Welcome to the EdLab!

Please read the

Acceptable Use Policy

The Computer Science Educational Laboratory sports 30 IMACs (triple bootable with MACOS/Windows/Linux) and 7 Linux PCs (for remote access only) all supported by several servers. The Edlab is located in rooms 223 and 225 in the Lederle Graduate Research Tower (LGRT) which can be found in the middle-top of campus on this map.

The EdLab is shared by many classes each semester for undergraduate and graduate level Computer Science classes, and is maintained by the Computer Science Computing Facility. If you have any suggestions or comments for improving these pages or the Edlab, please send mail to system@cs.umass.edu

EdLab Courses

The following classes for the Spring 2010 semester require the EdLab for use. Click on any class to access its home page. Not sure which class is which? Here are the current course descriptions

EdLab Hours

	Opens	Closes
Sunday:	1:00pm	10:00pm
Monday:	9:00am	10:00pm
Tuesday:	9:00am	10:00pm
Wednesday:	9:00am	10:00pm
Thursday:	9:00am	10:00pm
Friday:	9:00am	5:00pm
Saturday:	1:00pm	5:00pm

EdLab Policies

Please read the EdLab Acceptable Use Policy before you do anything that might get you in trouble.

EdLab Software and Unix Notes

Check the Edlab Software Notes for information on using specific software packages in the Edlab.

Please read the EdLab User's Introduction and Guide to Unix, and the quota and storage management guidelines if you have questions on using the EdLab UNIX machines.

EdLab e-mail setup

All new edlab accounts will have a ~/.forward file redirecting mail to the user's official university email address. Users can remove this file and receive email in the edlab. The mail forwarding can be changed using this web interface from any host on the Umass network.

All Edlab users should be using an IMAP client to read their e-mail -- local mailboxes don't exist on the Linux systems. PINE and Mozilla Thunderbird are two of the mail clients which support the IMAP protocol. The default PINE setup is already configured to use IMAP (this is not the case for Mozilla). If you need to configure the IMAP client yourself, the IMAP server is edlab-mail.cs.umass.edu.

CSCF uses a spam filtering device developed by Barracuda Networks to filter incoming email, and block known or very likely spam messages. The filter employs a series of filters to decide if an email is spam. These include white/blacklists of IPs and email adresses, a bayesian filter which scores the mail based on keywords, and flagging of untrusted URLs. The barracuda device labels likely spam with flags in the email header. For instructions on filtering out barracuda-flagged emails click here.

EdLab Web Server Statistics

Statistics for the UMass Computer Science Department Education Lab Web Server (edlab-www.cs.umass.edu) are compiled and updated weekly. We are currently using analog written by Stephen Turner at the University of Cambridge Statistical Laboratory to process our Web Server logs.

Weekly HTTP statistics (local access only)

Remote access to EdLab hosts

All of the EdLab Linux machines are connected to the Internet. Hostnames are as follows:

We highly recommend that for any remote sessions, machines elnux1-elnux7 are used as the remote host, as these are booted into linux and hence are always acccessible. There is a round-robin alias DNS elnux.cs.umass.edu which will resolve to one of these 7 systems to allow for some load-balancing. The edmac systems will not be remotely accessible if they are booted in to WinXP. In addition these systems may be rebooted at any time by the console user in order to boot into another OS.

The use of ssh is required for accessing all of the EdLab systems from a physical location other than its console (i.e. "network" or "remote" logins.).

The SSH protocol is intended for use as an endpoint-to-endpoint secure replacement for the Berkeley's "R" commands (rsh, rlogin, and rcp), but in order to achieve that security you must start the ssh client from your local machine. (I.e. the one at which you are physically typing.)

On UNIX, the SSH protocol is implemented by:

ssh

This is the command which replaces Berkeley's rsh and rlogin, as well as telnet. It allows secure remote login into a system which supports it, and adds numerous additional functionality to that.

scp

This command replaces Berkeley's rcp, and also can be used instead of ftp command (although it does not duplicate ftp's full functionality, such as its interactive shell environment).

sftp

sftp is a "secure FTP" protocol. If both the server and the client support SFTP, using it is as simple as typing "sftp" instead of "ftp" on command line. Unfortunately, most Windows and Mac clients don't support SFTP. A GUI interface on top of SCP can emulate FTP functionality. WinSCP (see below) provides such an interface for Windows systems.

The edlab-ftp server provides anonymous access for downloading course material; All other plaintext FTP access has been disabled on the EdLab systems. Users can use scp or sftp clients to connect to any of the elnux systems.

Where to find SSH client programs:

• On all UNIX-based CS machines, ssh is located in /usr/local/bin/.
• NiftyTelnet is a freeware ssh client for Macintosh OS9.
• JellyfiSSH is a freeware GUI interface for ssh running on Macintosh OS X.
• There are free UNIX/linux implementations available for download in several places such as www.openssh.com
• There are free implementations available for other platforms, such as PuTTY (for Windows).
• WinSCP is a freeware SCP(Secure CoPy) client for Windows using SSH. It's main function is safe copying of files between local and remote computers.

Student WWW pages

Students in the EdLab may program their own web pages if they choose. Each student has a default web page: ~/public_html/index.html. Edit your home page and add your personal information.

The URL for a student's home page is:

http://edlab-www.cs.umass.edu/~username

For information on HTML programming, please see one of the many tutorials available on the web, such as the W3 General HTML page.