Windows and Unix
There are two techniques for using a machine in your room (or house)
to connect to Unix machines used in CPS 06, 100, 104, 108, and so on.
One technique involves connecting to a Unix machine such as godzilla,
teerXX, carrXX, bioXX and so on. You logon to one of these Unix
machines but display the logon session (xterm, xemacs, etc) back to
your Windows or Macintosh machine.
The other technique is to install a Unix like environment, including
xemacs onto your Windows machine. Then you can work on your own machine
in the same environment that the Unix machines used.
The advantage of the second approach is that you use your own machine,
so you're not competing with other users of the Unix machines. Also,
for many programs running them on your own machine is much faster than
running on a remote machine and displaying the results back to your
machine. This is especially true of graphically intensive
programs e.g., Java programs that use GUIs.
Connecting to a Unix machine, Display back to your machine
You'll need two software programs to connect to a Unix machine but
display the session back to your machine.
- You'll need an X-server. This is typically X-Win32 for windows
machines and eXodus for Macintosh machines. These are accessible from
the OIT site
license page, http://www.oit.duke.edu/site/software.html.
- You'll need a secure-shell (SSH) terminal program. These are also
accessible from the OIT web page. The simplest are TeraTerm for windows
and Firewall for Macs. You can also get a very nice free version
from www.ssh.com, make sure you specify
the educational/free version.
X-server
You should download and install the X-Win32 X-server. If you're
off-campus you can download a trial version from starnet.com. The trial version lasts
for 30 days, then reverts to a version that only runs for two hours at a
time. This is still very useful.
When you install X-Win32 you may be asked for information and a machine
when it first starts up. You can most likely just ignore these.
If the X-server starts successfully you'll see a blue X icon in the task
bar at the bottom of the screen.
SSH terminal program
Download and install the TeraTerm SSH program, or the free version
from www.ssh.com. In this writeup we'll assume you
have the TeraTerm program, see below for the ssh.com program.
After installing TeraTerm you should run it to connect to a Unix
machine. Run it after you start the X-server if you want to
display xemacs back to your machine.
You can specify godzilla.acpub.duke.edu as a Host when
connecting. Godzilla actually cycles through several different machines
depending on load. You can also specify a specific machine such
as teer13.acpub.duke.edu or carr15.acpub.duke.edu.
You can substitute other numbers for machines, check in the clusters
to see what legal numbers are.
After you specify a host you'll need to enter your login and
your password. Then you should have a terminal window logged into
a Unix machine.
Font/Window
From the Setup menu you can choose the Terminal option.
If you check Auto Window Resize you'll then be
able to resize the window by dragging a corner. If you
select Font you'll be able to increase (or decrease)
the size of the font.
X-11 Forwarding
To make xemacs display on your machine, you'll need
to turn on X-11 Forwarding. To do this select the
Setup menu then choose the SSH Forwarding
submenu. When the dialog box pops up, use the check-box
to select Display remote X applications
on local X server. You may get a message
indicating your current session won't support this,
you'll need to save the changes.
Save Settings
To save the settings so you won't need to do this
again, select the Setup menu then choose the
Save Setup submenu. Choose the default
file name for storing the settings by pressing OK.
Your settings should now be saved, you can quit TeraTerm SSH
and restart it to verify that this worked.
Displaying xemacs and other applications
If you checked forward X-11 as described above,
you should be able to login and have xemacs (and
other applications) displayed back to your machines.
To see if this will work, after you login to a
Unix machine type
echo $DISPLAY
You should see something like
teer12.acpub.duke.edu:14.0. If you see
something about an UNDEFINED VARIABLE, then your setup stuff
didn't work. Try again once to turn on X-11 forwarding, then ask
for help. If you do see the DISPLAY environment variable
then you can simply type
xemacs &
to have xemacs run and display on your machine. The ampersand &
runs xemacs in background so that your shell still functions.
Owen L. Astrachan
Last modified: Wed Sep 12 11:24:57 EDT 2001