CSci 1901: Working Remotely

See Also:

Throughout the semester, you may need to work on your lab assignment outside of the two-hour lab session. There are computer labs in the EE/CS building that you are able to use: EE/CS 4-250 (large lab) and 4-240 (smaller lab where office hours are held). In addition, there are tools available to connect to the ITLabs machines remotely:

Using Linux, Unix, or MacOS X

If you are using a Unix-type system, you can easily use X11 forwarding to run graphical applications on a remote machine. Files you save in that application will be saved on the remote machine (your ITLabs directory). To use this functionality, do the following:
  1. Open a terminal. (Should use 'xterm' on MacOS.)
  2. Type: ssh -X username@machinename.itlabs.umn.edu
    Replace username with your ITLabs login name.
    Replace machinename with any Linux machine name on the ITLabs network. The ITLabs web site has a complete listing of the available machines.
    Note: MacOS 10.4 (Tiger) may require that you use -Y rather than -X. If you have errors running certain applications from other operating systems, try this as well.
  3. You may now run any application as though you were at that machine. You should remember to include an ampersand (&) when launching a program that runs in a graphical interface so that you are still able to use the terminal.
    Example: emacs lab2.scm &

Using Windows

There are a number of options to connect to the ITLabs machines if you are running Windows at home: Certain implementations of Scheme are available for Windows as well. To use these, you'll need the ability to transfer files from your ITLabs account and your home machine. This can be accomplished by using sftp from one of the Linux/Unix environments listed above, using a file transfer client that is able to connect via SSH, or by using email. While Scheme has a standard set of commands, not all distributions implement all of them, and most implement non-standard features. You should always make sure to test your code on the ITLabs machines using STK. Some of the options for Windows include: