Getting Started With Your Knuth Account
I have a Knuth account! Now what?
An account on Knuth offers many benefits (such as being able to
complete and submit your CS homework) but also comes with
responsibilities. This qref will help you get acquainted with the
system and develop good habits and secure practices.
(By the way... I will be using "Knuth" and "the system"
interchangeably throughout this document.)
Responsibility, what's that?
Yes, you, as a user of the system, have a responsibility to help keep
the system up and running and available for others to use. Or at the
very least, you should not prevent others from doing what they need
to. There are several aspects of this:
- Not being actively malicious
- Using resources wisely
- Maintaining system integrity/security
Not being actively malicious is very easy to do. Do that somewhere
else if you must, leave our systems alone. In fact, if you know how to
be actively malicious you probably don't really need to read this
document. Using resources wisely and maintaining system integrity and
security... we'll get to those later.
Responsibility, not quite yet!
Although you may not have enough experience and knowledge to know how
to or how not to fulfill some of these responsibilities, it is still
important to keep them in mind. For example, you may be running a very
CPU intensive program on Knuth. If this program is going to be
running for a long time, it would be polite to inform the staff of this so that
they can either instruct you to run this program on a different CS
department machine, or at least be aware that you are using Knuth's
resources for a legitimate purpose.
I don't wanna think about it, we'd be better off without it.
Well, unfortunately you can't take this attitude. If a single user is
too lax with their security practices and allows an attacker to gain
access to the system through their account, the system can be severely
compromised, causing inconvenience or even data loss for other
users. Other systems could be compromised as well, causing further
damage. If this single user is you, you're in bad trouble. However, by
following the simple guidelines in this qref, you will be just fine.
All right. You've heard the spiel. Now, on to the fun stuff!
Logging on to Knuth
Knuth is a unix system. More precisely, it is a Linux system. In all likelihood you don't really care what operating system
Knuth runs, but the fact that it is unix-like means that there are a
couple well-known ways to connect to and use the system.
- SSH
SSH (Secure SHell) is a protocol used to create secure
connections which utilize complete end-to-end encryption. Basically,
this means that even if some third party is "sniffing" network traffic
as data is transmitted back and forth between your machine and Knuth,
the data is securely encrypted, so the third party cannot extract
passwords and sensitive data from the network traffic.
Although a variety of applications can be "tunneled" through ssh, ssh
is most commonly used to gain shell access (command-line access) to
Knuth. This is one way to get your work done. But there's also...
- X Windows
X Windows, which most people simply refer to as "X", is a windowing
system that runs top of most unix-like operating systems. It is not
Microsoft Windows, although X can be made to emulate Windows to some
degree. In any case, this is the easiest way to get access to Knuth
and get started doing useful work.
(Just in case you were curious, you can tunnel X through ssh so that
all your data is encrypted.)
Logging on to Knuth (for real this time)
Okay, this time instead of just telling you the ways you might access
Knuth, I'll actually show you how it's done.
- SSH
SSH is your best option when you are not in the Terminal Room (BK102)
or the Graphics Lab (BK105). It may also be your best friend in one of those labs.
In order to use ssh, you need to acquire an ssh client. If you are at
an AC computer, you should find F-Secure and PuTTY installed for your
convenience. If not, you will need to either download and install an ssh client or use Mindterm, a Java applet hosted on the CS department
web server. If you are on a Linux/Unix/MacOSX machine, you can open the
terminal and use the built in ssh.
Once you've got an ssh client of some sort open, connect to
knuth.cs.hmc.edu. This command shouldn't be hard to find,
this is the main function of an ssh client. At some point you will
need to enter your username and password. You should have been
provided with a sheet indicating your assigned username and starting
password. Once the system has accepted your username and password and
you see a whole bunch of information fly by, proceed to the next
section of this tutorial, Changing Your Password.
- X Windows [Terminal room (B102) and Graphics lab (B105)]:
One you've found a free machine and turned it on if
necessary, log in using your username and password. You should now be able to
access through the terminal most of the things you would need to ssh into Knuth
for, but with a prettier user interface. But for the time being we will still
log on to Knuth. You can find the X11 application in
/Applications/Utilities/X11.app. When you open this, you will be presented with
the same window as when you log into Knuth through the terminal and ssh. In
fact, to log into Knuth, you must follow the ssh instructions above. The
difference is, by using X11.app, you can also receive graphical data, such as
opening up a web browser, instead of just text.
For more help with the Mac Minis, consult the Mac Lab documentation.
For more information on using an X terminal, see the
X Windows qref.
Changing Your Password
Once you are on, change your password. This is very important,
since the password received with an account is inherently insecure by
virtue of the fact that it is written down. Passwords are best kept in
your head, not on paper. Some guidelines for picking a good password:
- Passwords are private, and are not to be shared. Your account
is your own. Do not reveal your password to friends, family,
research partners, roommates, pets, or anyone else.
- Passwords should be changed regularly. Six (6) months is
considered a good interval.
- DO NOT REUSE PASSWORDS. This includes passwords you
currently use to access other systems, as well as passwords
you have used in the past to access Turing and other systems.
- Passwords must contain at least one uppercase letter, one
lowercase letter, and one number and/or non-alphanumeric
symbol (e.g. .,[^). Do not include a ~ in your password
because it can cause problems with some implementations of
ssh.
- Passwords must be 8 characters in length.
- BAD ideas:
- Don't use dictionary words.
- Don't use birthdays, anniversaries, or other important dates.
- Don't use proper names (whether from literature or real life).
- Don't use any permutation of your username or anyone else's.
- Don't use any simple keyboard pattern (e.g. qwerty).
- Don't use any of the examples on this page!
- Good ideas:
- Take a memorable phrase and use the initial letters in some
way:
"It takes one to know one." could become "It1tok1."
- Take a word or two, remove/transmute letters, add
punctuation and caps:
"Good one!" could become "G00d0n3!"
- The ideal password should roll off the fingers to make it
hard for someone looking over your shoulder to watch your
fingers.
- Make sure you can remember your password! Log
in several times while it is fresh in your mind so that
muscle memory will kick in the next time and help you
remember your password.
Important: Your password is case sensitive, so make sure that you
remember where you use upper and lower case. And watch your Caps Lock
key.
To change your password, use the passwd command on any of the Mac Minis.
This will prompt you for your old password, which is the one you logged in with.
It will then ask for your new one twice, to make sure you type it
correctly.
Review The System Policies
Your new account is now all ready for normal use. If you have not yet
reviewed the CS department system policies, please do so now.
Logging Off
When you are finished using Knuth, you need to log off to prevent
unauthorized access to your account. Leaving yourself logged in at a
public terminal is a violation of system policy.
- Type in either
logout
or
exit in the terminal window to logout.
- If you are on one of the Mac Minis, be sure to logout of it as well, by clicking on the Apple logo in the top left and selecting logout.
What Lies Ahead
From here, you are on your own.
The general command to get help is
man (1).
> man command
will let you read the manual page(s) for that command.
For more information on getting help, read the QuickReference Guide on
"Where to go for help".
For more general information, read UNIX: The Basics.
Copyright (c) HMC Computer Science Department.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with the no Invariant Sections, with no
Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License.''
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