout and log back in
- If everything worked right, you should now be able to access the CRSP libraries with, for example, Fortran code
If you get an error when you login, type "pico .tcshrc" at the unix prompt in your home directory. Your .tcshrc file should pop up. Scroll to the bottom and verify that there are no blank lines underneath the last line of text. This could cause an error in reading the file when you login. If there are any blank lines, delete the blank lines, Ctrl-X, Y to save, and logout and log back in. If you still have difficulties, email the Data Czar.
Other Links
University Research Computing Support http://computing.arizona.edu/research/
Data Czar Notes
The Data Czar can assist you with steps 5 and 6 on Mark's website (setting up your unix environment and getting your research directory created) anytime in the office, provided you have already obtained the needed permission to access the /fa directory.
If you are having difficulty connecting to the U System, make sure that 1) you are using the "SSH Secure Shell" program (regular telnet is not secure enough and will not work), and 2) that you have a valid research account for accessing the U-System. (Note this is not the same as an eller account. Normally this is your UANetID.)
The CRSP Programmer's guide (and other guides) can be accessed on the Finance Department Common Drive at: S:\dataczar\crspguides.
If you have any other questions or need further assistance, please feel free to contact the Data Czar in the finance department or by email.
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