Here you will have information specific to new users, current users, system information, disk space, and websites.

Click on a subject below to take you to that specific section.

• New Users
• User Acccounts
• System Information
• Disk Space
• Websites

New Users

How do I get a CS computing account?

The CS department allocates CS Unix accounts to all CS majors.

Are the login credentials the same as my CSU account (RamWeb/Canvas)?

No, please contact us for your CS account information.

How do I login?

In the labs, you can login on the physical console of the machines using your CS linux credentials. You could also connect via SSH remotely from your laptop. Some some good machines to connect to get started are:

• yam.cs.colostate.edu
• zucchini.cs.colostate.edu

A list of more machines with live resource usage can be found at the Machine Loads page.

How do I login on a course website?

The course website login, called the web-checkin, is controlled by the professor of the class. You will need to contact a GTA or the professor/instructor.

How do I connect via SSH?

Refer to SSH Connection on the Remote Connection page.

I know almost nothing about Linux. Where do I start?

A variety of books have been published on the basics of the Linux or Linux operating systems. These can be obtained from your favorite bookstore. Additionally, some great tutorials can be found by searching google for something like “linux tutorial” or “bash tutorial”.

Where can I find in-depth systems reference materials?

The Linux “man” command provides access to the typical on-line Linux reference manual set on all our systems. More complete reference manual sets for most of our supported operating systems and various other technical books and manuals are available for perusal in the systems offices (rooms 478, 472, and 474).

Supplementary documents for various software packages found in /usr/local are often embedded in the source trees for the given software package. For instance, /s/bach/i/src/emacs contains supplementary documents for emacs.

How can I get help?

If you are having trouble understanding how to use the systems, there is a lab-op available to help in each of the first floor labs.

If your troubles are due to hardware or software failures in the systems or network, you should file a trouble report at http://www.cs.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/trouble.pl . The program will prompt you for all the information required by the systems folks to solve the problem. If things are so messed up that you cannot log in or get a browser up, report the problem to a lab-op or locate a system administrator as described below.

Where can I find how-to videos?

Check out the Infospaces website (please note that SNA neither creates the content on the website nor manages the website).

How can I locate a system/network administrator?

The systems people are located on the fourth floor of the Computer Science Building, on the south side, in rooms 478, 472, and 474. You can also reach them by e-mailing (preferred) compsci_sna@colostate.edu. Please do not drop SNA from the email thread when you are communicating with us. Faculty may obtain the administrators’ home phone numbers from the file ~info/emergency.

What are the systems’ and network’s hours of operation?

Generally, we try to keep all systems up all the time. There is no regularly scheduled down time. However, sometimes we need to take systems or even the entire network down for maintenance. We try to schedule this at non- disruptive times. Down times are announced via email to your CSU address.

What are the Computer Science laboratories hours of operation?

The lab in room 120 is available 24-hours a day and can be accessed by computer science majors with a valid student id card. Hours are posted posted at the front of the other labs. Remote facilities are available at all times outside of scheduled maintenance.

User Accounts

How do I change my password?

The Linux and Windows platforms have distinct password domains. This means that you will need to change your passwords separately for Linux and Windows:

In Linux, you can change your password using the passwd command from the Terminal app on any department linux machine. The command assists you in choosing a secure password, thereby enhancing security for everybody.

To change your Windows password, you would have to change your NetID password on CSU’s EID/NetID management web portal.

How can I change my default shell?

Send mail to compsci_sna@colostate.edu to request that your shell be changed. The change cannot be performed with chsh because of incompatibilities among various machines’ implementation of the NIS protocol. The available shells are listed below:

• bash (the default)
• tcsh
• csh
• ksh
• sh
• zsh

How can I change my name in the finger information?

Send mail to compsci_sna@colostate.edu to request that your finger information be changed. The change cannot be performed with chfn because of incompatibilities among various machines’ implementation of the NIS protocol.

Where can I find a set of startup (or dot) files (.login, .cshrc, .xsession, etc) which are known to work?

The default startup files (which are provided in the home directories of newly created accounts) may be copied from ~info/dot.files. These files provide a basic template which works in our environment, and may serve as a starting point for your own individual modifications.

How long may I keep my account?

Generally speaking, your account will remain active as long as you are either enrolled as a Computer Science major or as another major taking CS classes. Other student accounts are removed twice annually, at the beginning of the Fall and Spring semesters. E-mail will be sent to accounts about to expire, several weeks before they are disabled.

Is it ok to let my friends use my account?

No. Your account is for your use only. Accounts used by anyone other than the designated user may be suspended or revoked.

How can I make ssh work across CS department machines without requiring a password each time?

Create a public/private key pair using the following commands, and leave the pass-phrase empty when ssh-keygen prompts for it:

cd ~/.ssh
ssh-keygen -t rsa
cat id_rsa.pub >> authorized_keys

cd ~/.ssh
ssh-keygen -t rsa
cat id_rsa.pub >> authorized_keys

For further information on password-less SSH see the Passwordless SSH page.

System Information

What types of computers are available on the CS subnet?

A complete list of CS machines is given in the file ~info/machines. All users may log onto any machine in the file ~info/machines that is listed as general use. Additionally, researchers, instructors, and graduate students may also run jobs on most of the machines designated as r/t (research/teaching) machines, except for a few machines which won’t allow logins because they are dedicated exclusively to particular research projects. (Students are also advised to seek advance permission before logging into machines in Department faculty offices.)

How do I determine which machines are not being used or have the smallest load (and hence the best performance)?

A list of load averages for all lab machines is found on the Status page.

One can sort on the columns. By default it is sorted on the load average (ascending order). It refreshes by itself and gets new data every 10 minutes.

What are the naming conventions used on the CS subnet?

Logical groups of similar machines in each lab share a common naming theme. Computers are named after musical composers, mountains , US capital cities, trout-fishing streams, fruits, nuts, vegetables or just about anything you can think of. Printers are named after musical instruments (e.g., banjo).

Internet addresses ending with cs.colostate.edu are all components of our subnet, for example mozart.cs.colostate.edu. The cs.colostate.edu suffix can usually be omitted on references local to our subnet.

Disk Space

How is storage organized on the CS machines?

User files and home directories are shared among all department Linux systems via NFS (the Network File System protocol) and NIS (the Network Information System protocol). Put more simply, no matter which Linux machine you log into, you will find your same home directory and same set of files.

User files are all located in directories of the form, /s/SERVER/DISK/CATEGORY/NAME, where

Directories having a CATEGORY of “nobackup,” or “tmp” are not backed up and are available on a “use at your own risk” basis. All other categories are backed up nightly to tape.

You can also map these directories from Windows PCs.

The navigation menu on the left provides more information on the various storage locations.

Websites

How do I set up a personal World Wide Web (WWW) home page?

First, you must create a public_html subdirectory in your home folder with permissions of 711:

cd
mkdir public_html
chmod 711 ./public_html

cd
mkdir public_html
chmod 711 ./public_html

Now anything placed under this directory will be accessible from the web using the ~ operator. For example,

http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~USERNAME/file

Would map to ~/public_html/file. If you are running into Access Forbidden errors, you probably have a permissions problem.

Note that PHP scripts do not need to be world-readable and are run using the permissions of their owner. This prevents other CS users from being able to see your PHP code.

Our web server also looks for files named index.html, index.php, etc. to determine the default page to be displayed when accessing a directory from the web. If you have an index.html in your ~/public_html/ directory, it will be displayed when visiting http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~USERNAME

How do I redirect my personal home page to an external URL?

Create an index.html file under ~/public_html/ with the content:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url='https://example.com'" />
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>Please follow <a href="https://example.com">this link</a>.</p>
  </body>
</html>

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url='https://example.com'" />
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>Please follow <a href="https://example.com">this link</a>.</p>
  </body>
</html>

Replace example.com with the URL you would like to redirect to.

How do I configure CGI scripts to work with my home page?

All cgi scripts in user home directories are run using the suEXEC wrapper. This causes cgi scripts to run with the owner’s permissions. The scripts must also reside under the following path to be recognized as cgi scripts

~/public_html/cgi-bin

~/public_html/cgi-bin

and are referenced as

http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~username/cgi-bin/scriptname

For further information, see the suEXEC documentation.

How do I use PHP on my home page?

All php scripts in user home directories are run using the suPHP wrapper. This causes php scripts to run with the owner’s permissions.

suPHP requires that all php sessions be given a name that is unique to your page. A quick and easy to ensure that that your session names do not conflict is to base the session name on the directory that the script resides in

session_name(substr(str_replace("/", "_", getcwd()), 1, 512));

session_name(substr(str_replace("/", "_", getcwd()), 1, 512));

For further information, see the suPHP documentation.

How do I password-protect some of my web pages?

For information on how to set up password protection for your web-pages, log onto a department Linux machine and consult the text-file, ~info/htpasswd.