Submitting CS125 Homework from a Mac

You’re not actually going to be doing that much “real” work on the Mac ; you’ll just connect the Mac to prclab as a remote terminal, do the bulk of your programming work there on prclab as per normal, and then, at the very end, bring a file from prclab over to your Mac so Canvas can get to it --- Canvas can work with your Mac, but without your jumping through a number of arcane software hoops, it can’t get to prclab.

Working on prclab.pr.erau.edu is exactly the same as described in the instructions at http://ultra.pr.erau.edu/~jaffem/classes/cs125/CS125_homework_submission_instructions.htm; as is submitting your script file via Canvas. The only differences are in how you connect to prclab in the first place and how you move the final typescript file (or whatever you wound up naming it) to your Mac’s desktop so you can submit it via Canvas.

1. To connect your Mac to prclab:

a. Open a terminal window ---Use Terminal.app, ; it’s built in to the Mac OS and is stored somewhere in your Applications folder (sometimes in a subfolder there named Utilities)

b. In the terminal window, type: ssh [email protected], where YourAccountName is, get ready for it, your account name, which is the same as the username you use to login to ERNIE. When prompted, enter your password. Your original prclab password is password2015; You can change it with the passwd command on prclab. Note that IT doesn’t synch ERNIE with prclab, so changes to one password don’t affect the other; sorry.

2. Then work normally on prclab with with pico, gcc, etc, as described in the regular homework instructions. After you have prepared the typescript file I want you to submit, do the following:

a. Close the ssh connection to prclab by typing either exit or logout in your terminal window --- that’s a command to prclab (which you’re talking to via ssh) to close your ssh connection. But your terminal window on your Mac will still be open and you’ll be talking to your Mac OS again. Alternatively, just open another terminal window.

b. Type the command: sftp [email protected]

c. Enter your prclab password when prompted. Submitting CS125 Homework from a Mac

d. You’ll now see a prompt like so in your terminal window: sftp> sftp stands for secure file transfer protocol and your Mac is now talking to prclab via sftp, not ssh (which is why the prompt is different).

e. Now enter the sftp command: get typescript and sftp will transfer the file named typescript to your Mac’s desktop. Then rename it and submit it via Canvas per the normal homework submittal instructions.

Alternatively, instead of messing with sftp on the command line, use a Mac application named Fugu to transfer the typescript file from prclab to your Mac’s desktop. As of Snow Leapord, Fugu is not bundled with the MacOS (sftp is), but it’s a freeware app at the Mac App Store. Download and install Fugu. Then run it. Here’s a screenshot from when I ran it just now: Submitting CS125 Homework from a Mac

Once Fugu connects to prclab , you can drag your typescript file to your Mac’s desktop and then submit it via Canvas as per the regular instructions. Fugu, by the way, in case you haven’t guessed, is just a third-party GUI front end to the sftp program.