Western Illinois University VPN

Please see uTech's VPN page https://www.wiu.edu/university_technology/vpn/.

NOTE: For the instructions below, if you are off campus, you will need to connect to WIU's VPN vpn.wiu.edu first. Please see the above information.



Connecting to uxb5.wiu.edu

• From a Windows computer:
  
  • You can use PuTTY from PuTTY Download Page, for example.
  • Alternatively, you could try MobaXterm


• From a Linux or UNIX computer, including a Mac computer:
  
  You can use ssh. Please see this.

(You can connect to toolman.wiu.edu in a similar way.)

Once you are connected to uxb5.wiu.edu, you'll notice that it is a Linux computer (actually, Ubuntu).

A few UNIX commands

pwd
will tell you what directory you are in. It's a good idea to have lots of subdirectories. To make a subdirectory named assn0, type
mkdir assn0
To change to it,
cd assn0
To backup to the parent of the current directory, type
cd ..
To exit from uxb5.wiu.edu, type
exit

It is easy to find Linux and UNIX info on the Internet. For example, there is a UNIX tutorial here.

vi and vim information

• After connecting to uxb5.wiu.edu, type
  vimtutor
  It will start a vim tutorial.
• The Vi Lovers Home Page.
• Using vi, the Unix Visual Editor, University of Washington Computing and Communications.
• It's easy to find info about basic vi commands on the Internet.
• On the new toolman.wiu.edu, there is no vim editor, so please use vi instead. On uxb5.wiu.edu, I normally use vim.
• To edit a file, type
  vim filename
  At this point you are in command mode where every key does something significant! For example, x deletes one character (where the cursor is). d4d cuts 4 lines. p pastes them. To begin typing, use i or a to get into insert mode. To leave insert mode, hit the escape key. Once again, every key does something interesting. To save what you've done (when in command mode), you can hit escape if you like (to make sure you're in command mode) and then type
  :w <enter>
  to save.
  To save and quit, type
  :wq <enter>
• Arrows not working when using vim?
  If you are using the vim editor and would like the arrow keys to work in insert mode, exit the vim editor, type
  set term=ansi <enter>
  and then try the vim editor again.

Java

To compile a java program on uxb5.wiu.edu or toolman.wiu.edu, type
javac Filename.java
and to run it type
java Filename

Note: You can compile and run C++ and Java programs on uxb5.wiu.edu and toolman.wiu.edu.

If you are having problems using java or rmic on toolman.wiu.edu, please read this.

File transfers

• To transfer files between uxb5.wiu.edu and toolman.wiu.edu, I recommend using scp. Please see here.
• uTech recommends using WinSCP for file transfers between a windows computer and a UNIX or Linux computer.
  WinSCP
• You could also try PuTTY's https://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/pscp.exe.

uTech

uTech
uTech Support Center