Useful Tools
The following is a list of useful tools that you may find helpful while navigating your CS major/minor
THIS PAGE IS IN PROGRESS
Shell Commands/Tools
SSH
Secure SHell is a network protocol that allows remote console (i.e. terminal) login from one machine to another. The Midd CS department machines all support SSH from the on-campus network. In addition, there is one machine (basin) that is specifically given a hole in the Midd firewall to allow off-campus connections.
You can find the manual page for the SSH command here or by typing "man ssh" on a Mac or Linux terminal. From the manual, the SSH command looks complicated; it's not! There are many optional arguments supported, but to get basic functionality all you need to supply to the command is the username you want to connect with and which machine you want to connect to. If the connection can be established, you will be prompted for the password of the account you are trying to connect with. If the connection cannot be established, you will be given some form of a "cannot resolve hostname" or "connection timed out" error (usually this means the machine is either disconnected from the network, or powered off).
NOTE: The examples below are all in UNIX format. To use SSH from a Windows machine, please see the #PuTTY section.
NOTE 2: The first time you remotely connect to a machine, you will be given a warning that the authenticity of the machine you are trying to connect to cannot be verified. Assuming you have correctly entered the name of a Middlebury managed machine or a Middlebury IP address, you can safely ignore this and enter "yes". In the grand scheme of things, if it's your first time connecting to a machine and you are expecting to get this response, you can usually ignore it and enter "yes". But, for the sake of completeness, you should be aware that spoofing is a thing.
$ {user@my-machine ~} ssh <username>@machine-name
OR
$ {user@my-machine ~} ssh <username>@ip-address
Ex:
$ {user@my-machine ~} ssh user@killington.cs.middlebury.edu
$ {user@my-machine ~} ssh user@140.233.20.155
Tip: If you are off-campus and need to connect to a specific machine, you can tunnel through basin to the machine you need with two ssh commands.
Ex:
$ {user@my-machine ~} ssh <username>@basin.cs.middlebury.edu
$ {username@basin ~} ssh <username>@killington.cs.middlebury.edu
OR
$ {user@my-machine ~} ssh -t <username>@basin.cs.middlebury.edu ssh <username>@killington.cs.middlebury.edu
SCP
Secure CoPy is a command that combines the ssh command with the cp (copy) command, hence scp. scp can be used to push local files to a remote server, or it can be used to get a file from a remote server and save it locally.
You can find the manual page here or by typing "man scp" in a terminal window.
NOTE: This command only works for UNIX environments. For Windows, see the pscp utility provided by PuTTY
{user@my-machine ~} scp path/to/file/to/send <username>@remote-location:path/to/location/to/put/file
OR
{user@my-machine ~} scp <username>@remote-location:path/to/file/to/get path/to/location/to/put/file
Ex:
{user@my-machine ~} scp ./Documents/my_homepage.html user@basin.cs.middlebury.edu:~/public_html/homepage/
{user@my-machine ~} scp user@basin.cs.middlebury.edu:~/cs101/homework1.py ~/Documents/this_semester/cs101/
Tip: You can select multiple source files in one scp command. scp will evaluate as many files as you select until it reads a destination location (i.e. if you provide many local files, it knows to continue reading local files as sources, and when it reads a remote location, that is the destination, and vice versa). You can also supply the -r argument to recursively push entire directories.
Rsync
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Tmux
Tmux is a Terminal MUltipleXer. It allows for multiple consoles within a single window, as well as the ability to detach and reattach processes from a single session.
TODO: Examples
PuTTY
PuTTY is an open source SSH client developed for the Windows platform. You can download it here (just the putty.exe binary form will do, but if you are feeling ambitious you can download the .msi installer for all of the tools).
The PuTTY client has many options for customization (similar to optional arguments with the ssh command). But, to get the basic usage out of it, all you need to do is supply the full hostname of the machine you want to connect to.
If the connection can be made, you will be prompted with a window asking you the username that you would like to login with. After entering a username, you will be prompted for the password associated with the username. Upon successful authentication, you should see a terminal-esque window like what you would see in a Unix environment.
File System Resources
Home (~) Folders
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Your public_html Folder
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Application Managers
Miniconda
Miniconda is a stand-alone release of the popular package manager conda.
TODO: Examples of usage and reasons for virtual environments
nvm (for nodejs)
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