EECS168:SSH Instructions

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What is SSH?

SSH is a Secure Shell. You can use SSH to log into a remote machine and execute commands. An SSH client program is typically used for establishing connections to an SSH daemon accepting remote connections. Most modern operating systems commonly have an SSH client present on them. If not, you can visit one of the following sites for your personal machine:

• putty
• WinSCP
  • Great for Windows users and allows copying/pasting of files

Video Tutorials

These videos were recorded March of 2020.

Video Tutorials
video 1: Remote Access
video 2: Installing Virtual box
video 3: Guest Additions
Mac users video Video made by Xiangyu Chen

Text Editors

All you need is a plain text editor such as Notepad (Windows), TextEdit (Mac), or gedit (Linux). All platforms come with a default one, but I've listed some alternatives for you to try at your leisure:

• Notepad++ (windows only, and I personally use)
• Atom
• Sublime

SSH into the Cycle Servers

The EECS department has three general purpose cycle servers. The host names of these these machines are:

• cycle2.eecs.ku.edu
• cycle3.eecs.ku.edu

IMPORTANT NOTE

• cycle1.eecs.ku is NOT a mirror of the lab machines
• it is running a different version of linux
• I do no recommend using cycle1 for checking your work

You can use your ssh client to get connected to any of these four servers. Once you SSH to a cycle server you'll have access to all the folders and files associated with your EECS account.

To practice this you can use one of the windows machines at EECS to try to ssh to your EECS account. Once you log into one of the windows machines (either log into your EECS or KU account), select WinScp or PuTTY from the list of programs (If you have logged in through your KU account, you will find them under SSH Tools). You will be using your EECS username and Password to SSH, and the host name would be one of the cycle servers. If you have logged in through WinScp, press Ctrl+T to open a Terminal, if you have used PuTTY you should already be on a command prompt. If you are using a linux or Mac OS machine at home, you should be able to type in 'ssh your-eecs-username@cycle3.eecs.ku.edu' to log in, once you hit Enter, it will ask for the password (use your EECS password) and then you are connected. Once you are connected to the server you can execute commands as if you were sitting at one of the lab computers.

If you have done your lab 01 assignment, you can try the following commands after you successfully use ssh to login to one of the servers:

$> ls         
$> cd EECS_168/workspace/Lab1   
$> ls
$> g++ main.cpp -o helloWorld
$> ./helloWorld

Obtaining files from the linux machines

Linux to Linux

To copy a file, such a tarball with a complete assignment in it, you can use scp.

The template is as follows:

$> scp eecsUserName@cycle1.eecs.ku.edu:path/to/file.txt /destination/path/on/local/machine

Example:

scp jgibbons@cycle1.eecs.ku.edu:~/Desktop/test.txt ~/Temp/

This example copies test.txt from my lab machine to my local home directory's (the '~' is a short cut for saying /home/yourUsernameHere)Temp folder. As long as you have scp, you should be fine on Macs as well.

Linux to Windows OR Windows to Linux

Use WinSCP to mount your eecs account's folder. From there you can drag and drop files like any other folder on your local drive. You can even open files on your eecs machine in a local editor (such as Notepad++) of your choice.