Reading

None.

The VM and your CS Department Home Directory

You're going to be writing and running a lot of programs this semester, so the question of where to do this work is important, as is the question of where to store it. We'll take some time in class to address that question.
  1. Where to work. You will be writing and running your programs either on the CS Department Unix lab machines, or on the VM you've installed on your laptop. You will probably want to bounce back and forth - work on something in the lab, continue work on your laptop VM later.
  2. Where to store your work. You have three basic places to store files
    1. your laptop's filesystem,
    2. your VM's filesystem, or
    3. your CS Department home directory.
    Storing stuff on your laptop's Windows filesystem is not a very convenient option because the writing, compiling and running will be happening either on the CS Department Unix lab machines or on your VM. Anything on your laptop's Windows filesystem would have to be constantly copied back and forth.

    Storing stuff on your VM's filesystem is nice in some ways - you can work regardless of whether or not you have network access, for example. On the other hand, it's got some serious negatives. If your laptop dies you lose all your work. If the file on your laptop that contains the VM's state gets corrupted, you lose all your work. Finally, the work you do in the lab is not available on your VM and vice versa, undless you go back to constantly copying files back and forth. So ...

    ... storing stuff in your CS Department home directory is the best option. It's backed up nightly, accessible from the computer lab and, thanks to the "csunixmount" script that's preloaded on your VMs, it's accessible from your VM - as long as you have a network connection.

  3. Warning! If you "pause" your VM before exiting VMPlayer (as opposed to shutting the VM down), we recommend you run the csunixunmount script first.
    Our recommendation. Use the csunixmount script and keep everything in your CS Department home directory.
A quick activity your instructor will guide you through and explain: 
1. in your VM home directory, give ls command.  Note the directory "csunix".
   Give command cd csunix, then ls.  Note: it's empty.  give cd .. to
   go back to your home directory

2. run csunixmount
   cd to csunix again and do an ls.  Now there's a file README.  Give command cat README
   NOTE: you instructor will explain what's happened and why and recall: cd, ls and cat

3. give command cd ~  (takes you back to your VM home directory)
   give command csunixunmont
   do ls csunix (now it's empty again)
   do csunixmount (files are back!)

Create hello world

Another quick activity your instructor will guide you through and explain: 
1. cd to csunix home directory

2. open README with emacs, change text to "This is my CS Department home directory."
   close.  cat again and see what you've got.

3. do 'emacs hello.cpp' and create the hello world program (as shown on right) Save it!

4. compile (g++ -o hello hello.cpp) and run (./hello)
   NOTE: the files are on CSDept fileserver, but the program runs in your VM!

5. run codeprint and drag resulting file out.pdf over to Windows desktop (good for printing)

From CSDept fileserver to your VM

Another quick activity your instructor will guide you through and explain: 
1. Give commands:
                 cd ~
                 cp csunix/hello.* .
                 ./hello
   Note: now the files are both on your VM and in your CSDept home directory

2. Use cd and ls to verify they're also in your CSDept home directory

3. Make sure you're in your CSDept home directory and give command
   rm hello.*

4. verify hello.cpp and hello are still in your homedirectory on your VM

ssh

The csunixmount script makes the files and directories in your CS Department home directory accessible from your VM, as if they were stored on your VM. You can edit, compile, run, etc. and all the computing is done on your VM (ultimately by your laptop's CPU), even though the files are stored on a CS Department fileserver. Another option is to "ssh" to a CS Department lab machine in order to bring up a shell whose input and output come from / go to your VM, but whose commands are executed on the lab machine, not your VM/laptop.

Ssh is not the recommended approach for this course, but it is an important tool that you'll see over and over during the course of your time here.