MAE 9 - Accessing your account

Account Lookup Tool

You will find information on your MAE 9 student account by using the Account Lookup tool.

Secure Shell (SSH)

Your account is hosted on a computer running a unix (solaris) operating system which you will need to become familiar with.

In order to gain access to your account you will have to use a program called Secure Shell (SSH for short). If you are on a Mac or on a Linux computer you most likely already have ssh installed. If you are on a Windows PC you will need to download an ssh client.

SSH client on a Mac or Linux computer

You already have SSH on your Mac or Linux computer. In order to access it you have to run a program called terminal. If you have a Linux computer you probably know where the terminal is. If you are on a Mac and never heard of it use spotlight to find it if you do not already know where it is (upper right magnifying glass on the desktop).

Open terminal and type the following to login to your account:


	ssh me9faa@iacs5.ucsd.edu

where me9faa should be replaced with your account login name.

You can also use the more verbose syntax:


	ssh -l me9faa iacs5.ucsd.edu

where the switch -l before the account name is the symbol minus followed by the letter el.

If this is the first time you login to iacs5 it will ask you confirm that this is really what you want to do. Type yes and you should be logged in your account.

Setting the terminal type

The default terminal type on your iacs5 account is vt100. Before you use any editors in your remote account you need to set the terminal type to vt100. After login type:


	set term=vt100

to set the terminal type to vt100. There are ways to automate this you Jedi masters out there!

Alternatively, if you are on a Mac, you can permanently change the terminal type in your mac's terminal and this will be propagated to the remote account. I do not recommend doing that as you will loose the nice colors, bells and whistles of the more modern terminal type used by the Mac's terminal (xterm-color). But if you think this is the only time you will ever use the terminal... You can always set it back later if you so wish.

In order to change the terminal type for your Mac terminal go to the menu Terminal -> Preferences then look for the Advanced pane and switch from xterm-color to vt100. For the changes to take effect you need to close and reopen a terminal window.

SSH client on a Windows PC computer

You will need to download SSH by clicking on this link. Just follow the instructions.

Turning in course work

Always use the turnin script to turn in your course work. Your work will not be graded if you use any other method.

For example, in order to turn in the file hw1.c which is your solution to homework 1 to the me9f account (i.e. the instructor's account), log in to your iacs5 account and type:


      turnin -c me9f hw1.c

To turn in the file quiz2.c which is your solution to quiz 2 to the me9f account type from your account:


	turnin -c me9f quiz2.c

IMPORTANT: Do not use me9x as written in Murakami's textbook. For our class, you need to use me9f as the instructor's account!

Locating and copying course material

Course material can be found at iacs5 one directory level up from your account home directory, which we refer by the symbol tilde ~, in the directory public.

Homework assignments and solutions are in the directory:


	~/../public/homework

Quiz assignments and solutions are


      ~/../public/quiz

Lecture notes are in the directory


        ~/../public/lecture

Examples for each week are in the directory


        ~/../public/lecture/week#.c

where # stands for the week number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

To copy the problems into your current directory use the cp command. For example:


        cp ~/../public/homework/hw1.txt hw1.c


        cp ~/../public/quiz/quiz1.txt quiz1.c

will do what you expect.

Use the command cd to make sure you are on your home directory.


        cd ~

or simply

cd

will bring you back to your home directory. The command

pwd

will tell you the directory you are currently in.

Which text editor should I use?

We are glad to offer you a choice of vi or emacs. To most of you none of these should even be called text editors. But the truth is that they are both excellent unformatted text editors. Plus, they can be run remotely from your account which makes them convenient tools to fix last minute errors in your code, etc. You can find extensive information and help on how to use vi or emacs on the web. There is also some instructions on vi on our textbook.

I personally use emacs all the time. I mean every day, even when I am not teaching this class :). All my documents, including papers, reports, letters, etc, are generated from unformatted text using emacs and LaTeX. I am using emacs right now to edit this web page! Which one should you use? Whichever you fell more comfortable with.

You can also get graphical frontends for both vi and emacs that will run on you Mac or PC. These will give you extra goodies such as syntax highlighting and auto-formatting which will make your code look gorgeous :) They will also save you a lot of time by allowing you to spot programming mistakes earlier.

Can I install gcc on my computer?

The answer is yes and it is not as hard as you might think. However...

READ THIS BEFORE YOUR PROCEED: Installing a compiler locally on your computer is not required or necessary in order for you to successfully complete this course! You can and should be able to do all tasks in this class by logging in to your iacs5 account as described above. Furthermore, even if you install tools locally on your computer, you will still need to copy your files and login to your account in order to turn in your assignments.

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: If you decide to go ahead an install development tools on your computer, please do it at your own risk. Myself and the tutors are not prepared or have the time to help you with installation or setup questions. We will hold that true even if after you install something on your computer it suddenly becomes an expensive paper weight. Even if everything goes smooth you will also need to spend some time familiarizing yourself with the environment tools with possibly some configuration issues, specially on a Windows PC.

SO AFTER ALL THE WARNINGS, WHY SHOULD I DO IT? First because your geek score will improve significantly. Second because it might be a more convenient way of developing and specially debugging code throughout the course!

Can I install gcc on my Mac?

If you are a Mac users then you are already running a version of unix and all you need to do is install the development kit that came with your computer DVD but you did not know about it until now. It is pretty safe, as it is a standard Mac OS X component coming directly from Apple. That means the chances of turning your computer into a brick are fairly low here. Check out this link for more details.

Can I install gcc on my Linux PC?

Should be simple to install using your particular distribution installation tool. Look for Development Tools and GCC.

Can I install gcc on my Windows PC?

If you are a Windows PC user you will need to download some development tools and there are a couple of choices here. I think that the most straightforward way is to download cygwin which will install all compiler tools plus a version of the terminal running a unix shell (bash) so you will feel home after all. Things are fairly automated and cygwin has a nice installation program, but there is a higher chance of things going wrong here or simply not working as you would expect.

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