Connecting to the course computer

The classroom has only Windows computers, but if you want to get real work done in the sciences, you need a Unix-like operating system: Linux or a BSD-based operating system like Mac OSX. In this class, we have provided you a Linux system named phy-compphysclass.syr.edu, located somewhere in an ITS data center. Here are instructions for connecting to it:

Connecting to the computer

The standard way of controlling a Linux computer is by a text interface: you send text to the computer, and text comes back, along with any graphical windows you request.

The standard way of connecting to remote Linux machines is via the Secure Shell protocol, abbreviated as ssh. This protocol creates an encrypted channel that allows you to communicate securely with another computer.

Once you establish a ssh session to another computer, you can send and receive text and graphics just as though you were physically at the machine. To connect from the machines in LSB 215, run PuTTY from your SU-Apps folder, type in phy-compphysclass.syr.edu, and click connect.

You will first need to download PuTTY. (ITS, for whatever reason, hasn’t installed that for us.) Download the program at https://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/w64/putty.exe. Then create a folder called “SU-Apps” on your desktop and copy the PuTTY file in there.

Linux uses a system called X to handle graphics. X is different than the graphics system in Windows in that the computer creating and the computer displaying the graphics can be different. The computer displaying the graphics needs a program running called an “X server” that actually creates the graphics on screen. The X server for Windows is called Xming; you will need to run it before you launch PuTTY if you want graphics. (It is way down at the bottom of the Applications menu in the lab.)

Finally, you will need to tell PuTTY that it should forward graphical output over the connection. To do this, you need to check the “Enable X Forwarding” box in the “X11” section of the options before you connect.

You can save these settings in PuTTY so you won’t need to type this in every time, or click the little box.

Connecting from elsewhere

From Windows:

The process here is the same as on the lab machines. You only need to download Xming, the Xming Fonts package, and PuTTY. All three are open source.

Go to http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/ and scroll down to “Public Domain Releases”. Download the xming and xming-fonts packages and install them.

PuTTY lives at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html.

From Mac OSX or Linux:

OSX is a Unix-based operating system; I believe it comes with a ssh client, and it uses its own X server for its own graphics. However, if you have a Mac or Linux system, you will be much better off using your own computer for everything!

But if you want to connect, just get a terminal window and type

ssh -X phy-compphysclass.syr.edu -l <username>

If you are on a slow connection, do instead:

ssh -XC phy-compphysclass.syr.edu -l <username>

This may speed up graphics somewhat; the -C option tells the computers to compress graphics, which will use extra computing power to save a little bandwidth.

Note for Mac users: In order to get the -X option to work, giving you graphics output, you will need to download something called XQuartz for Mac. I don’t know the details, since I don’t have a Mac; investigate this, and let me know what you needed to do!