Cygwin Cygwin provides the functionality of a Linux distribution on Windows. If the operating system you will be using is Windows, you will need to install Cygwin to access the course workstation that you will use to run many of your simulations.
Installing Cygwin 1. Go to www.cygwin.com. Click on Install Cygwin located on the left top corner of the page. Choose and download either the 32 bit or 64 bit setup file based on your computer, and run it once it has finished downloading. 32 bit install is recommended even on 64 bit systems.
1 2. Accept the defaults and click next on each screen. The default installation will be done in C:\cygwin, which you can change if you prefer. The connection type would be direct connection and in the next page you can select any of the servers to download the files from.
2 3 3. You will then be asked to select packages. Be careful here. We will need a little more than the default packages. - Look through the package list, and search for the X11 which has a ‘default’ next to it. Click on it once and it will become ‘Install’ which means we will be installing everything under the X11 set of packages. Leave the remaining in the default settings. This will install everything that is required for our course. Click next. You can always go back to the setup and run it again if you want to install more packages.
4 - If you would like to install the entire Cygwin package, click on ‘default’ beside the ‘All’ category at the top. What is now ‘default’ will become ‘Install’ and everything under the category ‘All’ should also become ‘Install’. We have basically selected all packages for install. Click next. The size of a complete Cygwin install tends to be very large and should be avoided unless necessary.
4. The setup may ask permission to install dependencies required for some of the packages which should be given. The setup might take some time to install.
5. If the download speed is extremely slow, cancel the setup, restart it, follow the same procedure but pick a different mirror site to download from. The speeds vary significantly
5 based on which server you are downloading from. Typically pick a server located in the US.
After the installation is done, it will ask whether you want to create start menu and desktop icons. They are convenient so I would suggest having them. Press ‘Finish’ to finish the installation and start Cygwin by using the desktop icon.
Connect to the x server (Cygwin/x) by typing in ‘startxwin’ in the terminal that opens. You can connect to an external server in the newly opened terminal using the ‘ssh’ command: ssh -X username@remote_host where the -X starts the xserver with display, the username is the remote user login name you will be using to login to the workstation and the remote_host is the name of the workstation. You will be first asked to verify the authenticity of the fingerprint key to which you should type in ‘yes’ and then you will be prompted for your password.
For example, you can connect to one of the Linux machines on campus by using the following command: ssh -X [email protected] Your RCS usename and password will allow you to login.
To test whether X-window works, using this command: xclock & A clock on the remote host machine will be displayed on your screen.
This command will log you out of the remote host machine: exit
Note: If you would like connect to the workstation from an off-campus computer, you need to install VPN first: http://dotcio.rpi.edu/services/network-remote-access/vpn-connection-and-installation
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