Access to Computing

Accounts have been created on our HEP analysis server for each of the students during the first week of class. The HEP analysis server can be accessed by logging in through ssh (Secure SHell) and only through ssh. The server's is called medianoche.hep.fiu.edu. The ssh application is a very useful thing to have on your PC, the mac already has it by default.

Windows PCs

If you are on Windows box an excellent ssh application is putty. You can download and install that on your laptop. Setup is easy. All you need to do is download the putty.exe file and run it. It will prompt you for hostname, username and password.

To use MN_FIT you will need to run an Xserver running on your PC since mn_fit uses the X11 protocol to communicate graphics between machines. A free Xserver that works well on windows is available from xming. Download and install on your laptop. You will launch this whenever you need to see the display produced on medianoche on our PC. To allow the X11 traffic to be accepted by your ssh session you will need to enable X11 forwarding on your putty session. Go to putty configuration and The graphics from MN_FIT needs X to display on To display the graphics window from mnfit running on medianoche you will need to launch xming on your laptop. One final thing, you need to enable X11 forwarding on your putty terminal session. To do this launch putty and in the Putty configuration catalog click on the "SSH" button -> X11 and click on the "Enable X11 forwarding" box. Then go back to category window, click on "Session", highlight the saved session you are in and save. Launch a new putty window and the X11 traffic will be accepted by the Xserver running on your PC.

Macs

If you are on a mac X11 is already part of the OSX, at least in recent versions. Most likely It will be located in your applications folder. Find it and launch the program from there. Once that's done, launch an x-terminal and from the x-terminal log into medianoche via ssh. Use the -X option to allow the session to forward X11 traffic from medianoche to your mac.

xterm $> ssh -X medianoche.hep.fiu.edu -l p4810x 

Data Analysis, Compilers, Xservers and all that test

Tools to do data analysis have been deployed on the medianoche server. A version of the root analysis framework, MN_FIT and GNU versions of the C/C++ ( to compile c/c++ code type g++ <filename.cc> on the command line) and FORTRAN ( to compile your code type gfortran <filename.F> on the command line) compiler have been installed on this sever. To display windows created by these program invoke root or MN_Fit you will need to install and setup a X-server software on your laptop or PC. On MACs X11 is already installed by default all you have to do is launch it. The X-server software on your machine will allow the root or mnfit software on medianoche to talk graphics with your computer. The X-server software I use on my windows box is Xming. Installation should be simple.

Useful Links

[http://www.panic.com/coda/]. This is a great editor for those of you who have a mac. It allows you to edit files remotely and it has a built in terminal...It's not free, but if you want, you can ask me (Zubair) and i might have a copy for you....

http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/usersguide/linux_ugbasics.html. A selection of links to Linux commands. Many can be found on the web.

http://www.cs.colostate.edu/helpdocs/emacs.html This link provides a set of common emacs commands. Emacs is a smart and powerful editor available on most platforms, window, mac, linux etc., . It understands most programming languages and "colorizes" your text to check your syntax all while you edit. It also does email, websurfing and just about anything else you want it to do. In fact, it can be extend infinitely if you can program in lisp ;)...