CS 10051 Introduction to Computer Science Class
Overview Syllabus Schedule Labs Homework
Instructors Resources FAQ Lectures Notices

CS 10051 Labs

Student Lab Schedule

Please follow this link.

Lab Assistants Schedule

Lab location: All sections except 004 are in room 139 Math and CS building. Section 004 is in room 162 Math and CS building.

Lab for Day sections:
Section   Time                     Place     TA
001     Monday    3:45-5:40      Room 139    Hui Hong (hhong@cs.kent.edu)
002     Tuesday  11:00-12:55     Room 139    Natalia Dragan (ndragan@cs.kent.edu)
003     Thursday 11:00-12:55     Room 139    Natalia Dragan
019     Friday   11:00-12:55     Room 139    Jalaa Hoblos (jhoblos@cs.kent.edu)

Lab for Evening sections:
Section   Time                     Place       TA
004     Wednesday 7:00 pm to 8:55  Room 162    Abdulkareem Alali (aalali@cs.kent.edu)
005     Monday    7:00 pm to 8:55  Room 139    Abdulkareem Alali
006     Wednesday 7:00 pm to 8:55  Room 139    Hui Hong (hhong@cs.kent.edu)

Meeting for TAs with Course coordinator: Tuesdays at 1:00 to 1:45 in 139 MSB. This meeting is for instructors only.

CS 10051 students are invited to join the ACM Student Chapter Meeting, Sept. 2 7:00--7:50 pm in room 228 MSB, refreshments are provided. Section 004 and 006 students, please return to lab promptly at 8:00pm on this day.

Lab Equipment

  • Hardware and software available in room 139 and in room 162.

  • In the Lab, if a station is not running Windows, it is running Linux. The way to get back from Linux to Windows is

    1. hit ctrl-alt-f1 (all three keys down)
    2. hit ctrl-alt-delete
    3. wait for Windows to boot

  • In the CS building and Lab we have wireless access to the Internet for anyone who wishes to bring in their own notebook computers. Please make sure you have enough battery power (75 min) for our typical class. Due to electric power limitations in room 162, it is recommended that you avoid plugging in your notebook to the power supply in the room.

    When you set up your wireless card you'll pick the "cs-student" wireless port.

C/C++ on Lab Computers

This class use Gnu C/C++ on Linux servers for most C/C++ work.

But, our Lab computers are mostly running Windows Vista. Many also has Cgywin, a Linux emulator on Windows, installed. You can easily use Cgywin to compile and run C/C++ programs, essentially the same way as on Linux systems.

In Lab 139 and 162, go to start->programs->Cywgin->Bash Shell.

See Writing C/C++ on Windows using g++ under Cygwin for more information.

Lab Security

The lab is important to our class, not to mention others. Everyone should know that the lab must be locked with lights and all monitors off (whoever leaves the room last must make sure).

The lab door sticks sometimes. So, make sure by pulling it close as you leave and not rely on the automatic closing action of the door. The department has been informed of this door sticking problem and should get it fixed soon.

CS Computer Account

Applying for An Accont

If you do not already have a computer account with the CS Department (This is not the account you have with the Kent State Computer Center) where your userid starts with two lower-case L's you need to apply for an account as follows.
  1. Fill out this online account request. On the form pick status as "low level" for CS 10051 students.
  2. In a day or two, you will receive a confirmation email from the systems titled Email verification from Kent Sys Admins, please pay attention to your email and confirm right away. Your account won't be set up unless you confirm as instructed by that email.

How to Login

With a CS lower-level computer account, follow this procedure to login on the department Linux machines.

  1. The computers available for student use include: 
    CentOS Linux      loki.cs.kent.edu
CentOS Linux      hermes.cs.kent.edu
    You may be interested in viewing a list of all of the CS department machines (servers). You can acces these Linux computers by remote login via SSH from Windows stations in any of the CS student labs, including Lab 160 and 162 in the Math/CS building. You can also access these machines from you own PC by installing the SSH software. Because the the Windows workstations in the CS student labs are connected to these Linux servers by a fast LAN (Local Area Network), they also offer you the ability to use an X-windows desktop to access these servers. To do that, first double click on the "X" icon on the Windows desktop. This should launch an X desktop and a remote-server-selection box. Select the server of your choice, and when prompted enter your valid user ID and password. Upon successful login, you will see your Linux desktop display. Each user has a unique home directory accessible from all these computers. With your userid and password you can access any of these machines by ssh and sftp.
  2. Every CS account comes with an email address 
    your_cs_userid@cs.kent.edu
    If you send email to that account, then you will be able to received it by going to 
    https://webmail.cs.kent.edu/src/login.php
    and login.
  3. From the CS lab, you can login to loki.cs.kent.edu by clicking on the X-Windows icon the click on the loki.cs.kent.edu menu entry and login. After login, please get a terminal window to use the Linux Shell command-line interface.
  4. From home or another computer you can login by ssh to loki.cs.kent.edu. See the next bullet for how to ssh.
  5. UserID--You'll get your userid when you receive the email about your CS computer account having been created.
  6. Password-- Your password is first initial, last initial, and last six digits of your Banner id (the initials are in lower case). Example: pw123456. Hit the enter key after typing your password. You can change your password once you log in.
  7. Changing Your Password--Login to loki.cs.kent.edu. At the Linux shell, enter the command

    passwd

    then follow the prompts. Be careful typing and write down your new password immediately. There is no way to recover your password if it is lost.

After Login

  1. Once login, you are in the Linux environment. Your home directory can be displayed by typing 
    pwd

    Linux Help--You need to know some Linux or get someone who does to help you. Also we have a Linux Primer and a help sheet for new users.

  2. Shell init file-- To make your CS account more usable, it is recommended that you save this file then upload it by sftp to your home directory. The file named .bash_profile (note the leading period and the underscore in between) will customize your Shell (bash) and make life much easier for you after you login to your CS account.

  3. To make your home directory accessible and to set up a 10051 sub folder for work with this course perform the following on your home directory:

    (1) SSH to loki.
(2) do exactly the following

cd

chgrp 10051grader .
chmod o-rwx .
chmod g+rx .

chgrp 10051grader 10051
chmod o-rwx 10051
chmod g+rwx 10051
  4. If you wish to set up your personal Web space, follow these instructions

Secure Communication with SSH and SFTP

SSH is a secure remote login program. It lets you login and give commands on a remote computer (in this case loki.cs.kent.edu) while using your own desktop/laptop.
SFTP is a secure file transfer program that allows you to upload and download files to and from another computer. See this help page for how to use SFTP.
Most server computers in the CS department are supporting only secure login (SSH) and secure ftp (SFTP), and not supporting the to-be-phased-out telnet and ftp.

From the CS labs, you can use the pre-installed SSH/SFTP client to access loki.cs.kent.edu or hermes.cs.kent.edu.

To access your CS computer account from outside of the CS labs, you need to install SSH/SFTP on your own computer. To do that just follow these steps:

  • Installation for Windows users--On your own Windows computer, you can install this local copy of SSHSecureShellClient

    Or you can try SSH and SFTP (from Source Forge).

    See this SSH guide for download, installation, and usage instructions for SSH.

    Also, windows users may prefer PuTTY which is easy to use and has Unicode support.

  • Installation for Mac OS X users--You can use the Terminal application and use the commands ssh and sftp.

    Also, Mac OS X user can get Fugu for sftp from http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/.

  • Installation for Linux Users--Your Linux system ought to have SSH and SFTP installed. So just use the ssh and sftp commands. If not you can install OpenSSH.

After installing SSH you follow this procedure to login to loki or any other Linux computer where you have an account.

From Linux or Mac Terminal Window:

ssh userid@loki.cs.kent.edu
sftp userid@loki.cs.kent.edu

From PC or Mac use the SSH or Fugu client:

  1. Start the ssh client, which can do secure shell and secure ftp.
  2. To remote login, click on the secure terminal logo and get a popup window.
  3. In that popup window, click on quick connect and enter the host loki.cs.kent.edu and your Kent Linux account userid. Then proceed to login.

The same SSH tool also provides SFTP for file upload/download. Just click on the file-folder icon to do SFTP.

Dealing with Files

Use a text editor (not a document format program like MS-Word) such as nano, gedit, and vim on Linux systems; or wordpad and gVim on Windows; or bbedit on the Mac, to create and save files.

If you are not familiar with text editors, we recommend that you use nano on loki. See this Linux Primer for important info and how to use nano.

When saving files make sure you get the correct file extension (.C or .cpp an so on). You can always modify the file name after it is created. Or make sure the file has the right name after you upload it to your Linux account in the CS department.

Use sftp (that came with SSH) to upload and download files from and to your Linux account.

Wireless network access in the CS building

Please use the CS Wireless network. Follow these instructions for connecting to the wireless network. You can also find instructions for connecting to the KSU FlashZone.
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