Students in this course are provided with an account on occs.oberlin.edu, the computer science server. For this course, it is necessary to be somewhat familiar with this system and the opportunities it provides. We will discuss these topics in class, but this page provides a reference.

The Command Line

The following are basic commands:

man -- command documentation. usage:
$ man command Press 'q' to exit.
pwd -- print working directory
mkdir -- make a new directory
ls -- list directory contents
cd -- change directory
mv -- change file place/name
cp -- copy a file
rm -- remove a file
latex -- run LaTeX
gnuplot -- run Gnuplot
ssh, sftp, scp -- secure shell, secure ftp, secure copy.

There is a more descriptive reference sheet here which you may find helpful.

Remote Access

Remote access to OCCS is allowed through the ssh (encrypted) protocol. A secure shell (ssh) program will let you access the command line from any machine connected to the Internet. sftp and scp programs will let you copy files to and from the server.

All the CS computers running Linux act as extensions of OCCS. You can log in to any of them instead of OCCS. They are named after characters in The Lord of the Rings story and The Simpsons. The names follow the format [occs.oberlin.edu], [gandalf.cs.oberlin.edu], [bart.cs.oberlin.edu], et cetera. If you are on campus, you may omit the final .oberlin.edu from each name, ie. [gandalf.cs].

~/ is your home directory, the one you are in when you first login, or after you type cd with no arguments. If you make a directory called ~/www/ then any files you place in it will be accessible to you and everyone else (unless you change the permissions) at
http://occs.oberlin.edu/~yourLoginName/

You can obtain ssh clients as follows:

Linux -- should already have them. See OpenSSH.
Macintosh -- See the "Alternatives" section (lower left) of OpenSSH site. The school Macs have a program called MacSSHPPC.
Win32 -- PuTTY provides nice small ssh binaries for ssh, sftp, scp.