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All CS 290W students have a mentor account. Just drop by the PUCC offices on the second floor of the Math Building to pick up your account. (An expert account will also work ... if you already have one of those.)
You have one set of files available to you through all your PUCC accounts. These files reside on either the file server champion.cc.purdue.edu or lookout.cc.purdue.edu. Whether you access those files through icdweb, picket, mentor, or expert, it is the same set of files.
In this course we suggest you use mentor (or expert) instead of (or in addition to) the PC interface. This will not be critical for JavaScript. But, you will be using the Java compiler, the Perl interpreter, and Oracle tools on mentor.
You will need to use a telnet tool to work with mentor. You will communicate with mentor via the Unix operating system and a set of Unix commands.
In the "Simple Unix Commands" link above, please note that rintintin
is a computer name (rintintin.colorado.edu). It is fairly standard
with a Unix system that your prompt is a computer name (like rintintin
or even rintintin.colorado.edu). You can follow that by some
character like a % or $ or even by some command number in braces (like
<70>). Notice in class when I telnet into mentor that my prompt
is...
mentor.cc.purdue.edu%
Use the chmod Unix command to CHange the MODe of a file -- that is to change its permissions. Some standard uses are:
chmod a+r file (All get to Read the file)
chmod a+rx file (All get to Read and eXecute the file)
chmod a+rx directory (All get to Read and aXcess the
directory. I know that access is misspelled. I'm not a moron :-)
chmod o-w file (Others do not get to Write (that is,
change) the file)
You will also want to use a text editor that runs under Unix such as pico, vi, or emacs. Pico, is by far the easiest to use and works much like Window's NotePad.
One of the things that we want you to do in CS 290W is to read the purdue.class.cs290w news group. That news group may only be read from IP node names that end in .purdue.edu. If your Internet connection is through a GTE account and you read news using Netscape, your IP node name will end in .gte.net and you will be forbidden to read our news group. A simple solution is to telnet to your mentor account and to use the Unix command
trn purdue.class.cs290w
Your IP node name will be mentor.cc.purdue.edu and you will be reading news through the "trn" news reader.
An even better alternative (thanks to CS 290W student P.J. Healy) -- "Telnet into postoffice.purdue.edu and, in the newsgroups option, subscribe to purdue.class.cs290w. This newsreader is far more flexible and user-friendly than the trn program."