PHY 480: Computational Physics

Spring 2006

Account Information

(Original document prepared by Aleksandar Donev)

This document is for students enrolled in Computational Physics courses (PHY480, PHY102, PHY201, PHY305...). It gives some instructions for using the classroom computers in room 1240 BPS Bldg.

You will be given a login username and a temporary password. Please login to your new account and change the password. To do this, login with the temporary password, and once on the system, type yppasswd to invoke the password changing program. Do not be confused - it will first ask you for your existing password, then twice for your new password. All new passwords must be at least 6 characters long. Choose a password easy for you to remember, but difficult for others to guess. 

System Notes 

These machines are all running RedHat 6.0 Linux with most common software packages available. In particular, the GNU tools and the X-windows environment are available. Upon login, you can choose from several environments, but the default GNOME settings are just fine. Your home directories, files, and desktops are shared accross the network via NIS, allowing for identical environments on all of the machines in the room. Please let your TA know about any problems that your are having. You will learn more as the course progresses.

Remote Login 

You can access the 1240 BPS Bldg. computer cluster from remote locations. For convenience to students using public terminals, telnet is enabled on the server gauss, so to connect to the system type (either at the prompt for UNIX terminals, or under Start->Run for Windows):
  telnet gauss.pa.msu.edu
and enter your login and password. When finished, please remember to logout by typing exit. When running resource-consuming programs, you can execute them on one of the ten working PC's in the cluster by typing:
  ssh pc1240BPS-xx [program]
where xx is the PC number, from 01 to 10, and the program is an optional name of the program to run (with full path). You will be asked a password and logged in. Again, type exit to return to gauss. Please be considerate to other users and ask if you are not sure about something.

However, if you have a computer that you use frequently to connect to the cluster, please take time to download and install the Secure Shell. The official site for this secure and supported by PA Computing Services tool is http://www.onsight.com/ssh/faq/ssh-faq.html
Please use version 1.2 and not 2.x, to be compatible with gauss.

If you have access to a Linux machine and know how to use Linux, you can download the SSH package from:
ftp://ftp.cs.hut.fi/pub/ssh/ssh-1.2.27.tar.gz
More likely though, you have a Windows machine. Windows comes with its own fairly primitive telnet, but you can download a very nice remote-login system for Windows at:
http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA002416/ttermp23.zip
and then add to it an SSH extension to enable secure connections to gauss:
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/pjx/ttssh/ttssh151.zip
If you don't have the WinZip program to unpack the above zip files, download an evaluation version for the purpose from:
http://www.winzip.com/downauto.cgi?winzip70.exe

In case of problems, talk to Aleksandar Donev or PA Computing Services.

Return to the Home Page of PHY 480

Document http://www.pa.msu.edu/~tomanek/PHY480/PHY480-Account.html
has been last updated on 23 December 2002 by David Tomanek.