SMC room B263

Welcome to class. Here is some useful housekeeping information.


We will use laptop computers for some hands-on exercises. Their operating system is linux. They will be distributed in class when needed and collected after class.

How to log in to one of our laptop computers:

Turn on the laptop. The bootloader should present a menu offering you some choices. Allow it to time out (5 seconds); linux will boot.

at the login prompt please type: student.
at the password prompt, please type: c$l@bLinuX
 (it's a mnemonic for "computer science lab linux"
  third character is letter ell, not numeral won)
You are now logged in, presented with the command prompt from the shell program.

To optionally launch the graphical interface: startx &


In addition to the student account, the root account is available; its password too is "c$l@bLinuX". While you can log in as root instead of student, it's preferred practice (for security reasons) to log in as student and convert your identity to root when and if desired by the command:

 su -      OR     sudo su -

To later revert back to being student, give the command:

 exit



There are a couple of things you should do as root. You may wish to join the local network. Plug a LAN cable into the laptop. Then, to give your machine an IP address on the local network:

 dhclient -v eno1

As an alternative the instructor may offer you a wireless access point SSID from his laptop. In order to connect to it first run Network Manager as follows:

systemctl restart NetworkManager

That will place an option on the menu found at the extreme upper right of your taskbar for selecting a network. Look for the name/SSID "instructor-ap" and
use the password "instructor.ap$". Don't run NetworkManager if you are connecting by cable/wire. To turn off NetworkManager:

systemctl stop NetworkManager

Please be aware that a College-supplied wifi extends to our classroom, but when you are connected you can use only http, (i.e., the web) but nothing else. Understand the distinction between "web" and "internet;" that's a big restriction. It's fine for browsing, but that's all. It doesn't work for most of our purposes.  


Also, on some occasions, you may need to edit a file that cannot be edited as a non-root user. So you need to run an editor as root. Either run:

 sudo gedit &


OR from a root prompt within a terminal window:

 gedit &

gets you the editor tool you'll need.


If you launch Firefox you can visit the following URL:

http://homepage.smc.edu/morgan_david

Here you will find a list of links for the classes I teach at SMC. If you select the class in which you are enrolled, you will find the syllabus, course outline, and other useful links. On the class webpage you can also monitor your progress, and view the slide presentations before, during, or after lectures.