INDEX
LINUX
Should you wish, you can install Ubuntu on your laptop and/or home
machine. The TAs will be available to help you with this.
A particularly straightforward and safe method to install Ubuntu is to
use wubi, which will do the installation within your Windows system,
just like any other software you might install.
See HERE
for instructions.
Also, with this specific type of installation, the software can
subsequently be uninstalled, again within Windows.
Finally, note that it is always very good practice to periodically
perform backups on all of your computers, especially if they contain
information that is important to you. Even if you are using the
wubi approach, it is a good idea to perform a backup before the install
if you can, just to extra safe.
MAPLE
Maple is a commercial product, so if you wish to install it on a
personal machine, you will have to purchase it (about $100). A link to
the on-line store is HERE.
However, you certainly do not have to have your own copy to do the Maple
work in this course. Also note that the version of Maple currently
being sold is 17; we will be using version 16, but the differences
between the two should be minor
IMPORTANT: Even if you have Xming installed
on a Windows box (see below), or are using a Mac, do not expect to be
able to effectively use xmaple remotely (i.e running on hyper,
but displaying on your personal machine). Xmaple simply
requires too much information to be transmitted to the display to be
handled by most people's home network setups. Thus, expect that
you will need to do your xmaple work in the computer lab.
PuTTY
(ssh
client for Windows)
If you don't have a ssh client installed on your Windows
machine(s), you can download and install the free package, PuTTY HERE. I recommend that you click
the "A Windows installer for
everything except PuTTYtel" link in the "latest release version (beta 0.60)"
section, save the file to disk, then double click on the file icon to
inititate the installation. Once installed, you will be able to
use PuTTY to open terminal
windows to remote machines such as hyper.
This in turn will allow you to do basic command-line work on hyper, and other machines that
accept ssh connections, from
within Windows.
Note that the terminal sessions that you initiate to hyper via ssh
will only provide you with the facility to run commands/programs
that use the terminal window itself for all input and output.
This includes commands such as cd, pwd, ls, grep,
as well as command-line maple, and, importantly, octave
(but not the plotting features of the latter two). If you wish to
use applications which "draw on the screen", such as gedit,
remotely---i.e. running on hyper, but displaying on your personal
Windows machine---you can install the Xming package, per the
following section. Note that I cannot guarantee that the
installation of Xming on any given system will be successful,
but it you are using a laptop, I can try to assist you at the end of a
lab session or, preferably, during my office hours (listed on the main
course page).
See HERE
for information on how to configure PuTTY for X forwarding.
XMing: (X Server for Windows)
Installation of this free software on your PC/laptop running Windows
will allow you to run an X server on your system (without installing
Linux). In particular, your will then be able to ssh into hyper.phas.ubc.ca and start up
graphical applications such as gedit, xmaple etc., and the applications will
appear on your Windows screen. Performance won't be as good as it
would be if you had Linux installed and were running applications
locally, but provided that your network connection is sufficiently
fast, it should suffice for you to do at least some of your homework
and term project work outside of the computer lab.
The software can be downloaded from HERE, and there is additional
documentation about installing and using it HERE.
IMPORTANT! Before
you install XMing, you should
install the PuTTY ssh-client
(see above), which you will use to establish connections between your
Windows machine and hyper.
During the process of installing Xming
you will be presented with a Select
Components dialog: choose the Normal
PuTYY Link SSH client option.
Once you have installed Xming,
and assuming you have placed an Xming
icon on your desktop, you start the server simply by clicking on the
icon (alternately, you can start Xming
from the All Programs
menu). Once the server starts, you won't see any specific windows
etc. associated with Xming,
but an "X" icon should appear
on the panel, indicating that it is running. Right clicking on
the icon will give you a pull-down menu that includes an option to exit
the server.
Also, when using PuTTY in
conjunction with Xming, you
should ensure that any connections that you establish to hyper, or other machines on which
you wish to run graphical applications, have X forwarding enabled;
otherwise those applications (like gedit
or gnuplot) will not be able to display on your Windows
system. Note that PuTTY
has a facility for saving and loading sessions (with the configuration
settings saved as well), that you should learn how to use.
Again, see HERE
for information on how to configure PuTTY for X forwarding.
OCTAVE
In principle you can install octave on
a Windows machine, but it isn't straightforward, and may not be worth
the effort. Note that assuming that you have putty and xming
installed, you should be able to ssh to the main PHAS server, hyper,
and use octave from there.
NOTE FOR MAC USERS
Mac OS is a Unix-based system and comes with a terminal program that
you should be able to locate in Applications -> Utilities (see e.g. HERE),
and from which you should be able to initiate connections to remote
machines via ssh. Providing that you invoke ssh with X
forwarding enabled (using the -X
or -Y options; see below), you
should then be able to run graphically based applications, such as gedit, on the remote machine (e.g. hyper).
IMPORTANT: On newer
versions of Mac OS-X, including 10.8 (Mountain Lion), you may need to
download and install some additional software (XQuarz), and then configure your
system so that X forwarding will work. See HERE
for instructions: once you have installed XQuarz, the specific command that
you will need to execute to give hyper access to your display ("Add
your remove [sic] server to host:") is
% sudo xhost + hyper.phas.ubc.ca
Irrespective of which version of Mac OS-X you are running, connect to hyper using
% ssh -X hyper.phas.ubc.ca -l your-login-on-hyper
and if that doesn't appear to work (e.g. the gedit window does not display when
you start the editor on hyper),
try using the -Y option
instead of -X, i.e.
% ssh -Y hyper.phas.ubc.ca -l your-login-on-hyper
|