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Unix has been around a long time (~1969), before computers had screens or hard drives – magnetic tape and paper tape were used instead. It is written in the C programming language, which was considered a high-level language at the time (– at least compared to assembly language); now . These days C is considered a low-level language (smile).

The original, fundamental "Zen" of Unix is that everything is a file – devices, printers, terminals, and of course actual files.

The GNU project ("Gnu 's is Not Unix") started by Richard Stallman in 1983, provided a lot of open-source tools and utilities to Unix. Popularity of Unix increased dramatically with this development. At this point in time, some Unix flavors were proprietary; others were open or partially open.

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There are many flavors/distributions of Unix, and many flavors/distros distributions of Linux. Severak clusters at TACC (the Texas Advanced Computing Center) uses use CentOS, an open-source version of RedHat. Our servers run Ubuntu, from the Debian family of distributionsdistros. Distributions may differ in a number of system management processes, but generally offer a similar set of utilities.

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  • gsafcomp01.ccbb.utexas.edu – odd number studentNN accounts
  • gsafcomp02.ccbb.utexas.edu – even number studentNN accounts


Info
titleUT VPN

If you For those associated with UT Austin and are not on the UT campus network, you'll need to have the UT VPN service active in order to connect to these servers via SSH. See How to Connect to the UT VPN

Folks not associated with UT Austin, or do not have the UT VPN service installed, can use an alternate web-based method, described below.

Logging in via SSH

You can access the servers using ssh in a Terminal program that runs on your computer. On Macs, this program is called Terminal. On Windows (Windows 10 or later) it is called Command Prompt or PowerShell. Find and open this program now on your computer.

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Expand
titleLogging in with PuTTY


Code Block
languagebash
export LS_COLORS=$LS_COLORS:'di=1;34:fi=01:ln=01;36:'

If you're using PuTTY as your Terminal from Windows:

  • Double-click the Putty icon
  • In the PuTTY Configuration window
    • make sure the Connection type is SSH
    • enter gsafcomp01.ccbb.utexas.edu for Host Name (or gsafcomp02.ccbb.utexas.edu)
      • Optional: to save this configuration for further use:
        • Enter gsafcomp into the Saved Sessions text box, then click Save
        • Next time select gsafcomp from the Saved Sessions list and click Load.
    • click Open button
    • answer Yes to the SSH security question
  • In the PuTTY Terminal
    • enter your student account name after the "login as:" prompt, then Enter
    • enter the password associated with our student accounts
      • for security reasons, the text that you enter will not be displayed


Tip

If your Terminal has a dark background, the default shell colors can be hard to read. Execute this line to display directory names in yellow.

Code Block
languagebash
export LS_COLORS=$LS_COLORS:'di=1;33:fi=01:ln=01;36'

We'll see later how to set this environment variable in your login script (~/.profile) so that it gets executed every time you login to this server.

For now, just copy the appropriate line above, paste it into your Terminal window (after logging on), then press Enter.

Logging in via RStudio web

If you're attending remotely and or do not have access to the UT VPN, you can use the Terminal functionality in the RStudio web application.

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To access the Terminal built into RStudio Server.

You should now see a command line in the RStudio type-in area.

Tip

If your Terminal has a dark background, the default shell colors can be hard to read. Execute this line to display directory names in yellow.

Code Block
languagebash
export LS_COLORS=$LS_COLORS:'di=1;33:fi=01:ln=01;36'

In the RStudio Terminal, yellow is the default color for directories, which can be difficult to see against its white background. Execute this line to display directory names in blue.

Code Block
languagebash
export LS_COLORS=$LS_COLORS:'di=1;34:fi=01:ln=01;36:'

We'll see later how to set this environment variable in your login script (~/.profile) so that it gets executed every time you login to this server.

For now, just copy the appropriate line above, paste it into your Terminal window (after logging on), then press Enter.

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