Using Unix on the computers in Park 231

Entry

Your ID cards should get you into Park 230 and Park 231, 24-7. If not, let me know. (The doors into the lab sometimes require a firm pull.) The outside doors to Park are locked overnight. If you want to do late night coding in the CS labs, call campus security, they will let you in.

Setup

  1. Find a monitor with a keyboard in front of it. If the keyboard is behind the monitor, do not use the computer. Also, do not use the computer if it has a sign saying not to.
  2. If the computer is running windows, you will need to reboot. Go to instruction 5 of setup
  3. If the computer is running Linux and someone else is logged and and the screen is locked, you will need to reboot. Go to instruction 5
  4. If you are here, go to the "Using Unix" section
  5. To reboot, find the computer attached to your keyboard and monitor. In the upper left on the front of the machines is the power button, push and hold for about 5 seconds. This will initiate a reboot. Boot should take less than 1 minute.
  6. After a while, you will see a screen with some choices. One might say "ubuntu". Choose that one. If you see two icons, choose the one that is not Windows. Loading unix should commence when you make this choice. Loading should take less than 1 minute.

Using Unix

If the computer is booted into linux you should see a purple window with the word "Ubuntu" at the bottom.

Log in

  1. Find the words "Not Listed" and click on them (if you see your name, you can click on that instead.)
  2. In the text box, enter your Unix user name
  3. In the next text box enter your Unix password
  4. If you did that correctly you should be at a purple screen with a big cat outlined

Using the desktop

On the "big cat" screen there should be a 3x3 grid in the lower left. Click on it. This will bring up a set of icons for the installed apps. The apps you are most likely to use will be "terminal" and "Visual Studio Code". You should be able to start both. Terminal should work almost identically to terminal on a Mac and very similar to Windows powershell. The major difference is that here you are working directly with the files on the server rather than the files on your personal computer.

If you are using Visual Studio Code, be sure to check the set of installed extensions. For java you should have "Java Extension Pack" and "Print Code". "Tabnine" is also nice.

Log out

ALWAYS log out.
In the upper right corner is the power icon (circle with a vertical line through it). Click on it. In the resulting popup select "power off / log out". Then select log out. This should take the computer back to the purple login screen with "Ubuntu" at the bottom.