Frequently Asked Questions

How do I forward e-mail from my class account to my student account?

Place the address of your student account into the ~/public/.forward file of your class account.

For example, if your student account is abcdef, enter the following line in your ~/public/.forward file.

abcdef@students.wisc.edu
Remember to end the line with a carriage return.

How can I use a CS machine from home?

You may remotely log into the CS lab machines.

From a Unix terminal

To access the machines remotely, use the form: ssh login@machineNameNN.cs.wisc.edu where the machine name is taken from the table below and NN is a 2 digit number as in the example: royal13.cs.wisc.edu. If you find your tasks are running slowly, you can use the UNIX command who to display a list of who is currently logged into a machine and top to see what processes are using the processor.

From a PC

You will first need to install the SSH program. The CSL has information on this, but my recommendation is to use a program called PuTTY, which can be found at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
At the bottom of the page you will find the download. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
I use the putty.exe

Once installed, this is a standard program; so go to the Start Menu-> PuTTY (or there might be a short-cut on your desktop) to run the program. When you open the program, you want to connect with one of the CS machines (e.g. emperor11@cs.wisc.edu) PuTTY should open a Dos prompt window and request your login; then password. Now you are in UNIX!

Now you can check your CS e-mail using "pine" or run matlab at the prompt by just typing "matlab". Note that I do not have an "&" after the command for "matlab", this is because running from a terminal window I cannot spawn multiple processes. Note that you can suspend any process by typing "CTRL c" and to restore the process, type "fg" at the prompt.

Additional information

See the Using SSH page for more information about remote access and Computer Systems Lab Instructional Facilities page for more information about the computer labs.

Obtaining information from a removable storage device

To obtain access to removable storage media (such as CD-ROMs, DVDs, floppys, flash drives) you can use the kdf visual device manager for mounting and unmounting removable storage devices.

To use kdf, at the prompt type kdf

However, the standard mount and umount commands can also be used to gain access to removable storage devices. (see CSL information)

You can mount any device (see a list of devices under /dev) and then view its contents under /mnt

Firefox troubles

If you have difficulty with firefox (the lab supported browser), note that the older browsers will come up (with warnings that the browsers are unsupported). At the prompt, type "netscape" or "mozilla"

Some fixes for firefox can be found at the CSL website.