Introduction
If you are not on campus and need to use the specialized software available on the TREE domain computers, your choices are either to use the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) program to log into one of the computers in the lab or to get the software you need and to install it on your home computer and work from there.
The problem with RDC is that although it is free (it is provided as part of both Windows and OS X), it can be very slow to use because every pixel that changes on the screen has to be transmitted from the lab to your home computer. Even with a good Internet connection, it can be very slow.
Students in CS-343 using the Quartus software in the lab can download a free “Web Edition” copy of the software from the Altera web site. It’s a big download, and you have to register with them to get the free license for running the program, but for our purposes it is exactly the same as the software that runs in the lab.
Students using Dreamweaver and Fireworks, however do not have access to free versions of that software. A good, free, programmer’s editor will let you edit your code just about as efficiently as you can when using Dreamweaver. There are several good alternatives to choose from. For Windows users, you might use Notepad++ or Vim, both of which are also installed on the computers in the lab. Do not use the Notepad program that comes with Windows: it is not a programmer’s editor and is not suitable for writing code. Macintosh users might want to try either TextWrangler or Vim. Linux users probably already have a favorite programmer’s editor.
Transferring Files
The main issue this page deals with is how to get your projects transferred from your off-campus computer to the lab so I can check them. You could copy your work onto a USB drive, bring it to The College, and transfer it to your account using one of the computers in A-205. Alternatively, you can transfer the files to your account over the Internet. Here’s how.
First, you need a free program that will let you log into your account from off-campus and transfer files to (or from) the lab server machine, maple. For Windows users, WinSCP is very good, and for Macintosh, Fugu works very well. There are graphical programs for Linux too, but I personally just use scp from the command line, so I can’t suggest a particular graphical program.
Install your program, and tell it to connect to any computer in the lab (even one that someone else is using at the time is okay), giving the username and password for your account. The weird part is that you cannot log into maple directly, but using WinSCP, Fugu, or scp, logging into any computer in the lab will give you direct access to your “home directory,” which is actually located only on maple. You can copy files and folders between your off-campus computer and your home directory using drag and drop if you are using WinSCP or Fugu. See the scp “man page” for how to do it from Linux.
But you are not done yet. Now you have to copy (or move) your project from your home directory to your roaming profile. You cannot do this using WinSCP, Fugu, or scp; you have to be logged into one of the machines in the lab either by sitting at it or by using RDC. Log in, open Windows Explorer (I suggest clicking on the icon for the computer in the upper left corner of the screen), and you will find that you have an H: drive in addition to the usual C: drive. Open your H: drive, and you will find that it contains your home directory, the place where you copied your work in the previous step. Just drag your project into the proper directory (folder) under My Documents, and you are ready to do a final check of your project to make sure nothing went wrong in the transfer process.
Remember, your work will not be copied to your roaming profile on maple, where I can access it, until you log out from the computer you are using. To be safe, you should log out of the first computer and log into another one to be sure the project got saved to your profile on maple successfully.