• Read the Introduction of The Linux Command Line.

Create an account

Refer to the Getting Started documentation for the CVL. You want to “Create or change your ECE Account”.

Get connected

Follow the instructions How to gain Remote Access to the CVL over the Internet for your particular operating system.

The following sections contain supplemental information and are not a substitute for the content on the CVL wiki.

Windows

For this class we will not need to run graphical applications over the remote connection, so strictly speaking you will only need to install PuTTY, not Xming. However, due to unfortunate content organization, the final instructions to connect to the server with PuTTY are listed at the end of the Xming instructions.

Feel free to install and use Xming too if you would like to experiment with running graphical applications remotely.

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a Unix based system

Unix Based Systems

If your CVL username is different than the local login name you used on the computer you are connecting from you will need to include your CVL user name in the ssh command when connecting.

$ ssh <cvl_username>@cvl.ece.vt.edu

where you replace the string <cvl_username> with your actual CVL username.

cvl.ece vs. ece2524.ece

You may notice you can connect to either of two host names:

• cvl.ece.vt.edu
• ece2524.ece.vt.edu

The machine accessible by the host name ece2524.ece.vt.edu is a virtual machine configured for this class but it shares the same authentication and home directory system that the rest of the CVL uses, so regardless of which you log into you should have access to any files you have stored.

The ece2524 server has these additional packages installed that are not available on the regular CVL machines:

• weechat
• git
• tmux
• clang
• gcc 4.4.7 (the CVL version is 3.4.6)

And I can install additional utilities and development libraries as we see fit.

We will be using most of these utilities regularly in class, so you will generally be connecting to ece2524.ece.vt.edu